Finding Inner Peace and Balance - Corrected Khutba
By Yasmin Mogahed | 2026-01-10T03:33:54.603654+00:00 | Topic: Purification
Finding Inner Peace and Balance - Ustadah Yasmin Mogahed
(بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ - bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim)
(أَعُوذُ بِاللهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّحِيمِ - a'udhu billahi minash-shaytanir-rajim)
(الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ، وَالصَّلَاةُ وَالسَّلَامُ عَلَى رَسُولِ اللهِ وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحْبِهِ أَجْمَعِينَ - alhamdulillahi rabbil 'alamin, was-salatu was-salamu 'ala rasulillahi wa 'ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma'in)
(رَبِّ اشْرَحْ لِي صَدْرِي وَيَسِّرْ لِي أَمْرِي وَاحْلُلْ عُقْدَةً مِّن لِّسَانِي يَفْقَهُوا قَوْلِي - rabbi-shrah li sadri wa yassir li amri wa-hlul 'uqdatan min lisani yafqahu qawli)
(أَمَّا بَعْدُ - amma ba'd)
(السَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ - as-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh)
Introduction: The Art of Overcoming
She's the author of Reclaim Your Heart. How many people have her book? Can't really see your hands. I'm sure a lot of you have her book.
You can buy it online, right? You can get it in a few days. Or, you're in luck because she's here today and she's selling her books at the Texas DAWA booth and she's signing it. So, what a deal, right? You get to meet the author, get the book signed, and read an incredible book full of amazing gems, mashallah.
In her session, she's going to walk us through restoration through our body, mind, and soul by following the path to Allah in order to overcome our challenges. Who here is excited to hear Sister Yusmin talk? She's traveled a long way for you guys and I'm so excited to introduce her to the stage, inshallah. She's a writer, she's a poet, and I am just so excited to have her come up, inshallah.
Please, welcome to the stage, Ustada Yusmin Mujahid. Ah, now you hear me. They were so excited to have me speak, they had me come up 10 minutes early.
Alhamdulillah, I've been to Houston a few times, but this is my first time at this particular conference and I'm very happy to be here.
I am the type of person and the type of speaker who likes to connect with whom I'm speaking to. But alhamdulillah, I can't really see your faces because of all the lights, but I hope that, inshallah, this will be an opportunity for us to have a two-way communication, even if yours is silent. This is a topic that everybody can relate to.
When I got the title, it had the word overcoming in it. And the skill and the talent and the art of being able to overcome is something essential that everyone needs. And the reason for that is, as all of you in this room know, this life is not perfect.
The Nature of This Life: Not Perfect, Not Entirely Bad
See, Jannah is perfect, but dunya is not created to be perfect. What that means is that there is nothing that is entirely good or entirely, eternally good in this life. But at the same time, and this is a very
important principle as well, this life is also not entirely bad either.
Why I'm emphasizing that is it is a key component of being able to overcome. The reason why sometimes we fall into despair, the reason why sometimes we fall into despair is because of the way we view things, because of the way we see the same reality. Two people can be looking at the exact same reality and see two very different things.
It's that age-old cliché that you can take a glass and you can fill it halfway with water and you can ask one person and one person will say that it is half empty, while another will say it is half full. But you see, the way in which we see our reality is extremely important in terms of how we respond to that reality. And that's why I want to emphasize this very important principle, which is that although this life is not perfectly good, it isn't perfectly bad either.
No matter how hard someone's life is, no matter how much they lose, no matter how much they struggle, they also have some ease in their life. They also have goodness in their life. No one, no matter how hard they have it, live with only hardship and no ease.
The Divine Design: Hardship and Ease Together
It's just the design of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that He gives us both. And not only does He give us both, but Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says:
And what that means is that along with the difficulty, and difficulty in this ayah is singular, along with the singular difficulty is plural, many eases. And this idea is very important because often people believe that things are either going to be all good or they're going to be all bad.
And when they go through difficulty, they have trouble finding the light within the darkness. And so I want to begin by speaking about the fact that there is always light, even within the darkness. Just now we're in a rather dark room.
The lights are very, very low, the ceiling lights. But there's also a lot of light as well. And so a person can choose what they focus on.
And I cannot emphasize enough that who you are and what surrounds you has everything to do with what you choose to focus on. And this is something that has been shown again and again in studies that it is our focus that determines our world essentially, our reality. And I'm going to explain what I mean.
The Power of Gratitude
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, He teaches us a very, very fundamental principle. He says:
That if you are thankful, if you are grateful, I will increase you. And what's so powerful about this is that what Allah is showing us is that if you and I choose to focus on what we have rather than focusing on what we don't have, what we have will increase.
And when I say what we have will increase, not only will we be given more of these good blessings, but psychologically, those blessings grow in our minds. In our minds, we feel full. We feel contented when we choose to focus on the things that we have.
When we choose to focus on the light, when we choose to focus on positivity, it actually grows within us and we become filled with it. But see, there's another dangerous tendency that we have. We have this tendency as human beings and we have this tendency as a community.
And that is that we like to complain. We like to complain about how bad it is. We like to complain about the things that are going wrong.
Two Extremes in Dealing with Difficulty
Now, one thing I warn you against is this. I believe very, very strongly that we have taken two extremes in how we deal with difficulty. We've taken two extremes in how we deal with pain and hardship.
And when something wounds us or something harms us or hurts us, we've taken two extremes. One extreme is the extreme of suppression. We have a lot of cultures, especially, which teach suppression.
The First Extreme: Suppression
Suppression of emotion, suppression of pain. If you go through something difficult, just put your happy face on and pretend it didn't happen. That if you have a wound, whether it's from your childhood or from your past, that the way to deal with it is to just suppress it and to cover it up and definitely don't let the world know that you're imperfect.
And that's actually a very, very, very dangerous trend. Because what that's like is like a person who gets shot. And what they do with their gunshot wound is they cover it with a Band-Aid.
When you cover a gunshot wound with a Band-Aid, what happens to it? Well, you might say time heals all wounds. But what's going to happen to your gunshot wound? It's going to actually become worse. It's going to get infected.
And pretending that it's not there doesn't make it go away. And it doesn't heal it. And time will not heal that wound because it was not cleaned.
It was not actually treated. And therefore, time is not going to heal a wound that's never treated or addressed. You have to address the wound and then you can talk about healing.
So there's this extreme of just suppression. Pretend you're perfect. Pretend everything is perfect. Put your mask on. And there's a very, very strong push in our culture to be perfect. Have perfect skin.
That's why we have so many filters. Alhamdulillah. Have a perfect body. That's why we have Photoshop. Alhamdulillah. Have a perfect life.
Perfect children. Perfect spouse. Everything has to be perfect.
And if it isn't perfect, put a filter both physically and metaphorically to make it look perfect. And we have this all over our social media. People photoshopping their lives to make it look what it is not.
Because there's so much pressure to be perfect. Nobody wants to see your flaws. Nobody wants to see that. No one wants to know that you have wrinkles or stretch marks. No one wants to know that you don't have perfect skin or you don't have a perfect life or a perfect figure. And there's so much pressure and this is actually causing a lot of mental a lot of depression and a lot of anxiety.
All this pressure to compete and to be perfect. It's very very dangerous in fact and spiritually it's very dangerous because it turns us into fake people. And when we become fake people a fake person cannot connect to their creator.
If you're fake you can't connect to Allah. You have to be real to be able to connect to your creator. You can't put a mask on and think you're going to connect to the one who made you.
So actually it's very dangerous both socially but also spiritually it's very dangerous to put on this mask and become fake.
The Second Extreme: Coddling Your Wounds
But see we have another extreme on the other end in dealing with wounds and in dealing with pain and struggle and hardship. And that is what I'll call coddling your wounds.
This is like a person who has a wound and Alhamdulillah they have dealt with it and Alhamdulillah it has healed but they keep picking the scab. Now what is this like? This is a person who becomes stuck in their past. A person who cannot let go of what has happened from the past or cannot let go.
For example if someone has hurt them they never let it go. They will never forgive. They'll keep replaying it in their mind.
They'll hold grudges to the grave. And that is equally dangerous because that also does not allow you to heal. It's just like the wound that you keep on picking it's healed but you keep picking it and you're actually making it, you're stunting that process you're making that process have to start over again because you're not allowing yourself to heal.
When you hold on to grudges you're actually harming yourself. I heard once someone say that holding a grudge is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. You understand? You hurt yourself when you hold a grudge.
You're not hurting the other person because you yourself are the one staying wounded. You're choosing to stay wounded. You're choosing not to heal and that's a choice that you have made for yourself by holding on to anger, by holding on to what people have done to you or what has happened to you and then you replay it in your mind and realize that this is a tool of Shaitan.
Shaytan's Tool: Getting Stuck in the Past
One of his favorite tools is to remind you and actually replay like a broken record anything and everything that ever hurt you from your life and the reason why he does this is he knows that if you get stuck in your past you won't be able to move to your future. You just get stuck and when you get stuck in pain you can't move on. It's like a person who's driving and we have a couple, you know, mirrors in the car, right, when you're driving.
You have the front where you're looking forward but then you have the rear view mirror and the rear view mirror has a very specific function. The rear view mirror is supposed to be something that you look at to give you an idea of what's behind you but it's not intended let me ask you this, if when you're driving you stay too long looking at the rear view mirror you understand, so instead of looking forward you just get fixated on the mirror, the rear view mirror, you get fixated on what's behind you. What's going to happen? You crash.
Why do you crash? You crash because you're not looking forward but the mirror is there but the mirror is not intended for you to be fixated on. The rear view mirror is only supposed to be for your reference, for you to reference what's behind you and then move forward and look back forward because forward is where you're moving but people do this in their lives, they get stuck on the rear view mirror, they get stuck on their past they get so stuck in whatever has passed them, whatever is behind them that they crash because they're not looking forward and they're not actually able to move forward so this is a very very well practiced tool of the shaitan is to make you stuck on what is behind you and there's many ways in which he does this many ways, one is by keeping you angry at whatever happened keeping you holding a grudge, keeping you holding on to that anger someone hurt me so and so did this to my family this person didn't, you know whatever it was that they did to you sometimes he might try to keep you angry at Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, audhubillah oh look what Allah did to you right, this is the worst kind look what Allah did to you look what Allah took from you you didn't deserve that, that wasn't fair this is the type of poisonous waswasa that he will put and when you start to feed, when you start to allow that and it grows within you, it's like poison so it will replay these things in order to keep you internally very negative and when you're internally negative, it's like poison poison going through your veins you won't be able to move forward.
The Solution: The Middle Path
So what's the solution, I've talked about two extremes, I've talked about the first which is the suppression that, the fake attitude right, the I'm perfect let me put a bandaid on all my problems and not actually deal with them as we said that's not going to solve anything, you can't put a bandaid on a gunshot wound and expect it to heal, you're in fact it's in fact going to get infected and you're going to end up having to amputate or even die from the infection the other extreme were those who just stay stuck who coddle the wounds who take off the scab who get fixated on the rear view mirror and that also is going to make you crash so then what's the solution how can we deal with hardship how can we be genuine and authentic and not fake but at the same time not get stuck in that quicksand right, in that mud that doesn't allow us to move forward and I believe that the answer is this, the answer is that we need to be honest about our reality.
We need to be real about our reality for example when you walk outside and it's night time it's night is it dark at night yes, thank you no one's saying, no it's not dark it's actually really light that's called denial so if you walk outside and it's dark, it's night it would be it would be denial to say actually the sun is upright just now so you can step outside when it's night and say yes it's dark right now yes I'm in pain right now yes things are hard right now yes Trump is going to be taking office right now that's true, however however the dangerous thing is allowing that darkness to consume you is allowing that negativity and that fear because you see when we allow fear to own us we become like slaves, we become it's just like being chained chained up, you can't actually move when you allow fear to consume you so what is the proper way to deal with it the proper way is to realize and to acknowledge yes it's night right now, however I believe and I know that tomorrow the sun will rise it is the ability to still have hope see it's the death of hope that kills a person think about it this way there's one saying I read and it says that a person doesn't drown by falling into the water you only drown by staying there make sense you don't drown because you just got dropped into the water but you will drown if you stay there you have to move you have to be able to move out of that situation and not stay stuck in order to survive.
Focus Determines Reality
But why I'm saying this is because there's a lot of challenges we are dealing with both personally and collectively as a community, obviously there are hardships, obviously these things are real, obviously these challenges are real but I will tell you what will make all the difference there will be a group of people who are going to focus on the problem, there will be a group of people, there always will be a group of people who will continue to focus on everything that's going wrong and that's going to be all they talk about and that's going to be all they read about and that's going to be all they think about but what happens when you do that when you focus on the problem is that it grows it will grow and it will consume you and you actually start to become paralyzed by it have you ever done that where you just watched too much negative news for a while how do you feel after that what happens to your state when
you consume yourself with negative news and that's it, does it make you more empowered, be honest or does it make you despair it doesn't empower you to focus on negativity what empowers you is to focus on hope to focus on what you can do about it, to focus on how you can make it better you understand the difference and there will be another group of people who will focus on the positivity on what it is that we can do to make a change, see if I am chained up and all I do is focus on my chains man, I got a lot of chains just now, I got a lot of them and I just sit and describe the chains, I tell you how heavy they are, I tell you exactly their shape, their color and that's it, and that's all I talk about and maybe I post about it and then I call my friends and all I'm talking about is chains you guys following? and that's it, but I haven't actually taken any steps to break those chains, I haven't focused on how can I get out of that situation or how can I improve my situation, if all these lights got turned off just now all of them, see we could sit and we could talk between one another about how dark it is in the room we could sit and we could complain and lament and then everyone take out their phone and write a status about it, maybe take a photo of how dark it is, you know get a lot of comments have a big discussion cry and scream but what have you done about the darkness no one has gone and gotten a lamp no one has gone and gotten a candle no one has turned on a light switch you understand, and this is the essential problem, when we get consumed with everything that's going wrong what happens when you do that is that you haven't actually taken steps to change it.
So I warn you and myself against becoming consumed with the negativity I warn you and myself from becoming consumed with everything that's going wrong and only problems, because I promise you while the problems are real, the goodness is also real, there's also goodness Allah has promised that Allah has promised that along with the hardship comes eases the plural of ease it's never ever going to be only dark there's always going to be goodness but it's up to me and it's up to you what it is that we're going to focus on whatever you focus on grows whatever you focus on grows and that is why the practice of gratitude is so powerful and the practice of gratitude is something that you know psychologists have found across the board this very principle that Allah tells us in the Quran:
"That if you are grateful, I will increase you they have actually found in studies that one of the most effective ways to treat depression is simply to keep a gratitude journal to have a journal where every single day you write what you're grateful for five things you're grateful for they've actually found that it can treat depression why is that? because this is the way Allah has wired us, when we focus on what we have, when we focus on what's positive and what we can do about it, we actually become more content and we become happier people so I urge you to take this middle route this middle route of acknowledging the problems but not focusing on them as they say, you should let go of your past but hold on to the lessons the rear view mirror is intended just as a reference your past I once read, your past should be a place of reference not a place of residence you're not supposed to be living in the past but what you're supposed to be doing is learning from it, take the lesson but let it go and similarly with the
challenges that we're dealing with today every single one of us have personal challenges every single one of us have collective challenges as a community we are facing very very real challenges.
The Story of Musa: Focus on Allah, Not the Problem
But I'm going to end with this story, many of you have heard me share it, I feel that it is so relevant today, and that's the story of Musa alayhis salam when he was with his people in front of the Red Sea when Musa alayhis salam stood in front of the Red Sea he was in a very impossible looking situation, he had this giant body of water in front of him and he had an army behind him and this was Pharaoh, he was a superpower he was a superpower who killed babies as a policy cut off people's limbs and stuff and now he's with a group of slaves stuck but the question is what was his response and what was the response of the people who were with him when they saw each other the group, so Musa alayhis salam his people saw the armies you know what the people of Musa said they had this attitude which many of us had the day after the elections especially:
"We will be overtaken" that's it for us you know what I'm saying we're all going into camps not the fun kinds of camps guys we freaked out and understandably so when we face hardships as a community or individually, many of us have this type of response indeed we will be overtaken, we lose hope we fall into despair and honestly it's somewhat understandable they're stuck in the front of a red sea with an army behind them it's understandable given the situation as it is understandable our own anxiety at this time however, look at the response of Musa alayhis salam he said nope he said nope, he said absolutely not by no means for those who understand Arabic it's a very very emphatic no way he said:
"Indeed indeed my lord is with me and he will guide me through this" you see Musa alayhis salam had the ability to stay focused on the right thing Musa alayhis salam wasn't focused on the problem Musa alayhis salam wasn't focused on the army and he wasn't focused on the red sea he was focused on Allah and he knew that Allah would get him through it he knew that Allah was greater than the red sea and the army combined and Allah is greater than any candidate and Allah is greater than any leader and Allah is greater than any catastrophe that's happening in the world he said he said by no means will we be overtaken by no means my lord is with me and he will guide me through and then what happened to him Allah told him to strike the sea with his staff and when he did that the sea was split in half now this is not just an awesome story it is an awesome story but that's not it after telling us this story Allah tells us:
"Indeed in this is a sign" this is a lesson for us it's not just a bedtime story that we tell our kids this is not just a bedtime story it is a lesson for us and it's a timeless lesson that applies as much then as it does
today and it will be forever applicable that when you put your trust in Allah he will make a way out for you and this splitting of the red sea will happen and can happen for us today just as it happened for them not physically we won't physically be standing in front of a sea we probably will never be put in such a situation I hope however Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and many of you who've been in this situation have attested can attest to this and can witness to this that there are times when you feel stuck in your life there are times when you feel powerless and you see absolutely no way out has it happened will it happen absolutely and it is in those times that if you truly put your trust in Allah and you do what you can one thing that's very interesting about this story is that Musa alayhis salam was still told to take an action wasn't he see when we get put in such situations it doesn't mean we don't take action see trust in Allah doesn't mean you don't take action it doesn't mean you don't take action.
Tawakkul and Action Together
We are taught in our deen this balance between having both at the same time both tawakkul and action tie your camel and put your trust in Allah it doesn't say tie your camel and then put your trust in Allah it says and this is simultaneous and so Musa alayhis salam was completely in a state of tawakkul he said he is not afraid of being overtaken he is in a state of tawakkul and yet still Allah asks him to take an action and his action was to strike the sea his action was to take his staff and strike the sea I am not telling you that we don't need to take action we need to take action both personally collectively and as a global community we need to take action when we see injustice we need to take action when we see people suffering we need to try to help them relieve their suffering when we see our situation we need to try to change it Allah says:
Allah says indeed Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change what's inside themselves so we need to take action but it's when we take action Allah subhana wa ta'ala then opens the sea for us in every way both personally collectively as a community and all over the world.
Closing Dua
I ask Allah subhana wa ta'ala to relieve all those who are suffering all over the world all those who are suffering in this room and I ask Allah subhana wa ta'ala to enable us to take that action to change ourselves internally and for Allah subhana wa ta'ala to change our condition externally.
جَزَاكُمُ اللهُ خَيْرًا
Sister Yasmin One thing you guys should know is that she will be outside immediately after this lecture she's heading out right now for a book signing for her book Reclaim Your Heart keep in mind this is the new edition where there are four additional chapters so you have her book already be sure to buy the new edition inshallah and get it signed.