How to Manage Stress - Corrected Khutba

How to Manage Stress

By: Yasmin Mogahed

Opening

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed Satan.

And peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah and His blessings.

Introduction

I have a very short time to speak about a very deep topic, so I'm going to do my best to summarize. What I want to do is I want to leave you guys with something practical that you can take home and you can do, inshallah, and I'm deeply appreciative of the experts here who spoke about the need that we have and then some of the resources that are out there. What I want to talk about is just some things that we can do, some things that can help us, as the other sisters who came before me said, to manage our stress and increase our own well-being, inshallah.

Eight Practical Ways to Manage Stress

1. Spiritual Oxygen: Nourishing the Heart and Soul

The first thing I want to talk about is that when you talk about the soul and when you talk about the heart, the heart and the soul have needs, they have essential needs, just like the body has needs. And one of the essential needs of the heart and of the soul is to have oxygen, to have food and water, just like the body needs food and water, just like the body needs oxygen, the heart and the soul need its oxygen to stay alive.

And the oxygen of the heart and the soul is the remembrance of Allah - (ذِكْر الله - dhikr Allah) - that what that does. It's literally food for the soul. You've heard this expression, but it's literally feeds the soul and so one of the things that sometimes we do that starves us spiritually is that we deprive our hearts and souls of oxygen simple as that.

The Most Essential Need: Salah

And what are some of the ways we do that? We do that number one, the most extreme way in which we deprive our hearts and souls of spiritual oxygen is when we're not praying when we don't pray or we don't pray as we're told to pray five times a day. It's like depriving the heart of its oxygen of the spiritual oxygen that it needs to just be okay and stay alive.

This is just to stay alive just as the body - it needs it requires oxygen right just to stay alive and then beyond that it needs other it has other needs. But the most essential need of the body is oxygen and it's the same thing with the heart that the remembrance of Allah first and foremost our (الصلاة - salah) is what is keeping our heart spiritually oxygenated.

The Three-Part Prescription

And then in addition to that and those of you who have heard me probably in any recent talk I've given this prescription because I truly believe in this prescription to keep the heart spiritually alive and that is:

First: Salah - taking that as just like breathing.

Second: My Dua App - I recommend downloading an app called My Dua. Now My Dua M-Y-D-U-A-A at the end, it is just simply an app you spend 99 cents - as someone quoted me best 99 cents you'll spend, best investment. What it does is now on your phone, it's a collection of these supplications from the Quran and from the Sunnah that the Prophet ﷺ would say.

Now I want you guys to understand you may have grown up hearing about these supplications. Oh, I know the adhkar - saying (سُبْحَانَ اللهِ، الْحَمْدُ لِلهِ، اللهُ أَكْبَرُ - Subhan Allah, Alhamdulillah, Allahu Akbar). That's all true. But I think what has happened is that because we sort of grew up with this maybe we've taken the power of these things for granted. I know I did and what you'll realize is that these things are gold. These things are like vitamins and minerals for the heart and soul. It's like water and food for the heart and soul. It's like oxygen.

The Daily Routine

So when you have this app what you can do with this app and this is like kind of like the bare minimum daily routine that I recommend and I do myself and if I didn't do it, I couldn't really survive my life and that's no exaggeration. And that is:

• Morning supplications - So in the morning after you pray you open up your app and there's morning supplications you click on it. It's gonna give you a list of about 25. So that might be overwhelming for people. It takes a while maybe but what you can do with this app is you can star certain ones and that becomes your personal collection. Even if you spend a few minutes every day I promise you it will have a profound effect on you.
• Evening supplications - And then again in the evening and this is before maghrib prayer. And you read those again the evening supplications.
• Before sleep supplications - Lastly before you sleep, there are supplications for that.

These three and this is any scholar of the heart any spiritual doctor in the world will tell you that these are the main ones that you need to do to be spiritually healthy.

Keep in mind this principle: Allah loves the actions that are consistent even if they're small. So if you just take a small amount make that your collection but you do it consistently.

Third: The Quran - And the third part I forgot to mention was Quran and the Quran of course goes under that umbrella of the remembrance of Allah.

2. Focus Shifting: What You Focus On Grows

The second point I want to make is this is mentally. So there are ways that we feed our hearts and souls, there are ways that we feed our bodies, and there are ways that we feed our mind. And one of the ways to keep our mind healthy and this is a principle that you will just take home with you and that is that what you focus on grows.

Psychologically the things that we focus on tend to become bigger and bigger and so one thing that a person can do is shifting the focus of what it is that you focus on in your life each day.

Understanding Allah's Promise About Hardship

Now there are - everyone has stressors in their life, right? Everyone does. No one has it all good but no one has it all bad either. See the thing that Allah tells us in the Quran is:

What does it mean to say (إِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا) One of the mistranslations that people have of this verse is "after every hardship comes ease." But this ayah doesn't say (إِنَّ بَعْدَ) (after). The word is (مَعَ) (with). Now the word مع means alongside - with the hardship comes ease. This is a profound point.

What it means is that at any given point in time any hardship that you are given Allah gives you ease at the same time. And if you look at linguistically the ayah, the hardship is singular and the ease is plural and that's also a very profound point because what it means is that Allah never only gives us difficulty. Allah never only gives us struggle. Allah at the same time gives us يُسْرًا - and this is the plural of ease, the plural of ease.

And then again, it is repeated:

So the idea here is that at any given point there is no one in their life that only has difficulty or only has ease. It's always a mix.

The Practice of Gratitude

And so what does shifting your focus mean? Shifting your focus is a mental exercise where it's about what is your focal point? See there are people whose focal point is for example, what is missing.

I give this example of two pictures, right? You have a boy on the top holding one slice of cake and he is beaming. He's so excited because he's got a piece of cake and then there's a boy on the bottom who's holding an entire cake and it's missing one slice. So he's sad.

The difference between the two is not the amount of cake. It's the focal point. It's the fact that the one on the bottom is focused on what is missing whereas the one on the top is focused on what is there, what he has.

Now what is this alluding to? This is alluding to the practice of gratitude. And the reason I'm mentioning this is because it has been shown not just in the Quran where Allah says:

Allah says that your Lord, your Lord is telling you this, that if you are grateful, I will increase you.

But interestingly enough in psychological research they are finding the power of gratitude that gratitude, the practice of gratitude daily has been shown to alleviate physical as well as psychological symptoms. And so this is something that we already have in our Deen that the practice of just writing down five things every day that you're grateful for. What it does is it's shifting. It's part of that shift of focus. The situation might be the same but the focus is different and what you focus on grows.

3. Self-Compassion: Counter Negative Self-Talk

The third point: We need to be more compassionate with ourselves. This is something I've recently noticed especially in speaking with a lot of women and that is that we are so hard on ourselves and we this negative self-talk I've picked up on this that there is within our community and actually women in general and men as well.

We have a lot of very very negative self-talk. We beat ourselves up to an extent that if we ever spoke to anyone else in the way we speak to ourselves we would basically sabotage our relationships. Have you ever thought for a moment about speaking, you know the way that we talk to ourselves sometimes? Imagine speaking that way to your best friend. Imagine speaking that way to your sister or to your mother or to your father or to your husband or your wife if you're a man, can you imagine that what would happen to those relationships, right?

If we "oh my god, you're such a failure, you know, you can't get anything right" whatever it is that we say to ourselves. And the point is this is what we're doing with our own self-worth, our own self-esteem, our own relationships with ourselves - it's being sabotaged by some of this negative self-talk.

So one of the things I really want to emphasize is compassion for oneself. Self-compassion. We are too hard on ourselves and when that negative self-talk comes we have to counter it. We can't allow that just the same way that we can't allow ourselves to speak to a friend like that. We'd never do that. So don't speak to yourself with any - speak to yourself with the same mercy and compassion that you would want others to speak to and that you would speak to others. So this is very very important.

4. Mindful Intake: Don't Sip Poison

Number four is in order to keep our hearts healthy just like keeping the body healthy, we have to be mindful of what we're taking in - intake.

So I call this the "don't sip poison" point. You know if a person every morning for along with their very healthy breakfast is just sipping a couple sips of poison right or maybe with their lunch, with each meal just it's only a couple sips. What's going to happen to that person over time? Well, it doesn't take a doctor to know you're going to be killing yourself literally right because you're sipping on poison.

Now sometimes we do this to ourselves spiritually and psychologically by the kinds of things we surround ourselves with. When we surround ourselves with a lot of negativity when we surround ourselves with things that are not healthy for us, for example, there are things on social media that are not necessarily healthy psychologically, they're not healthy spiritually. It's a little bit like sipping poison.

Being Mindful of What We Consume

So keeping your environment healthy as much as you can. That's a huge part of being healthy internally just like you're not gonna have poison in your fridge and then expect that you're going to be healthy, right? That's something you're taking in.

So being mindful of:

• What you look at
• What you're listening to
• The type of talk not just self-talk, but what's coming out of your mouth
• What kind of conversations are you having

Just be mindful of these things. This is all intake into your heart.

And so your news feed on social media whatever type of social media that is, think of that like your fridge. Okay, you open up your fridge, that's what you're gonna eat that day and it's the same thing with your news feed. That's what you're gonna eat that day, but you're gonna eat it spiritually and psychologically. Does that make sense? Because everything you read, everything you're exposed to, it's like intake and that all goes into the heart and that affects you. So try to maybe make it more healthy.

The Power of Unfollow

And I always remind people there's this amazing thing on social media called unfollow, you know, and no one's gotta know. That's the beauty of it. Right, I'm serious because I've done this like for my husband and for my friends of like just let me have your news feed I'll fix it up for you and I've just tried to help them make it more healthy and you know what they've appreciated that.

Because sometimes people don't know like there's algorithms for these things like Facebook, for example. They have nowadays ways to really tailor your news feed to be stuff that's gonna be healthy. You know what I mean? Like put that organic food in the fridge, stuff that's gonna be psychologically and spiritually healthy for you to eat because that's what you're eating every single day.

A Note on Content Focus

And I'm interested make this point. I'm not up here to talk about Haram and Halal. Okay? There's nothing necessarily Haram about having every single thing you're following being a hijab tutorial and a makeup tutorial and a fashionista and all that kind of stuff.

I'm not gonna talk about Haram and Halal. I just want to remind you about what matters most. That's all. It's just a reminder that what you focus on grows. When the only thing you're exposed to is how people are looking and dressing and fashion then what happens is your mindset shifts and that becomes your focal point. It becomes the most important thing to you and that's not necessarily healthy because then that shifts your focus to almost an obsession with the superficial. That's it.

5. Service to Others: One of the Most Effective Ways to Increase Well-being

Number five: One of the most effective ways they found in psychological studies to increase someone's own happiness and their own well-being is to be in the service of others. This is something that studies have found in positive psychology. They're looking at they're moving away from just looking at disorders, but looking at how can we improve our wellbeing? How can we improve the quality of our lives and they call it flourishing.

And one of the things they found that one of the most effective ways is service - they call it pro social behaviors. So things that help others. This is something that we can do and not only are you going to help someone else but ultimately actually help yourself. One of the fastest ways to pick yourself up when you're down is to help another person who's down. So being in the service of others.

6. Address Life Circumstances That Need Change

Number six: Sometimes the pain that we feel is an indication that there's something we need to change in our life circumstances. Sometimes the pain that we feel is an indication there's something we need to change in our life circumstances.

So fever for example - when you guys are sick, and you feel a fever, the fever itself is telling you that there's a problem. Right? There is an infection and that fever is pushing you to go to the doctor to get medicine for the infection. Right? The fever is a symptom of the actual issue. You guys understand what I'm saying?

And so sometimes we feel pain because there's something in our lives that needs to change. For example, we are in an unhealthy relationship, perhaps an abusive relationship and the pain that we're feeling is because we need to get out of that unhealthy relationship or that abusive relationship.

So sometimes we have to also look at our lives and see what are the things in our lives because our hearts and our minds and our body they give us indications about things that are going wrong, and we have to go and make a change. So there are sometimes circumstantial things in our lives that we have to work on.

Allah says:

Allah says that indeed Allah doesn't change the condition of a people until they change what's inside themselves.

There is work sometimes we have to do to change within our lives, make changes within our lives before we're going to see change. So sometimes we have to take action circumstantially - there's things in our lives that need to be fixed and of course there are resources to help us with that.

7. Let Go of the Myth of Perfection

Number seven: Let go of the myth of perfection. Especially us women, we are taught that we're supposed to be perfect and this myth is actually crippling us.

And I'm just going to come from just even from a spiritual perspective. When we believe that we're supposed to be perfect, what happens is that when we slip or we commit a sin, many people fall into despair and the reason they fall into despair is because they had the myth of perfection.

When in fact Allah and his messenger never taught us that we're supposed to be perfect. Human beings by definition are human in that they are not perfect. We are not perfect and we will slip and we will commit sins and we're told that the best of us are not those who don't commit sins but those who repent and get back up when they slip.

And so keeping in mind that you're not supposed to be perfect but what Allah wants us to do is to not give up hope and to continue to go forward and when we fall - because everyone falls sometimes, everyone slips sometimes - and when you do, having that not falling into despair spiritually, but knowing that we're not meant to be perfect and getting back up that those who repent are those who are most beloved to Allah.

8. Having the Right Center of Gravity

Finally, number eight and this is a deep point. I don't have very much time to talk about it, but there are other classes I've taught specifically about this point and that is making sure we have the right center of gravity.

Sometimes we take things and we put them at the center of our lives. This is called an (إله - ilah). And ilah is something not just that you pray to but something that you revolve your entire existence around.

Now what happens to a human being when they take the wrong things and revolve their existence around it? It causes excruciating suffering.

What do I mean by that? When people take things for example like money and they put it at the center of their existence, they will suffer. When people take something like even if it's another person sometimes it's your own children. A lot of us fall into that especially as mothers. Even your own children if you put them at the center of your existence where only God should be, it will cause an excruciating amount of suffering.

If you take status or power or what other people think of you - these are things that sometimes we take and put them at the center of our existence and that place is only intended for God and when it is replaced with something else it causes excruciating pain.

Closing

These are eight practical ways that we can manage our stress and increase our well-being from an Islamic perspective. The key is to remember that we need to nourish our hearts spiritually, shift our focus to what matters, be compassionate with ourselves, be mindful of what we consume, serve others, address what needs to be changed, let go of perfectionism, and keep Allah at the center of our lives.

I say this and ask Allah's forgiveness for me and for you. He is Forgiving and Merciful.