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Wake up.

Hit snooze.

Hit snooze.

Hit snooze.

Drag myself out of bed.

Pray Fajr lazily.

Chug coffee.

Rush out the door.

This was my life.

I did everything simply because I had to.

I prayed because I didn’t want to go to Hell.

I went to school for my parents.

Got good grades for my parents.

Mindlessly, aimlessly, endlessly.

Every task took so much mental effort.

I had to drag myself to prayer.

Forcing, pushing, exhausting all avenues.

And I didn’t want that anymore.

I had heard the stories about the Muslims who would stand in prayer all night, whose hearts would soften at Allah عزوجل mention, who remembered their Lord sitting, standing, laying, etc.

I wanted that.

To find ease, comfort, and bliss in my Ibādah and life.

I still want it.

And I want the same for everyone reading this.

But to do so, we need to organize the mental clutter in our brains.

By going from force to ease in our Ibādah and life بإذن الله—in 4 consecutive steps.

1. Vision

Create a goal, or you’ll be assigned one.

Create a project, or you’ll be assigned one.

Create a vision, or you’ll be assigned one.

If you do not know your purpose and what you want from life, you will be sucked into harmful environments.

An environment of bad friends, bad desires, and bad actions.

And as Muslims—this is even more damaging to your Imāan and overall goal of achieving Halāwah (sweetness) of faith.

Woe to me! I wish I had never taken so-and-so as a close friend. 25:28

You as a Muslim are responsible for your environment.

And your environment begins with your mental space.

“How do we level up our mental space?”

By creating a vision through an anti-vision.

“I don’t want to end up in Hellfire.”

“I don’t want to die not wearing hijab.”

“I don’t want to die earning harām.”

“I don’t want to waste my life.”

And that there is not for man except that for which he strives. 53:39

If you know the things you don’t want, it means you’ve automatically developed clarity on what you want.

“I want to enter Paradise.”

“I want to dress as the Mothers of the Believers.”

“I want to earn halāl and use it beneficially.”

“I want to strive for good.”

Boom. You have a vision.

2. Identity

Who is the individual you want to become?

Indeed, the Muslim men and Muslim women, the believing men and believing women, the obedient men and obedient women, the truthful men and truthful women, the patient men and the patient women, the humble men and the humble women, the charitable men and the charitable women, the fasting men and the fasting women, the men who guard their private parts and the women who do so, and the men who remember Allah often and the women who do so - for them Allah has prepared forgiveness and a great reward. 33:35

These are the characteristics we should strive for as Muslims.

And a lot of us want this for ourselves but there is an increasing gap between desire and execution.

We find ourselves in constant guilt and dissatisfaction with our lives because the person we want to become is not us.

At least not right now.

This leads to cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is when your behavior and beliefs are contradictory to your actions.

You want to be x, y, z, but give in to your desires 90% of the time.

Therefore your progress is lacking and you feel burdened.

And you resort to methods of distraction and cheap dopamine such as movies, junk food, idle talk, etc.

But you always come back feeling empty because you are dissatisfied with the condition of your soul and life as a Muslim.

Hence, the term—cognitive dissonance.

Surely in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find comfort. 13:28

The opportunity cost of you being comfortable in this state of dissatisfaction is the person you could be and the things you could achieve.

But the first step of eliminating this cost was recognizing the underlying reasons.

Now that we’ve understood why we feel unfulfilled, we can build an identity focused on Islāmic principles through hacking our reward system.

3. Habits

“It won’t feel hard if I’m having fun, right?”

“It won’t feel hard if I’m used to it, right?”

Absolutely. Everything becomes easier the more you do it.

The problem with us as Insāan (humans) is that we forget—we forget the happiness that awaits us at the end so we choose instant gratification time and time again.

This leads to entropy—disorder in our lives.

We don’t enjoy Salāh because we don’t focus in it long enough.

We don’t enjoy reading the Qurān because we do not ponder upon it.

We need to force our limbs long enough, and our heart will follow.

So get up. Stand. Stand in Salāh. And read the Qurān.

Even if you’re doing it out of sheer obligation.

Do it.

Because happiness awaits you at the end.

Is there any reward for goodness except goodness? 55:60

And the more you strive against yourself to achieve a habit or goal, the easier the process becomes.

Through building a habitual system aligned with the Muslim identity, we can take the mental strain of rectifying ourselves to bliss.

And we can understand the concept of joy with neurochemistry.

The process can become enjoyable because of something remarkable in the brain’s structure—the nucleus accumbens (NAc).

The NAc is key in reward, desire, and motivation. It is also activated during wanting something and liking it.

We are conditioned to think that we like a lot of things—but no, we want a lot of things.

The NAc is a 100% active when wanting something.

Yet, it is only 10% active when liking something.

Wanting something gives you the dopamine hit you seek.

If you form your Islāmic habits through attraction, you will want to do them because dopamine is released at the anticipation of reward, not just experiencing reward.

When you anticipate the reward for doing good deeds, you become happy.

This leads to earned dopamine which is lasting and provides you with a sense of purpose and fulfillment.

I did not create jinn and humans except to worship Me. 51:56

And there is the halāwah (happiness) we were looking for.

And we find this happiness by implementing the habits of our desired identity.

4. Implementation

Implement through clear intentions.

Indeed, deeds are only with intentions, and each person will have only what they intended. Bukhari 54

Vagueness breeds procrastination.

And procrastination is arrogance that you will have time to do tomorrow that which you had today.

To cut procrastination at its root, you need to make the first step to your desired habit so easy that it’s like drinking water—free and flowing.

And this is done through removing the blockages of vagueness.

You need to devise such clarity that you should know what time, what day, how, after what, and before what you will do something.

“I am going to read one page of the Qurān every day after praying Fajr before going to work.”

Clarity.

Now you know exactly where to start—cutting procrastination out.

And after the initial days of hardship striving against your desire to sleep after Fajr, you will become accustomed to starting your day with the Qurān and you’ll start to find halāwah in it بإذن الله.

If you want to read more on how the Qurān opens up our time, check out my previous letter here.

And if you’ve been misguided with the idea that habits will lead to boredom and lack of spontaneity—discard this thought.

Because success and stamina in Ibādah is born through cultivation of righteous actions and having a reliable system to fall back on when your soul calls you to sin.

And I do swear by the self-reproaching soul. 75:2

All habits are automation. They provide ease in your life by transforming difficult tasks to ease by reducing the amount of mental power required.

The more you read Qurān, the easier your recitation becomes.

It becomes familiarized with your tongue and brain.

The more you workout, the easier it is to stay healthy.

Your body becomes familiarized with working its muscles.

So familiarize yourself with difficulty in order to progress and reach that station of halāwah بإذن الله.

Your brain is a muscle. You can train it as you wish. So train it to find the difficulty of self-rectification as enjoyable بإذن الله.

Your Homework

• Use ChatGPT to create a vision through an anti-vision

• Use this to extrapolate your desired identity

• Ask ChatGPT to give you the Islāmic habits of this identity

• Ask ChatGPT to build you a schedule to implement these habits with your daily commitments in mind

May Allah عزوجل grant us the ability to strive for good, may He عزوجل accept our righteous actions, and pardon our sins.

Ameen.

Until next time,

في أمان الله (I leave you in the care of Allah)

-bintabbas