Impact

When you start a blog, often things will happen in your day and you may think 'i MUST blog about this'.  I've had more than my share of those moments.

But what happens is that once you have too many of those moments, the thoughts never end up on the blog.

But there's one thought that has lingered. Only because it has made such an impact on my life, the life inside my head.

I think I've finally learned how to deal with others. "Others" here means people I must deal with on a regular basis who are very different from me, my lifestyle, my views etc.

I'm a sensitive person. And I would easily get 'hurt' over comments or actions that I viewed as being disrespectful towards me. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. But that wasn't the point at all.

Basically I would get super duper pissed inside and just make my own life worse after these episodes. And it all looped and looped in my head. I would be doing the dishes, and fantasizing about what I would say to this person if I ever got the opportunity.  I complained to a few friends/family who mash'allah gave me very good advice. But I don't think anyone, even I, knew the root issue.

Then one day I realized this is crazy. No other person should have such emotional power on me. And alhamdulillah Allah taught me the lesson I guess I was meant to learn through this experience I had.

There was dua. There was listening to lectures. One specifically on discoveru.org.  I had to analyze my self. It wasn't easy-the analyzing part.
It all finally came together in my head. I was looking for honor from this person. Their acceptance. Their acceptance of me was somehow going to add to my self esteem. W-h-a-t-e-v-e-r. Yeh alhamdulillah that's how I feel NOW. But not then...

So here is the super simple pearls of wisdom:

• Honor comes from Allah. Alone.
• When you must deal with a person who is causing you emotional pain, realize that you are allowing this person to make you feel that way. In other words, no other person can make you feel anything unless you allow it.  
• Know that if someone treats you good or bad, the actions of this other person reflect on their character, not on your self worth.  I was making the critical mistake of thinking that the way they treated me somehow belittled or honored me. Example: one man chooses to treat a beggar with respect while another doesn't. We all know who the nobler of these two men is.  

You can additionally imagine that a person saying xyz has a mirror around them, their actions/words reflect on that mirror and show them their true image/character.  In other words, their actions/words have absolutely no connection with you.  They own their actions. Subhanallah how freeing it was when I finally realized this.

Insh'allah with Allah's help, if you truly truly embody these things, Allah will help you.

And ofcourse the most important thing is building taqwa. When you build taqwa, you strive for Allah's acceptance, and people seem petty targets to seek acceptance from. You think about giving, and not about receiving. Problems aren't so bad anymore, because you have Allah. You cannot solve your own problems. Allah is the one who does that for us.

The new me is a completely different person on the inside. This person's comments or things that I would otherwise take as insensitive and disrespectful now bounce off me alhamdulillah.  Although some of this person's actions are indeed disrespectful, it does not matter anymore. They are not my actions and hence I do not worry :-)

The way Allah has made us..we all have some good and some bad. The good we keep and insh'allah fight the bad.  Basically I've tried reminding myself that this person is an older person, who also has a LOT of good mash'allah as well.
And that it's not my job to change this person's behavior.  I simply have to learn how to deal with it so it doesn't really effect my personal life, which alhamdulillah it really doesn't.