The Method To Staying Motivated When You Want To Quit

The Secret to Lasting Motivation

How do you become motivated? How do you find motivation — not just temporary motivation that lasts 30 minutes after the talk, but a motivation that stays with you for as long as possible?

The secret is in the du'a that Musa (alayhi al-salam) makes when he goes and sees some injustice. He tries to intervene. He kills a man by mistake. Who knows what did he say straight away?

He said, "Oh Allah, please forgive the mistake I've just done." Allah forgave him — Allah is the Forgiving, the Merciful. He comes back the next day. He's more careful today. But when somebody calls him out, it touches something deep down. Why?

Musa (alayhi al-salam) has witnessed years and years of apartheid. Years and years of injustice. He's seen his people be slaughtered. He's seen his people be chained. He's seen his people be enslaved. Do you think that goes away? When you see that day after day after day after day, you will have a burning desire: I have to fix this injustice. I can't just watch. When the injustice is close to home, you'll be ready to tear up everything. You're not going to give up, because it's a personal experience that touched you so deeply.

Personal Experience as a Source of Motivation

One of the things that keeps people motivated for a long period of time is personal experiences — negative, not positive. Negative personal experiences. Let me give you another example of apartheid. Who ended apartheid in South Africa? Nelson Mandela — you guys should know this, this is important history.

Did he just wake up, make a TikTok video, and then become prime minister? Does anybody know how many years he was imprisoned? Roughly 27 years. Was it a normal imprisonment? Solitary confinement — for 27 years. Why? What did he do wrong? He just said blacks and whites should have equal rights. There shouldn't be a bench that says "whites only." There shouldn't be a bus that says "whites only." Just to speak up for that — he was in solitary confinement for 27 years. When he came out, did he retire? He had doubled the motivation.

This is the motivation that we need. We're not looking for motivation that ends the day after tomorrow. We want the motivation that becomes a burning fire that never leaves you.

One of the important parts of motivation is to tap into your own personal life, your own personal experiences. Allah leaves you clues in your life. Things happen in your life, and when you look back you say: "This is the day that I realized — this happened to me, I saw this happen — therefore I will never let it happen again." You'll be a man or woman on a mission, because it happened to you personally. Personal things happen to you, and this is Allah pushing you in a particular direction, giving you a permanent fire — not a motivation that lasts for two days.

You can only fake motivation and manufacture motivation for so long. At some point it disappears. You can only put oil on the fire so many times before it burns out. But the deep motivations are intrinsic. They are not dependent on outside people and company and environment. The deep motivation comes from within yourself — within your past, within your love of Allah, within what you want to see in the Hereafter.

What Ibn al-Qayyim Says About Al-Himmah

What does Ibn al-Qayyim rahimahullah say about al-himmah — about motivation? He says: when you deeply desire something, it overtakes you with a passion such that you have no interest in doing anything else. There's a drive that overcomes you such that there's no interest in going or doing anything else.

Where does this drive come from? Ultimately and fundamentally, the drive and the motivation comes from one thing. The starting point is knowing Allah and understanding what He has in store for you — being able to visualize the rewards of Allah and visualize the consequences, and not treating them like some imaginary realities. And then he says: to have an aspiration, an ambition, a desire — in the short time that I am on this earth, how can I achieve the closest position to Allah?

There is a level of competitiveness that drives you. Everybody else is chasing some temporary illusion, some temporary satisfaction. And it takes you to taste one of those temporary things and say: "There's nothing here. I tasted it. I felt good for about three minutes and then it was gone. That's it." But these acts of worship and these acts of drawing close to Allah — the pleasure doesn't go in five minutes. The pleasure stays with me, and I will see it again on the Day of Judgment.

The Loneliness of High Aspirations

Ibn al-Qayyim talks about people whose ambitions are connected to the afterlife. He says these people are very lonely. Even though they're in a big crowd of people, they feel very lonely — because they look at the crowd and they see everybody as sheep. They're just following what everybody else does, walking in the same direction as everybody else. But these people are thinking about something far greater. They're motivated by something far deeper. When they're with people, they're losing interest. But when they're with Allah, or when they're working towards their goal to please Allah, they are deeply motivated.

The Power of Company

One of the most important ways to receive motivation — especially if you're lacking it, if your himmah is at zero — is to be around people of himmah. To be around people who desire the afterlife and you see them working day and night. You see them sweating. You see them waking up early in the morning, late at night, like a machine — and you think: "How is this person able to do this? I can't even do a tenth of this." If you just hang out with this person for a week, you will notice it starts to rub off on you, like osmosis.

There's a reason why the idea of congregation exists. There's a reason why the idea of doing things together exists — because alone is very difficult. Alone, you lose the motivation.

One of the most beautiful hadith about this is the hadith where the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) informs Allah that a group of people have come to remember Him. Allah sends the angels to check: why are they gathering? They say, "Oh Allah, they're gathering to remember You." He says, "But what about this one man? He doesn't seem to be there to remember Me." They say, "No, he just came because the rest of them came." Allah says, "Forgive him as well, for all of his sins" — just because he was there with the pack.

And so this is something that we have to realize: motivation is often linked with the company that we keep. If we keep the company of people who are just on survival mode every day of their life, we will also become in survival mode.

And this often happens in work environments. You end up in a work environment — 9 to 5, or 9 to 9, whatever your hours are — you're working, working, working. You end up around the same people nine, ten, twelve hours a day. You end up sharing the same aspirations as them. You go to the kitchen, or you're driving a taxi and you end up talking to the other drivers, or you're a plumber and you end up with the other plumbers one day, chit-chatting — and what are they talking about? They're talking about the next job, the next client, the next project. And so over time, over a long period of time, your mind becomes attached to these things.

And by the way, religious people are no different. A group of people who call themselves tullab al-'ilm — seekers of knowledge — they gather together. Every time they gather together: "Which book are you studying? This book? Is it this book? What about this — have you studied Ibn 'Aqil? What about Al-Alfiyyah? After that, what are you studying? Which sheikh? I'm studying this sheikh. Really? That sheikh? I'm going to that sheikh." And it ends up being a very similar conversation — all of them competing on these symbols of progression and achievement.

I challenge you to find me a group of students of knowledge who gather together and ask each other: "Which of us prayed tahajjud tonight?" It doesn't happen. Nobody competes in those kinds of things — because it's easier to read books. It's easier to go to a halaqah and sit and have the illusion of progressing in knowledge. Everyone loves to run after illusions. But the people of high himmah — the people with the highest aspirations — are chasing something nobody knows, understands, or appreciates. They are chasing the permanent. They are chasing the pleasure of Allah.

If you ever tie your ambitions and motivations to something temporary, you will always become deflated — your balloon will be popped. And this is why the people who struggle the most with motivation are people who are not sincere.

The Munafiqoon and the Lack of Motivation

When Allah talks about people who lack motivation in the Quran, He talks about the munafiqoon:

"When they get up for Salah, you see them lazy — they don't have the motivation to get through the Salah." And the reason is that fundamentally they are not interested in the pleasure of Allah. They are only doing it to put up an appearance to other people. Wa la yadhkuruna Allaha illa qalila — and very little do they remember Allah.

Dhikr as the Greatest Source of Motivation

This brings us to another of the greatest sources of motivation — in fact, I can say the greatest source of motivation. When people who are disbelievers need motivation, what do they do? They go on YouTube, search "motivational speech," and find somebody screaming in their ear: "Get back up when you fall down!" They look for someone screaming at them to get their life in order. But the believer — when a believer wants motivation, all they need to do is sit by themselves and say:

"Oh Allah, the Ever-Living, the One who keeps everything in order — I ask You for Your mercy." All it takes is to sit by yourself for one minute and say:

Or, when the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) would himself find his motivation dip, he would say:

"Oh Allah, there is no life like the life of the Hereafter." These are heavy words. Many of us don't give them enough time of day.

And this is what Allah criticizes the munafiqoon for — they have no motivation to pray Salah, and when they pray, they're constantly trying to please people. And this is the Achilles heel of motivation.

The Root Cause: Lack of Sincerity

The greatest reason for lack of motivation is not what Simon Sinek tells you, and not what all the great leaders of management and psychology tell you. The greatest reason for lack of motivation is a lack of sincerity — fundamentally. When we look at our own lives and we make excuses for things that we don't feel like doing, there are a number of things we do every day regardless of motivation — and often it's because when you want something hard enough, you'll do it.

And so really the question that Ibn al-Qayyim asks — the question that you have to ask yourself — is: How badly do I want what is with Allah? How badly do I want the pleasure of Allah? Or am I just keeping up appearances?

One of the greatest sicknesses that we will fight until the Day of Judgment is the sickness of wanting to please people — wanting to put up a mask and an appearance for the pleasure of people.

The Fuel of the Prophets: Secret Worship

And you ask yourself the question: Where will I find this ikhlas? Where did the Prophets, the messengers, and the Sahaba draw the spiritual strength to have the level of sincerity that egged them on again and again — night after night, day after day, setback after setback? The secret of the ikhlas and the strength of sincerity of these messengers is one thing: it is the secret worship that nobody ever saw.

Allah said to His Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam): when you've done all the deeds, done all the hard work, had all the sweat — wa iqtarib — come close to Me. "All you who are wrapped up, pray at night except a little." This is the fuel — this secret worship that nobody could see.

Motivation is not a hack. There's no life hack. There's no alarm clock, no app, no screensaver, no YouTube Short that you can watch in order to become motivated. You have to want it — deeply, deeply, deeply. And that is the only way that you will walk through fire and snow and rain and do everything possible until you have achieved what you desire.

If you don't want it, nobody in this world can help you. No procrastination book can help you. Nobody on this earth can motivate you. No speech will be able to rile you up — if you fundamentally do not want and desire and intend the pleasure of Allah. Sorry, there's nothing that can be done for you. That is something you have to sit with yourself and ask yourself:

What do I really want?