When You Lose Motivation (How To Be Unshakable)

The Meaning of Weakness (Wahen)

Allah says:

Don't become weak and depressed. When a believer goes through a crisis, instead of the crisis becoming a reason to lose inspiration, the crisis becomes the fuel to become far more motivated than ever before. Allah would not give me a crisis unless He wants me to rise even higher.

That's the mentality Allah wants. Allah says, I want to see who really believes in the unseen. Allah says, that's why I gave you a hard time because I wanted to see how many of you can still believe in the promise of Allah even when you don't see it.

All praise is due to Allah, the creator of existence from non-existence and the maker of light from darkness and the bringer of patience from pain and the giver of repentance from regret. All praise is due to Allah. The best speech is the book of Allah and the best guidance is the guidance of Muhammad ﷺ and the worst things are innovations and every innovation is misguidance and every misguidance is in the fire.

Allah says in His holy book, I seek refuge with Allah from the accursed Satan:

To start today's khutbah I would like to introduce you to a word that happens only a few times in the Qur'an. The word is وَهَن (wahen). The ayah that I recited to you also includes this word. In the Arabic language the word وَهَن is used for instance when a bird eats something infected and it becomes sick and it can't fly anymore. So it tries to take off and it can't take off anymore. So it ate something sickening and it's no longer able to fly. So it became disabled, the bird became disabled.

When someone is not able to find the energy to do work, they're trying to do the work, but they can't do it. They're not able to get up or they can't find the—for example, you might be having mental block. You're trying to type your report and nothing's coming to your head. You're experiencing وَهَن. It's a kind of temporary paralysis that happens. Similarly when someone has weak grip, they're not able to grab something and hold it tight. Their hands have become weak. Someone who's وَاهِن is someone who doesn't have a good grip, doesn't have a tight grip.

This word is used in a very interesting way in the Qur'an like for example Zakariya عليه السلام tells Allah:

My bones have become weak, they don't respond anymore. It's almost like in my mind I'm getting up but my body says wait. So it doesn't react the way that I need it to react. It's almost slowly becoming paralyzed. So that's how he describes his old age that his bones are too weak and too rigid, too slow to react, to respond.

Physical and Mental Weakness

This is also not just a physical state. This is also a mental state. وَهَن is also a mental state. Before I go to the mental state, understand something about the physical state also. When a mother is pregnant, when a woman is pregnant and every month the burden becomes heavier and heavier—first trimester, second trimester, third trimester—Allah says:

His mother carried him one weakness on top of another weakness. What that means is she becomes less and less able to get up, less and less able to do the normal things she was able to do, less and less able to turn from one side to another side when she's lying in bed. She slows down, physically she's slowing down and becoming less capable.

From this comes the idea that just like when you eat something bad and you become sick like the bird, or a woman is carrying an entire other human being in her body and it slowed her down, the same way you can experience وَهَن when you become depressed. You can experience وَهَن because you saw something that took away your motivation. Your inspiration is gone.

The Battle of Uhud: A Crisis of Faith

The Sahaba رضي الله عنهم أجمعين were with the Prophet ﷺ in the Battle of Badr and they saw the angels help them. Some of them would report that we would slice our sword but before the sword could touch we could see the enemies already cut. And Allah talked about how He sent an army of angels to help the Sahaba. This inspired them. They were inspired.

But when you get to the Battle of Uhud, when you get to the Battle of Uhud, the Prophet himself ﷺ is almost killed. There's even rumors spreading that he's already been killed. And when he was unconscious, when he woke up his face was filled with blood because if you accept all of the reports he was injured at least in three different places in his face. Even an arrow went through his jaw, took out one of his teeth. And there's even reports that the Sahaba like Ali رضي الله عنه had to take mud and make a mixture and patch his face so the bleeding would stop.

This had to happen. And of course all of this happened because in the beginning of that same battle, Allah will say Himself in the beginning you were destroying the enemy. You were winning, they were running. This is what the beginning of Uhud was—Muslims were winning. Allah talks about that in the Qur'an. So we were also motivated. But then of course, we know that a mistake happened and some people left their position and then they came from behind and everybody here knows the story.

Allah in great detail describes not just what happened, but how the Muslims felt. Actually what they felt was وَهَن. The feeling that they had at that time was وَهَن. The reason I want to share this with you is that this story is not just about the Battle of Uhud. This is the story about how to overcome a devastating situation whether it's a devastating situation in your family, it's a devastating situation in the country, in the economy, a state of war, whatever devastating situation happens that in the beginning you were full of hope, everything was going well, everything was going exactly according to plan and all of a sudden everything turns around and all of your hard work disappears. And your own leader, your own inspiration is injured.

Imagine the next week Rasulullah ﷺ has to lead the prayer and he's giving the khutbah and everybody's looking at his face full of injuries. And they're sitting there looking at him and they cannot, they can't, they always remember what happened. They can't forget what happened. And maybe his voice is also changed because of the injury the way he speaks is no longer the normal way that he speaks until the injury recovers and they can hear the pain in his voice and that becomes the voice of everybody. Everybody gets depressed.

Allah's Message in Times of Crisis

What ayat of the Qur'an came in this time of depression and this type of no inspiration? What ayat of the Qur'an came? Allah says:

Don't become weak and depressed, as if Allah knows we are already depressed. He knows we're already feeling paralyzed. We already feel like what's the motivation for me to get up now? And in that moment He says وَلَا تَهِنُوا. Then He says وَلَا تَحْزَنُوا.

A lot of times the word حُزْن is described as sadness, but حُزْن is more than sadness. حُزْن in Arabic is when something becomes hard on the inside. So for example, if a person dies their physical body starts becoming stiff. This is actually a حُزْن on the inside of the body. So this is describing extreme feelings—it could be sadness, it could be anxiety, it could be depression, it could be fear, it could be doubt. All of those things can actually be حُزْن.

So first thing Allah says is your inspiration went away, وَلَا تَهِنُوا. And when your inspiration goes away, then all these negative feelings start taking place replacing the positive feeling. Because if the container is empty, something will fill it. So no longer it has positive feelings, so it's flooded with negative feelings. وَلَا تَحْزَنُوا, and you start becoming petrified, you start becoming hard inside.

Allah says:

Don't become victim to these two things. You will be supreme, you will win, you will be on top if in fact you truly, truly believe.

The Enemy's Motivation

Then Allah gives the Sahaba a motivational speech. He says:

If an injury has touched you—and the word for injury normally is جَرْح in Arabic which is injury, Allah uses the word قَرْح with a ق here in this ayah. But it is an injury that goes inside the flesh all the way to the bone. When it reaches the bone that becomes قَرْح. Allah is saying the injury that you experience is not small. I know it cuts you deep. But you have to understand your enemy, they also have a قَرْح.

This time you got a قَرْح, last time in Badr they got a قَرْح. This time you lost many of your most precious Sahaba, last time they lost some of their most important leaders. Exactly the same thing happened to them, but look at them. They're still motivated to fight you. They were supposed to be depressed, they were supposed to lose all hope. But now they're coming back three times stronger than last time because the loss did not make them depressed. The loss made them more motivated. And Allah says, and what do they believe? They believe in shirk and they became motivated. You have Iman, you should be much more motivated than them.

The Cycles of Victory and Defeat

So what is Allah doing? Allah is reverse engineering crisis. When a believer goes through crisis, instead of the crisis becoming a reason to lose inspiration, the crisis becomes the fuel to become far more motivated than ever before. Allah would not give me a crisis unless He wants me to rise even higher. This is the formula.

Allah says these are days that we flip between people. Sometimes Allah will give your enemy victory, sometimes Allah will give you victory, but the victory will not be permanent. Your goal, my goal in this life is not victory because Allah Himself says He keeps switching these days between people.

I'm reminded even on the day of Fath Makkah when Makkah was conquered, you would think okay Islam won finally, all the enemies have been defeated, all the problem has been solved:

All the people, so many people are entering into Islam, victory. Even then Allah revealed in Surah Tawbah:

Many of them are sick with hypocrisy. You don't even know who they are, Allah knows who they are. The goal of the Prophet ﷺ was to give Iman to the world and even at the end after the victory of Islam Allah says actually even some of your followers don't have Iman, they have Nifaq. Which means you can never have 100% victory. There's no such thing. There's always going to be victory and loss and victory and loss and victory and loss.

What do we find even soon after the passing of the Prophet ﷺ? There's extreme difficulty among the Muslims, even among the Sahaba, extreme difficulty. Then we find a period of great expansion of Islam—many of us are Muslim today because of the expansion of Islam. Then there's decline of Islam, then there's expansion, then there's decline, then there's expansion. So we know something about the way the Sunnah of Allah. It's always up and down. The situation is always up and down. It's never up only and it's never down only.

Allah Tests to Purify Believers

So Allah says why does He do this? Why does He keep not giving us good times permanently? Why give us hard times and then good time? He says in this ayah:

Allah wants to see who actually believes. Allah wants to expose who actually believes. What does that mean? It's easy to believe when everything is alhamdulillah. It's hard to have high Iman when everything around you is لا حول ولا قوة إلا بالله. When everything around you is أستغفر الله العظيم, that's harder to have Iman. Allah wants to see who has Iman in good times and in hard times because that's real Iman. Real Iman is not when your team is winning. You're a strong fan when your team is losing you leave the stadium. That's not real Iman. If you're a real true believer, even if your goal is 10-0, you're still staying until the last minute because you're a true believer.

That's the mentality Allah wants. Allah says I want to see who really believes in the unseen, really believes in the unseen. Because victory is seen. And when there is difficulty then you don't see the help of Allah. You don't see it when you don't see it, it's harder to believe it. Allah says that's why I gave you a hard time because I wanted to see how many of you can still believe in the promise of Allah, even when you don't see it.

And Allah wanted to purify those who believe. تمحيص in Arabic—مَحَصَ is when you purify gold. When you purify gold, now gold is different. When you purify for example when you're cleaning rice it's easy. You just put water and you rinse the rice and all the fibers and everything else comes out. Easy to clean rice, easy to clean clothes, you can use some soap, some water, beat it, done. You can't clean gold that way. Gold, the impurity inside gold is not on the surface, it's deep inside. You can't access it. The only way to purify gold is you have to put it under extreme heat and you have to melt the gold and then deep inside the impurity, the rock or the steel or whatever else was inside will burn and will get out and then you get the pure gold.

Allah is saying to the Sahaba, I will put you under extreme heat circumstances because the benefit is there is something deep inside you that's not pure. And the only way to get rid of it is extreme heat, extreme difficult situations. On the outside a difficult situation is always a problem. On the inside Allah is saying a difficult situation purifies you. It removed some of the things that you would never know were there if difficulty didn't exist, if the temperature didn't exist. On the outside it looks like gold. It just looks like pure gold.

وَيَمْحَقَ الْكَافِرِينَ—and this is how He will eliminate people who didn't have Iman to begin with. Some people when you burn the gold there was no Iman inside, it was only a rock. Well, those people will be eliminated, those people will be removed. They no longer want to believe. There are people who when they go through a difficult situation they say I don't want to be a believer anymore, I don't want Islam anymore. Well, Allah says yeah, that was the idea—goodbye, there's the door. The whole plan was to get rid of those people because they're only Muslim, they're only believers when it's convenient. Allah has no need of them and the Ummah has no need of them. وَيَمْحَقَ الْكَافِرِينَ.

The Path to Jannah Requires Struggle

Then Allah says in the same ayat:

You think you're just going to walk into Jannah? You think it's so easy to just enter Jannah? Well, then Allah says:

Allah has not yet exposed who among you really struggles and He hasn't exposed people who stay on target—الصَّابِرِينَ. I'm giving you a different translation of الصَّابِرِينَ for the purpose of this discussion. صَبْر, المصابرة على شيء when you stay on target.

Imagine you're walking somewhere and it starts getting very windy. You keep walking. It starts raining. You keep walking. It gets very hot. You keep walking. It gets very cold. You keep walking. This is called Sabr. That's what Sabr is. In other words, the circumstances change, the weather changes, the environment changes, you have a target, you don't change. You keep moving towards your target. You don't change your direction because the situation changed. You stay on the same direction. That's called Sabr.

Allah says you think you can just walk into Jannah if I don't see you? You want to walk straight into Jannah, let me see how straight you can walk in this life with the changing weather. وَيَعْلَمَ الصَّابِرِينَ.

The Reality of Seeking Martyrdom

Then He describes something important for all the Muslims to understand. It's easy for us to say ya Allah give us Jannah, give us shahadah. اللَّهُمَّ ارْزُقْنَا شَهَادَةً فِي سَبِيلِكَ—give us shahadah in Your path. There were young Sahaba who became Muslim after Badr, so they never saw Badr. And then Rasulullah ﷺ was preparing for Uhud and the strategy was we should stay inside Medina and defend against the kuffar. Some of the young Sahaba said ya Rasulullah, we didn't get to go to Badr. We want to enjoy shahadah. Let's go to Uhud. Let's go meet the enemy in the battlefield because we want to face the enemy and have the same honor that the Sahaba in Badr had. Because they were excited to become Shaheed.

Allah talks about these Sahaba, these young men. He says:

You were the same people that were wishing for death before you met death. So in theory, you were very excited to be a Shaheed until you saw death. And when you saw death you were staring at it and you couldn't stop looking—you were shocked. It's easy to be motivated without being put in the situation. Don't become overly excited and say big things when you know you don't know if you're ready for those things or not. Allah knows whether you're ready or not. So even though their motivation is sincere, they were not ready. And Allah says you were not ready.

True Faith Beyond the Prophet

And then of course all of their motivation came from the Prophet ﷺ. And now the Prophet ﷺ is rumored—the rumor is he's been killed. The rumor was he's been killed and he was almost killed. Allah says:

Muhammad is nothing but a messenger ﷺ. As much as we love Rasulullah ﷺ, the message of Islam is bigger than Rasulullah's personality ﷺ. Even if he died that is still not justification for you to lose motivation. That's what Allah tells them. This is how strong your Iman in Allah must be. Even if Rasulullah is not there ﷺ, even then you keep going.

Messengers came before him too. If he died, if he was killed, you're going to turn back? If the Prophet died your motivation is gone?

And whoever turns back, they cannot harm Allah in any way. They're only harming themselves. Allah is going to be great. Allah will compensate, Allah will reward people who were truly grateful, meaning they were grateful. They even saw Rasulullah ﷺ for one day. That was enough for them. Now they can carry that motivation for life. They don't say until he comes and personally motivates me, I'm not feeling motivated.

Now we live in the age of an addiction to motivation. People want to see something inspiring on TikTok, I want to see something inspiring on YouTube. And then your inspiration goes low. You got to see it again. Then it goes low. You got to see it again. And guess what? You're never inspired because that's not how inspiration comes. It comes from conviction. They're being told even the most inspiring human being that ever lived ﷺ, even if he leaves you still remain on the track.

Life and Death Are In Allah's Hands

And then Allah says:

It's not allowed for anybody to die except when Allah wants them to die. This is written for all of us. There's a limited time that we're here. Allah just wants to see if we stay on course or not.

Choose Your Reward Wisely

This passage that Allah gave us in Surah Al-Imran one ayah after the other. In the end Allah just told us the final motivation:

Whoever wants the reward of this life, we will give it. Whoever wants the reward of the next life, we will give it. What does this mean? If you want the reward of this life, then you join the winner. If you want the reward of this life, you run away from the loser. The moment things become difficult you go where things are easy because you want the reward of this life. You want the reward of the next life, you stay on track.

Many of you younger folks, for example, you want to get in better health, you want to lose weight, you want to become more fit, etc. Right in front of you is a chocolate cake. It looks good. You're looking at the chocolate cake. The chocolate cake is looking at you. If you eat it, it's gonna feel good right now. But you say no, I have to wait three months until I fix myself and then I'll look at the chocolate cake, I'll avoid it. The only way you can get real reward is if you deny immediate pleasure. You have to stop yourself from immediate impulses to get to the final outcome.

This is true in a person's personal life. This is true as a nation. This is true as a student. This is true as an Ummah, an entire Ummah. We have to think long-term and we have to stop jumping at every new opportunity and say, okay, we just want this one, all we care about is this, all we care about is this. Then we have no real journey. We have no real agenda.

The Du'a for Steadfastness

Finally inshallah, I'm going to leave you with a du'a that Allah taught us. How do you build this kind of maturity? Because in the end this entire khutbah is about maturity. How do you stay constant and have istiqama in your deen and you don't let the situation make you fluctuate? This is the du'a that Allah gave us from the people before us:

And their statement was none other than: Our Rabb, our Master forgive our embarrassing mistakes. Forgive our extreme decisions. Sometimes we overreact and we do extreme things. Ya Allah forgive our sins. Forgive the excess or extreme actions that we take in our decisions. And make our feet firm. Make us stable. And aid us against, help us against disbelieving people.

This is the du'a of istiqama. This is the du'a that when you're in depression and you feel unmotivated and you feel وَهَن and you feel حُزْن and you feel what's the point now, I don't have any inspiration. Well, here's a du'a for you because what the people at Uhud experienced is much more depressing than what you and I can experience. Much more depressing and this du'a was for them. So this du'a is definitely for us.

This is ayah number 147 of Surah Al-Imran. Make it a point to memorize this du'a for yourself. Inshallah ta'ala it will help you and may Allah azza wa jal raise all of us from any of the depression or sadness or paralysis we might be feeling and make us an Ummah that's truly, truly believers and never experience a state of weakness.

May Allah bless me and you with the Wise Qur'an and benefit me and you with its verses and wise reminder.

All praise is due to Allah alone, and peace be upon His chosen servants, especially upon the best of them and the seal of the prophets, Muhammad the Trustworthy, and upon his family and all his companions.

Allah the Mighty and Majestic says in His Noble Book after I seek refuge with Allah from the accursed Satan:

O Allah, send prayers upon Muhammad and upon the family of Muhammad as You sent prayers upon Ibrahim and upon the family of Ibrahim among the worlds. Indeed, You are Praiseworthy and Glorious. O Allah, bless Muhammad and the family of Muhammad as You blessed Ibrahim and the family of Ibrahim among the worlds. Indeed, You are Praiseworthy and Glorious.

O servants of Allah, may Allah have mercy upon you. Have taqwa of Allah. Indeed, Allah commands justice and good conduct and giving to relatives and forbids immorality and bad conduct. And the remembrance of Allah is greater and Allah knows what you do. Establish the prayer. Indeed, the prayer has been decreed upon the believers at prescribed times.