How To Win And Influence Friends Part 1

How To Win And Influence Friends — Part 1

Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wassalatu wassalamu ala Rasoolihi Al-Ameen, wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma'een. Amma ba'd.

Introduction: Why This Topic?

We're going to be talking about psychological tools — what they call techniques. Psychological techniques are tools to change people's behavior. And I don't want to spend too much time on the introduction, but here's the reason why we chose this topic in particular.

Number one, our religion is composed of two parts: ibadat and mu'amalat. Ibadat are your acts of worship — your relationship between you and your Lord. And mu'amalat — your dealings and how you behave and deal with your fellow Muslim and your fellow human being. The two extremes are that you'll find people focusing on one at the expense of the other.

So someone will be extremely kind to people but have no relationship with their Lord. And you'll find this a lot when it comes to non-Muslims — they'll say, "I'll be very good with everybody and treat everyone with kindness, and when I die, God should treat me well." Okay, but you have to have a relationship with Him. So it's not just treating people and ignoring your Creator.

Then you have the other extreme, and this is more what you'll find amongst our communities. You'll find someone focusing hard on the ibadat, the acts of worship, and giving little to no time to how they deal with and interact with people. And from the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ, the man who came with mountains of good deeds because he had a lot of good worship, but he had bad treatment and bad dealings with people — he lost that whole mountain and was thrown into the Fire. A'udhu Billah.

Most People Are Unaware of How They Treat Others

The other thing is that most people are not very conscious of how they deal with and treat others. For this next week, pay attention to how many times people smile at you — I'm talking in the masjid, within the Muslim community, at the halal store, wherever you go. Pay attention to how many times they'll smile and greet you, or smile and shake your hand. They'll say very nice and sweet things to you but no smile. No smile whatsoever.

Pay attention to how many people interrupt. Pay attention to how many people don't even listen while you're talking. Those of you who are very aware of that — when you're talking to someone, you can tell when they're not listening to you. It's very, very clear. And most people are not good at listening. Not good at all at listening. They tell you Allah gave you one mouth and two ears because it's twice as hard to listen as it is to speak. But most people don't listen.

Most people are completely unaware of how they deal with others. I'm sure everyone in this room, at some point in your life, someone gave you salaam like this — they're busy, they're talking to someone else, they saw you, they gave you salaam. Or you were talking to someone and a third person came who knew that person but didn't know you and just gave them salaam. We've all experienced these kinds of things. But it's really sad that that person is completely unaware of how they treat and deal with people.

There was a time when I injured my wrist, so it was wrapped up. And that brings you to pay attention even more so — how people are just so oblivious to how they behave. My wrist was wrapped up from here to here. I could still shake hands with it but none of that movement. And I'm not exaggerating — people would shake your hand, then notice it's wrapped up and say, "Wallah salamat, what happened?" and then flip it around like that. That's what happened basically.

Recently in Ramadan in New York, one of our brothers had rotator cuff surgery — and may you never experience that, say Ameen. It's a nightmare in recovery, nightmare in pain. He did it in the beginning of Ramadan, and we didn't see him till the end of Ramadan. Everyone knew he had the surgery and his sons were updating us that he was in a lot of pain. He comes finally towards the end of Ramadan with a sling — the sling is here, the arm is here. And people would come up and smack him on the arm that's in the sling, saying, "Wallah, we haven't seen you in a while!" People don't pay attention to how they treat people.

I was in a country in Europe, in Scandinavia. A brother was going to show me around — he knows the history and all the museums. But all day he was doing something super annoying. Every time he wanted to get my attention, he'd smack me with the back of his hand right here on the forearm. All day. "Brother, let me show you something else." All day like this. He was completely oblivious. So I did something dramatic so he'd notice. When he would do it, I wouldn't move away slightly — I moved away dramatically. And what does he do? He just reaches over further to smack. It's so not acceptable. But the more you pay attention to it, the more you'll see that people are just not aware of how they're dealing with others and how they come off to people.

But here's the good part. Everybody has the ability to understand people's emotions, expressions, the way they say things, how they say things, and to intuit emotions. One of the easiest examples — if you're ever flipping channels on the television and you get to a channel that's in another language, maybe Spanish, Telemundo, whatever it is, and you don't speak that language — but you watch like four minutes of some soap opera in that language, and you understand exactly what's happening. Why? Because now you've lost language, so you pay extra attention to everything else: body language, facial expressions, voice inflection. Suddenly you're aware of what's going on. "She's upset with him because he did something really, really bad. That guy over there is trying to create the peace." You figured it all out even though you don't speak the language, because you heightened everything else — you brought it up a notch.

And that's what we want to talk about. We want to get into some of the techniques for changing behavior — what are called psychological techniques, or tools. The way a tool works: when you go to the hardware store and you buy a hammer, the packaging doesn't tell you every possible way you can use it. You understand how a hammer works, and then you use your creativity to take advantage of that tool. You can use it to drive in a nail, use the other side to pull up a nail, break ice with it — the point is, you use your creativity based on how you know the tool works. So what I'm going to try to do is give at least maybe eleven psychological strategies or tools to changing behavior. And now it's up to you to take this tool and apply it in completely different scenarios — with co-workers, with your children, with spouses, with siblings. Whatever it is, it's up to you. It's a tool.

Technique #1: Respect Their Intelligence

The first technique: the person that you're dealing with, that you're trying to change — you need to respect their intelligence and treat them in that way. This works wonderfully with youth also. You respect their intelligence, they live up to the expectation that you have of them. Psychologists tell you that human beings have the need for order and consistency. So if I think you're smart and I tell people that I really think that person is smart, and they tell you, you will always try to act smart in front of me — because you want to remain consistent with what I think of you. When you respect someone's intelligence, they live up to that expectation and that standard.

There are many examples of this. One of the best stories is about a young lady who was studying to become a teacher. She graduated from university, got her first teaching position, and the class she was assigned — unbeknownst to her — was the worst class of failures the school had ever seen. D's and F's, didn't do homework, didn't attend class. All the teachers knew them over the years, and no teacher wanted to deal with them. So the principal, because this was a new person who didn't know the school, gave her that class. Nobody told her it was the worst class.

At the beginning of the school year, the principal gave her the names of the students with a three-digit number next to each name. In a few months, they had straight A's and B's — doing their homework, writing essays, reading books, showing up on time, not skipping class. The principal was amazed. For years and years they'd been dragging this class from one grade to the next, barely able to pass, and the best, most experienced teachers couldn't deal with them. How did this inexperienced teacher do it?

He called her to his office and asked. She said, "I didn't do anything. I just treated them based on their IQ level. I spoke to them based on their IQ level." He said, "What IQ level? How did you even know their IQ level?" She said, "The paper you gave me at the beginning of the school year, that had their name and the number next to it." He said, "Those were their locker numbers."

But she thought — she would read, "Jesse... 160." Genius. And she didn't tell him, "Hey, you're a genius, your IQ number is high." She never said that. She just spoke to him like he was a genius. And he caught on to that. There are so many studies — they give someone the wrong information about somebody and have them speak to them over the phone. Subconsciously in their voice, because they think they're talking to this incredible person, they treat them that way. Then they interview that person, and he felt better from the phone call — just because of what they thought of him.

She never said, "This is your IQ number." She would see 150, 155, 145, and she started to treat them like they were intelligent, and they lived up to it. It's as simple as that.

And that's why those of you who have traveled a lot — you go overseas, and sometimes you find young men who are 15 years old but they behave like a grown man. They don't lose their innocence or childhood, they still enjoy themselves, but they behave very maturely. And then you go to other countries and you find someone in their 40s still playing video games, still can't manage finances.

Why do some people mature so quickly? Because they are treated as such. What's proof that the Prophet ﷺ and the companions treated young men that way? First of all, look at the ages of the companions when they became Muslim: Zubayr ibn al-Awwam was 15, Talha ibn Ubaydullah was 16, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas was 17. They were young men, and they gave them da'wah because they considered them young men.

Another proof: during the Battle of Badr, the army advanced, the Prophet ﷺ inspected the troops, and he took out the kids — what we would call kids today, like 11, 12, 13, some 14-year-olds. The question really is: why was the 12-year-old in the army to begin with? The answer is that in that society, the 12-year-old was treated like a young man, so he felt capable. If you treat someone like they're capable, they live up to it. And if you treat them like they're a child and incapable — or that magically, when you become 18 you'll become a man, or 21, the next obstacle — these are all mental blocks.

You treat someone like they're intelligent, they live up to that expectation. That's why they tell you: when a child does something wrong, you tell him, "That was a naughty thing you did" — you don't call him a naughty boy. It's just the action that was bad. "That was a bad thing you did," not "You're a bad boy," because then that's how they will see themselves.

Alright, so that's number one. Whoever you're dealing with, treat them like you respect their intelligence.

Technique #2: Readjust Their Goals

The second technique is to readjust goals. If you want to change someone's behavior, you change their goals. Why? Because behavior is linked to a goal.

This is a true story. A young man wants to become a professional soccer player. What do you think he's doing all the time? Playing soccer, training, watching it, reading about it, talking about it, even playing it on his video game. That's it. His father wants him to become a businessman — study business, read about business, look at the news for stocks. Do you think it's going to happen? It will never happen. Because your actions are linked to a goal. You want to become a singer? Your actions will look like: singing in the shower, writing poetry, maybe learning an instrument. It's linked to the goal. The father kept nagging the child, and the child is not interested because they have another goal.

So one way to change behavior is to readjust the goal. This was a technique used by a very wise woman — the mother of Imam Malik, rahimahullah. When Imam Malik was a young boy, what did he want to become? A singer. So what do singers do? He'd be spending time with poets and writers and people who write melodies, instruments, singing all day. By nagging him, she's not going to change that behavior. So she, being a wise woman, readjusted his goals. And she took him from wanting to become a singer to wanting to become a young scholar.

She did something very interesting. She dressed him up like a young scholar — just like we buy children the doctor kit from the toy store, with the stethoscope and the little scalpels and the syringes. Or we make them fall in love with being a police officer, or a firefighter, or a vet. She dressed him like a little sheikh. He was so young that she couldn't let him go to the masjid for Fajr on his own — it was too dark and he was too small — so she used to accompany him. And I always say, I would love one day after the Jumu'ah khutbah, a father will bring his son or daughter up on the minbar and tell them, "Look, you're the sheikh — speak to people." Make them love the profession, just like we make them love being a doctor or whatever.

So she made him love being a scholar and want to become a scholar. She dressed him up for the part and she supported him. So naturally, he stopped singing. Because your actions are linked to your goal. If his goal is now to become a great scholar of Islam, what do you think his actions would be? Halaqat, memorization, dhikr, learning, and so on. He was able to completely change his actions without any nagging, simply by readjusting his goals.

Goals and actions are always linked. We actually applied this with a co-worker of ours a long time ago. His goal was to live a fun life — a happy life. But he confused happiness with fun. Fun is short-lived — someone goes to an amusement park, gets on a rollercoaster, screams coming down. But when they get in a van to drive home, they're not screaming on the way home. The fun is gone. Happiness is a longer, more resounding feeling. So his goal was to always go to this party and that party, kayaking, doing these kinds of things constantly.

We wanted to readjust his goal from running around like that to a better goal: having a relationship with your Creator. And it's just very simple — using the same technique. As we're sitting there having lunch, I said: "You're 26 years old, you've been to a lot of parties and had a lot of fun. As we're sitting here right now, do you have any of that with you right now? All those memories, all the fun — you've probably forgotten a lot of them, and there's nothing you can take from this right now, right?" He said, "Yeah, it's just old memories, some of them are gone." I said, "So what would you rather — become a 60-year-old man and look back at your life with just memories that were lost and you can't benefit from, or would you rather invest your time in something that will help you after you die?" And he said, "You're right. All the fun I've had until now, it's just memories, I've forgotten a lot of it, there's nothing I can benefit from right now." So wouldn't it make sense to invest your time in worshiping your Creator, so that when you die, you've got a life of obedience to Allah and a relationship with Allah?

And this guy — someone you'd call very fun-oriented — suddenly was realizing the logic of investing his time with Allah. Similar thing: just readjusting the goal can change everything. Nagging doesn't work. Nagging kills, actually.

Technique #3: Let People Set Their Own Goals

Another technique is to get people to set their own goals, objectives, or solutions. I want to show where I learned this technique and the completely different scenarios where we've applied it, because we're talking about tools — and you can take a tool and apply it in a completely different scenario.

I was taking a class on research methods. The professor did something very strange. At the beginning of the semester, he allowed us to set our own grading scale. He said the grading scale is yours to set — as long as the class agrees upon it, he's fine with it. So obviously, we set it so that it was really, really easy to get an A. The final exam was 4% of the grade. Who cares? Nobody studied for that final. Attendance was already a big part of the grade — just attend and do the homework, you'll pass.

I couldn't understand why he would allow us to disregard his final exam in such a way, so I went to his office and asked him. He said — and remember, the class is research methods — "Research shows that when you allow people to set their own goals and their own objectives, they make a much greater effort to reach those goals than if you just tell them, 'This is what your goal is, try to reach it.'" Allow them to set their own goals.

Now — this is the technique he gave me, and I'm going to apply it in completely different scenarios. Back then I was a chaplain at George Mason University. A sister came in tears with a problem: she works full time, is doing her PhD, is married, has one son, and has all the responsibilities of the home — mopping, cleaning, vacuuming, laundry, cooking, the child, putting him to bed, her homework, research, getting ready for the next day — plus her husband just sits on the couch, flipping channels. And if the food is a little overcooked, or comes to His Highness not hot enough, he throws a fit.

I asked her — and I even felt silly asking this — "Have you ever asked him to help you?" She said yes. "What happened?" "He helps for a day or two, and then he goes back to sitting on the couch and yelling at me."

So now we're going to use the same technique from the professor — even though the professor didn't say "you can use this technique to help a woman whose husband is lazy." You take the tool and apply it in a completely different scenario. I told her: "Go home with a pen and paper, sit down, and list all the chores that have to be done in the house. Then tell your husband: 'You know this is impossible — I can't do all this and go to school and work full time. You have to help me out. So what are you going to do around the house?' And whatever he gives you, if you're satisfied, fine. If not, ask for more, until you're satisfied with the chores he has chosen for himself."

"Now you fold that piece of paper up and put it in your pocket. That piece of paper has transformed. It has become a license to follow up." Why? Because we know what he's going to do — his pattern is to help for two or three days and then go back to sitting on the couch. When he goes back after two or three days and he's sitting on the couch again, you come now with that piece of paper. "I didn't ask you to do these things. You said you were going to do these things. Where is it?"

She came back two months later with a big smile on her face — he's still doing his chores and doing a good job. Alhamdulillah. An example of a tool used in a completely different scenario.

Another scenario for the same tool. I went to a masjid in California and they had put basketball hoops in the parking lot of the masjid, so that the youth — instead of playing in the parks where there are drugs and problems and fights — would be playing near the masjid. But the problem was: when the youth hear the adhan for Maghrib, they keep playing. One team is beating us by one point. Then they hear the iqamah, and they keep playing. First rak'ah, they keep playing. Second rak'ah. By the third rak'ah, some of them are running trying to make wudu, some catch the last rak'ah, some miss the entire salah.

In the meantime, uncles and older brothers would come, park their car, see the youth playing while they can hear the salah, and frown at them and call out one word: "Salah!" or "Namaz!" or "Prayer!" in different languages. But you're not adding any new information. They heard the adhan, the iqamah, the takbeer — they know it's salah. You're not adding new information.

So I said — okay, this is what you do. Sit down with them. And this is another technique in communicating: you start with points that you agree upon and you get "yeses" from the person. Sit them down and say: "Let's agree — we all know when you're playing sports, this team is beating you by one point, and you try to get that point back. It's a very, very strong pull. But let's all agree that salah is more important than this. This is not some championship game. We need to find a way to break that strong pull." Then get them to give the suggestions.

And as you moderate, you might be the one pointing them in the right direction. So you'll say: "How do we get you to stop on time?" And they might agree on things like: "When we hear the first Allahu Akbar of the adhan, that's the equivalent of the referee's whistle. And when the referee whistles, no one keeps running with the ball — it's over. Whoever won, won. Whoever lost, lost." Get them to give a number of good suggestions. Then ask them for a punishment if they don't stop on time — and have them suggest the punishment. Moderate it so it doesn't get too extreme. If they say "take down the backboards for six months," that's not good — we don't want them going to the park for six months. The whole idea is to keep them here. The punishment might be something like picking up trash from around the masjid, whatever it is.

Same tool, completely different scenario. And that's why you can use it with co-workers, siblings, children — whoever you think of.

Technique #4: Ask for Their Help with a Problem Similar to Theirs

Another way to get people to change their behavior is to ask for their help with a problem similar to theirs. Here's a hypothetical. You're teaching a weekend Qur'an class and a mother comes to you and says: "My son Ahmad is 14, he's in your class, but he hits his older sister — she's 16. I need you to talk to him, please."

You could talk to Ahmad directly — "Your mother said this to me." Or you can try another technique. Ask Ahmad for his help with a young man who hits his older sister. "Ahmad, I need your help and your suggestions for a problem. There's a boy about your age, and you know how they think, so you might give me some good pointers. He's about 14 years old and he hits his older sister. What do you think I can tell him so he could stop this bad behavior?"

Now Ahmad is going to give you suggestions. He might tell you about the hadith that says:

("He is not one of us who does not have mercy on our young and does not respect our elders." — Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 1919)

Or he might mention the hadith:

("The Muslim is the one from whose tongue and hands the Muslims are safe." — Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 10; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 41)

As he's telling you these things, he's going to feel bad — he's going to feel hypocritical. Because when what you say goes against your actions, you feel bad about that. Every time he gives you a suggestion on what to tell that imaginary kid, he's feeling more guilty about what he himself is doing. And he's got two options, and he's going to pick the easier one: change the behavior.

Sometimes you try a technique and it doesn't work — but you have a whole arsenal of techniques and you try a different one. But this can very well work, because hypocrisy is a very strong and uncomfortable feeling. Psychologists refer to something called cognitive dissonance — when your behavior and your actions don't agree with what you believe. So if somebody believes that stealing is haram and immoral, and then he steals, how bad will he feel? Versus someone who believes that stealing is not stealing — "it's opportunity and unprotected risk." If he steals, he won't feel bad.

When somebody does something that goes against their belief, they have two options to remove the discomfort. One: change the behavior — stop stealing, he'll feel better. Two: change the belief — "stealing is not actually haram." And that's why you'll find the smoker saying, "It's not haram, it's only makruh." Why is it makruh? Because he's a smoker, that's why. And everyone — the issue that's close to them, they defend it. The issue they're not attached to, they'll happily call haram.

And that's why the scholars dislike debating so much — because people hear what they want to hear. The smoker says, "My grandfather was a chain smoker — two packs a day — until age 93, and he died of natural causes." Justification. The guy who doesn't wear a seatbelt says, "I know someone whose car started flipping, and he was flung out of the window, and the car kept rolling, and an 18-wheeler destroyed it — so if he had his seatbelt on, he would have been crushed." People use everything to justify things like that.

In da'wah, you always catch people justifying, because they're into something. The guy at the university who's always walking around with girls, instead of changing the action, he changes the belief: "The hearts are pure. This is the new century." Nobody likes to live in discomfort. And it defines how you see yourself — if I believe stealing is haram and I steal, I see myself as a bad person. I don't want to see myself as a bad person, so I find a way to say it's not haram.

Technique #5: Make the Change Feel Easy to Achieve

There's a very famous story — though there is some weakness in its chain of narration — about al-Hasan and al-Husayn, the grandchildren of the Prophet ﷺ. They found an old man performing wudu incorrectly. If they had come to him and said, "Uncle, let me show you the proper way," that's very insulting — especially if someone has been doing something for a long time. "We've been doing this back home in the village for the last 50 years, and my grandfather before him."

So they came with a smart technique. They said: "Uncle, my brother and I are having a discussion — we're disagreeing on which one of us performs the wudu more correctly. We'd like you to judge between us, as to which one of us is doing the wudu more correctly." The man observed both of them doing the wudu, and when they finished, he said: "Actually, I'm the one who used to do it incorrectly. You guys just taught me the proper way to do the wudu."

So that's still part of the same idea: making someone feel that the change is easy to fix, and that the objective or goal is easy to achieve. If someone comes to you with a problem, we can fix it — "it's not a problem, it's just a few sessions or exercises and we'll be done with this issue." It makes it, in their mind, easy to conquer.

And that's how children operate. When a child falls, the first thing they do is look at the adults. And your expression will tell them how badly hurt they are. Child falls hard, looks at you — if you're alarmed, they start screaming. But if you just tell them, "Okay, let's get up — what are you looking at me for, let's go," they dust themselves off and they go.

You make the problem seem huge, it will become huge. This is what they call learned helplessness — when someone believes that their actions will not change anything, or they've trained themselves to become helpless. A psychologist coined this term and gave the excellent example of the circus elephant. In the old days, the elephant would be tied with a rope to the ground when it was a baby, and it would not be able to break free. Then the elephant grows up and is able to pull everything out of the ground with one movement — yet they tie their big elephants with that same little peg in the ground, and the elephants never try to escape. Because when the elephant was a baby, it tried hard to escape and couldn't. It grows up much stronger, but it never tries — because it learned to be helpless.

And we do this to ourselves all the time. You tell yourself, "I'm not good with math." And because you tell yourself that, you set yourself up for failure. Even a simple equation like calculating 15% of your check at the restaurant — really easy — becomes a big problem. Or you tell yourself, "I'm not good with roads." I used to do that all the time. One day in Virginia, I got lost on the street behind my own house and called my roommate. He laughed and said, "You're behind the house, just come to the front." I always told myself I'm not good with roads, so I didn't even try — I set myself up for failure.

Bonus Tip: Remembering Names

"I'm not good with names." A few weeks ago, I was doing a class and I asked who's not good with names. I took three brothers and three sisters outside and gave them some instructions. Then I brought them back into class with nine or ten random people from the audience they didn't know, had those people say their names once — and every single one of the six or seven people I'd taken outside got every name correctly. Not a single mistake. Because the technique is really easy.

But the first step — we'll close with this — is to not tell yourself that you're not good with names. Most people in this room speak two or three languages, and languages are composed of thousands upon thousands of words. You memorized all those words. You can't memorize the guy in front of you whose name is Hassan? Just one word. You are good with names. So rule number one: don't tell yourself you're not good with names.

Rule number two: the strongest part of your memory is your visual memory. Link the name to something visual. I'll tell you a story from four Ramadans ago. We were in London and I was getting to know the i'tikaf team, and everyone was going around saying their names. Right now, four years later, I still know exactly where they were sitting — I can see them.

There were two uncles whose names were Muhammad. Do we need a technique for Muhammad? No. Muhammad, Abdullah — I don't think you need a technique for those. Over here, there was one whose name was Yusuf. My best friend's name is Yusuf, so I saw my friend and associated him. Diagonally across from Yusuf there was Benyamin. What's the link? Brothers — Yusuf alayhissalam and his brother Benyamin. Wonderful. Over here, there was a guy named Adnan. Those of you who are Arab know the cartoon Adnan and Lina. I have a cat called Lina. The minute he said his name was Adnan, I saw Lina on top of his head. Visual memory — you'll never forget. And there was a Nadeem. There's an old Arabic series with a character called Nadeem. I just saw that actor. Done.

There's always some easy technique. You have a relative with that name. Sometimes you spell the name. Or if it's a new name, ask the person: "What does that name mean? How do you spell it?" — see it visually, and you'll never forget it. So step one: don't tell yourself you're not good with names. Step two: link it to something visual, or remember someone and link it with that individual. Really, really super easy.

Closing: Bringing It All Up a Notch

There are many different techniques and obviously we don't have time to get into all of them. But one of the most important things is understanding the person in front of you — understanding what their obstacle is. If you can figure that out, you can fix any problem they have, bi-idhnillah. But the problem is most people don't put attention into understanding people. They don't give enough time to it.

They tell you — and the numbers change because it's not something official — that 70–80% of communication is non-verbal. People are saying something, but with their eyes they're telling you something completely different. With their body movement, or just the inflection of their voice, they're telling you something completely different. And that's why in the field of da'wah, people would sometimes take shahada very quickly — 10 minutes, 15 minutes. People ask, "How do you do it?" It's because you understand the person and you understand their problem. From the way they word their issue, you can find out what their issue with Islam is. You dig, you find out what it is, you apply the remedy, and you ask for the shahada.

All we have to do is just bring it up one notch when it comes to understanding people better. For this next week, be aware of how you smile at people, whether you gave them full attention when you shook their hand. The Prophet ﷺ:

("When he gave salaam, he gave it with his whole self." — He didn't just turn his face towards you; he turned his whole body towards you.)

He gave you full attention. He got your name and remembered your name. When he went to Tabuk with 1,400 companions, he asked about every single one of them by name and didn't forget a single one. That's an amazing leader ﷺ. So how good are we with that? People's names, giving them salam, not interrupting them, listening, noticing how many people don't smile, how many people don't listen, how many people interrupt.

If we just bring it up one notch, we'll be so much better at creating a better community and more harmony amongst ourselves. And from there on — you can't take over the world until you fix the community first. No broken community ever fixed the world. So fix that, fix that.

Jazakumullahu khayran for coming and for your attentive listening. Was-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.