How To Be Disciplined: The One Mountain Rule That Changed My Life

When I think about the different things that I have accomplished in my life, there is always one pattern that I always recognize. And while I was preparing this video, I kept on thinking, how can I say this in a way where I don't sound like a douchebag or I don't sound like I'm, you know, trying to to brag about it or or something because that's not the point here. But the point is to use these accomplishments in my life as examples of the lesson that I'm trying to share with you. And my ultimate goal is to make you believe that you can accomplish the same things and better. And now look, I haven't mastered life. I'm far from it. But there are a few things that I have accomplished that make me generally proud because of how difficult it was to accomplish it and the amount of discipline that it demanded from me. So things like, for example, having memorized 17 Jews of the Quran as an adult, going from knowing absolutely no Arabic to eventually teaching it to thousands of people. Going from being broke, not coming from a family of money or business background to eventually building a business that generated over a million dollars in a year. Or being able to buy a home for my family back home for my parents as well for them be there whenever they want to with a swimming pool. and what not and whatnot with uh the money that I that I had saved which takes as well a big amount of discipline or finally becoming you know the person with the physique that I always wanted growing up that we used to look up to to the guys that look like that. And the pattern that I have noticed every single time that I have worked towards one of these goals is that I have never accomplished any of these goals by trying to do all of them at once. It was always actually the opposite. So I gave almost all my attention to one thing, one season at a time, accepting that I wasn't going to be great at many other things during that time because I was trying to accomplish that one thing. And so everything else didn't matter and everything else I was weak at. And I honestly think that's something a lot of people struggle that struggle with and that struggle to to even see it to even recognize because once you are able to see something, you are aware of something you are able to at least fight against it. And it actually took me accomplishing at least one difficult thing before I realized that this is how I have to approach every other meaningful goal in my life. And yes, maybe the fact that I was a polyglad by the age of 19 or 20 and having learned these five languages at a fluent level did help in a way or another. Even in my jahya, you know, I used to dance and I became the champion of the whole Europe uh in in 2009. And so accomplishing this thing makes you realize, okay, so this is what it took. So I guess for something else it would take this amount of focus, this amount of effort, this amount of obsession. But many people they either don't realize what they have accomplished in their life because it was just by again like me my languages is just I just went to France live with my father and I just learned French. Then I went to Egypt because I wanted to learn um Arabic and that's the one that I learned actually intentionally. But why? Because before that I had learned Catalin, Spanish, French and English without necessarily wanting to but it was more like a natural way on how I have accomplished it. But now I have absolute credibility internally that I am able to accomplish this. So when I went for the fifth one Arabic in 10 months I was speaking Arabic and using and understand the theas only in Arabic and so many times you don't realize things that you have accomplished in your life which if you realize and recognize it as an accomplishment it will give you that belief that okay this is all I have to do to accomplish this next thing in my life because if you really think about it almost every worthwhile goal has a point where it stops being something you are trying to do and starts becoming something of more like who you are. And getting to that point is what takes almost all your effort. And they call this in psychology identity formation, which is the time that it takes you to repeat something. So many times until it becomes behavior and it stops being something that you do, that you practice for, but it starts becoming something that you are. And so in anything that you want to accomplish in life, what you are really doing is skill acquisition. That skill acquisition curve it's frontloaded. The first stages requires the most effort. But later once you have repeated enough times, it just requires refinement. It requires maintenance rather than creating the skill from scratch. So think about for example memorizing the Quran. It takes an incredible amount of effort and focus time to get to 10. Once you get there, no portions, but it becomes part of you to the point where even if you don't read those 15, you can still come back to it and it will not take the same effort to be able to revise them and read them from the top of your head. So when you have gone through the struggle and you have put in your heart to accomplish that first portion of that skill, maintaining it is nowhere near as difficult as memorizing it for the first time. And the hard part is not maintaining that skill. The hard part is getting it in the first place. So Arabic is exactly the same thing. It might take you 15 to 24 months before you comfortably speak, communicate, understand lectures, and pick up books of the scholars. But once you reach that level, it becomes part of who you are. Even if for a year you don't speak Arabic, when you come back to it, your brain remembers or remembers it. You don't have to start from zero again. You just spend a little bit of time kind of like warming it up or waking it back up. Business is no different. It takes years and mistakes of and frustration to get to that first 10K a month. But once you have learned those lessons, maintaining it, even starting it from scratch again becomes much easier because you have already paid the price of learning the fundamentals. Same thing with your physique is the same exact thing. Building muscle takes time. Losing fat takes time and knowledge and habit formation. But once you have done it, once you can do it again and again and again, you have already become the person who knows how to do it and you become more aware of the foods you eat and the habits that got you to lose fat. So now it becomes part of your identity. We know that now fan that now Muhammad doesn't like too many oils in his food, doesn't like too many sauces in his food, doesn't eat too much sugar. You know he's conscious of what he eats. Why? because you have gone through that period of time where you was losing fat or you was getting in shape cuz people are not not in shape because of their who they are but it's because of their habits and it's all in the little things and I think that's one of the biggest reasons so many people stay average at so many things they are trying to build all of these identities at the same time they want to be fit they want to learn Arabic they want to memorize the Quran they want to read these 15 books or memorize these 15 books or build a business at the same time fix their sleep media all at the same time. And especially today becomes very hard or is even harder to not compare yourself to somebody else to somebody else success because if you open your social media you see a person talking about what they have accomplished the business they have built another person showing their physique another person talking about memorizing the Quran another person learning languages another person traveling the world you are constantly looking at everyone's else's highlights on their feet. And if you are not careful, it makes you feel like you are behind. And that's something that we all experience. Someone might look at my life right now and might say, "Oh, mashallah, he's one at life." Meanwhile, I'm here looking at somebody else, thinking about the next level that I want to reach. And that person, he's probably looking at somebody else, too. And that's why it's very dangerous. And the proh, he has warned us about this. He has taught us not to constantly look at those who are above us but to look at those who are below us. Reported in Muslim by Abu where the prophet Muhammad wasallam he saysallam because it protects your gratitude. It protects your contentment and it reminds you of how much Allah has already blessed you with all you have. So mastery of skill requires seasons. Every major achievement in my life came from giving one thing. Almost everything I had for a period of time. There was a a season where my life was almost entirely about learn Arabic. That's when I was living in Egypt when I left when I was 19. Then there was another season that was almost entirely about the Quran which was the second two years after I learned Arabic. Then at 21 I became a father. I started feeling broke and I realized that I had to figure something out financially. So that was the season where it became about business. I tried different hustles while I was in Egypt. Then I eventually realized that it might be easy easier to go to London and start delivering food on a on a motorbike as I figure out, you know, how to get out of that situation. And that experience eventually pushed me into thinking, you know, how can I build something on my own? How do I stop trading my time for money? And that's when I started getting into online business. And after years of trying different things after 6 years to be more specific, something finally worked. I wasn't trying to become great at everything at that moment, but I was trying to become great at one thing. And once that thing became part of my identity and I went past identity formation where I could maintain it while moving onto the next season, then I did so and I started the next thing. So in this video I want to give you six principles that have helped me approach every meaningful goal I have ever chased until I have accomplished it because I generally believe that you can accomplish almost anything in life but you cannot accomplish everything at the same time. And this brings me to the first thing which is choose one mountain to climb. Don't choose five goals. Choose the one achievement that if you accomplished it will have the biggest positive impact for the rest of your life. Ask yourself if I accomplish this one thing, it would generally make me feel like I have accomplished so much in my life and think about the other problems that it will solve. So for example, maybe you're struggling with your iman, right? You want more knowledge. So maybe learning Arabic and surrounding yourself with students of knowledge and scholars would solve a lot of those problems. Or maybe your biggest struggle right now, the time that you spend, you know, paying bills or this or that, you're just financially restrained. In that case, maybe building a business or increasing your income might be the the season that you might want to go into it because it will fix so many other problems. The point is to tackle your goals by priority, not by emotion. The second thing is accept the trade-off. You have to be willing to accept that you are not going to be great at everything else during that session. You cannot maximize everything at the same time. If you are aggressively memorizing the Quran, maybe your fitness won't be at its absolute best. Maybe you're still train four or five times a day a week just to maintain what you're doing. Maybe a few push-ups here, maybe a few squats there, but you are probably not going to be at the level of an athlete. Because when you are truly obsessed with one goal, you'll be surprised how much time of your day it consumes. For example, when I was memorizing the Quran, almost my entire day revolved around it. And I al honestly don't believe that if you are aggressively attacking one of these goals in one of those seasons that you are seriously doing it unless you spend with it at least 10 hours in the day attacking that goal. Now the third thing is to define the season. Don't say just one day I'm going to learn Arabic, one day I'm going to memorize the Quran, one day I'm going to build a business because that one day never comes if you don't commit to it. So write it down. For the next six months, this is my season. For the next 12 months, this is my season. Whatever it is, whether it's Arabic, business, Quran, fitness, give it a beginning and give it give it it an end. Give it it a deadline. I honestly don't think that there should be ever a season in your life as a grown man where you don't know what mountain you are climbing. People should see you in the street after long month of not seeing you and ask you how are you doing and the first thing you tell you tell them is your top priority your your season the title of your season. Hey, how are you fan? I didn't see you for a long time. What are you up to these days? Oh, I'm learning Arabic because that's your season. Oh, what are you doing these days? Oh, I'm memorizing the Quran. Okay, that's your season. You are lock in on that. Oh, yeah. I'm just struggling just, you know, starting up my my business. That is your season. So it should be top mind. Everybody around you should feel like you are chasing that thing. Now the fourth thing is define what done actually means because if you don't define it, you will never know if you have arrived. If it's Quran, what does it mean to to have finished this season of Quran? Does it mean that you want to memorize 10 Jews? Does it mean that you want to memorize the whole Quran? What does memorizing the whole Quran mean to you really? Is it maybe just being able to read it in one sitting or is it maybe to have read the full Quran Jews per Jews in 30 days to a sheh? What is it rece receiving an hijaza by a particular sheh? Receiving receiving 10 jazzas from this top 10 sheh in your city if it's Arabic the same thing. What does it look like to learn Arabic to you? Being able to understand the Quran without translation reading books of the scholars. Understanding what is it? Be specific because vague goals almost never get finished. The fifth thing is attack it daily. As we mentioned before, you have to build the identity of the person you are trying to become. If you want to become a hath, spend time doing what a hid already does. Somebody who's already there. Spending time with the Quran every single day. If you want to become an athlete, spend time doing what an athlete does. How many times he works out a day? How does he eat? How does he sleep? How does he protect his time? If you want to become a strong student of knowledge who knows Arabic, then do what a strong student of knowledge already does. Spend time with your sheh. Revise, teach, study, whatever the high priority activities of that goal. Do them every single day because your identity isn't built by what you say you want to become. It's built by what you repeatedly do. The sixth thing and the last one is finish before you switch mountains. I think this is where most people actually lose because they try to collect all of these beginnings of having tried all of these different things instead of acquiring completions of goals and skills and acquiring skills. They start learning Arabic. they they quit before they even form that identity. Then they switch to business. Then same thing with business. They get to a little five grand a month business. Then they go into memorizing the Quran, which fair enough, that could be what the season was, you know, entitled as done. But then they might go and and get hyped about fitness and then they switch to something else. Nothing compounds because nothing ever gets finished. And life only changes once you complete these seasons that you have set for yourself, defined what it looks like, done, and aggressively attacked it until you have completed and formed that identity and acquired that skill. Not when you constantly start new seasons. And and I know that's difficult because there are so many things that you want to accomplish in your life. But that's exactly what you have to be disciplined enough to say. Right now my season is business. Later my season might be seeking knowledge. Later it might be memorizing the Quran. But right now this is the mountain I'm trying to climb. So write it down. put it somewhere you can see it every single day while you brush your teeth or whatever because it's very easy to tell yourself I will do that later but if you don't define a deadline and you don't define what it actually looks when that thing is done you will stay in that season forever take business for example if you don't decide beforehand what success looks like and I'm take taking business because it's a dangerous one for somebody like us who their ultimate goal is to get to Jenna Right? And acquire as much knowledge as possible in this dunia. You will start a business. You will reach $10,000 a month and then you want 50,000. Then you reach 50,000 then you want 100,000 then 200k. Then you want to want to get to 500k and the goal post and that's why you have to decide before you start what is enough. This is enough and this is what I wanted from this season. So I'm so I'm done and now I can maintain that and I can move on to the next mountain because I generally believe you can accomplish almost anything in your life. You can build a business, you can memorize the Quran, you can learn Arabic, you can transform your physique, you can do all those things. Just don't expect to accomplish them all at the same time. And I generally believe that Allah has created you with the ability to accomplish far more than you think than you can even imagine it. So pick one mountain, climb it until you reach the top of it. Then look back and you will surprise yourself what Allah has allowed you to become. And after you accomplish this one, sky's is the limit and you are only going to start getting better and better at the game of life. I believe in [snorts] you. Keep going. And I hope this gave you a framework to know how to accomplish your next goal or your current goal.