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Working on the Base - Cognitive Distortion Part 2 | Daily Reminders
Continuing on the topic of Cognitive Distortion, Sh. Omar Husain explains while it is great to look for practical ways to be better and do better, it is more important to work on the base and ensure the foundation is strong. Tune in as he talks about 3 concepts of cognitive distortion - rejecting the positive, jumping to conclusions and magnification.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. We continue with our cognitive distortion mini-series. Today, insha'Allah, we will cover three patterns of cognitive distortion. Basically, the point of this little series is to get us thinking about how we think in the first place. A lot of times we want something to change right now. We say we want something practical, we want to do it. Alhamdulillah, that's very important. But we have to look at the base of what's happening in the first place. If the base isn't stable, then it's just like putting a band-aid on the wound. It's not really solving the problem. So, today, number four is going to be what's known as discounting the positive. This means that we reject positive experiences by insisting like, oh, that doesn't really count. So, something great happens in our life. Maybe we get, or maybe we did a good job, let's say, in a presentation. And everybody is telling us what a great job we did, alhamdulillah. But we just kind of don't give ourselves credit for it. We just kind of act like, oh, no, that doesn't really count. I'm not good enough. We say alhamdulillah, we want to remain humble, of course. We don't want to be arrogant about it. But how can we just discount something that we've done which is positive? Now, one of the things about people who are successful is they are thankful for what they've done, and they continue to do the good deeds. So, it's kind of this balance between we don't want to be arrogant, but we also want to be kind of confident in what we did. And we don't want to just discount what we did. Otherwise, we'll kind of get in this sort of stuck in the cycle where we're never going to feel like we're good enough. So, that is the important thing to remember. And also, of course, our intention. Our intention really is the ultimate. So, this is a cognitive distortion.
Discounting the positive really takes the joy out of life and makes us feel inadequate and unrewarded. And there's a beauty in the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ when he said, مَنْ لَا يَشْكُرُ النَّاسَ لَا يَشْكُرُ اللَّهُ Whoever does not thank the people has not thanked Allah. So, we want to acknowledge the positive that somebody has done. It's not that we're just going to act like it didn't happen. It encourages people when we thank them. Now, we don't want to go overboard and totally exaggerate their praises and things like that. But we do certainly want to recognize them so that we do feel some adequacy and we do feel some reward and that social bond as well. So, this is distortion number four. Number five is jumping to conclusions. So, we interpret things negatively with absolutely no evidence to support our conclusion. An example of this is mind reading. So, we don't check something out but we arbitrarily just conclude that somebody is reacting negatively to us. So, maybe somebody was in a rush at the masjid, okay? And we say, oh, and they don't give us salam, for example. This happens a lot of times as imams. You're very busy, you just quickly give a salam, people get all offended and then they start mind reading. Well, they don't like me or I remember that one time I may have said something and that's why they didn't give the salam. It's really what evidence is there to show that? Give people the benefit of the doubt. Many times you hear 70 excuses, 70 excuses, giving people 70 excuses when they make a mistake. This is not a hadith. This is important to remember. It's not a hadith but it's just a saying of kind of the righteous and the pious. But there's a lot of wisdom in it, right? To be easy on the believers. وَاخْفِظْ جَنَاحَكَ لِلْمُؤْمِنِينَ
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says, telling the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam, literally, lower your wings in mercy. If you've ever seen a bird, the way it kind of cradles its young with the wings, right? So, be easy on the people. Don't start mind reading with no evidence of anything. Another example of this is fortune telling. So, we predict that things are going to turn out badly. With no evidence whatsoever. So, we have a job interview tomorrow. Oh, I'm going to bomb the job interview. Why? What evidence is there? Did you prepare? Yes, I did. Did you read up on the company? Yes, I did. Are you, you know, didn't they give you the interview, meaning that you have the skills for the job in the first place? Yes, they did. Okay, then why are you fortune telling and thinking that I'm not going to be able to make it, right? This is very important to keep in mind. We don't want to jump to conclusions. And this is the fifth cognitive distortion. The sixth one is what's known as magnification. So, we exaggerate the importance of problems or shortcomings and minimize the importance of desirable qualities. The Prophet ﷺ told us to look to those who are below us in the dunya, not to those who have more, lest we be unthankful. If we're always looking at people that have more, then we're never going to be satisfied with our life, right? We're never going to be happy. We're always going to say, I have this house, I'm going to look at someone who has a bigger house. Well, I've got news for you. We're going to do that for the rest of our life. We'll never be satisfied. And the Prophet ﷺ told us the son of Adam will never be satisfied, right? If he has a valley of gold, then he's going to want two. They're never satisfied, we're never satisfied until we go in the grave. So, by magnifying, exaggerating the importance of our problems or shortcomings and not looking at desirable things that we have in our life,
then this is a cognitive distortion and it really leads to a lot of misery. Always, you know what they call that, keeping up with the Joneses? I've never even met the Joneses. I don't know who they are. I don't know what they're doing. I don't need to keep up with them, right? So, we don't want to over-exaggerate our problems and we want to focus on what we have. So, insha'Allah, this was helpful. We ask Allah ﷻ to give us the thinking of a believer. Jazakumullah khayran. Wa sallallahu ala sayyidina Muhammad.
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