finding yourself

Hello everybody! Welcome to the Hip-Hop Podcast. Also known as Uncomfortable Truths, where I make you "unnecessarily uncomfortable". If you're new here, welcome. Good to meet you. If you are a regular welcome, good to meet you. Guys, oh my god, I want to show you something. What is this? You might be asking. 100,000 subscribers. It's crazy. Guys, guess what? It's plastic. It's plastic. Gosh, shouldn't know this was a capitalist company. Now, you probably clicked on this video for one of two reasons. One, you like to hear me talk, which I think should be counted as a mental illness. Two, you want to find yourself. You're in the abyss of life. You're deep in there. You interact with people on a day-to-day basis. I hope. And you just want to find yourself. You want to know who I am. Guess what? I'm not going to be answering that question. But I'm going to try and show you and tell you what I found and what has helped me and what I find to be a good way to start. Okay, but you have to do the work yourself. I'll be honest with you. This is very, like, this is heavy internal work that you have got to embark on just alone, which is what makes this very uncomfortable and going into this topic to be honest with you. I don't know what exactly set me off into picking this topic, but I thought it was going to be like a fun, light episode, like finding yourself. You know, like, who am I? Guys, it was deep. It was deep. Doing the research for this, writing notes, thinking, I spent hours just thinking, not writing, not looking, not searching, just sitting and thinking. Because it was deeper than I thought. I didn't know it would be this heavy. It's a heavy topic. It's not like it's like this cute fun thing. And when you search it up, by the way, when you search it up on Google, whenever I do a topic, I like to search it up on Google to see what I get. Fascinating, fascinating stuff. I searched it up and I was like, how to find yourself. And then there was this blog. They were writing steps like it was a wiki how question. Like step one, do this. Step two, do that. I'll read you some of them. Are you ready? Visualize your ideal lifestyle. Period. Okay. Do things on your own. Okay. Keep yourself organized. And then you can find yourself. Guys, that's BS advice, respectfully with all due respect. I'm not even going to say what the blog was or the name of the author. I'm just saying like that is some surface level, superficial stuff. There was one point that I actually agreed with and it's make a list of the things you value. And then the author ruined it by saying about yourself, things you value about yourself. It was so close, but they missed the mark. I want to as much as I can try and deliver this topic across to you in a way that'll make you feel what I felt. In a way that'll make you feel how I currently feel. Because honestly, after searching, after reading the one book that I'm going to be talking about, after just going through a bunch of dead people's names that were psychologists and therapists and whatnot, I just was not prepared. Mentally, I was not prepared. This was heavy and I'm going to get started. Are you guys ready? I am so ready. First things first, why I think this is a heavy topic and why you need to embark on this alone. Like this whole question of finding yourself who you are, what you are, you are taking the introspective position of looking at yourself and looking at your life from a bird's eye view. And no one else can do that because then they would be projecting their biases and their own life views on to you. And you wouldn't be able to think for yourself. You're just going to take their work for it. You're the one living your life. You're the one controlling your life. Well, controlling is all. See, when you're in Muslim, you can't say that. You're the one who wakes up in the morning. You're the one who decides when to go to sleep if you're not 12. You're the one who decides what to eat, what to do, how to spend your time in your free time when you're working. You're the one living in it. So you have to really sit down, be uncomfortable as hell and inspect your life from like an airplane, like look at your life, like you're looking at it from an airplane. And that requires that you take the objective point of view. And being objective with yourself is so not easy. It is not easy because you are admitting to yourself that you have faults, you have flaws, you are confusing, you contradict yourself, you are this intertwined mesh of ideas and things and thoughts that you have to at some point try it on the gravel and make sense of. And it's not easy. And as I said, no one else can do it for you because they're not you. You're the one who has to do the work. There's this book that's called Man's Search for Himself by Rolo May. And I heard about it when I was watching this video about picking good friends. So I went and I investigated this book a little more deeply. And man, Rolo May, crazy guy, crazy dude, has some very, very good interesting ideas that I wanted to shut light on. Of course, with coming to books like these, like Rolo May was a psychologist and very renowned in his time. He was well known, you know, he was respected. He, he had a good name to him. He had a good reputation. But the thing, and the only thing is that when we're talking about psychologists, when we're talking about American psychologists, we have to understand that it's not completely applicable to other world countries. I was going to say third world countries, but there are second world countries as well. It's just not applicable everywhere because America, let's be real, is a world in and of itself. And that's why I think that American psychologists are just a different breed because they are putting some of the most disturbing people into the microscope. With all due respect, guys, I'm just saying America has has been the country that progressed the most in the last century. I would argue. And with that comes its consequences, with that comes its side effects, you know, and it's such a, it's still accelerating this pace of progress and, and movements and all of these ideas and behaviors, and et cetera, being adopted by an entire society. It's unlike any other country, so that's why I feel like Americans psychologists are genuinely something else. They're studying something completely out of the ordinary that does not apply to other people, like say Middle Easterners living in the Middle East. Bias is a natural thing of life. The first page alone of the book, Man's Search for Himself, spoke absolute volumes. I wasn't ready. I pulled up this book. I was like, it's going to be a late fun read. By the way, I didn't read the entire book. I just read snippets of it. I literally found it yesterday and I was like, okay, let me read some bits for the episode. But I, from myself, glazing over a good chunk of it, a good chunk. In the beginning, he talks about our predicament, our big problem, our problem that is very prevalent, but is not discussed enough. He talks about loneliness and anxiety of the modern man, and then he goes on to discuss a type of people he calls the hollow people. Now, this coming off guard, I was like, sir, you are stepping boundaries here. And then I kept on reading. He did step boundaries, but I just kept reading. And then he was talking about how people who are hollow from the inside, these people latch on to ideas, to people, to things, to constructs, because being in solitude, being alone, being with themselves and their thoughts in a very raw place is the most terrifying thing to them. He was talking about how you cannot depend on external entities to complete yourself. And that's interesting because you see some people that are heavily invested in their work. They're heavily invested in something, you know, an arena of life. Students heavily invested in school. Just being invested, and overly invested in some areas of your life, and how you can use that as a way to complete yourself, except this puzzle piece of completing yourself is not fitting in the puzzle itself, and you get mad, and you get irritated, you get frustrated, but why do I not feel fulfilled by this? Why do I feel like this is not giving me what I always thought it would give me? And you can, by the way, see this in relationships, he talks about this, he talks about how people have this idea of a partner. And then they go out, they seek a partner, in the beginning, it's the honeymoon phase, and then they realize they're not giving me what I always thought they would give me. They're not filling that void inside that I always thought they would be able to fill. People really try and extend their identities to other people, you know, like that person, my partner or my friend, or whoever it may be, is just a part of me. And they use them to complete their identities. They use them to complete themselves and to feel whole, even though we know that's not a healthy thing to do. We know that's not the case, and will never be the case of completing you. Now, here's where I would argue that religion is something else. Religion is, well, obviously I'm gonna argue for the side of religion. Do you see me? Anyway, religion is something else. Why? Because it's a metaphysical entity. It's an entity that is beyond our scope of understanding in our empirical senses. You know, the idea of God, the idea of, guys, I don't want to say it, but some people believe in the universe, the idea of the universe. All of these metaphysical things that we cannot perceive because we are within the bounds of time and space. And when discussing external entities, it also takes into account, not just people, not just things in places and jobs, whatever it is. It also includes external validation, the approval of people, the need for people's approval to go on. That's what validation means. You wait for something, you get the okay, and then you keep going. Some people function like that, believe it or not. And that's a very substantial topic in today's generation because that has been accelerated and catalyzed by the use of social media. With social media, every little heart, every little like, every little comment, some people use that to try and fulfill themselves. They try and use that to make themselves whole. And then it's slowly but surely starts to eat away at their identity because they're not living their life anymore. They're living what is like a picture to people. I have to look good for the people. I have to look good for this picture. I posted this picture on my story the other day and I don't know what I was feeling that day, but I just, I was like, I love the way I look in the hijab. And then I took a picture and I captioned it. I love my hijab. And the amount of responses I got, I looked presentable, I looked decent. I will no longer be doing that again. I will never look decent again. The amount of responses that I got saying, oh my god, you're so beautiful. I was like, oh okay. Listen, I'm not here to like brag like, guys, I'm just better. We know that already. That's not an argument. But I just looked at this and I was like, I don't usually post this kind of content. But what about the people that do? What about the people that for a living, they post this kind of content to look good, to look presentable, to look like I can't be for the people or whatever. It just felt like I slowly stopped thinking about my thoughts. I stopped thinking about who I am. And I know it's like not that deep, but I will, I'll make it deep. I started thinking about what people thought of me and not what I thought about myself. And that's when the change that I think is lethal starts to take place and starts to destroy you and eat away at you and starts to eat away at your identity and who you are. And so then finding yourself is the most impossible task that you could give yourself. And it's sad, but it's true. And it's happening all the time. People want to look good on social media all the time. And I know the connection is a bit wonky here. You're probably thinking like, how did you make that connection of finding yourself and posting good pictures of yourself on social media? It's not that. It's just, there is external validation involved. This is not the topic of today. I could talk about external validation for hours, until I get an hours on end. Here's where it gets really interesting. Rollo, the author of the book, I don't know if you guys knew that. Did I mention that? I probably mentioned that, yeah. Rollo believed that anxiety influenced much of our society. In fact, he spends most of the time in this book talking about how anxiety is like the ruler of the people. And he's, he's got to put, again, guess, he's talking about Americans. I know they're weird, but we have to stick this past again. I'm kidding. You know, most of my viewers are from America. I'm sorry, you guys. I don't mean anything, I say. That was a joke. I mean, everything will work. And so think about that for a second. An anxiety influences much of our decisions, much of the way we live, much of the way we act and speak and talk. In fact, if you sit around on a bench somewhere, say you go to a park, sit on a bench, look at the people passing. Look at how people walk. Look at how people talk and speak with each other and the way their footsteps are and the way they look at others, their demeanor, the way they dress, just do that. Like look at people in a park for about 30 minutes. I don't know about you guys, but I see it trend amongst all of these people. Well, most of these people, some people are anomalies, but most people are trying so hard not to be weird. They're trying their damn hardest to look like a normal human being amongst all of those human beings. And that leads me to my next point. And it's that the opposite of courage isn't cowardice, but it's conformity. And this quote was one by Rollo May. And they, they suppose I, I don't know who the exact person who said this quote was probably Rollo May, Earl Nightingale, or Jim Hightower. I don't know. Hightower. Is that a name? Oh, but let that sink in. The opposite of courage is not cowardice. It's conformity. Everyone is trying so hard not to be weird. And when you think about that, when you think about conforming, when you think about trying to be part of the people, trying to be the everyday person, trying to fit into society, but not fit in the way that you think, not fit in the way that you look, or how you dress, or whatever that is, not fit in the physical aspect, but I'm talking mentally, fit in the mental side of things. When you're, you're trying to be the same as people mentally, because you don't want to miss out on anything. When you want to feel what others are feeling, when you try and imitate how other people are, because you think they have a better anything and everything, all of these sorts of conformity, they will make you lose yourself. Because instead of you trying to discern yourself, set yourself apart and figure out what it is that makes you, you choose to go the easy route, but actually the more painful route of just conforming and being like everyone else. So that's why I say it's so extremely painful to sit with yourself and dig deep, dig down deep, and investigate and nitpick it yourself to understand who you are, to understand what you're made of. Rolo may discuss this a lot, and he says that people who try and fix these problems, like they go to therapy to try and understand who they are and what they are, they're breaking away from this construct of everyone trying to act normal when deep down there are so many different kinds of conflicts that are so messy and ugly, but that no one wants to deal with, no one wants to actually face it, so they're all just acting normal. So it's like the person going to therapy is the crazy one, except they're the actually the same one. Here's the thing, here's actually the thing, that's what Rolo may say, not what I said, there's a difference. I am okay, how do I see this? I personally thankfully never need a therapy. Therapy to me is just was never, you know, an option with all due respect to therapists. I'm so sorry, but it's just therapy is not the only option. It's not. You know, when we talk about finding yourself or wanting to fix your life or put your life back together because it used to be good, but now it's all messy and ugly and I don't understand what's going on and I'm so confused, you don't have to go to therapy to do that. You know, and I see that as like the only option nowadays and Rolo may himself actually says that therapists nowadays are just so bored that they're trying to come up with new gimmicks to entertain themselves when what they're doing is not actually what therapy is intending to do. You know, therapy is supposed to be about the individual is what Rolo may kept talking about because he is a psychologist and turn a psycho psycho. What is wait, what is a therapist who's also psychologist? Just a therapist? I don't know the difference. Psychologist, psychiatrist, therapist, psycho something. I don't psychotherapist. I don't know what those are. I'll be honest. That's not a good look for me right now, but he just he's one of the more honest therapists that I've seen out there. Obviously he's not here anymore, but I think he did a good job of trying to show what therapy can do, but I just argue that it's not the only option. I guess in finding yourself and wanting to find yourself and doing that through therapy is a more accelerated route. It's still painful, it's still difficult, but you have someone almost guiding you because what they're there to do is first and foremost listen and then see what your potential is and not fix your problems for you but kind of put you on the right, you know, like push you to the right a little because your path is on the right. That's what I figure that therapy is, but here's here's my form of therapy. Are you guys ready? If you know me, you know that I love David Goggins with a passion. You have a, no use to them, you have a baby comes in Muslim. Goggins, if you think there's a God out there, that's not important. I'll make David Goggins please convert to Islam another time, but I love the way he thinks. I love the way he lives his life. And one video of his that has been circulating, or every video of his circulates because he just talks truth, but one video that circulated recently is him running, obviously, and then talking. And what he said was along the lines of you have to struggle, you really have to endure pain, you have to almost wish for pain, you have to wish for a struggle, wish for it, not accept it, wish for it, bring it, manifest it, manifest a struggle. He says those exact words, he says when the ending is unknown and the distance is unknown, that's when you know who you are. And I think that's the best way in finding yourself. Sure, if you want to go and do it in therapy, that's great, but, but cry it out alone. You know, shed some tears alone, break down alone, but not in the way where you think, you know, it's not going to end up well. Please do it in a safe manner, but when you're alone and you're facing all of these thoughts in your mind, it's like not only do you know who you are or how you find yourself, but it takes you to another level, to a deep subconscious level that you didn't know existed. And this process of finding yourself takes your whole life to do. It's not something that just snaps immediately, like, oh my god, now I know who I am. That's great. Now I can do everything in life. That's not how it works. No, the entirety of your life is dedicated to finding yourself, is dedicated to understanding who you are, what your build of, what you're made of, what you can do, all of these things because for that to be the case, you need experience, you need to endure things, you need to yourself, you're going to suffer a little bit, but you're going to be happy about it. Quite literally those words. Now in the midst of all of that and breaking down and struggling and going through the journey of finding yourself, you are going to make friends in life. But the thing about it is that you're also growing with time. You grow every day, I hope. And going through these friendships with time along the way. It honestly helps you ask really tough questions. It helps you ask the toughest questions of your identity and who you are and what you believe. And that's a good thing because sometimes you can get really close to a person and then they make you realize that you're not supposed to be with that person. And that makes you grow. That makes you grow a whole lot because in understanding who you are and finding yourself, it's like you're fine tuning your compass. Imagine having this compass and the more friends you have or the more friends you've gone through, the more you're fine tuning this compass, you're adjusting it, you're making sure it's tuned correctly. And then with the more friendships, it starts to become more accurate and then more accurate and then more accurate until it starts to lead you and guide you to the place where you have found your people. And in turn, more importantly, you have found yourself because there are people that are very like-minded to you. My mom says this thing where when God created man, when he created all the people that existed, he created them as a soul. He didn't create human bodies. He created the soul and then he made the human bodies put that soul into it. But Allah made these souls in a specific shape. He molded them into a specific way so that when you come to the real world where we are here, you sometimes find a person that is almost like a fitting puzzle piece to your soul. That's because your soul shapes are so perfectly matched for each other. They almost click. Like, they click so well because their souls are molded in a similar shape. And ever since my mom said that, I just see that all the time. I see some people that I feel like they're speaking to my soul before I even speak. And it's so interesting because I thought I was the only one. I'm like the only one with this idea. I'm very unique. No, I wasn't. No, I was not. I was never. I will never be. I am not. That's not to say you are dependent on those people, but you need to understand that there are people out there that share exactly what you think that are almost entirely how you are. And that's, if anything, a blessing. It's a blessing, you know? And it has been honestly facilitated by social media. Like, we do see people online that are more like us than we do in our actual social circle in real life. You have to pick really harshly. You have to be harsh. You have to question. You have to investigate. You have to ask yourself the tough questions. Did I like it when they did this? Do I accept that they do this kind of thing? Am I willing to spend my time with them? All of these questions, they make you uncomfortable, but they make you honest. And it's kind of like asking yourself what your values are. You know, for me, in Hamdulillah, I have Islam. Like, that is my compass. That's the only thing I need. You know, I don't need anything more than that. If someone that I'm spending time with, that's Muslim, that's something that is really like just achy, that does not go with Islam. I'm just going to make a mental note. And then I'm going to like back away. Because that's it. That's my compass. I'm not, I'm fine tuning my compass by seeing what they did and seeing my response to with it. I asked myself, do I accept this? I don't. I don't. Okay. Now I'm going to fine tune my compass. I'm going to go somewhere else. I'm going to keep searching because why stick with this person? They're only ever going to make me more like them. So when you're seeing a behavior on someone else, ask yourself, do I want to have that same behavior? It's not just accepting, by the way. You're going to adopt it somewhere or another if you keep spending time with them. So it's important that you analyze and evaluate every second that you spend with people, even though it's harsh. But then by that, you're also making it easier on your future self because you're not changing because of the people. You're changing for yourself and you're changing yourself to be better, to be a better version of yourself and to find the right people eventually. And then you'll find people that will lift you up. That's why they say, always try and find a friend that is doing better than you. A more ideal version of what you want to be or who you are. Because trust me, one way or another, you're going to adopt their behavior. You're going to adopt their attitude. They're thinking, it's really not a joke when it comes to this at all. So pick really harshly, pick really wisely. Be freaking just judgmental if you have to know. Don't be judgmental. But but really be picky, be picky, be very picky. And to cap it off here, there's this one question that I wanted to ask you guys. And it's going to be uncomfortable. The question is, how different would the world be if you weren't around? You're probably thinking, sit in there thinking, not that different. Okay, that's great. That's seed. That's what I wanted to ask the question because a lot of people, when they think about that, they think about it from a very pessimistic point of view. Like, oh my god, I'm not contributing to the world as much as I thought I did. But here's the thing. The question is a matter of how you approach it. How do you approach this question? You can approach it from the point of view of, I'm not enough. You're so right. I'm probably not doing enough to actually change the world. But then you can take another approach and you can ask yourself, what can I be? What can I do to leave a positive mark on the world? Because yes, we can think about finding ourselves. We can think about who we are. Think, think, think, think. We can think all day long. But we're also put here for a purpose. And inevitably, that purpose is interconnected. We're not here for our individual sake. We're not here to be alone. We're not here to do our own thing and then leave. We're all here for each other. And yes, that sounds like freaking high school musical, but we're here for each other. And so that we can help each other. We can lift each other up. We can leave a positive mark on each other's lives and teach each other things and learn from each other. Because life is so sad if we're just living for ourselves. You know, so that's a question that I want you to think about. And be uncomfortable asking it. It's okay. It's okay. In fact, it's going to make you think, I'm not doing much. You probably are. You probably are not. Okay, that was the joke. Kind of. But no, it really, it does help you in first and foremost, understanding who you are, but then also understanding what you want to be, what you want to be and what you want to do. And you understand that faster, by the way, by helping people. When you help people, when you give aid to a friend, or an acquaintance, or a peer, whatever it may be, you actually start to understand yourself better. Start to find yourself better. Take the first step by helping someone. Just help someone. And then do it again, and then do it again. And you'll notice yourself, going to a place where there's a lot of familiarity, where you're going to a place where it feels like home. And I don't know how to explain that other than to say that I think I've lived it, because by making these episodes, by making content that people love and people laugh at and people enjoy, it just, I think it made me realize who I am. It helped me understand who I am, and what I was made for. So I think that's the first step. That's a good step. Just to help someone. And that's a wrap. I'm going to go pray now, literally be called the prayer right now. And I'm going to see you guys in the next episode. Bye-bye!