LESSON OF THE DAY 474

Ayahs of the Day:
And God knows what you keep secret and what you reveal. As for those to whom others pray besides God, they do not create anything, and are themselves created, inert, void of life; and they do not know when they'll be resurrected. [16: 19,20,21]

Hadith of the Day:
Be a little reserved in your love for your friend, for someday he may become your enemy. And a little reserved in your hatred for your enemy, for someday he may become your friend. [Bukhari]

Wise Quote of the Day:
Know that it is not your family and friends, but rather your deen which truly looks after you. [Hasan radi Allah anhu]

Guidance of the Day:
Just for fun, agree with the criticism directed toward you, then watch it go away. So often we are immobilized by the slightest criticism. We treat it like an emergency, and defend ourselves as if we were in a battle. In truth, however, criticism is nothing more than an observation by another person about us, our actions, or the way we think about something, that doesn't match the vision we have of ourselves. Big deal!

When we react to criticism with a knee-jerk, defensive response it hurts. We feel attacked, and we have a need to defend or to offer a countercriticism. We fill our minds with angry or hurtful thoughts directed at ourselves or at the person who is being critical. All this reaction takes an enormous amount of mental energy. An incredibly useful exercise is to agree with criticism directed toward you. I am not talking about turning into a doormat or ruining your self-esteem by believing all negativity that comes in your direction. I'm only suggesting that there are many times when simply agreeing with criticism defuses the situation, satisfies a person's need to express a point of view, offers you a chance to learn something about yourself by seeing a grain of truth in another position, and, perhaps most important, provides you an opportunity to remain calm.

Reacting to criticism never makes the criticism go away. In fact, negative reactions to criticism often convince the person doing the criticizing that they are accurate in their assessment of you. Give this strategy a try. I think you'll discover that agreeing with an occasional criticism has more value than it costs. [Don't Sweat The Small Stuff]

Food for Thought:
When you are immobilized by what anybody else thinks of you, what you are saying is that your opinion of me is more important than my own opinion of myself.