Stand out not blend in

The troubling decline in conscientiousness - https://www.ft.com/content/5cd77ef0-b546-4105-8946-36db3f84dc43

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1953811277463122162?s=48

Auto-generated transcript:
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
And all praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds.
And peace and blessings be upon the honour of the prophets and messengers.
Muhammad and the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him and upon his family and his companions,
are very much in acceptance.
And after you, my brothers and sisters, today I want to talk to you about something different.
The other day I told you there are two ways of learning.
One is to make mistakes yourself, feel the pain, suffer.
You learn, you don't learn, we don't know.
And the other way is to learn from people who have experience.
So people who have made those mistakes learn those lessons,
and now they have that ready-made experience which they are happy to share with you.
My experience of people,
is that if you approach them respectfully,
sincerely,
then they will share their experience freely.
I've never in my life had anybody who did not share his experience,
provided they are approached respectfully and with interest.
What any potential mentor wants to see
is whether you are going to waste his time or not.
Because if you are going to waste his time,
he doesn't have time to waste with you.
So if you are kind of, you know,
yeah, I would like to know, so tell me your story.
No, sorry, I've got other things to do.
Like feed my chickens maybe, right?
That's more satisfying.
Why would I tell you a story?
Who are you?
So you have to show who you are.
You have to show your desperation,
you have to show your seriousness.
And that when the person is talking to you,
he's not wasting his time,
he's not wasting his experience.
With me, my first and foremost,
I have a checklist in my head
to check seriousness.
And my first check,
first point of checking seriousness is,
if I give you a time,
will you take the time or will you argue?
Simple as that.
No matter what the time is.
I might tell you, I'll see you at 4am.
Will you say, yes, sir, I'll see you tomorrow at 4am?
Or will you say, oh, 4am.
Oh, you know, I, that's not convenient.
I am sleeping at that time.
I'm in the second installment of the third dream.
Sorry, then goodbye.
Find somebody else.
I mean, I don't usually say 4am.
I say 2am, but that's a different issue.
Seriously, bye.
Many people come to me,
many young people.
Can you mentor me?
I say, sure.
But I have a criteria of mentoring.
I say, what's that?
I say, what's the date today?
It's the 9th of August, 2025.
So I tell him,
come back to me,
on the 9th of August, 2026.
One year.
This one year,
you must pray tahajjud
every day.
And this is between you and Allah.
You can tell lies to,
to me, you can't tell lies to Allah .
Pray tahajjud every day.
And if on the 364th day you miss tahajjud,
you go back to counting one.
When you complete 365 days of tahajjud,
then you come to me and talk.
I want to see how serious you are with your own life.
Because you want advice about yourself, right?
You're not, you're not asking me advice about how I should,
how I will succeed.
You want to know how you can succeed.
So prove to me that you are interested.
And somebody who is not praying tahajjud,
doesn't really want success.
He's doping.
Because if you have no time to stand before Allah ,
Allah is coming specifically for you
to the first heaven.
And Allah is announcing,
is there anyone who needs anything from me?
Is there anyone who needs my help?
Is there anyone who needs my protection?
He says, no, no, not me.
Because I'm busy sleeping.
Then why should I be interested in you?
I'm not interested.
So that's the first thing.
Second thing is,
if I have a mentoring contract with somebody,
there's zero tolerance,
absolutely zero tolerance
for not keeping time,
not arriving at the right time,
whatever time slot was given,