Develop some habits within yourself.
If you don't, time will force you to, and time never teaches any lesson with love.
Time has its own philosophy. It leaves its marks, sometimes on the soul, sometimes on the body in the form of lashes, and sometimes on thought, like dragging a silken cloth through a thorny bush.
So try to understand that the fruit is connected to effort, it is conditional upon it, rather it is bound and mortgaged to it.
Try to remove from within yourself the spirit of challenge, of claiming, of "I". The psychology of superiority, that I defeated him, I made him bow, I forced him, I won the field... remove these things from within yourself.
Never make a claim, in any form, in any situation.
Never ever say the sentence, "I did it."
Even if it seems to you a million times that you stood firm, you faced the storm, you turned the direction of the wind.
You are nothing. You cannot even fight the world over the prick of a thorn, you keep colliding with pain.
With a single sprain while getting up and sitting down, you become dependent, lying on a bed for four months, unable to move.
This is another aspect where the pen keeps slipping, but never adopt a debating style, never speak in a tone of superiority.
What is it that keeps you in pride, that keeps your neck held high?
Your strong, young children?
Think for a moment, what if you had a barren wife, what if you yourself were barren, what if your children went astray and became a headache for you, what did you do in all of this?
You are in some position, now think, when you were selected, it must have happened that those more capable than you were left behind and you moved ahead.
You are merely a pawn of destiny, a part of the divine scheme.
Remember.
The most beautiful creation among the creations of the Planner is the illusion of free will.
Yes, but understand a more bitter, more serious, more dreadful reality than this and engrave it on your heart.
The day you make a claim, the day you stand with arrogance and utter a single sentence.
At that very moment, at that very instant, God smiles. He stands aside with folded arms in complete indifference. He says to the angels, to those angels who are attached with you, "Oh, just wait, let him do it."
A man of dust had said, "I am your Lord, the Most High" (Ana Rabbukumul A'la), you saw the spectacle. This one is going to become another child of Pharaoh, small perhaps, but this is the same Pharaoh-like arrogance, so let him do it, let's see what he does, what he can do. And when God withdraws His hand from your affairs, when He folds His hands and watches your spectacle with smiling eyes...
Then do you know what happens?
Then it does not happen that suddenly all your work stops. Would that it were so, that the universe was black and white and decisions were easy.
But it doesn't happen like that. Then many times it happens that your work starts happening with even more ease and facility. Then Satan becomes your co-worker. Then the forces of evil become your companions, and then you sink into the world of gradual entrapment (Istidraj) and your "I", your sense of superiority throws you into a blind well, from which the only key to escape is selflessness, is the negation of your own self.
There, then, nature does not show mercy to you without crushing you, without making you into particles.
The Lord overlooks, can overlook, not just much but everything, but the Lord who says "Pride is My cloak" can never forgive a single step placed on all the small and big paths and highways that lead to "I", ego, superiority, challenge, and polytheism.
He says even to His Prophet in a very stern tone:
"And never say of anything, 'Indeed, I will do that tomorrow,' except [when adding], 'If Allah wills.'"
