Discovering the Spiritual You

As-salamu’alaykum,

Last week, we explored the idea of getting to know ourselves better in order to understand how we show up in the world and what our natural tendencies are in the interactions that we have and how this impacts how we are perceived by others. 

Specifically, I recommended taking a behavioral style assessment known as the DISC profile as well as an emotional intelligence assessment because of how uniquely these 2 tools provide a much needed spotlight on our sense of self awareness. 

Self awareness is a key foundation for evidence-based emotional regulation that directly impacts our interaction with others from family to colleagues to patients and as we learnt last week, has been shown to impact professional satisfaction, lower burnout risk and importantly, impacts patient outcomes both positively and negatively. 

Please do check it out here if you haven't had a chance to reference these tools - the self awareness that you will develop as a result do have a profound life-altering potential when leveraged intentionally by the will of Allah. These insights have certainly had such a transformative effect on my journey thus far.

Today, we turn our attention to a closely related concept - your spiritual personality!

Just like we have behavior styles and personality traits that describe our natural disposition and our default interaction approach with ourselves and others in the world around us, so do we have spiritual personalities that inform our instinctive appetite for certain aspects of our Deen relative to others.

Allah SWT describes a useful spectrum of spiritual expression that helps us lean into this concept with some clarity in the opening verses of Surah Al-Mu’minun.

Surah Al-Mu’minun (Ch. 23): v1-5; Certainly the believers have succeeded. Those who are humbly submissive in their prayer. Those who turn away from ill speech. Those who observe charity. Those who protect their chastity.

These verses highlight some of the variation in our individual tendencies to connect with Allah SWT with some of us having a propensity to action seeking Allah’s mercy through prayer and charitable giving while others who are equally seeking the Favor of their Lord, are more inclined to refrain from wrongdoing by protecting their chastity and avoiding ill speech.

As healthcare workers, the value of this insight into our individual spiritual disposition in the work that we do may not be readily apparent until we begin to explore the connection between our spiritual wellness, on one hand, and our professional performance and resilience on the other hand.

Our ability to nurture our core selves and our spiritual inclination is central to our holistic wellbeing.

Stephen Covey described the concept of “Sharpening the Saw” - the 7th Habit of his seminal work, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” as the proactive nurturing of the 4 dimensions of the self - physical, mental, social/emotional and spiritual - with intentionality that drives continuous improvement and holistic wellbeing that supports living a life of purpose and meaning. As healthcare workers, we cannot afford to neglect any of these 4 dimensions and the spiritual dimension is key because it grounds us and especially for us as Muslim healthcare workers, it provides a means to tap into the Barakah paradigm and Allah’s divine support to get through our frequently tough days and complex patient care related obligations.

As I walked towards a near-irate patient room yesterday, I found myself leveraging the famous du’a of Musa (AS) from Surah Taha for confidence and calming speech. 

Surah Taha (Ch. 20): v25-28;  Moses prayed, “My Lord! Uplift my heart for me, and make my task easy, and remove the impediment from my tongue so people may understand my speech.

This is one of my natural inclinations to tap into the power of supplication and dhikr (remembrance of Allah) when the going gets tough. For others, avoiding ill speech, such as pulling out of hospital staff lounge conversations that smell of backbiting may be a more natural inclination for them. We all have what Allah SWT has facilitated for us and other things that He (SWT) requires more effort from us in terms of spiritual expression. 

The key thing is to recognize our strengths and weaknesses in this arena and leverage this self awareness to cultivate spiritual resilience intentionally because it has been correlated with improved overall performance and productivity while lowering stress and invariably our risk for burnout in the high-stress healthcare environment. 

Today, I invite you to discover your spiritual personality by taking the Spiritual Personality Quiz from the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research.

Exploring our spiritual personality helps us to hone in on the spiritual expressions that are most aligned with our natural disposition so that we can build upon this knowledge of ourselves with intention. It opens up endless possibilities for how we can best find Allah SWT and His divine favors and barakah in a way that's most suited to our divinely designed and unique nature. In another verse of the Qur’an, Allah SWT reminds us of the diversity in our creation and our dispositions to act.

Surah Al-Isra (Ch. 17): v84; Say: Everyone will act according to their nature, and your Lord knows best who is rightly guided.  

We will all invariably act along those lines but will we do so with intention? and in a way that is potentially highest yield for us in the hereafter while supporting our Dunya-focused intentions for professional success; for burn-out proofing our healthcare careers and cultivating resilience; and for driving superior outcomes for the patients that we serve of because of our intentional investment in our spiritual growth as part of our holistic wellness.

May Allah SWT guide us towards knowledge that will foster our success in this life and the hereafter. Ameen 

Please do share your feedback or any thoughts on how you are interfacing with this context.

Sincerely,

Sulyman

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