Letters for Living #58
Helping you move from surviving to living with purpose
As-salaamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh, dear beautiful souls,
Bismillah.
Are you tired? I mean really tired not just the kind that comes from not getting enough sleep, but the kind that settles somewhere deeper.
Tired of the news. Tired of social media. Tired of the constant opinions, narratives, expectations and information coming at us from every direction. Tired of being told what we should be doing, buying, wearing, eating, achieving and becoming.
And underneath all of that sits a quiet, constant feeling that we are not quite enough. Not thin enough. Not successful enough. Not productive enough. Not present enough with our children. Not doing enough for our families. Not earning enough. Not living the right kind of life.
There is always something else — something to fix, something to achieve, something to worry about. Honestly, I think many of us are exhausted from trying to keep up.
We Were Never Meant to Live Like This
Our nervous systems take in an enormous amount of information every single day. We wake up and reach for our phones before we've even had a moment to think — consuming other people's lives, opinions, problems and expectations before the day has properly begun.
Then we move into our own lives: responsibilities, work, children, relationships, finances, and everything else that needs our attention. And somewhere in the middle of it all, we are expected to remain calm, grounded, present and emotionally regulated.
No wonder so many of us feel overwhelmed.
When the body is constantly being asked to respond, it doesn't get much opportunity to rest. And when the nervous system spends too much time in survival mode, our world becomes very small — narrowed down to the problem in front of us, the bill that needs paying, the message we need to answer, the thing that went wrong today, the thing we're afraid might happen tomorrow.
It becomes difficult to see beyond it. Difficult to think clearly. Difficult to access perspective. Difficult to surrender.
Remember When We Slowed Down?
I often think back to the beginning of COVID. There was so much uncertainty and difficulty during that time, but also something many people experienced for the first time in a long while: stillness.
The world stopped. We weren't constantly rushing from one place to another, or keeping up with the same pace of life. I remember hearing so many people say how strange it felt — but also how good. People cooked more. They spent more time with their families. They noticed things they'd been too busy to notice. They realised how much of life had become a constant race.
Then, as life returned to "normal," we climbed straight back onto the same wheel. Back to rushing. Back to consuming. Back to comparing. Back to striving. Back to doing.
And now we're wondering why we're exhausted.
We Keep Looking Outside
Part of the problem, I think, is that we've become so externally focused. We believe that if we just fix the next thing, we'll finally feel better.
If we earn more money, we'll feel secure. If we lose the weight, we'll feel good about ourselves. If we achieve the goal, we'll feel successful. If our children are doing well, we'll feel like good mothers. If people approve of us, we'll feel worthy.
So we keep looking outside ourselves for the thing that will finally make us feel okay — and in the process, we lose touch with what's happening inside. We become so focused on the means that we forget the Source. We forget that behind every means is Allah:
Ar-Razzaq — the One who provides.
Al-Fattah — the One who opens.
Al-Wakeel — the One we can entrust our affairs to.
Ar-Rahman — the One whose mercy encompasses us.
But Why Is It So Difficult to Stop?
Because stillness can feel uncomfortable when your body has learned to stay busy. Doing feels productive. Controlling feels safer. Knowing what comes next feels reassuring. But sitting quietly with yourself, letting go of control, not knowing, trusting — that can feel frightening.
This is something I've come to understand much more deeply: we don't always struggle to trust Allah because we lack faith. Sometimes we struggle because we don't feel safe enough to let go. The body has learned that safety comes from staying alert, staying busy, staying in control, anticipating what might happen next. So when we're asked to slow down, surrender and trust, everything within us can resist.
This is one of the reasons I created Safe to Trust , not because we need another reminder that we should trust Allah (we already know that), but to explore a deeper question: why does trusting Allah sometimes feel so difficult? And what would change if we became safe enough within ourselves to release some of that fear, control and constant striving?
That's what we explore inside Safe to Trust , a self-paced workshop you can work through in your own time. You can explore it here:
Go Inwards
There is so much happening around us that we cannot control the narratives pushed toward us, what other people are doing, the economy, the news, world events, what tomorrow will bring.
But we can choose where we place our attention. We can choose to pause, to become still, to notice what's happening inside us rather than constantly reacting to what's happening outside us.
And when we begin going inward, something starts to shift ,because what happens within us eventually finds its way into how we experience the world around us. A regulated person experiences the same world differently from someone constantly living in survival mode. A person who trusts Allah experiences uncertainty differently from someone who believes everything depends on them.
The external world may not have changed. But the person experiencing it has. And that changes everything.
A Closing Reflection
Maybe we don't need another thing to add to our already overflowing lives. Maybe we need to remove some things: the constant noise, the constant comparison, the constant need to know, the constant need to control, the constant feeling that we should be somewhere other than where we are.
Give yourself permission to be still — not because there is nothing to do, but because there is something you need to hear. And perhaps what you've been searching for outside yourself has been waiting for you in the quiet all along.
Go inward. Return to Allah. And remember: you were never meant to carry the entire world on your shoulders.
With sincerity and du'a,
Nazia