Refocus... Refocus...

As time passes and things happen, (the good, the bad, and the neutral), we tend to take things to heart, and get caught up with everything around us, that we forget what's important in our lives... in those moments, it's very important for us to go through what I call a refocusing exercise.

So what’s a Refocus exercise?
A refocus exercise is a mental exercise that you go through in order to help you face any situation in your life. When you find yourself either too excited about something, or too agitated about it, you need the refocus exercise. It helps you maintain calm, avoid disappointments, and keeps your vision clear.
The setting of the exercise is not important, although I do recommend traveling as the best opportunity to refocus and reflect (This could be anything from traveling to a different city or a walk through a nice park). If traveling is not an option for you, simply praying 2 rak’ah and sitting on your prayer mat can do as well. The thinking procedure is the most important part...and you can do it by thinking about 3 things:

1) Ask yourself whether the things that you're so excited/disappointed about are actually that important in your life. Are they not simply your whims and desires getting stirred?
2) Place whatever you’re happy/sad about in the bigger picture of your life and ask yourself: “Will this thing matter to me in a week’s time? A month’s time? 1 year’s time? 10 year’s time?” What you’ll notice is that what you thought was important quickly diminishes as you extend your time horizon.

3) Place these thoughts/events in the context of the HereAfter: “Will this matter to me in the Hereafter? Will this matter to me when I meet Allah?” Again, a lot of things will simply vanish in your importance radar once you think of it this way.
Going through this exercise, is almost a healing process for those times you’re down, and a calming process when you find yourself too excited and can’t contain yourself. The reason why I advocate calming yourself at times of excitement, is because sometimes you might lead yourself to disappointment if you’re too excited about something that will happen in the future OR lead yourself to arrogance if it’s an excitement over an achievement. You need to maintain that balance, and just focus... focus on what’s important, focus on Allah. Always.