My name is Michael Collins and I'm the Director General of the Institute of International and European Affairs and I'm very pleased to welcome you all this afternoon to this IEEA webinar. And we're absolutely delighted to be joined today this afternoon by Patrick Flynn, Vice President of Sustainability for Sales Tours and Patrick is going to speak to us about the adaptation of business models to achieve sustainability goals. Patrick has been really very good to join us and take time out of his schedule and the thing to speak to us particularly given the early hour of the morning in California where he's just told me the sun hasn't even come up yet. So thank you all the more for joining us in these circumstances but in any event Patrick will speak to us for as usual for about 15 to 20 minutes and then we will go to Q&A with you our audience and you'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom which I think you're all very familiar with at this stage and which you should see on your screen. Please feel free to send your questions in throughout the session as they occur to you and we will come to them once Patrick has finished his presentation. A reminder that today's presentation and questions and answer are both on the record and please feel free to join the discussion on Twitter using the handle at IEEA. Patrick as I said who as I said is Vice President of Sustainability for Salesforce which is a global leader in the customer relationship management and one of the fastest growing software companies in the world and at Salesforce Patrick defines and leads its environmental strategy prior to this role he has had important roles in green building design venture capital and sustainability for a data center co-location company. Patrick holds an MBA from MIT as well as a BS in engineering from Stanford University. So Patrick came to follow you 100,000 welcomes you're very welcome to Ireland and nice to see you good morning to you in California and thank you for joining us the floor is yours. Top of the morning to you as well thank you so much for having me here today thanks thank you Michael thank you to the IEEA really such an honor and such a pleasure to be here with you. I'll begin trying to share my screen here just confirm I'm doing that properly please and then you can see it. The I just again I want to start with a sense of gratitude. I'm honored that I'm even eligible to be speaking with with you all. I will plan to as Michael said set about 15 or 20 minutes of context both the global context as well as zooming in on the corporate context with a specific lens on what Salesforce is doing in sustainability and then I'm most looking forward to the Q&A session at the end so please as Michael said keep the questions coming in I'm really eager to have a dialogue and understand any way that I can help you or illuminate why we do what we do offer some advice and learn from each other again beginning with thank you it's I have to finish myself that I get to speak in situations like this really in truly such an honor. Let's start by zooming way out this the global context setting part of a conversation like this I think is necessary. There's no way to solve global challenges without taking a moment to zoom out and take a truly global view and some of what I'll share here at the beginning section will not be new to anybody but I think it helps us all enter into the right mindset. We are on a rock in the middle of space and on the stariest night that you can picture you were only looking at about one one hundred millionth of the stars in our galaxy alone and there are a hundred billion galaxies out there and yet in spite of all of that vastness we have no indication that there's any life anywhere but on this little speck and what an interesting time to be on this lifeboat in the middle of the darkness with a global pandemic and economic crisis and the climate crisis looming. Meanwhile we also have a social and inequality crisis and a crisis of leadership of the one hundred ten billion or so human souls who have ever lived. You and I happen to be here today alive conscious privileged and able to take part in trying to reshape the future for all life as we know it anywhere in the universe from here on out. We've got a lot of great work to do together. Now we also have a pretty good roadmap the the sustainable development goals our collective species wide to-do list for the coming decade and the objectives are quite clear 169 underlying metrics behind these 17 SDGs and yet if we examine them one of those initiatives stands out above every other and that is the climate crisis. It is the number one risk in terms of impact and number two in terms of likelihood on the World Economic Forum's annual global risks report of the 169 metrics that underlie those 17 SDGs. 154 are linked to climate action and that's an important distinction. Climate action is not just about the environment. Climate change and taking taking part to address climate change is a way to address inequality, a way to spur on the economy, a way to create human health and well-being, a way to support biodiversity and yes a way to deliver action against the claim the changing climate that we see around us and we're not doing a very good job yet. Currently we are on track for a 3.2 degree rise in temperature Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Every scientist out there would tell you that that is not a scenario that we want to see happen and so it's up to us in this critical moment in history to try to reshape things.  So again let's zoom in a little bit on how we're doing on that and you can see current policies here in the light blue place us into a 2.8 to 3.2 degree future. Optimistic pledges and policies place us a little bit better but we need a lot of more work to get to a 2.2 degree or ideally a 1.5 degree future. Let me share with you a bit of an animation here that puts it a little bit into context. If we had started declining emissions back in the year 2000 it would have taken only a 3% decline in order to achieve a 1.5 degree future, 3% decline in annual global emissions but emissions kept rising, we kept deteriorating our available climate budget and now we require about a 15% annual decline in global CO2 emissions to achieve that 1.5 degree pathway. I rule up some way to think about it as a 50% decline in annual global emissions by 2030, having those emissions again by 2040 and reaching net zero emissions by the mid-century and we know leaders need to move much faster. If we think about climate change sinks of CO2 emissions I find this diagram from drawdown quite powerful. We have in the center the atmosphere. On the left hand side the various sources of emissions from electricity production which gets a lot of focus but also food agriculture and land use, industry, transportation, buildings and other sources. We need to reduce the sources of greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible across the board. Those sources are generating more heat trapping gases than the sinks can capture and sequester. The two main sinks that we have doing great work year in, year out are our land-based sinks and ocean-based sinks here on the right hand side of the diagram. We also need to protect, support and create even more sinks in order to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as well. We are at a all of the above time for climate action, reducing sources, enhancing sinks, building partnerships in order to create that 1.5 degree future that we all want and that we all will share. Now what's the role of a company in addressing sustainability writ large and in particular addressing climate change? Well let's break down a company into some of the fundamental things that it does. It makes products or provides services and depending on the industry it's in there are levers, opportunities to create change to either reduce sources of emissions or enhance sinks. There's also the dimension in the center here of how that company operates. Everything from what it purchases in its supply chain, how it invests, what its philanthropic portfolio looks like and plenty of levers there particularly for reducing emissions if we zoom in on how it operates and where it operates. And then a very important lever right now especially with regards to creating systemic change is what a company stands for, what it communicates, what it says to and asks of other stakeholders around it. And as we move forward through this presentation I'll zoom in on that a little bit with regards to Salesforce. We are a company that is motivated by our values. Our values are trust, customer success, innovation and equality. And when we think about approaching a topic like climate change or creating change in the world we begin with our values. And I'm incredibly proud of where Salesforce is on its own sustainability journey. Let me tell you a little bit of that context. So every day every customer is on a carbon neutral cloud from Salesforce. We will hit 100% renewable energy only from new renewable energy that we or our suppliers on our behalf have helped bring to the grid. We have about 75% of our global real estate certified to the highest levels of green building standards including our office in Dublin. One out of five employees is part of our green team that we call Earthforce. That's 10,000 people globally doing the many amazing things that add up to really big impact. And we've advanced our transparency to the investor community quite a long way integrating environmental social and governance topics and metrics into our public filings. By the numbers we can see that for us data centers present a very large source of our scope one and scope two emissions along with business travel, offices and employee commuting. We have programs in place to mitigate, reduce, avoid and also bring renewable energy and carbon credits into the picture in order to achieve the goals that we showed earlier. And yet at the scale that Salesforce operates Planet Earth will not notice. We at the same time that I'm so proud of where we are on our own journey we know that we need to take that opportunity provided by the great work that we've done over many years and find ways to catalyze systemic change. What we think about is beginning with walking the walk. This is what provides any stakeholder from an individual to a country to accompany the credibility in order to have an expert point of view on a topic like climate change but it has to continue on from there given the scale of what we are trying to do. We need to walk the walk to a point where we can build a movement inspiring others and showing them how to follow alongside us and then use that movement to create systemic change at the scale that Planet Earth might actually notice. And the scale that Planet Earth might actually notice is about 10,000 times bigger than Salesforce's own emissions. That's how much bigger that domino is at the end of the chain that we're trying to kick off. We stand upon a foundation of excellence given the great work that we've done over years but then we look to stakeholders around us in order to drive that systemic change. Our customers, our suppliers, governments and the investor community and over the next few minutes I'll zoom in on each of those stakeholder groups and tell you a little bit more about what we're doing with each of those. So the investor community, one of the biggest levers we have around us if Salesforce can have even a small influence over reallocating capital flows we can create big change for climate action. We were proud to see Larry Fink and BlackRock step forward and really underscore the importance of businesses standing for something and improving the state of the world and also the importance of the task force for climate related financial disclosures, TCFD framework as a way to make sure stakeholders around businesses understand the trusted metrics that show whether a company is taking action or not. Our CFO Mark Hawkins here who you see in the center of the photo at the New York Stock Exchange covering up my own face right behind his elbow is a great champion inside of Salesforce and has spurred us on the journey of making sure that our environmental data is investor grade enabled to and allows us to be a leader in environmental social and governance reporting. One of the ways we do that is with the Salesforce platform. Earlier this year we launched Salesforce Sustainability Cloud. It's a platform for any of our customers or anybody who is not yet a customer to use the tools that have been built by Salesforce over 20 years that we've brought into a purposeful product that takes the form of allowing customers to take climate action. It's really focused on two things. One is the annual greenhouse gas footprinting process. You can see that depicted in the large screen here on this image. What we've created is a very organized single point of record single source of truth for any stakeholder in a business to bring their environmental data to a place of trust and then we've coupled that with analytics and data visualization which you see on the mobile device here that allows the executive audiences within a company who wants to take climate action allows them to have the data that they need and that they expect in order to take action. One of the ways that a company can take action is to invest in and focus on nature-based solutions. Let me tell you a little bit about that. Earlier this year around the same time we launched Sustainability Cloud, Salesforce helped the World Economic Forum stand up 1T.org and initiative that hopes to bring together all of the many stakeholders around the world who are focused on nature-based solutions and bringing greater focus to tree conservation, restoration, and tree planting. An incredible and important part of the climate action portfolio and upon that launch we also made our own corporate commitment which is to see 100 million trees planted, restored, conserved over the next decade. I mentioned our supply chain as well as one of the great sources of leverage for change around Salesforce. We have a 1.5 degree approved science-based target from the science-based target initiative and one of the components of that target is a scope 3 supply chain engagement goal that says suppliers representing 60% of our supplier-based emissions will set science-based targets of their own by 2024. To me that sort of chain reaction set off by us and other companies alongside us who are looking to their supply chains to try to motivate them to create science-based targets is one of the greatest sources of inspiration in the climate corporate climate movement right now. We are day by day seeing more companies committing to and setting science-based targets and as that coalition grows the ability to influence supply chain members collectively grows with it and day by day we're seeing more and more momentum behind that initiative and Salesforce hopes to the extent we can to help push that movement forward and help others along their journey. Another pillar of achieving that 10,000x leveraged influence for climate action is in government affairs and public policy and when we think about our government affairs public policy priorities regarding climate action they come in three forms. One is reducing greenhouse gas emissions broadly the next is decreasing the carbon intensity of the grids where we operate and the third is increasing market access to clean and renewable energy and we've taken what is a very values driven values oriented company in Salesforce and worked in close partnership with our government affairs team both in the United States and internationally in order to try to lend our voice and lend our support to the initiatives that can achieve these goals and as we zoom in on Europe we've made a bunch of good progress and good advances recently as well we joined the CLG recently I'm quite proud of that we hosted Mark Carney in a dialogue with the Salesforce employees recently as well and I'm proud to say Salesforce with about 160, 150 other companies backed the largest ever UN CEO effort to request that the build back better components of stimulus recovery take place in the EU and globally. What's ahead for Salesforce? Just a little bit of a preview of some of the things we've committed to or are working on as we zoom as we look forward again this goal to see 100 million trees conserved or restored over the next decade new commitments within our real estate continuing to lead the geographies where we operate to a one and a half degree future focusing in on water as well with our improved water leadership commitment under the we mean business protocol a 1.5 degree science-based target that we mentioned including a supply chain component trying to bring others along with us on that journey focusing on clean and renewable energy we expect that we will hit 100% renewable energy in FY 22 again from new renewable energy that we are able to bring to the grid and I think one of the most interesting things is again Salesforce sustainability cloud because in this climate emergency every stakeholder can focus on what they do best for climate action that happens at the individual level we need artists to make art for climate action we need lawyers to to file lawsuits for climate action and we need companies to to tether their unique core competency to climate action for Salesforce that is digital tools that help our customers transform their business we've done that successfully through macro changes like the move to mobile social cloud iot ai and with Salesforce sustainability cloud we can deliver digital tools to help your company your organization transform in the face of climate action and so that one to me is a place where our 150 000 plus customers can find their own superpower for addressing climate change and I'm really excited to see what happens there so thank you for allowing me a few minutes to share some of the context and our point of view and our progress where we are headed here at Salesforce I'm thrilled to be with you this this afternoon and look forward to the discussion ahead well thank you very much Patrick for that stimulating inspiring indeed presentation just maybe just to get the ball rolling if I may and and would I wish him to be overtly political in any way not inviting you to be so I mean clearly you are determined to be in the vanguard of as a company of sustainability and achieving the ambitious goals that you you outlined there and I suppose two questions one is what would actually prevent you from doing so what are the huge obstacles in your way and the second one where it maybe gets a little more political is how frustrating is it that perhaps at federal level in the United States that you know there's a disalignment or a non-alignment between maybe the kind of ambition that you're articulating there and perhaps the view at a federal level great thank you yeah you know in terms of in terms of obstacles I think one of the biggest one of the biggest challenges is trying to reconcile the urgency of climate change you see something like 15 percent global annual emissions declines no amount of corporate incremental sustainability progress is going to deliver that even if we snapped our fingers and every company in the world was focused and motivated on taking their own steps forward bit by bit so over over the past few decades that more incremental focus on sustainability has been extremely relevant but now given how much change we need and how fast the the challenge that we face is trying to take a take what we have learned and use that to try to catalyze bigger more systemic change as quickly as possible and I think for for those in my position in corporate sustainability that mindset shift of trying just to look for bigger opportunities that can deliver impact far far bigger than the four walls of the company is a new more difficult more challenging challenge more challenging set of strategies with less direct control where it's much more about influencing others and and so I think I think the barrier is really trying to reconcile what a given corporate sustainability program can do with the demands of the planet and then if I think about the the US context and the federal context the there is some some silver lining here you know the the same day that the federal government here announced that we would be withdrawing from the Paris agreement hundreds of US businesses and now a movement that's thousands of stakeholders strong stepped in to say that we will uphold the ideals of the Paris agreement and so my my sincere hope is that what we've seen is a surge of state and local we certainly have seen that a surge of individual and corporate action that will in the end when we look back really have provided a boost you know in terms of awakening stakeholders who need to take action here thank you Patrick maybe just a related question that's just come in at least in part from a colleague a former colleague of mine David Dunnehu who of course was our ambassador for the United Nations and very much instrumental in you know the climate change achievements there over the last the period of his term as ambassador he says congratulations to Salesforce for its commitment and leadership on SDG climate and ESG he says some fear that the huge economic impact our shock of COVID will halt the momentum and towards a sustainable world others see the SDGs as more relevant than ever and say quote unquote building back must be based on them where do you start yeah it's a great question and I imagine this is top of mind for many so we might spend a little bit of time here on the intersection you know between between COVID and corporate sustainability let me give it given that we might have a few passes at it let me let me first begin by maybe speaking to it at the highest level there are there are some great and helpful parallels between the COVID-19 health crisis and the climate crisis for example globally collectively all of us each of us is getting a crash course in system dynamics the ideas of that that in the case of COVID actions today may take a couple of weeks before we start to see the impact and in the case of climate change actions today what we do and do not do might take a couple of years or a couple of decades to come to fruition a crash course in in understanding the science exponential curves trusting experts and so that I think as we look forward we'll provide this global collective capability for understanding a complex system with delays embedded within it and I think that's quite a good thing we're also seeing front and center just how interconnected we are you know think back to that image of of the blue marble sitting there in space we know just how interdependent we are and in the case of a global pandemic that any one stakeholder's success relies on the success of the stakeholders around them and certainly that is no you know that is truer than ever with the case of climate change one global atmosphere and and absolutely with climate change the unfortunate situation that those with the least usually are the ones who suffer the most so the net of it I think is these lessons learned that will help us in in in addressing the SDGs and in addressing climate action long term we we need to and we have in front of us a multi-year multi-decade adventure ahead to conquer these goals and to create a prosperous future and what I hope is that the COVID-19 circumstances although tragic and unwanted have provided us with some really valuable lessons that will stick with us in terms of our our sort of global collective action capability over the long term now I think the other the other thing to think about here is some strategies need to be accelerated and some strategies need to be decelerated in the in the face of COVID-19 the back in the back at the launch of the UN emissions gap assessment last October or November one of the one of the lines that stood out to be most was in order to achieve a one and a half degree future we need rapid far reaching and unprecedented changes in every aspect of society that's from about a year ago back in October before COVID-19 hit and now unexpectedly and tragically we are seeing rapid far reaching and unprecedented changes in every aspect of society and we need to make the most of this moment of crisis and think about it as an opportunity to reorient and indeed to build back better this is exactly the kind of change that we need to see we just need to make sure we we intervene and make sure that we don't build back the same but build back in a direction that we want it's excellent so building back better is really but but but me out of this current tragedy out of this current crisis there is at least an opportunity to do that and to potentially achieve that yeah yeah absolutely yeah so one just a question here from Patrick Paul watch who's the director of UCD University College Dublin one of our the biggest universities here in Ireland Center for Sustainable Development Studies he says excellent talk talk he says is the sales force sustainability cloud only for the corporate only for corporate operations he says in theory a tracker on consumer expenditure on government our government spending on government spending would also induce the systemic changes outlined yeah great question and thank you i'll tell you a little bit about the origin story for sales force sustainability cloud as a way to answer that one so once a year a company does its greenhouse gas accounting and it is about as boring as it gets in my opinion it's the equivalent of doing corporate taxes except instead of having a tax expert do it usually the corporate sustainability team assigns it to the newest person on the team because it is really equivalent to looking in the rear view mirror and looking at what has transpired rather than looking forward and trying to change the future and anybody who gets into corporate sustainability wants to look to the future and change things and does not want to be doing the paperwork to understand what transpired in the past for sales force even up to a few years ago it took us six months to do that process gathering utility bills and data from the different parts of our operations applying emissions factors stitching all that together and coming up with the metrics that we need we set out to do that process better inspired by our cfo who told us that we need to make our environmental data look a lot more like our financial data and so we we looked around at all different tools to do it and the sales force technology platform emerged as the right solution what we have with the sales force platform is equivalent to the building blocks the lego pieces in order to assemble new capability and those lego pieces have been built over 20 years of r&d and product development for sales cloud service cloud marketing cloud and the other tools that you all know so so well from the sales force portfolio we brought those tools together and in the very first time we used sales force sustainability cloud internally it took that six month process down to six weeks and the important change there beyond the time back to looking to the future was that we were able to um gather the data in time to place it into our 10k the the annual sec public filing for the company and have um an integration of our environmental data with our financial data now um i i share that anecdote because although it was built and is currently directed at the corporate sustainability user the flexibility of that sales force platform is tremendous and what we have in the most generic sense is a tool that allows any stakeholder to take a trusted data through the process of gathering it analyzing it creating feedback on it getting it internally reviewed externally reviewed and to a place of the utmost trust and quality so if we think about taking that tool that's that capability that's currently focused on the corporate customer adapting it to things other than carbon emissions or adapting it to the needs of a city government um is actually quite easy thanks to the flexibility that sales force platform okay very good just as a matter of interest uh patrick um um driving this ambition of sales force at the corporate level are you reflecting i suppose the ambition um where is the ambition coming from is it coming from within sales force or is it your customers and shareholders who are driving this ambition or is it a combination of both yeah that's a great question um 20 years ago um sales force was founded on the on the idea of being a different kind of company and one of the ways that that took place was integrating philanthropy into the business from day one we started with the one one one model where one percent of product one percent of equity and one percent of employee time would go to non-profit causes around the world and i mentioned that because what that has done is create a culture in the company that truly understands business is the greatest platform for change and so it has started from the very top down from day one to today and and as i in my work within the company meet new stakeholders across the business and come to them um looking for ways to improve the state of the world every single day i am blown away by how consistently that feeling and those values are shared with the employees at sales force so i i would say it starts there for sure but all the while we are seeing so many other stakeholders highly motivated to see business achieve um great positive impact in the world the employees that are coming to sales force especially younger employees we know they are highly motivated to work for mission driven companies the investor community we know is highly motivated to see greater environmental social and governance data and certainly in environmental social and governance performance come out of the companies that they are investing in our communities across the board stakeholders are recognizing that values create value and that there is something really to be said for doing business with values aligned stakeholders and companies and how typical would that be patrick i mean in the say the california ecosystem i suppose you know what sales force is doing would be um there'd be many other companies seeking to adopt adopt leadership positions on the on on the on these issues but i mean how universal is this kind of sentiment or this kind of ambition within the american business ecosystem i mean i know you're a global company but obviously california tends to give leadership on so many things how far ahead of you are are you from the rest of your your cohort has worked in other states in the united states right um we are we are right there alongside so many other leading companies it's it's one of the greatest sources of inspiration um in my line of work you know when i connect with a peer at a different company um in a lot of ways we consider ourselves on the same team trying to achieve the same sorts of objectives to improve the state of the world and i think you know you're pointing out that definitely we see west coast us and technology companies quite a lot taking taking the lead we've seen just this week apple microsoft amazon stepping forward with new climate leadership um announcements and it's it's it's it's just so inspiring um and we're also seeing leaders from other sectors as well you've got of course you know patagonia and vf corporation um mars and danon and you know so many so many companies that are um leading that it's it's not just about west coast or tech sector it is really um the the leading companies who know that values and a focus on values a focus on stakeholders um creates value for the company okay here's a question from alistair mac meneman from zurick insurance he says i love the idea about how sales force has mobilized an internal green team he wants to know can you please share more about this sure the irish team is it yeah yeah that's right that's right the irish the irish earth's force chapter is is double yeah so we we call it earth force and the way we've done it is um really i'll describe a little bit of the governance in case that's helpful in in in the ideas of trying to stand one of these up um the way it takes shape is it's local chapters within each major office for sales force and we actually also have an earth force chapter for all of our remote workers that we call earth force at home and those chapters are more or less autonomous self-governing we have we have elections um people take positions of leadership in those local chapters and then we have some degree of global oversight um julie morad who who is a fantastic member of our team and and based in london helps with some of that global oversight and what that takes the form of is really just trying to achieve some sort of consistency across those different chapters so tangible examples of things like in a particular month there may be a theme that that each of the chapters tries to engage upon and those chapters themselves will do things everything from bring in speakers to host a movie speak movie screening volunteer events all of those require the ability to be in person in gatherings so some of that i'm sure is on hold we've pivoted a lot to digital education and engagement but but hopefully that helps with the the colleague from from xeric insurance to think about how to inspire very good uh just a second another question here from um from durval o brian from air grid and she says um really great presentation of course he says sales force really seems to have embedded sustainability across every aspect of its business i'm interested in finding out how difficult or easy it has been to engage on sustainability across the supply chain does sales force put any supports in place to assist suppliers along the sustainability journey yeah interesting um definitely so you know part one absolutely what what we set out to do is embed sustainability throughout the business and i've mentioned the the benefits of a really focused culture on creating positive impact that certainly helped us do that we have stakeholders around the business who we work with as trusted partners in order to enact the change that we're looking for some of those stakeholders sit within the supply chain team and when it comes to supplier engagement we've got a few different ways that we do it and it depends a little bit on who the supplier is um what sort of product and what the relationship is with them but what we aim to do is help all of them achieve the next steps on their sustainability journey by sharing with them what we have done and and and the lessons we have learned giving them some of the tools that they need in order to gather um and communicate the data back to us so one example is over the over the first quarter um and and into the second so over the past few months um we've held webinars to talk about supply chain collaboration and supply chain engagement um with other peer companies in hopes of spurring them along their journey some of the greatest supply chain successes we've had actually come in our real estate group um we know um employees are more productive healthier happier in built environments with a high degree of health and wellness healthy materials environmental sustainability and so we've provided scorecards and toolkits to the vendors that that um that we work with for building out our office spaces to help guide them on their own journey of product improvement to make sure that what they offer to us meets our needs and advances both of us forward on our sustainability journey good um a lot of the things we're talking about issues obviously which are a major preoccupation in the in the in the first world if i may describe it as such and you know in the world of that that we inhabit what is sales forces uh perspective our kind of role does it see itself playing in the developing world i mean uh over and beyond the kind of the developed world that that is california that is uh the europe that we we inhabit i mean there's a whole world out there obviously which is full of challenges in relation to development where does sales force come into all of that or what level of ambition do you have in that field yeah that's a great question you know i think it's it's important to begin the answer with the fact that climate change in particular has been um created so much by the more developed economies and the worst impacts are going to be felt and are being felt even today by the developing economies of the world there's there's a deep obligation that i feel for us to take action on behalf of others um when it comes to our our global operations where we are as you say a global company operations all around the world working with customers of every industry every geography every shape and size to help them transform their businesses our um Salesforce.org team works with 40 000 NGOs scattered around the world addressing various causes across the social and the environmental landscape and those those NGOs use Salesforce at significantly discounted or even free prices so we create tremendous impact with our tools in the hands of the NGO community and last but not least when we think about our carbon credit our carbon offset projects we look globally to the locations where we can create environmental impact today and change people's lives today around the world to achieve to help achieve some of our outcomes that we discussed like providing carbon neutral cloud services to all of our customers offsetting all of our business travel and employee commuting and all of our scope one and scope two emissions. Here's a question from Nancy O'Neill who's one of our colleagues in the institute she says and what behaviors are Salesforce employees encouraged to undertake at an individual level so we've gone from the global now to very personal very individual level in their today work re you mentioned business travel and staff commuting and two contributors you mentioned as being responsible for some of Salesforce's emissions. Yeah you know we have a we have a learning platform that we call Trailhead and anybody on this on this call can can look for sustainability lessons on Trailhead and some of those are focused on these sorts of individual actions that any employee can take both related to their work life but also on a more personal family life basis we're also more and more focused on the home environment now since so many of our employees are working more from home than ever before during these unique circumstances you know at the home you've you've got opportunities for energy efficiency and thinking about swapping out light bulbs for LEDs I'm sure many of you are far advanced on that part of the journey. One of the one of the ones that often is overlooked is our dietary choices so reducing food waste and switching more and more to a plant-based diet is one of the biggest levers that any of us has on an individual basis in order to create environmental change. Yeah I know individual companies and maybe Salesforce themselves although I haven't heard it have announced kind of indefinite working from home arrangements maybe even over and beyond COVID have you as a company adopted a policy yet or a position in terms of what the future is going to be in terms of the balance to be achieved between working from home and working from the the the previous environment. You're right some some companies have said more of an indefinite stance. We haven't set a firm policy any direction yet at Salesforce I know the team is looking very closely at what this new work might look like what the new modes of work might look like and without a doubt it will be different than what it once was. I personally would anticipate more people working from home and remotely than we saw before and from an environmental sustainability perspective it's one of these places where the interventions should happen sooner rather than later so we are looking at policies related to air travel in order to understand how we might do that differently when things resume back to some sort of new normal. I think employee commuting too is a very important one. We know that mass transit is definitely the most environmentally friendly safest most economical way to get to and from the work in home office. However in the face of a global pandemic I can imagine some rebound where people may be a little bit reserved about stepping back onto a bus or a train with other with other people. So this is a moment where we need to make sure we get those mass transit modes of transportation right and make sure they are safe but also communicate the benefits and the safety of those modes of transportation. It's a great time to think about re-greening cities and making them more walkable and more cyclable for commuters as we go forward. So those are the sorts of intervention moments that this window of opportunity has created for us to not just go back to what it once was to certainly not go back to something that's worse than what it once was but to try to set in place the structures that will make us happier healthier and more vibrant. Excellent. Just a question here from Etha McQuillan who's I think she's from our department of Ministry of Transport here in Dublin. She said thanks for the presentation. She says in terms of tripartite understanding of sustainable sustainable development what do you think are the key messages to focus on in moving the understanding of sustainable development away from it being a purely environmental construct especially in terms of public policy development. Yeah thanks Eva. I think we have a chance here to communicate the interconnectedness of all of the sustainable development goals and the link between environment social and economy a healthy economy can only rest on a healthy society and a healthy society can only rest upon a healthy environment and we are seeing that interconnectedness in the very stark change between what what things look like globally last April versus what they looked like globally this April and I think there's a tremendous opportunity to use that contrast in order to help people understand just how interconnected all of this is with a health crisis we have an economic slowdown with an economic slowdown we have cleaner air cleaner water birds returning to the cities that you can hear and certainly the environmental benefits of the economic slowdown are only so good as to point out that the economy is disconnected from our environmental outcomes right now and we need to realign economic and environmental in a way and social of course in a way that advances in any one of these areas advances the other as well. Okay then maybe just coming towards the end here now Patrick and just maybe if I could just bring it back maybe to the times that are in the United States and and without again wishing to invite you into kind of a fractious political terrain or anything like that but obviously you're in the midst of an election campaign now you know what was destined to be kind of a heavily fought campaign and the issues that we're talking about here I mean to what extent would you ever anticipate that there will be issues within the campaign itself and will be issues that would differentiate between the candidates and you know and whether whether they're likely to get any profile as a consequence you know in the course of the campaign and as part of the future administration for example should there be change? Yeah good question I think one really one bright spot here is is how much we are seeing climate show up in the U.S. polling as an issue that really matters to a lot of voters so I would predict that it is absolutely a component of the elections that we have ahead over the next few months differentiating candidates of course the presidential but also all of the many other state and local elections that will be taking place over the next four months or so here in the United States. The values and the objectives of creating a healthier more economically prosperous future for citizens of the United States and their children should be and I hope is something we can completely all agree upon and my my sincere hope would be that we are entering into a a phase where climate action sustainability broadly focusing on equality and human health and the environment really are what motivate a lot of voters going to the polls especially given all of the chances they've had to see that things have been off track over the last time here and try to try to see them all remotivated to really vote and and use the power of the vote to create the future that we want and that we all share. Well on that note Patrick I think we're going to draw proceedings to an end we're just coming up on on the half hour and we're spot on time and in our usual efficient way at the IIEA but just to say thank you thank you for sharing those inspirational thoughts with us not just in relation to what Salesforce itself is doing as more broadly in terms of the global the global context presented the global context the global challenges for us in Ireland it's I suppose it's very reassuring to know that there is a good Irish man in charge of such a green agenda in California it's something where we're deeply mindful of that of course the Irish are everywhere and not least in Salesforce and secondly just to you know to thank you for obviously to to do wish you well in your endeavor 15 years ago I'm sure a job like this didn't quite exist I'm not even sure 10 years ago it existed so bringing it from where it was then a very low base to the level of ambition that you now represent is something that's very very encouraging and we commend it I salute you along with every other individual and corporate out there who is seeking to achieve the same aims oh well thank you so much we I truly hope this was helpful to those who were able to attend I would love to use this as a springboard for greater conversation and collaboration we have a lot of work ahead of us I'm highly motivated to do that and none of us can do it alone the the only thing of leadership here is leadership in terms of collaboration there will not be any single leader just a bunch of people like me and a bunch of companies like Salesforce who are hoping to follow their values and improve the state of the world thank you very much Patrick and we'd like to invite you back on some future occasion when maybe you can tell us the progress that's been made in the meantime so thank you very much and good morning to you in California enjoy the rest of the day thank you all very much we'll see you on the next IE webinar thank you very much


All right, I'm there. So today we are going to be talking about the different types of desires that a human being has. And we're going to just do a quick recap in terms of what we covered last time. And then we're going to dive into a couple of the different categories of desires that you can think of that you and I might have. So last time we just talked more about the introduction and the framework for how desires work, what are the types of desires that we have. And this time really the goal is to help us develop a deeper understanding of why desires can be so negative for us, why they can hurt us, and why obeying our desires can be so harmful for us as human beings. So a couple of things for us to keep in mind first is that Allah swt mentioned in the Qur'an that the one who restrains their nuts from following its desires, that for them, heaven is the reward for that. So Allah alludes to this in the Qur'an regularly that if you control yourself, inshallah you're going to get a reward. You're going to get heaven or you're going to get some other type of reward for it. And so that's important because what we're seeing is that the path to heaven, the path to the pleasure of God, the path to goodness, is facilitated and really the path is set up in a way that we have to control our desires in order to get to the end goal. So if we control these desires, if we control our sexual desire, our desire for food, our desire for fame and wealth and all these other things that we have inside of us, we will be able to travel that path in a more effective way.  Whatever desire you're following, that leads away from the path of heaven. And so that's just one major point for us to keep in mind here. And as you know folks have questions, the live chat feature at least in YouTube is working. So please feel free to chime in with questions. I'll do my best to address them, inshallah. So we covered, we discussed this just briefly, the types of desires that you have. I want to dive into it a little bit more in this class. So our goal is to go from basic carnal appetites to what are called the stronger spiritual desires. Okay. So as I mentioned, the goal is not to eliminate your desires. You do not have to get rid and be a desire-free person. Islam is not the type of religion that says that you have to become completely abstinent in everything and you have to achieve kind of a monk type of status. No. Alhamdulillah, the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, who is our role model, he married, he ate food, he fasted and he broke his fast, right? He didn't fast every single day, not so fast. Of course in Ramadan he did, right? But he would pray at night and he would also sleep at night. He married, he engaged in relationships, right? So this idea of complete abstinence from the desires that we have to completely eliminate them, that's not what we're talking about here. The goal though is to curb our desires. It's to get them in control. You don't want anything controlling you. Think about this as a human being. Only Allah should control you. Don't let something else you're lust or some desire for food or some bank account or some money or all these types of things control you. No. When you get an inclination they're like, oh, I have a decision I could make.  Or you could get the, you know, super fancy, the Mercedes or the BMW or whatever it is and it requires you taking down an interest loan. Well, desire leads you to Haram.  We might not think of it as a big deal, 1% APR, 2% APR, but that's technically, I mean, not technically, it's very validly Haram. But which part of us, how do we go about controlling that? It's about limiting the desire for the person who doesn't have a desire in the first place to go beyond their means. Who doesn't have a desire in the first place for significant wealth or all these luxuries or status or these types of things. They're not going to go and do these types of things, right? So that's something for us to keep in mind. So now let's get to the way for us to travel from following these carnal appetites to actually achieving these more spiritual desires it is that the human being has. So the basic appetites that you and I have, we had the basic appetites of sexual appetite, the appetite for food, those that's what everything's built on, and then the appetite for money and the desire for wealth and the desire for status, those are other ones. Those are the things that pull us down. Those things pull us down. What you want to go to is you want to traverse up spiritual journey is a journey upwards. It's a journey towards a closer relationship with Allah. So in order to traverse upward, you have to desire things that are high up there. Does that make sense? So hopefully we want to desire what are called spiritual desires. So what does that mean? It means that we want to have a couple of things. There is a way to transform yourself. There is a way for Allah to transform you, for an inner alchemy to happen that rather than desiring these base things, you start desiring high things, like what? You start desiring love of Allah. You start desiring tranquility. You start desiring peaceful moments so you can worship Allah. You start desiring knowledge. You start desiring moments where you can learn. You start desiring sitting with wise people who can teach you. These are the types of things that human beings can actually start to channel their desires. So rather than somebody who's like parting all the time or clubbing or just caught up in all the different things that we can be caught up with, especially in Western society, you start to channel those desires into the right direction and start to focus on what would be called these higher value spiritual desires. So that is very, very important. That is the goal of this path for us to take the carnal desires and for us to traverse. Instead of just following the carnal appetites, we try to follow the we try to shift those carnal appetites upwards and we instead eliminate the carnal aspect of them and we start to channel them towards spiritual desires. So now you and I know the goal. What's the goal? We got to get from A to B. We got to get from the situation we're in right now to a higher situation where we start desiring the right types of things. Now this is a journey though. It's not easy. This journey requires inner work and inner balancing. What you and I want is we want to figure out what are the different keys that will unlock different parts of us that will allow us to traverse this journey. Right? So self-mastery is what becomes important here. You and I might have heard of this concept self-mastery. It is the idea of literally mastering your nests, of mastering yourself.  You are not a slave to your nests. You are not a slave to your desires.   You will love Allah. You will want Allah. You will yearn for Him. Allah says in the Qur'an, those people who have a yearning and they're aspiring to Allah. He mentions that. So that's who we want to be from. We want to be from the people who have this desire to get close to our Lord. That's not going to work if we're caught up in all these other types of things. So we have to reduce those things. We have to channel the energy in the right direction. But it requires hard work. It does require hard work. So just think about it like this. If somebody who wants to play a game, let's say they're playing a sports game, the Super Bowl just happened, and the team that won the Super Bowl, for them to win Sof Tom Brady and his team, for them to win the Super Bowl, you think it was just like there's chilling all the time, drinking and hanging out and eating food? I doubt that. No, they were working out. They were hustling. They were practicing. They were up early and working out. They are in different various games. They are, of course, winning all the different games in the season. And then they get to the Super Bowl and then they have to work really hard in that game to actually win. So that required work. But the work paid off. It paid off in a reward. You got a ring and you get a trophy and all these types of things, and you get bragging rights to say you won. But other than that, the reward is limited to this world. But they put in the hard work, the sweat, the blood, sweat and tears in the hard work in order to hustle to make it happen. Now think about this. You and I, we have a chance to put in the hard work to conquer ourselves and we get way more reward than the simple reward of winning a Super Bowl or getting some money or some prize or status in this life. That's nothing. We get the reward of, inshallah, eternal jannah, eternal jannah, eternal paradise, no worries, no sicknesses, no problems, no challenges, all calmness and tranquility and hanging out with the prophets. May Allah bless all of them and bestow peace and blessings upon all of them, right? No family tensions and problems and illnesses and COVID and all these types of things. And let alone blessings upon blessings upon blessings, abundant blessings that Allah showers upon His servants in paradise. But it takes hard work to get there, right? It comes into hadith with the Prophet ﷺ. He said that paradise is surrounded by difficult things. And so it makes it easy to get to and that hellfire is surrounded by beautiful things. And so it's you, you, you, you will yearn and incline that the desire in you will incline towards the path of the hellfire unless you and I tame our desires. When we start to tame our desires, our self becomes okay with the hard work and the self mastery needed in order to achieve the best outcome, which is the outcome of traversing the path to paradise. So let's talk a little bit about what types of desires exist. So you have the obvious ones and then you have the subtle ones. So I think I've already mentioned the obvious ones, like a lot, but I'll just mention again, sexual appetite, appetite for food, the desire for money, the desire for fame, the desire for significant amounts of wealth, the desire to be in charge, the desire to be famous, the desire to have followers. These are all like in the last couple are very much linked, right? You'll see people in this society, they will do everything it is that they could and they'll be really promiscuous. And generally speaking, they have no control over their food and their diet many times. And then after they get to a certain point, it's not about that stuff. Like, now I got to make as much money as possible through whatever means as possible. And then while they're doing that, what are they spending their money on? They're spending money and people are spending their money on activities that they shouldn't be doing, going clubbing and this type of thing over and drinking, having tabs at the bar that are like thousands of dollars, right? Just overdoing and living this excessively lavish, unnecessarily exuberant, extravagant life. Then, oh, that's not enough. Well, now I got to be in charge. Maybe I'll run for office. Maybe I'll be, maybe I'll try to get to the CEO status in my company. That's still not enough because the nuts is never full. Now I want to be famous. I got to run for office and be famous. I got to be in charge of people. I got to be powerful. I want followers. Now everybody can get followers because of these different social media platforms. You see the desire goes on and on and on. And it never leaves you. It never leaves you. It different desires target different people depending on the age you're at, but you see this in politicians all the time. I mean, I see it even in the president of the United States, the past president, all these desires were extremely manifest in his life journey. And up to the point where the desire to be in charge was so manifest that he was trying to stage a coup in order to stay in charge. That's just desire and all nuts. Definition of nuts is that right? The nuts cannot handle losing. The nuts cannot handle people when they don't praise you. And so that example was an example of pure nuts. You and I follow example of spirit of the Prophet. Who is a spiritual, who is our spiritual guide, right? He is the Prophet. He is the one who teaches us how to attain stations of spirituality that draw us nearer to near to Allah. Excuse me. So those are their parent desires. Those are obvious. The nuts, it likes those desires. You know, it likes those desires. And so it's obvious. But remember this, the Nus, one time, one of my teachers told me, he said that the Nus will try to take its share of everything, including obedience. It will take its share in obedience. And Ibn Ata'ilah in the Hikm, he mentions this, that the Nus wants its share in everything. So now let's get into obedience. Why does the Nus want its share in obedience? Well, what the Nus wants here is it wants its, it wants to be noticed in some way or another. So with disobedience, it's very clear. What is a Nus not? What is a Nus getting? It's getting fulfillment of these different appetites. But when you start worshiping Allah and you start trying to get close to him, you start following the religion, you want to, now what the Nus says is like, how can I get, how can I get a portion of this?   Oh, you should say this so that people can praise you.  Oh, you should post this religious statement or any statement, whatever, so people can praise you in this way or another. Oh, you should do this, give this much money so people can, can, can tell you how generous you are. Oh, you should learn knowledge so people can say, wow, look at this guy, look at this girl, she knows so much. This is the Nus trying to get its share in obedience. And this is very much a possibility. It comes in a very, very, very famous hadith with a promise of some indicated that one of the first people to be thrown in the hellfire will be the scholar who taught people so that people could say he was knowledgeable and the scholar who recited Qur'an so that people could praise him, not for the sake of Allah. And this is what's happening here is that the desire, the Nus is taking its portion of the worship and the desire, this is called, these are called apparent subtle desires. So you have obvious desires, you have the subtle ones that are hidden. Once you break past the obvious desires, you've got to work on the subtle desires because if you don't, you can still be ruined. You can still be ruined in this life. And in the next, Allah protect us, but it's not just about defeating the apparent ones. But Allah starts to help you. Allah helps always. Allah says that he, that he takes the believers out of darkness and into light. And Allah is the protecting friend of the believers and he takes them out of darkness into light. And so know that Allah can take you out of the darkness in a desire into the light of trying to obey him and the darkness of obeying him for the wrong reason into the light of obeying him for the right reason and the darkness of insincerity to the light of insin of sincerity. As allah to Allah, he will inshallah do it. But we have to put in the effort Allah says in the Quran that whoever strives in our way surely we shall guide them. So you and I have put in the effort and we know that hadith where you go to Allah walking and Allah comes running.  So we put in that effort. But the apparent desires are there. So don't discount them.  I'm not smoking. I'm not clubbing. I'm not, you know, on Tinder all the time. I'm not doing and if you are doing all those things, there's a lot of hope. Allah will forgive you inshallah and Allah will facilitate a path of goodness. Don't let anybody ever tell you like you're too kind of sinful or messed up for salvation. No, nobody has that right to say anything. Allah is a Rahim. But some people might think that, oh, you're caught up in these types of things and once I leave them, oh, I'm good. I figured it out. I'm bound for heaven. I got my spot reserved in heaven. You know, it's not how it works, right? Because there's still work to be done when I have to work on a daily basis and a weekly basis on ourselves. The nafs will always try to trick us with something or another. Tricks are up its sleeve trying to get to you and the desires have to be conquered in order for the nafs to be defeated. So as we just mentioned, now there are a couple other things to keep in mind. The more you obey anyone desire, the stronger it gets. As I mentioned last time, it's like feeding.  So the more you follow, let's say with sexual appetite. This one's obvious. The more one follows their sexual appetites, the more they're going to want to continue to engage in illicit sexual relations, right? And so you have somebody who's just not able to control themselves here. The more you eat and overeat, the more you're going to want to overeat. So this culture in the U.S. of buffets and this type of thing, it encourages regular overeating and unhealthy foods don't help with that. And then of course, you would know that the country has no obesity problem. So this is because desires are followed. And then you have like ads come up like seven up or a sprite, which everyone says like obey your thirst, right? These are targeted ads to make you obey the nafs. It's really just saying obey the nafs, right? Obey your thirst, obey your desire. So it tries to get you to obey that desire for food or for beverages and whatnot. So that being said, simple solution here. You lessen the amount that you do of that thing and it will start to get better, right? People who have pornography addiction, let's say, which is a very big problem in the Muslim community, unfortunately, but it is a problem. And unfortunately it's not talked about that much either. The more one works on themselves and reduces the amount that they are engaging in or watching, the more they will be able to conquer that desire, doesn't go away completely. That desire has to be eventually curved then into a halal situation or one gets married is able to release that in the right way. So that's the kind of high level path. But here's the tricky thing. When you get into the subtle desires, we have a parent ones and subtle ones. When you get into the subtle ones, the more you follow the subtle ones, the more your nafs will trick you into thinking that you're all that and you don't really need work on yourself. So the other ones, it's obvious that you and I know, okay, for doing something very obviously haram, okay, I got to stop. But the nafs doesn't work like that. When you start to say, oh, I'm going to worship so people can notice me or I'm going to speak or I'm going to learn so people can say this about me, this type of thing. I'm going to try to get followers so that I can get more and more influence in the hearts of people. What's happening here is that their words affect you in a way you don't know and the people's eyes and their gaze at you in all the different ways that they're following you affect you in ways you don't know. And that gets subtle because it makes the nafs stronger but the nafs tricks you into thinking that it's becoming weaker. So hopefully this makes sense. As you get more and more religiously oriented and worship oriented, the nafs will get to a point where it's like, look at you, you're all that.   Look at you and then what people end up doing is the nafs tricks them so much and I've seen this happen that they'll spend all this time talking back, talking smack about other people because they're going to look at this person and that person doesn't do this and this person doesn't cover theirs and this person doesn't dress like this and they're just losing all their good deeds and backbiting. Meanwhile, they're puffed up thinking that there's something that's the nafs. That's desire being followed and we ask that Allah protect us because there are very subtle things that can completely ruin our good actions, right? So the path then is a path of self-control and the path is a path of working on ourselves and rejecting these impulses and rejecting these desires when they come and we have to just be on guard for whatever subtle one comes up or a parent one comes up. So I'm going to just give a kind of very general review of how the scholars recommend curing this stuff and then we'll get into specific ones in the future conversations. So at a general level, if you and I are into something, if we can reduce it, stop completely, it's good, but gradual reduction is better than not stopping at all. So let's say that somebody like smokes a lot of weed, right? Okay, smoking a lot of weed. It's very common now these days. It's legal in many states in California. It's legal. People are smoking. Okay, well, you're like, okay, I want to stop smoking weed. Hopefully you should want to stop. It's not good. It's an intoxicant. It's considered haram by contents of the scholars. I'm sure people already know that. There's not really need to discuss that, but so you want to stop. Well, you might not be able to stop clean. If you can stop clean, Alhamdulillah. But what you do is you gradually reduce it. So you're doing this much, you reduce it to a little bit less. Okay, less frequently, less frequently, whatever device you're using, you use less of it and less of it, right? And you slowly reduce the amount such that the desire goes away. And you replace it with something less evil. Okay, so you might go from weed to like hookah.  And then you eventually leave it completely, right? The entire idea of the smoking. So those are, those are ways gradual reduction works for obvious desires, but leaving at the completely is better. That's better, but it's not easy always to do that. So gradual reduction is a method that we have and that we're able to follow. Now there are a couple of remedies for us to keep in mind. They're what are called over the counter remedies, and then they're called specific remedies. Okay, so over the counter, these are like, you know, basic remedies that scholars have given us that, okay, this will work in general to curb all of your desires. And then there's specific prescriptions you and I need to be given for individual things that we're going through. And a very qualified spiritual guide can help us with those things. So over the counter, five things are needed. You can nail these five things. If we can nail these five things, we'll be inshallah in a very good place. And may Allah assist us. First is you and I have to have the determination and the intention to work on ourselves. We have to say, I want to work on myself. I'm not just going to be a person who's complacent. I'm going to improve. I'm going to work on myself. That's the first. The second is we add in regular doses of being hungry and fasting. So fasting curbs desires. It diminishes desires. We all know this. And Ramadan is coming up. May Allah allow us to reach Ramadan and get us, give us the full barakah fi khairul luth falafia of Ramadan. But Ramadan helps to eliminate these desires. So what you do is in your daily regimen tasks and portion, even if you don't fast for the whole day, where you just don't eat all the time. You want to have hunger because when hunger is there for portions of time, hunger facilitates the suppression of desire because a full, when you give yourself everything it is that your nuffs wants. I want food now. I want this now. I want french fries now. I want ice cream now. Just get it as soon as you get an instant gratification. The nuffs gets built stronger and stronger and stronger. So you and I have to curb that. So the first is determination and intention. Second is some regular amounts of hunger and fasting. Third is consistent amounts of worship and thicker. So we have, if you and I are trying to work on ourselves, we got to get in a worship regimen, a worship routine, not just like, this is an addition to the basics. The basics are important. This is five prayers and beyond. So you add in extra prayers, right? You add in noato prayers, you add in the Hajr prayer, you add in extra adhqar that somebody would do. The three things I would recommend adding when somebody is doing their fard in order to help curb this. First is the regular, what are called sunnah muakkada. They emphasize sunnah after each prayer or before each prayer, of which in the Hanafi school at least is two before fajr, two after lohr, and two after maghrib and two after ishah. So those would be good prayers for us to make sure we do. Second thing then is to do the sunnah adhqar, sunnah adhqar of the morning and the evening, right? You can find this thicker in compilations. There's one called where the latif that I would recommend. W-I-R-D, a latif that is a compilation of the sunnah du'a as the prepositional madhu every morning and every evening. Try to do that at least once a day in the morning time. And in addition to that surah yasin would be good to read every day based on various hadith or the prepositions. I'm encouraged us to do that, especially in the morning time. And then the third thing is to add in the hadjib prayer when possible. So the hadjib prayer is the prayer that is a special connection, it brings a special prayer between you and your lord. This is prayed at any time from after ishah, right? And before fajr. So ideally somebody gets up 20 minutes before fajr and just prays two rakat at the hadjib and asks Allah to help them in whatever situations they're facing. This is known as the hour of- Allah's asking, there's a hadith kutsi that indicates Allah comes down in no anthropomorphic way. He comes down at that time and asks, is anybody asking that I may grant them? Is anybody asking forgiveness that I may forgive them? Is anybody have a need that I may fulfill? This is the time to be close with your lord. So determination and intention, hunger and fasting, worship and dhikr and regular, then the fourth is turning to Allah in complete sincerity and begging him for help, begging him for help. If you and I want to work on ourselves, we can't just like take this stuff, you know, in a relaxed way, we got to ask, we got to ask with sincerity and beg Allah, Allah help me. The scholars recommend doing it in a way that you were, as though you were drowning, like you were so in need of help, not like Allah help me, like Allah help, like really from the bottom of your heart, begging him, and inshallah Allah will answer. And the fifth is spending time alone. This is an important ingredient. We can't always have our devices with us. It just means virtually as well. We can't always be with people who right now most of us are alone anyways in quarantine or in, you know, COVID situation. We have to have some moments. It's just us in solitude, solitude thinking about what's going on in life, giving ourselves time to process our thoughts, spending time alone with our Lord. Here's to the five, intention and determination, hunger and fasting, worship with and ticker, turning to Allah and begging him for help and spending time alone. You'll see that somebody who's gotten the basics already down and then starts doing this stuff, you will start to go through spiritual transformation. This is tried and tested. This is a science. This is not just some made up thing. Tried and tested science by of course, the Prophet ﷺ and the Sahaba to begin with, and then all of the greats who came after them that have continued it. So this works, but we have to put in the effort. This is the medicine. You and I need medicine. We have sicknesses. We now have the medicine. What do we do in order to curb our desires? Let's know what they are. Let's figure out the subtle ones and the apparent ones. And then let's know that when we embark on a path to work on ourselves, Allah will facilitate it for us. Allah rewards the intention. The intention of the believer as it comes into hadith is better than the action. So make the intention now, whenever you're whatever you're whenever you were able to when you're watching this or afterwards or some other period of time, make the intention. You want to work on yourself. You want to work on your desires. You want to work on curbing these desires and you want to work on getting closer to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and inshallah Allah will facilitate that and may he make this immensely easy for you and immensely easy for all of us and facilitate all hair and all goodness. We see some questions in this live chat. So if anybody has questions, please post them and we will we will answer them inshallah. So somebody posted here, I'm conflicted. My ADHD is something that is making me shift my focus and struggle with khushu. Please talk about people who suffer from these mental struggles every day. So this is regarding focus in prayer and concentration from my understanding and your struggles are limiting you with that. So first of all, thank you for sharing and thank you for asking me the question. The first thing to note here is that Allah only tasks you with as much as you can bear. So Allah says in the Qur'an He only burdens a soul with as much as it can bear. So Allah will not burden you with the difficulty or with the limitation or with the struggle more than you can bear. If you can bear it, Allah knows though what you can bear. You and I don't know. Allah believes in us more than we believe in ourselves. So Allah says, okay, you can do this. I'm going to put you to the test, but I believe you can do it. You and I are like, I can't do this, right? But Allah knows we can do this. So that's the first thing to keep in mind. And if you're struggling with something, it's a test from Allah and inshallah Allah will leave you from it and Allah give you complete shifa and cure from these difficulties. Just know though that Allah is testing you and that he believes that you can improve and get better and work on yourself through that test and that difficulty. Second thing to keep in mind then is don't beat yourself all over when you don't have khushu when you're not able to focus because of the situation that you are in. It's okay because Allah is testing you in that situation and he knows you're going to have weaknesses, but the desire for you to want to improve is already beautiful. That's the third thing is take basic steps for khushu in the prayer it's recommended in the beginning to recite. Before you start the prayer, then before you engage in your farth prayer, engage in at least some sunnah raka. Some sunnah raka is where you try to get focused. The third thing is to make sure that the area you are praying in or that you are trying to do thicker in or whatever it is is clear.  Then just try to have focus. I'm going to make it a goal to be focused in one raka or half of one raka or a quarter of a raka or in two raka whatever you're at. It's okay if you don't achieve full khushu in four raka. I mean that would be such a miracle if we had that. Allah give that to us. But just start with something basic. It's okay if at fajr time you're tired and you're not able to focus necessarily. You and I know we have those things to work on. But begin with these solutions and inshallah it will help. So let's try that out and let's inshallah see how it goes. If anybody else has any questions please feel free to type them into this chat. Any questions related to this conversation about desires or something else that's relevant please feel free to type it in. We'll wait just another 30 seconds or so. And if not then we will go ahead and end with the dua. Okay well I'll see if anything comes up and if not then I'll just go ahead and end. And if anything comes up please type it in. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem, Alhamdulillah. وَهَمَسَلَيَّاسِينَ مْحَمَدٍ وَالَعَالِيْ وَصَحْبِيَسَلَّمْ لا إله إلا أنت سبحانه كني كنت من الظالمين يا الله يا رحمان يا رحم يا قريم يا حنان ومنان يا زجلالي ولكرام يا فتح يا الله please open up the doors of your mercy for us ya Allah please pour your mercy upon us ya Allah please facilitate goodness for us and our loved ones and all the people it is that are watching and that intended to watch and that intend to work on themselves in our Muslim community and in anywhere in this world ya Allah inwardly and outwardly assist them ya Allah with your special assistance please help us with all of our problems and challenges please remove the anxieties and difficulties and stresses and problems and challenges and illnesses whether those are mental or physical or spiritual or psychological that we have ya Allah ya Allah you are a companion and our sister and our source of assistance and you are the one who helps us please help us ya Allah please help us ya Allah you are the one who assists please help us with all of our problems please cure us of all of our difficulties and our challenges and please give us the ability to get close to you and please allow us to control our desires and to live a life that is pleasing to you as-Sallallahu Alai paina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sahbihi wa sahbihi Alhamdulillah Alhamdulillah Alameen Alhamdulillah Jazakuma ala khayr Assalamu alaykum inshaAllah we'll see you next week inshaAllah


I just want to add a little to some of the questions that have been asked. A question was asked on the railways and what has been happening, especially with respect to being able to evacuate goods from the ports. Two things happening first, I'm sure that some are already familiar with the concession given to General Electric, to GE, to refurbish the narrow gauge line which of course starts from the ports itself and that concession is already in place and we expect that things should begin to happen very quickly. So a private sector, one of the members of that consortium, APM terminal, is going to do something in the lugu which is a railway station on the way to Ipadu and is trying to develop an inland port there. Now that inland port when developed and they said that they can do this within ten weeks. We hope that that will mean that further, that would just mean a further reduction in the pressure on the APAPA ports. Aside from that, the standard gauge line which is funded by the China Exit Bank has already started and again that also is taking off from the ports from the APAPA ports. We expect that by the end of this year we should see significant progress between the Lagos Ipadu and the standard gauge line. As a matter of fact our target is to have that bit of it concluded by the end of this year and we hope that we can achieve that. So that will move goods also from the APAPA port out of Lagos to at least as far as Ipadu before we then go on to Kanu which is the terminal point of the standard gauge line. The other question which I'd like you to add to is one on the eastern ports. I think somebody asked about the Onitsha ports, yes. The concession agreement on that has been finalized. All the technical evaluation has been done. The concession agreement has been finalized now and that's going to the Attorney General's office. So we expect that that should be sorted out very, very shortly but that has been concluded. For the, in that same eastern port axis as a worry port which is still, the technical evaluation is still going on. That hasn't been concluded but we expect that that should also move on very quickly. So we think that there should be some activity around the eastern ports, you know, especially with the conclusion of the Onitsha port and the worry ports. The other point which I think I should just add something to is the frustration that many of us feel about coming into Nigeria through our airports and, you know, of course some of the frustration also around the sea ports, bringing in goods, etc. The point that was made especially about two people sitting around and questioning you and passing one passport, your passport from one person to the other is one that I'm sure most of us are, you know, just generally quite irritated about. But what it is is that we require what is called the eye check which is a fairly elaborate device which enables us to get advanced passenger information ahead of passengers actually arriving at the ports. Now this will enable us to do two things. One, it enables us to give visas on arrival because you have all the information. And secondly, it removes the necessity of more than one person checking the passports because you already have the advanced information. So the security people don't need to sit down there also and check the information at the same time. So they work from the back end. We expect that when that is installed we'll be able to achieve that and remove the nuisance of two people or three people. Just about, I think it was last week we held a meeting with all of the agencies that are usually at the ports. And you find of course that there are several, you know, sometimes you find up to 14 different agencies at the ports. So the whole idea is to reduce this number such that only those who must absolutely be there are there. For example, we said, you know, NDLEA, SON, there are so many that are there that rarely do not absolutely have to be there. And they only need to be summoned when their services are required. So we're looking at how to do this. I think the permanent solution that we are proposing, especially for the whole bringing in goods and taking goods out and all of that of our ports, is our single window, the national trading platform. We've gone very far with that. And we expect that that should be on stream very shortly. Of course, I will come with the scanners and the whole works. And we expect that that should come on stream very shortly. We are at the point where this is going to affect for a final approval. And we expect that that should happen very, very shortly. With the single window, a lot of the stress will be greatly reduced. And of course, with the appropriate scanners run again by concessions with the PPP arrangement, with concessions a lot of these facilities to the private sector so that they can, so that the service is much more efficient. I think we should be able to achieve greater ease of coming into our ports, bringing in goods to our ports and exporting from our ports or taking goods out of our ports. So let me join my cabinet colleagues in again thanking you for making the time. Yet again to attend the Quarterly Business Forum. This is the seventh forum. And there are many here who have attended all seven. To them, of course, we are especially indebted for their consistent faith and support for this process. But even those who have not attended seven have attended several and some who are attending for the first time. But we think that it is important that we continue to emphasize that for us, both philosophically and as a practical matter, partnership with the private sector is fundamental. Aside from the Quarterly Business Forum, we have also established other platforms to harness this partnership. And these platforms include, as you know, the Industrial Policy and Competitiveness Advisory Council and the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council, or rather long names, but by and large, these are interactive platforms where we bring the private sector to collaborate with us, to think through policy with us, develop policy with us, in the Competitiveness Council to even implement policy with us. And I think that this is the way that we ought to continue and this is the way that we have to continue because when you consider the size of the federal government's budget, even when you total, as the Minister of Finance had said, when you total or aggregate the state government budgets, you still find that the absolute amounts are very small indeed. But once you factor in the public, the private sector, that becomes the real economy of Nigeria. And really, there's absolutely no way of going ahead and talking about economic development of a country this size without the private sector sitting right there at the table and playing a critical role. But I've asked the question and I'll ask again, what was wrong with the Nigerian economy and what did we need to do to correct the flaws? There are several issues, many of which have already been very well articulated and we articulate them time and time again, especially in all the earlier presentations. But I want to talk about what I think is probably the biggest problem, but which we for some reason hardly talk about when discussing our national economy. This is grand corruption in the public finance space. I think that sometimes the way we talk about the Nigerian economy, it almost appears as if it is the economy of say Norway or Sweden or somewhere where all things are equal. And even when we refer to what has taken place in our economy, we almost sound as if this is in every sense a very normal business environment, a normal public finance environment, but that's not the case. And I do not think that any considerations of our economic development can be properly or honestly done without fully analyzing the role of corruption, especially grand corruption in the public finance space. And we will see that despite record high levels of all prices, very little was invested in infrastructure and record levels of leakages were recorded, especially in the past few years. This is the fundamental issue in our economy. Corruption affects everything. It affects even judgment as to what sort of infrastructure to put in place or whether to even put in place infrastructure, or whether infrastructure will ever be completed. It is so fundamental that we cannot even think of our economy without thinking of what to do about it. And it's not just, you know, sometimes when we talk about the economy, we say okay, we relied on a single commodity. And that's one of the reasons why we're aware we are. But yes, that's true. It's a fact, but the fact is that proceeds of that single commodity were regularly hijacked consistently by a few. That is really the problem. If we spend the proceeds of that single commodity, the way we ought to spend it, we won't be aware where we are today.  So for example, in a so-called, I'm sure many of us are familiar with the so-called strategic alliance contracts with the NNPC and the NDPC, the promoters of the companies made their way with close to three billion US dollars, almost a tenth of our reserves at one point. Now if there's no way in the world that if somebody makes their way with almost a tenth of your reserves, then you're not going to have a major economic shock. And if we don't deal with it, if we don't talk about it, how do we really discuss our economy in any real, honest way with a view to ensuring that these things will not happen again? In one single transaction, a few weeks to the elections in 2015, sums of 100 billion and $289 million. Why, why, why, why, why, why just, you know, frittered? I'm dazzled by a few. When you consider that in 2014, as the Minister of Finance said, all prices, with an average of $110 a barrel, and only 99 billion Naira was spent on powerworks and housing. Only 99 billion. And in one day, 100 billion Naira was issued and people essentially shared it. And 99 billion was spent on powerworks and housing. And when we talk about our economy, when we talk about it as if it is the normal, it's not as abnormal by every standard, completely abnormal. Nobody, nobody should talk about the economy when you have these kinds of huge, huge leakages, huge corruption, corruption that completely makes even what you're allocating to capital, what you're allocating to infrastructure, the nonsense of it. Because when you compare, I mean, we saw from the presentation of Minister of Finance, 14 billion spent on agriculture in 2014, 14 billion, transportation, 15 billion. So the total spent on capital in those critical areas was 153 billion. And in two weeks before the 2015 elections, 150 billion was released and essentially shared. If your total infrastructure spent, your total capital spent is 150. And you can share 153 billion. I mean, let's face it. That is completely incredible. It's the sort of thing that doesn't happen anywhere else in the world. And when we are talking about, and when we talk about the economy, we absolutely must understand that that is the problem. Today with less revenue, we have increased capital funding by 400%, as the minister pointed out, in powerworks and housing, in defense, in transportation, in agriculture. So economic analysis in Nigeria is either fraudulent or ignorant. If we do not bring the money lost to corruption into the maths, we absolutely must bring it into the maths. It is a fight against corruption, especially in public finance. I can say that what I have seen is that if you have a precedent, and I say this with all sense of responsibility, if you have a precedent in this country who is not corrupt, 50% of your financial problems, especially in the public financial space, are over. 50% at least is over. And this is what I have seen. I can demonstrate this with facts. I can demonstrate this with figures. If the president is corrupt, the entire financial system of the country is compromised, and that's what we've seen. It's completely compromised. From the figures that we've just seen, it's completely compromised. That is an absolutely important point that we must take into account. I'm not saying that corruption under this administration has been completely dealt with. No, I mean certainly not. Where corruption has become systematic, such as we have in our country today, you can't deal with it in one fell swoop. It's not possible. In any event, you still have a lot of corruption fighting back. The system fights back, and it's both an internal and external fight back. And you have to be steadfast and strategic to win the battle. There is no way that you have a system such as ours that has consistently thrived on corruption, and proceeds of corruption, and public finance in particular, that will give up and just roll over and say, guys, the problem has been solved. No. It's a system that has fed on corruption. It's a system that has actively, actively developed on corruption. And it's a system that affects all aspects of governance. So it's not so clearly. Trying to deal with it is certainly not a walk at the park, as they say. But I want to say that that task has already begun. And that task has been done consistently. And I believe that going forward, I believe that going forward in the next few years, even no matter how we slice it, if we stick to policy, especially on controlling excesses and corruption in public finance, this country will make the kind of progress that it deserves to make with all of the resources at our disposal. If we stick to a policy of ensuring that at least as far as public finance is concerned, there is no impunity and that we hold people to account. I'm absolutely confident that this country has everything that it takes to really make the kind of progress that we deserve to make as a nation. So again, let me just thank everyone for your participation and for your continued support and confidence in the work that we're doing. And I want to say that all of the comments you've made, all of the issues that you've raised, we take them seriously and we will go back and look at what we need to do to ensure that we, to ensure that all of our objectives, all of our plans and thoughts come to fruition and that our country has a much better place for doing business and that the economy of our country grows to the benefit of our people. So I want to thank you again very much. God bless you.