Season 2 Episode 14I’m Saba Malik, and this is a Mini Mental. One of my best friends is insomnia. It’s always been with me. And it still is, but alhumdulillah I’ve learned to live with it and not just deal with it, but actually use it to my benefit. Having mental health challenges means that you’re going to deal with insomnia, where you have trouble falling asleep at night. I’ve given a lot of tips in previous episodes on how to, you know, deal with difficult thoughts. But one of the times that challenging thoughts really hit me is at night when I’m supposed to be sleeping. Everything just comes crashing in like a big wave. So, what I’ve learned about myself is that I’m a big “audio” person. I mean, it makes sense? I podcast, so audio stuff and listening to audiobooks, or music, or Quran really benefits me. Now it can go two ways because if I’m listening to things that are harmful (I’m not talking about haraam and halaal because that’s not what this podcast is about), things that are kind of like junk food, for my ears if I’m listening to junk music, or junk audio, it’s not gonna uplift me.On the contrary, it’s going to bring me down and it’s going to ruin my mood. So knowing that why not actively choose something that is healthy for my ears? So let me give you an example. I love listening to the Quran and it gives me peace, it makes me feel very serene, it calms me down. But I found that if I didn’t have a reciter that I really kind of, you know, clicked with or vibed with, then I didn’t want to hear it. And sometimes if the audio was really bad, it would actually hurt my ears. This has nothing to do with the message of the Quran and the actual words that are being decided. It’s just the voice of the reciter. So what I’ve done is search for reciters that I like and here’s the interesting part that I haven’t heard other people talk about. I look at what mood I’m in, and then I match a reciter to my mood so that it helps me feel better. Let me give you an example. So there are two reciters who are currently my favorite. One of them is the reciter Fatih Seferagic and the second one is the reciter