We put the phone down after ten minutes and the living room looks different. The couch seems older. The kitchen seems smaller. Nothing in the house has moved.
What moved was our eyes. They spent ten minutes on a renovated kitchen, a new job title and a family on a beach, and they came home carrying a measurement.
The Prophet ﷺ had a teaching for this exact evening. Look at those below you, he ﷺ said, and he told us what it would protect.
In short: “Look at those below you” is a hadith in Sahih Muslim 2963c. In wealth and worldly things, the Prophet ﷺ told us to look toward people who have less, so the blessings of Allah keep their true size. In faith and character, scholars explain, we look toward those ahead of us.
Look at those below you: why comparison needs a direction
The feeling that follows a scroll has a pattern. It looks up. It finds the person with the bigger house, the easier marriage, the better year, and it holds our own life against theirs.
It almost never looks the other way. We do not finish a scroll thinking of the family with no kitchen at all.
This is the nafs at work. The nafs is the self inside us that wants, compares and keeps a tally. Left alone, it studies whoever has more and reports back that we have been shortchanged. The report feels like a fact about our life, when all it records is where we were looking.
The hadith in Sahih Muslim
Allah knows this about us, and His Messenger ﷺ answered it with an instruction so practical it fits in a sentence.
“Look at those who are beneath you and do not look at those who are above you, for it is more suitable that you should not consider as less the blessing of Allah.”
The Prophet ﷺ gave our eyes a direction and then told us why. When we look toward those who have less, the blessing of Allah stops shrinking in our hands.
Notice what he ﷺ was protecting: our sight of the gift. The home stays the same home and the salary the same salary. What changes is that we stop treating the gift of Allah as something small. The blessing was always its full size, and our looking had cut it down.
Another narration from Abu Hurayrah, may Allah be pleased with him, shows how gently the Prophet ﷺ treated this weakness. He ﷺ expected that our eyes would wander upward, and he told us what to do in the very next moment.
“If anyone of you looked at a person who was made superior to him in property and (in good) appearance, then he should also look at the one who is inferior to him.”
Property and appearance. Those are the two things a feed is built to display. The Prophet ﷺ named them, and he gave the cure in the same breath: when we catch ourselves looking up, we turn and look the other way as well.
Allah told His own Messenger ﷺ where to rest his eyes
Allah gave this teaching first to His own Messenger ﷺ.
“Do not let your eyes crave what We have allowed some of the disbelievers to enjoy; the ˹fleeting˺ splendour of this worldly life, which We test them with. But your Lord’s provision ˹in the Hereafter˺ is far better and more lasting.”
The verse speaks to the Prophet ﷺ directly. Allah tells him that the shine on other people’s lives is a test for the people who hold it, and that what waits with Him is better and lasts longer.
If the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was told to guard his eyes from the glitter of this world, we can forgive ourselves for needing the same reminder every evening. And Allah Himself calls what He has set aside better and more lasting.
What qana’ah means
Qana’ah is the Arabic word for contentment. It means the heart is satisfied with what Allah has apportioned, while the hands keep working and the tongue keeps asking Him for good.
The Prophet ﷺ counted it as success itself.
“He is successful who has accepted Islam, who has been provided with sufficient for his want and been made contented by Allah with what He has given him.”
Read the last part again. The person has been made contented by Allah. Contentment is something Allah places in a heart. We ask Him for it, and we walk toward it by doing what His Messenger ﷺ told us to do with our eyes.
The person with less is our brother or sister
There is a wrong way to hear this hadith. We could look at someone struggling, feel relieved it is not us, and move on, as if that person were only a mirror for us.
The Prophet ﷺ sent our eyes toward those with less so that we would see the blessings of Allah clearly. Once we see them clearly, a second thing happens. We see the person too.
Somewhere tonight a person is asking Allah for the things we walked past this morning: a body that works, a door that locks, someone who calls to ask if we have eaten. That person is part of our ummah, the worldwide family of believers. When we notice them, gratitude and giving arrive together. We thank Allah for what is in our hands, and some of it leaves our hands for theirs.
So the look the Prophet ﷺ asked for is a look of mercy. It ends in alhamdulillah, which means “all praise belongs to Allah,” and it often ends in sadaqah, a gift given for His sake.
In faith, the direction reverses
The scholars who explain this hadith add a condition. The instruction to look toward those with less concerns wealth and worldly things. In matters of faith, we look the other way.
In worship, in character, in generosity, in patience, we look at the people ahead of us and let them pull us forward. The friend who is gentle when she is tired. The aunt who gives quietly and tells no one. Looking up at them does us good, because what they have is open to anyone who asks Allah and takes one step.
This holds wherever we are starting from. Someone returning to prayer after years away is looking in exactly the direction the scholars describe, and Allah sees every step of that return.
The nafs is comfortable with the opposite arrangement. In dunya, the life of this world, it looks up and feels deprived. In deen, our religion, it looks for someone doing less and relaxes. The Sunnah gently turns both around.
A brief witness from research
Researchers have measured both halves of this, the harm of looking up and the good of counting what we have.
On the first half, one research team studied passive scrolling on Facebook, in a lab and then in daily life. People felt worse over time, and the daily-life study found the path: it worked “by increasing envy” (Verduyn et al., 2015). That is a single platform, so we hold it loosely.
On the second half, the closest well-known experiment tested gratitude listing, a neighbour of the Prophetic practice and a different thing from looking toward those with less. In 2003, Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough randomly assigned people to keep regular lists: one group listed things they were grateful for, other groups listed hassles or neutral events.
Across three studies, the gratitude groups showed higher well-being on several of the measures, though not all of them. The authors called the rise in positive feeling their most robust finding, and wrote that “a conscious focus on blessings may have emotional and interpersonal benefits” (Emmons and McCullough, 2003).
These are modest findings, and neither one tested the hadith itself. The believer counts blessings for a better reason: Allah asked for gratitude and attached a promise to it.
“If you are grateful, I will certainly give you more.”
How to practice looking toward those who have less
Here are five steps. Keep them for seven evenings and judge them by how the living room looks on the eighth.
Before opening a feed, name three blessings. Choose three things in our life that someone else is asking Allah for today, and make them specific: this knee that bends, this lease, this friend who texts back. Say alhamdulillah for each. Under the breath counts, on a train or anywhere else.
When the eyes go up, turn them in the same category. This is what separates the Prophetic practice from a general gratitude list. If a kitchen made ours feel small, we think of someone with no kitchen. If a promotion stung, we think of someone looking for any work at all. That is the instruction in Sahih al-Bukhari 6490.
Let the look become a gift. Once in the seven days, let that thought end in an action in the same category: a grocery donation, a job lead passed on, a phone call to someone who is alone.
Pick one person ahead of us in deen. Choose one small habit of theirs and ask Allah to help us take it up.
Ask for contentment by name. “O Allah, make us content with what You have given us” is a du’a drawn from the meaning of Sahih Muslim 1054, and we can say it in any language.
Our earlier piece on hasad in Islam deals with the sting we feel at one person’s good news. This practice comes before that sting. It trains where the eyes rest on an ordinary day.
For why a long-awaited purchase stops satisfying so quickly, see contentment in Islam and why arrival never lands. For what happens to a heart that credits its wealth to itself, see Qarun in the Qur’an.
Questions about looking at those below you
Does contentment mean we stop working for more?
No. We can seek a better job, a bigger home and lawful provision, and ask Allah for them. Qana’ah concerns the heart while we work: it is at rest with what it has today.
What did the Prophet ﷺ say about comparing ourselves to others?
He ﷺ said to look at those beneath us and not at those above us, so that we do not consider the blessing of Allah as less (Sahih Muslim 2963c). Scholars explain that this concerns worldly matters.
Does the hadith apply to religion as well?
Scholars explain that it concerns worldly things. In worship and character, we look to those ahead of us.
Does looking at those below us mean feeling superior to them?
No. The hadith names its purpose: that we do not belittle the blessing of Allah. The person with less is our brother or sister, and seeing them should move us to thank Allah and to give.
Name three blessings before opening a feed. When a post makes our life feel small, think of someone who has less in that same thing, and let the thought end in gratitude and giving.
Where is the hadith “look at those below you” found?
It is in Sahih Muslim, number 2963c, narrated by Abu Hurayrah. A closely related wording is in Sahih al-Bukhari, number 6490.
The blessing was always this size
The home we came back to after those ten minutes is the home Allah chose for us, and He knows what we need far better than a feed does. The Prophet ﷺ gave us a way to see it again at its true size.
Tonight, before the phone comes out, we can look around the room once and say alhamdulillah for what is already here. If that is the only step we manage, it is a real one. Allah has promised more to the grateful, and His promise is true.