How to Bring Out the Best in People

The following is a speech by H.H Younus AlGohar on the spiritual dimensions of human character and the practice of drawing out the highest potential in those around us.

Kindness Over Righteousness

"Try to be always kind, do not try to be always right. Sometimes you have to be kind even if people are wrong, so do not go after righteousness."

There is something seductive about being right. In an argument, in a conflict, in a moment of disagreement — the desire to establish one's correctness is almost instinctive. We feel that if we concede a point, we are somehow diminished. And so we hold our ground, insist on our position, and in doing so, we often damage the very relationship we were trying to protect.

Being right is overrated. The spiritual person knows this. They know that truth does not need to be vindicated in every conversation. They know that sometimes the most truthful thing you can do is to let the other person feel heard, even if what they said was not entirely accurate.

This is not weakness. This is the highest form of strength — the strength to subordinate the ego's need for validation to something more important: the wellbeing and dignity of another human soul.

The Man Buried Beneath His Sins

"Sometimes, a man is not what his character is. Sometimes, a man is not what his sins tell you. Sometimes, a man is buried deep under the burden of his sins and habits that he cannot get rid of. However, inside his heart, he is very kind — a gentleman."

This is a profound insight that changes the way we see people. When we observe someone behaving badly — when we see addiction, aggression, dishonesty, or cruelty — our natural tendency is to identify that person with their behaviour. We label them, categorise them, write them off. We say: this is what this person is.

But what if the behaviour is not the person? What if the person is buried — genuinely, deeply buried — beneath layers of habit, trauma, conditioning, and accumulated moral failure? What if, somewhere beneath all of that, there is a heart that is kind, a person who is, at their core, a gentleman or a gentlewoman?

The spiritual teacher does not look at the surface and make a final judgement. The spiritual teacher looks deeper. They look for what is real and permanent in a person — and in every person, what is real and permanent is the soul, with its innate capacity for goodness, love, and connection to God.

Avoiding Constant Judgement

To cultivate the finest qualities in others, we must first stop the habit of constant judgement. Judgement closes us down. It creates a wall between ourselves and the other person — a wall through which nothing transformative can pass. When we have already decided what someone is, we stop being able to see what they might become.

Practising forgiveness, on the other hand, opens a space in the relationship. It says: whatever you have done, I am still here. Whatever your failures, I have not written you off. This creates the conditions in which change becomes possible — not because we have forced it, but because we have made room for it.

What Only a Spiritual Person Can Do

Spiritual individuals help others reveal their best nature, and this is something that people cannot achieve independently. This is not a small claim. It suggests that there is something the spiritually developed person can do that no amount of self-help, therapy, or willpower can achieve on its own.

What is that thing? It is the transmission of divine energy. When a heart has been activated — when the divine name is truly alive in it — that heart radiates something. People feel it, even if they cannot name it. In the presence of such a person, something in them relaxes, something opens, something that has been buried begins, tentatively, to surface.

This is the secret of the great spiritual teachers throughout history. It was not primarily their words that transformed people, though their words were wise. It was their presence — the quality of love and divine energy that they carried, and that they extended without condition to everyone they met.

To bring out the best in people is, ultimately, an act of love. Not sentiment — love as a living, active, transformative force. The kind of love that sees past the surface to the soul beneath. The kind of love that says: I know what you are, beneath all of this. And I am calling that forward.