Self Care – How to get your “Glow”.

How to Get Your “Glow”

Skincare can change how we present ourselves. A prayer of Prophet Muhammad صَلَّى ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ asks what happens when light reaches the heart, the tongue, and the way we live.

There is a particular kind of promise waiting for those wanting it at the beauty counter: you could look more radiant. A serum, a facial, a better haircut, a carefully chosen fragrance. Somewhere between the bathroom mirror and the camera on our phones, “glow” has become something we are encouraged to manufacture. The total beauty and male grooming market is now estimated to be 698.38 Billion USD. One particular fad, fuelled by social media is, South Korean Beauty, now estimated to be over 11 Billion USD. 

Brightening. Rejuvenating. Restoring. Firming. Many discuss skincare routines, grooming appointments and Botox with a fluency that previous generations might have reserved for the weather. Looking refreshed has become an aspiration in itself, sometimes even when the life behind the face remains exhausted. Being a man, I honestly find even the difference between shampoo and soap irksome. When did a 50p soap bar have to become 3 different products and a 10 pound haircut have to become fade, taper and God knows what else. Neither did I go around researching “beauty” – it came up while I was designing the world’s first commercial 3D printed razor. This is when I realised just how “saturated” the market was. From Gillette’s 5 blade heated razors, to Philips One Blade – there is something “precisely” for every inclination of grooming one could have. I eventually zeroed in on a design with 1 blade to reduce ingrown hairs, standard safety blades which are extremely cheap, no maintenance, entirely 3D printed after 78 prototypes.

Yet most of us have encountered another kind of radiance. An elderly person whose presence settles a room. A friend who listens without turning our pain into their performance. Someone who has suffered and still treats strangers gently. Their attraction becomes clearer through knowing them.

This is the glow I find myself thinking about: the quality of a person whose company leaves others less afraid, less diminished, more able to breathe. In Islam, a remarkable supplication of Prophet Muhammad صَلَّى ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ (peace and blessings be upon him) – offers a language for seeking something deeper than a pleasing reflection.

It begins with the heart.

“Allahumma-j‘al fi qalbi nuran, wa fi lisani nuran…..”: O Allah, place light in my heart and light upon my tongue. This opening appears in a narration from Ibn Abbas رضي الله عنه (may Allah be pleased with him) in Sahih Muslim, 763l. The prayer continues by asking for light in hearing and sight, behind and ahead, above and below, and concludes with a request that Allah grant light. sunnah.com

The Arabic word is nur: light. The request reaches beyond the face to the faculties through which a person encounters the world. Before asking how other people see us, it invites us to consider how we see, hear, speak and respond to them.

Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth… (Excerpt from Quran 24:35)

That is an extraordinary place to begin a discussion about beauty.

There is no need to begin by condemning the bathroom shelf. Caring for our appearance can express dignity, gratitude and consideration. Clean clothes, a pleasant fragrance and thoughtful grooming need not suggest spiritual emptiness.

The Prophet himself addressed the distinction. When a man mentioned enjoying good clothes and shoes, he explained that Allah is beautiful and loves beauty, while identifying arrogance with rejecting truth and looking down on people. The problem was the posture of the heart towards truth and others. The reference is Sahih Muslim, 91a. sunnah.com

That distinction matters. A beautifully dressed person may be humble; someone in deliberately plain clothing may be consumed by their own righteousness. Religious language can become another flattering mirror if it allows us to admire our supposed depth while despising someone else’s lipstick.

The comparison with skincare and cosmetic treatments should therefore remain fair. These address appearance; they cannot undertake the work of conscience. Whatever someone decides about Botox, no appointment can apologise to a child, relinquish a grudge or make a dishonest sentence true. Those tasks remain ours.

My question is about proportion. How much attention do I give the face with which I enter a room, and how much to the effect I have once I am inside it? Do people leave our conversations feeling respected, or merely impressed? What does our beauty cost the people closest to us?

The prayer’s opening gives that question an inward direction. We often know how to inspect ourselves under unforgiving bathroom lighting. We notice a blemish almost immediately. A different inspection might ask why a colleague’s success irritated us, why we enjoyed an unkind story, or why our generosity became less enthusiastic when nobody would know about it.

Such questions need not produce self-hatred. Their purpose is repair. An honest admission can be hopeful precisely because it gives us somewhere to begin. I cannot change a motive I refuse to acknowledge. Asking for light includes asking for the discomfort of recognising where I have been wrong.

Then comes the tongue. Consider how much beauty can be destroyed by a sentence. A person may be impeccably groomed and still make a waiter feel small. A parent may smile for a photograph and humiliate a child moments later. A voice can make an otherwise lovely home feel unsafe.

Light upon the tongue becomes a searching aspiration when we apply it to ordinary speech. It could mean accuracy when exaggeration would help our argument, restraint when gossip would entertain the table, or an apology that does not immediately become a defence. These are my practical reflections on the prayer, rather than additional words of the hadith.

For anyone who writes publicly, the question becomes uncomfortable. Am I helping readers understand, or giving them a more sophisticated reason to hate? Have I represented all sides of the argument fairly? Would I still publish this sentence if the person concerned were sitting beside me? Eloquence needs a conscience as much as a vocabulary.

The requests concerning hearing and sight carry the reflection further. We can listen for understanding or simply wait for ammunition. We can see another person’s suffering or search their identity for a reason to discount it. What reaches our senses matters; what we choose to do with it matters too.

There is a second hadith that brings this prayer into a larger picture of devotion. In Sahih al-Bukhari, 6502, the Prophet صَلَّى ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ reports words attributed to Allah. This is a hadith qudsi, a narration conveying divine speech, rather than another supplication for believers to recite as their own request.

In the passage, Allah describes the servant drawing near through the duties He has prescribed, then through additional voluntary acts, until the servant receives His love. The narration then speaks of Allah becoming the servant’s hearing and sight, the hand with which the servant acts, and the foot with which the servant walks. It also promises an answer to the servant’s asking and protection when refuge is sought. sunnah.com

The language needs care. The explanation followed here understands it as divine guidance and assistance in how the servant hears, sees and acts. It does not mean that God physically becomes a human organ, or that the distinction between Creator and creature disappears. Devotion directs a person’s faculties towards what pleases God. Islam Question & Answer

Read alongside the prayer for light, the connection is powerful. We ask for illumination in the very capacities through which our responsibilities are carried out. We seek a life in which faith reaches our attention, our decisions and our treatment of others. The inner aspiration acquires outward consequences.

A hand can write a cruel message or carry someone’s shopping. Feet can take us towards an argument we want to inflame or towards a neighbour who needs help. Hearing can be offered patiently to someone who struggles to explain themselves. These ordinary choices give our reflections a practical setting. It applies to the teacher, co-worker, manager, apprentice, politician. “Destroying an argument” – normally doesn’t create any “lasting change”. “Changing hearts” does.

The order in the hadith also deserves attention: prescribed duties precede additional devotions. There is something bracing about that for an age attracted to exceptional experiences. Spiritual ambition begins with faithfulness. The pursuit of an impressive religious identity cannot excuse carelessness about the responsibilities already in front of us.

Imagine someone meticulously researching an elaborate grooming routine while repeatedly forgetting a promise. The imbalance is easy to recognise. Its religious equivalent may be harder to admit: pursuing an elevated feeling while avoiding the conversation in which we owe someone an apology. The ordinary duty can be the more demanding encounter.

This is where “getting your glow” becomes more serious than a pleasing metaphor. Prayer should lead us to examine the life that resumes after it. If I ask for light upon my tongue, the next conversation matters. If I seek guidance in my actions, the next opportunity to act fairly matters.

None of this allows us to assess another person’s holiness by looking at their face. Acne, scars, ageing, disability or exhaustion reveal nothing reliable about someone’s standing with God. Nor does a conventionally attractive face certify kindness. Turning spiritual light into a beauty standard would reproduce the very confusion we are trying to examine.

The Prophet’s teaching in Sahih Muslim, 2564c, places divine regard upon hearts and deeds rather than appearance and wealth. That offers an essential safeguard: our moral worth is not determined by the features we possess or the resources available to polish them. sunnah.com

This also changes how we think about ageing. A face carries time, and time can carry service: nights spent caring for someone, years of work, laughter shared across a table. We need not romanticise every hardship to refuse the idea that every trace of living is a defect. The person in the mirror deserves tenderness as well as attention. So does the person beside us whose appearance we judge too quickly. A more generous understanding of beauty leaves room for bodies that change, lives that are difficult, and people who cannot afford the products advertised as essential. Human dignity must never depend on access to a beauty counter. That is worth remembering every morning.

A devout person can also experience grief, anxiety, illness and periods of profound difficulty. We should never demand a serene expression as proof of faith. Sometimes the person making the greatest effort is the one whose distress is visible. Compassion asks what support they need, without making their suffering a spiritual accusation.

The Qur’an’s language of light has a horizon beyond our social impressions. Its famous Light Verse, 24:35, speaks of Allah as the Light of the heavens and earth and of His guidance. Elsewhere, 57:12 describes believing men and women with light proceeding before them and on their right on the Last Day. Quran.com

For believers, these are truths with a depth that no lifestyle slogan can contain. Calling the subject “glow” is an invitation into reflection, not a claim that worship is a cosmetic intervention. The ultimate concern is our relationship with God, extending beyond what a camera or another person can register.

Still, the everyday comparison can be useful. We understand that outward care usually involves repetition. We return to familiar routines without expecting one hurried effort to settle everything. We might bring comparable attentiveness to our speech, our promises and our willingness to repair harm, while recognising that divine grace cannot be purchased by a technique.

The bathroom mirror offers one practical moment to remember that intention. While preparing to face the day, we could ask for the light named in the prophetic prayer. We could then choose one concrete responsibility: speak truthfully in a difficult meeting, listen properly at home, or stop circulating a story we have not verified.

There is no need to invent a sacred number of repetitions or promise a visible result. The supplication already gives us words to ask with. Our task is to learn them accurately, understand what we are requesting, and avoid treating recitation as permission to leave our behaviour untouched.

At the end of the day, another brief examination might help. Where did I make someone feel safe? Where did vanity or anger decide for me? Is there something to correct tomorrow, or an apology that should happen tonight? These are ordinary reflective practices, not a prescribed ritual added to the religion.

An apology may be particularly revealing. It asks us to surrender control of our image long enough to tell the truth. Sometimes we would rather invest considerable effort in appearing generous than acknowledge one specific act of selfishness. Repair brings our aspiration down to the scale of an actual relationship.

There is also something liberating about an act of kindness that remains unseen. No photograph, no testimonial, no suggestion that the recipient owes us admiration. In a culture that makes almost everything available for display, a private good deed protects a small space in which being seen is no longer the point.

For readers of different faiths, or none, the human question remains accessible: what is it like to be on the receiving end of me? The Islamic texts give that question a particular theological depth. They direct my concern towards God while making it harder to neglect the person standing before me.

I would like to think we can care for both the face and the life behind it. Enjoy the clean shirt. Appreciate the fragrance. Attend to the body entrusted to you. Alongside that care, make room for the work that becomes visible in patience, honesty, generosity and the courage to change.

Perhaps the most meaningful transformation is noticed first by someone else: a child who is heard without being interrupted, a colleague who receives credit, a stranger treated with dignity. They may know nothing about our private prayers. They encounter their hoped-for consequences in the way we behave.

When I think about getting my glow, I want to remember that possibility. I want to ask for a heart willing to recognise truth, a tongue careful with another person’s dignity, and actions guided towards what is good. There is beauty in becoming someone whose presence makes kindness easier.

So, before facing the world, I can stand before the mirror and remember the prayer’s beginning: Allahumma-j‘al fi qalbi nuran, wa fi lisani nuran. May the care I give my reflection be accompanied by care for everyone who will meet the person reflected there today.

Let’s end on this Hadith :-

Umar ibn al-Khattab reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “O Allah, make what is within me better than my outward appearance and make my outward appearance righteous. O Allah, I ask You for the righteousness of what You give to people of property, family, and children without myself being misguided or misguiding others.”

Source: Sunan al-Tirmidhī 3586

Grade: Sahih (authentic) according to Al-Suyuti

Selected List of References

1. Sahih Muslim 763l: the supplication for light in the heart, tongue, hearing, sight and surroundings.
2. Sahih Muslim 91a: beauty, good clothing and the definition of arrogance.
3. Sahih al-Bukhari 6502: obligatory and voluntary devotion, divine love, hearing, sight, hand and foot.
4. Explanation of the hearing, sight, hand and foot passage: divine guidance and assistance, drawing on Sunni scholarly commentary.
5. Sahih Muslim 2564c: hearts and deeds rather than appearance and wealth.
6. Qur’an 24:35: the Light Verse.
7. Qur’an 57:12: believers’ light on the Last Day.