Suggestions to protect our iman in today's wildly materialistic world...

[Flame of Hope]

Iman is without doubt our most important possession.

Do you have any suggestions to protect it in today's wildly materialistic society? Any ideas at all, please post them. Jazakallah khair!

[Woodrow]

Do not strive to have all you want. Learn the joy of enjoying life with the minimum your needs being met. The moment we have one more material thing than what is needed, we start to loose ownership of what we have and become slaves of the material world. Do not seek to have everything to satisfy your needs, try to reduce the number of needs you have.

[CosmicPathos]

Do not set your heart in worldly things, worldly ambitions, careers, materials, wealth and of course health. Today I saw a patient who had lost central vision in his one eye due to ischemia of central artery in retina. He was otherwise perfectly healthy, non-smoker, no cardiovascular risk factors ... he went to sleep, woek up the morning with a dark big spot in his vision .... he asked the doc today if he will regain vision, he asked 2-3 times, the doctor said that he can, according to our current knowledge, never regain the lost vision as it is just scar tissue on retina now. Then the doc told him that we need to prevent further damage to the eye. At that moment, he decided to not ask any questions about this anymore, remained pretty well-composed and we were done. Of course probably he is shattered from the inside but at that moment I realized how much we humans have stake in this wilderness called dunya. We should never be arrogant about our health. This massive Kingdom of health that we have can be lost any time and our lives should certainly not circumambulate this false god called health and we should never feel invincible.

I think feeling invincible, feeling one to be "perfect" and "at the top of his/her game" is damaging to the emaan.

[tigerkhan]

for me its something not that much simple as stated by above posts.
eg u go to doc and he diagnose u a cancer and siad that u have just few days left with ur life. surely one feel so much down....actually our heart accept this doc words and they penetrates our heart. but In quran Allah SWT had said every one have to die. but that words dont make us sad. surely we dont have much effect of these words of quran on our heart than the words of doc. however the msg is same.
similarly we trust more on asbad/materialistic things than one who is creator of asbad. so i blv we need to struggle for it as we do for degree/career to got our eman more and more strong. and that struggle should be on the way of prophet pbuh to got excellent results. prophet PBUH use these 4 ammals dawat, tahleem, dhikar, khidmat for this.
i blv today we muslims have weak eman and islam bcz we dont struggle on these ammal and if someone is doing, he is not keeping these four in parallel. but a part or two part of these. eg most ppl choose ilm, but neglect dhikar and dawa, some choose khidmaat and leave first 3. suhaba RA had done these 4 in parallel and even today i see ppl doing these 4 in parallel had so much strong eman and islam.

[Cabdullahi]

dont look at billboards....even better dont even go to the city centre or the shopping malls

[Haya emaan]

always try to feel Allah inside your heart what ever you are doing where ever you are going what ever happens to you

i read a hadith (don't remember the exact words. if any one could tell plz)
that a momin is always in a benefit.. when hard times there he dose SABR and when he recieves blessings he says thanks to Allah

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Here’s a story about the dangers of materialism/consumerism. This is from The Home We Build Together by Jonathan Sacks.

In 1968 a young American in his late twenties faced a personal crises. Trained as a lawyer, he had become a successful businessman. Married with young family, he was a millionaire, with a large house, an expensive car, a two thousand acre farm, two speedboats and a holiday home by the lake. He was making plans to achieve his next target, ten million dollars, when his wife came to him in the office and told him that she was about to leave. He reminded her of all he had given her. ‘What you haven’t given me’, she said, ‘is yourself’. She never saw him. He was devoting all his time to the business, and noe to the family. She no longer wanted to live like that.

The name of the young man was Millard Fuller. Shocked by this totally unexpected blow, he decided that if making money was destroying his marriage and family, he didn’t want to do it any more. He canelled his plans and took his wife and their children on holiday. They agreed that he would sell his share in the business and find another way to live. Visiting a friend in a Christian community in the American south, he heard that they were planning to build houses for poor rural families. He decided to join them and for five years he built homes. Then he went to Zaire, and built houses there. So was born one of the most successful voluntary projects of recent times: Habitat of humanity. Up to the present it has built 150, 000 houses throughout the world, including Britain. It has transformed lives in the most effective and practical way by giving people in poverty a ‘simple decent place to live’.

A good way of protecting our Imaam is to understand what is consumer culture and why is it so prevalent over (particularly western) societies.

Go to 2:20 thats when Noam starts talking about materialistic/consumer driven societies