Bismillah. Alhumdulillah. Wa Salat Al al-Salam wa rasulullah. We start with the blessed name of Allah, seeking his facilitation and guidance.
Welcome to our third episode of Muslim Mastery Breakthroughs. I’m your breakthrough coach, Zubair Ashraf
You can access the video series here.
What would you do if I gave you 17 dollars every day?
What we will talk about today, is two important reasons why people do not put the effort to achieve what they want.
Let me ask you something. What would you really do if I gave you 17 thousand dollars today? I would like you to take a moment to think about, in your head.
What would you do?
What would you do if I were to give you $17 every day?
Now draw these connections here. If you knew that you would live for one thousand days, and I were to give you $17 everyday, and if you were to save it then, by the end of a thousand days, you would have $17,000!
But, if you take it a step further, and you realize, that if I were to give you $17 every day, after a year you would have a certain amount of money that you can invest. By investing again and again you would be able to earn $17 000 in a shorter amount of time. So instead of waiting for one thousand days, you can earn it in a shorter period of time.
Now, what happens is, if you do not have a goal that you need $17,000 to buy something, you would not save. You would not consciously invest. You would be like,
‘It’s just $17. Let me go and have a dinner.’
But if you had a clear picture of what you want, you would take that $17 and, perhaps, spend some on entertainment, to relax yourself to give you the motivation and re energize you to work hard and then you would save the rest of the money towards your bigger goal.
So what I’m coming at is, just like in the example of cash, what you need to be aware of is;
What is the eventual thing that you want?
You really have to be passionate about it and you have to be certain that, if you were to save up, you’d be able to get it. If you don’t have these pieces, $17 dollars means nothing, and you’ll just end up spending it on Coke and chips.
Likewise, why did I choose the number 17?
For most people they will sleep 6-7 hours a day. Which means that you are left with 17 hours every day. The way you treat those hours again, depend on what you want from your life. If you had a goal, a vision, a purpose and you knew the steps that you would take to get there. You would be very conscious of time, whenever you would get free time you would consciously invest. Yes, you would spend some time on sleeping, on resting, on relaxing yourself. But you’d be very conscious about your time
The people who are negligent of their time are the people who do not either have a goal they are passionate about, or they do not know how to use their time to get closer to their goal.
Think about this; from the wisdom of Allah, if he has written for you that you have to wait a certain amount of days and you have to try a certain amount of things and you have to put an effort until you get that thing. Which means that every time you try, you are getting closer to your goal. Imagine if you had to try something 99 times. Each time you try, you might think ‘Oh, I didn’t get it.’
What’s happening is you’re getting closer to you goal.
Before I come back to this point, I would like to share some things, some ideas, some activities from a spiritual perspective. From the perspective of the knowledge of the unseen. The perspective of what is related to our faith. Now before I come to this point. I want to step back and take a look at some activities and habits from a spiritual side. From the side of the knowledge of the unseen.
These are some techniques and some tips that somebody who was belief in the unseen, somebody who has faith in the creator of the heavens and the earth, would consciously apply to boost their productivity. To get them closer to their goals. To have that divine assistance and facilitation.
We have a narration from the Messenger of Allah Sallallahu alayhi wa salam, narrated to us by Abu Hurairah (ra) and he said:
The Messenger of Allah Sallallahu alayhi wa salam said, which is translated as:
Call upon Allah, while being certain of being answered. And know that Allah does not respond to the supplication from the heart of one headless and occupied by play and amusement.
This is something very important. Now imagine if you are going to a job interview. If you are going to meet a potential customer. If you are going to meet a potential partner. How excited we are. We are hopeful that something great will come out of this meeting. Some life changing events will trigger after this meeting. What kind of expectations and hope and passion do we have when we go and meet Allah in the prayer? In salah? When we are asking Allah, where is our heart? What are our emotions what kind of expectations do we have?
Secondly, it is also narrated from the Prophet of Allah Sallallahu alayhi wasallam, that he said that “Dua is a weapon of a Muslim. It’s a pillar of deen, the religion, and the light of the skies and the earth.”
And from Sahih Muslim we have a narration from Abu Huraira radi allahu anhu, that he said:
The supplication of the servant is granted in case he does not supplicate for sin or for cutting the ties of the blood, (which is to sever and break the ties of kinship and relationship) or he does not become impatient.
There are three conditions.
If you are making a dua a supplication, and that does not involve asking Allah for something that is a sin or involves breaking ties of kinship and you do not become impatient, your supplication is guaranteed. Who’s saying this? The Messenger of Allah Sallallahu alayhi wasallam
They asked the companions inquired, “Oh Allah, what does it mean for one to become impatient?” He sallallahu alayhi wasallam, clarified for them and explained that by being impatient what is implied is one saying, “I supplicated, I supplicated but I did not find it being responded” And then he becomes frustrated and abandons supplication.
This is very important many times you will supplicate, supplicate and supplicate and you’ll be trying and making efforts and each time you’re doing that you’re getting closer and closer to your goal and closer and closer to removing the calamity. But at some point, one stops and says, “You know what, I’ve done it enough, there’s no point.” And you stop doing that.
That’s it, you lost it, you were getting closer and closer. You just didn’t know how long it would take. You were speeding up. You were accelerating.
You were getting closer to your goal and you just gave up too soon.
This is something very important to remember. These are from the matters of the unseen. Allah is telling us these things to get us closer to our goals, faster. To accelerate our progress. What we have to do is, make sure we are putting in the right effort. We are not quitting too soon and we’re avoiding things that prevent the dua from being accepted and this involves disobeying Allah Subhana wa ta’Allah. This involves being hasty.
The takeaways from today are basically a couple of things
You need to identify that;
I can achieve this thing and I will chase my dream.
Now, this can be in different categories. In your physical activity and the levels of energy. in your financial goals. in your spiritual goals. in your goals about learning the religion of Islam. In your different relationships.
For each one of those, you need to have passionate dreams. This is like you having a vision of “What I would do if I had $17000”.
Once you have it, now you need to break it down into ideas that would get you closer to your goals. These ideas should be something you can act upon in an hour. You want to make small chunks of those.
Or, perhaps, look up something called Pomodoro technique. In that, you kind of “chunkify” your tasks into 25 minutes. You want to achieve bigger tasks but break them down in small steps that can be done in 25 minutes. So, you’re putting in those cycles of 25 minutes each time and getting a bigger task done.
At this point, I am just asking you to capture.
Let’s say ‘I want to lose weight and I want to have a lot of energy’ So a task could be that I would go on a walk for 45 minutes or I would go swimming 25 minutes. Or I would go jogging for 25 minutes. Or I would just sit hat would be best for you is to pick up the habit of walking. Later on, if you find that, ‘Okay, I am kind of getting bored with walking and now I have access to a pool’, change that to going for a swim for 25 minutes! Likewise, in your different goals about studying, business activities, not every idea will be something that will be suitable for you. And some ideas are going to be more likely closer. As they say that there’s certain things,
20% of your ideas are the ones that will get you 80 % of the results.
You don’t have to focus on all of our ideas, at least get those ones done that will get you the most impact.
This is what I want you to do:
Have clear goals and chunk them down and continue to make your dua.
Getting that spiritual guidance. That spiritual facilitation. That spiritual success and do not engage in activities that prevent your duas from being accepted.
Learn about those things. What is preventing your duas from being accepted? What can I do to get my duas accepted? What are the times in which duas are especially accepted? So you are helping yourself from a spiritual side and then you are also taking steps such as having a clear goal and having chunkable action items that will help stay away from procrastination
So, until next time.
Make it a part of your identity.
Make yourself accountable for it.
Subhaanaka Allaahumma wa bihamdika, ‘ash-hadu ‘an laa ‘ilaaha ‘illaa ‘Anta, ‘astaghfiruka wa ‘atoobu ‘ilayka
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