You can access the video series here.
If he loves to hang out with his friends does that mean he does not enjoy spending time with you?
Understanding your personality as well as that of loved ones and team members is really important to understand each other. It helps you to strengthen relationships and providing a thriving environment to team members.
This helps us to decide how and when to optimize or compromise.
This helps us to understand the situations where people thrive and where they merely survive. For this, in the next four episodes, we will share with you a pretty successful model to decode people’s personalities in different relationships. This will enable you to figure out how you work together in teams. How to optimize family activities and how to meet you own needs and put yourself in situations that you thrive in along with enabling your loved ones and team members to be in their thriving zones as well.
In our spirituality section, we will look at the difference between good hope and false deception.
Bismillah. Alhumdulillah. Wa Salat Al al-Salam wa rasulullah. This is your breakthrough coach, Zubair Ashraf.
Whether you’re trying to understand your spouse, parent, child, manager or other team members, one key quality to assess in your relationship is:
How open are YOU to try out new ideas?
How curious are you?
How much do you value traditions, processes and rituals?
Notice, a person may be more open to new ideas and innovation and adventure in one relationship but not the other. For example, he may be very innovative and curious at work, but may not have the same style when it comes to family activities or when he’s with his friends.
The question of how open, curious or adventurous you are is dependent on a specific relationship that you care considering. Likewise, when you are trying to evaluate someone else and understand their behaviours and their personality ask this question in the context of a specific relationship or environment.
Understanding this will help you know which type of projects or activities do you enjoy and thrive in. LIkewise, it will also help you understand the same about your spouse, your manager, your direct reports and other team members.
As an individual, if you know you like to try out new ideas and activities you should plan to meet those needs of yours and give yourself opportunities to thrive in those settings.
Whether it be by choosing new projects at work or new projects at hobbies or to try out new activities with your friends and family. If you’re proposing an idea to someone who enjoys novelty and adventure, you should consider highlighting these specific areas of the project. You should start by highlighting what is new about the project, what is noble about the project, what is adventurous about the project or the activity, and then go on explaining the other parts of the project.
Please be aware that this attitude also exposes you to additional risk.
You may also appear as someone lacking focus or being unrealistic. Therefore, you shall consider having metrics and fail criteria. You can keep and eye and decide when to quit the new idea. Or change direction
You should also consider when communicating your plan or idea to someone who is not as adventurous or open to new ideas, you should consider how you would explain the fail criterias and how you would explain to them that you have a contingency plan.
Let’s take some examples;
At work you might select projects to give you the space to try out new things and innovate around them. And at the same time you should also communicate what is your plan and what are your metrics for success and how will you measure them and how will you be aware if the project is failing and you are ready to stop or change direction/
You should also explain to them, what areas of the project will you keep in line with the current processes as well so they understand the risk and the things that are upon the current standards.
For personal relationships, if your partner is not as open as your are to new ideas, you would try out new activities with your friends and not necessarily your family. If you are taking career or business risks, you should be considering how you would gain confidence from your family members by sharing the back up plans, the savings that you have and how you will take their confidence and have their buy-in in your new adventure.
Likewise, if your spouse is more open to new ideas than you, then you may take the risk with them and support them while agreeing on when to stop or pivot. For fun activities, you should realize that if you are not open to new activities then this is what they will pursue individually or with their friends.
So if you observe that your spouse, or a friend, or a child, or another family member is pursuing activities with their friends and seems to be enjoying them, that does not mean that they don’t enjoy spending time with you. It’s just that they are meeting their other needs with their other friends.
Likewise, if you are someone who values traditions and rituals more and are dealing with someone who is high on adventures and likes to try out new ideas, you’re now able to understand them better. And will know how and when to compromise. Will decide when to activities, what is the right balance and when to have the private space so each of you can try and meet your own specific needs.
If you don’t know the preference of the other person that you are dealing with you can observe the choices that they make or simply ask them what is their preference and how do they feel about a certain project or activity or a trip and so on.
Having this sort of understanding will help you maintain and deepen relationships and get the best out of people. It will help you know when you need to go outside of your comfort zone and provide what the other party needs.
Or come up with a plan where you have a win-win situation and both of you can enjoy a certain activity and can enjoy risk-taking behaviour.
The key is to realize that honest communications go a long way.
So when in doubt, just ask.
Now, for the path of our relationship with Allah, when it comes to disobeying the Master, the Lord of the heavens and the earth, some people have a wrong attitude. A very deceptive attitude and that is based around their wrong expectations of the forgiveness of Allah (swt).
Ibn Qayyim (rahimahullah) May Allah have mercy on him, discusses that in his book, The Disease and the Cure. He discusses the false claims around this and explains the fallacies therin. Those interested in details, should check out the chapter. We will suffice with the following for this episode.
He quotes the following hadith in this chapter; Relying on the Mercy and Forgiveness and Generosity of Allah. He quotes the hadith that The Prophet (ﷺ) said,
“A wise man is the one who calls himself to account (and refrains from doing evil deeds) and does noble deeds to benefit him after death; and the foolish person is the one who subdues himself to his temptations and desires and seeks from Allah the fulfillment of his vain desires”.
So you can see that The Prophet (ﷺ) is creating that difference and telling us there’s a difference between the wise person who does the right deeds and has the right expectations and the person who does the wrong deeds and has false expectations from Allah (swt).
In his book, Ibn Qayyim (ra) continues explaining the difference between having a good opinion and being deceived.
He says there if a good opinion advocates work and action then it is correct. However, if it recommends idleness and indulgence in sin then it is deception.
That is a pretty good litmus test.
If you have a hope, you have an expectation and it encourages you to do the right things, then that’s a good hope. That’s the right hope and the right hope from Allah (swt). But if it discourages you to take actions, if it makes you lazy, it makes you idle and it encourages you to do sins then definitely this is a deception. And that is not the right understanding of the forgiveness of Allah (swt)
He quotes an ayah from the Qur’an which can be translated as:
Verily, those who have believed and those who have emigrated for Allah’s religion and have a striving heart in the way of Allah all these hope for Allah’s mercy.
The ones who are truly hoping for Allah’s mercy are the ones with these characteristics.
That they truly believe in Allah and they leave the sins. They leave conditions inside them that incite them to do sins and they go to places where they have the ability to obey Allah.They do their best, they strive hard they work hard and they are patient and they strive hard to seek the pleasure of Allah.
These are the ones who actually hold the mercy of Allah.
Let’s take a look at some practical steps from this episode.
In each of the of your relationships that are important for you, identify how open to new ideas are you. And how open to new ideas the other person is.
- What are the challenges or friction points in the relationship?
- How can you meet your needs while addressing their concerns and meeting their style?
- How can you meet their needs while addressing their concerns and meeting their style?
- If needed, what kind of balance do you both need to have to have your own private space to enjoy places and activities that meet your individual needs.
And for our spiritual side, let’s have a distinction;
- What kind of hope are we living with?
- Is it a good hope or a deception?
Remember our actions will tell us the answer.
Muslim Mastery Breakthroughs is our weekly podcast series in which we share insights on how you can achieve breakthroughs in your life to unlock your spirituality, relationships, and mindset. You will get practical steps towards living a truly extraordinary and fulfilling life in sha Allah.
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Got questions or comments? Send us an email at breakthroughs at muslimmastery.com
A good spouse should also be a best friend. It may just take some effort from both parties.