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Skill, Consistency and Speed will make you Fail Faster with a Wrong Strategy
You are listening to Muslim mastery breakthroughs, a podcast series in which we share insight on how you can achieve breakthroughs in your life to unlock your spirituality, relationship and mindset. You will get practical steps towards living a truly extraordinary and fulfilling life Inshallah.
Skill, Consistency and Speed will make you Fail Faster with a Wrong Strategy
Strategy without tactics is a slowest route to victory. Tactics without Strategy is noise before defeat (Sun Tzu)
The breakthrough idea for this week is that once the intention is right, the destination is clear, one can be slow, inconsistent, lazy, unskilled or even distracted, and still get to the destination. but there is nothing worse than not having the strategy right. We will see how this principle applies in all areas of our life. We will also talk about the different love languages or appreciation languages, how misguidance and unqualified advisors can mess up the strategy for you and I will also share with you my story about the most embarrassing reason I had to cancel my flight to one of the destinations and take a flight back to the UK. Bismillah. Wallahumdulillah Wa Salat Al al-Salam wala rasulullah. This is your breakthrough coach, Zubair.
So, in 2014, Allahumdulilah, I found a security issue in Android court. And I got to represent my research across the globe, including Australia, Turkey and Ireland. One of those trips was to Berlin via UK. And after speaking in Berlin, I was book to go and visit clients in Khadar. I have recently upgrade my laptop to one of the recently released the Norah business machines and still had the charger from my old laptop. The look and size of the charger for both laptops are exactly same. Guess which of the charges I took to the Berlin. Yep! I got the old one. Well, it turned out that although size was same, the voltage and current output was different and I could not charge my laptop battery in Berlin. After giving my presentation, I started the mission of calling and visiting serval dealer in stores to find out the right charger. But I was not able to do so. Partly was because of this was the newest released and was not available in that region. As I was not able to access my corporate systems and data, I decided in the inch of times and productivity and I postpone my trips to Khadar, and head back to a stop over while I am in UK, and then back to Canada.
So, how is this related to our breakthrough idea? Well, see, you charge a smartphone, but you put gas of petrol in the car. You provide different form of energy to a microwave and oven, well; the car is an example of become irrelevant soon as the electric car become the norm. But the point is, a wrong road map won’t get you to the desire results. If you want to keep using your phone, you have to give the right source of power. Human relations need appreciation of love to flourish and growth.
The first step is to realize the value and importance of love and appreciate in any relationship, and then to commit to providing it. Once the goal is clear, the commitment is clear, the next more important thing is to find the right way to do it. It is common sense that what one person needs to feel appreciated. Maybe is completely opposite to what someone else’s need. Sadly, this common sense is not very comment.
Let’s share with you the five languages of love and appreciations. So you can choose the right one for the right person.
Number one: words of affirmation, expressing affections through spoken words. Such as the word of praise, thanks, appreciations, and so on and so forth.
Second, acts of service, Actions rather than words. This could be to show and receive love by doing something that is important for someone else, like picking them up or dropping them off, and taking them out to an event, doing something for them, making something for them, and such so on and so forth.
Thirdly, receiving gifts, Gifting is symbol of love and affection. Right? So you find the right gifts for the right person, and you present something that is of value to them. But it is not about how expensive, or how cheap the gift is, is the thought if you going to purchase something and then the other person will appreciate it.
Fourthly, quality times. Expressing affection with undivided and undistracted attention, so you are in present with them. Right? That could be just talking, that could be attending an event, that could be doing something together.
And finally, physical touch. That could be intimacy, holding hands, a pad on the back, hug, and so on.
There is a lot of research out there, for example how you can use this idea with your parents, spouse, children, client and team members, and so on. The key thing is to realize what you may like and appreciate most, may not be what the other person want. Make sure you know your love language, and let important people in your life know about it, and ask them for theirs.
Another caveat here is, as an example, someone spouses would say, hey, you know what, I do want him to do this because I like it, I want him to just do it naturally, this is being unrealistic, isn’t it? Shouldn’t you appreciate that someone cares for you, and he want to express his love and appreciation in a way that you will like, Even though it is not their natural way.
Finally, once you figure out what other person’s love language is, you may still need help to come up with an idea to express it. So don’t be shy to ask for suggestions, example, if you are not big on quality time, you may have not known what it means to have quality times for that specific person, right? So you just ask about it. How do you? How would you like for us to spend time together. Right? And then you find the activities and ways that are mutually of interest. And then you find activities and ways that are for mutual interest.
Now let’s move on to the spiritual side of things. In your journey to strengthen your relationship with Allah, Be one of the beloved; be blessed with His love and mercy. The strategy is still very important. If you know what you need to do, and what you don’t need to do. Even if you are slow, you are falling short, and you are still repenting, you have higher chance of succeeding by you asking for forgiveness and doing your best. But if you deviate from your right path, even it is a small deviation, with time, speed and consistency that small deviation will take you way of.
There is something that messenger Sallahu Alayhe wasalam clear warn us against. And he informed us that every innovation of religion is misguidance. And every misguidance leads to hell fire.
Think of this as someone being on a right path, even if he is slow, he take a few steps forward, and a few steps backward, he still on the path and much safer than someone who is deviated from the path, and he does not even realize that he has deviated, so he would not even correct the path, he would not even change the strategy because he think he is on his right path. Allah subhana wata Allah says in His book: Verse (Quran 18:103) “Say (O Muhammad Sal’Allahu ‘alayhi wasallam): Shall We believers inform you of those greater losers as to (their) deeds?”
Right? Shall we tell you about the one who are the greatest loser regarding their deeds. Then the next words go to
Verse (Quran 18:104) [They are] those whose effort is lost in this world, while they think that they were doing great.
So this is the example, that you know, people are putting effort, they were putting a lot of effort, they were busy, but was all lost.
So in this age of social media, everyone has a voice. It is very important for us to pay attention; who we are getting risk strategy or Our path is getting closer to Allah from, is a very subtle concept. Not only does it apply to knowing what is permissible and what is impermissible. As many do use intellectual gymnastic to convince people that something impermissible, is impermissible, and vice versa.
It also applies annoying which of the two evils is a greater evil. And which of the true good is higher good. This helps us to avoid the greater harm. Many people call to good, but the way they advise or call to good creates more harm. Hence we cannot emphasized the needs of the right strategy, and sticking to the way of messenger of Allah (Sal’Allahu ‘alayhi wasallam) as enlisted by his companion, and taking advices from trusted and well established scholars?
Again, this is also something that we see as harming relationship and homes. A child, or husband or wife will try to correct the behavior of parents, or of his spouse, but do it in the way that would cause much more harm and just break apart the whole family. After that, every individual becomes weak individually, they become weak emotionally, they are so stress, they will be much easier for them to deviate from the path and keep falling into the sins. May Allah protect us all from this!
Now finally, we realize it is such a subtle issue that many fallen to it except those whom Allah protect. And Allah will definitely protect those who deserve. So let us not forget our needs to repent to Allah, to be steadfast on the right path. And for us to take means to get this favor from Allah. One of the greatest means from that is to consistently, and sincerely ask Allah for it.
So let’s recap and look at some action points.
Do you know how much love or appreciated in your life to different people feel? Do you know their love language? Do you know how to express it? Do you feel not love or appreciated by the key people in your life? Do they know your love language? You didn’t know how to express that. In your personal and community life, are you avoiding the greater evils, and going for the greater good. Is the greater evil and greater good understood and verify by trusted knowledge of the person? Or it just base on you own desires. Note, the importance of dua and dependence on Allahto be protected from wrong strategies and path.
Until next time
Subhanakallahumma wa bihamdika, ash hadu anlaa ilaaha illa anta, astaghfiruka wa atoobu ilaik.
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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.
To check out previous episodes visit Breakthrough Podcast
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