001: THE STRONG ME – a new MISSION statement and A NEW IDENTITY

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The Strong Me
A new mission statement and a new identity.

You can access the video series here

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 first episode of Muslim Mastery Breakthroughs. I’m your breakthrough coach, Zubair

If you were to own a business what would it be?

Do you have a favourite retailer store? A cafe? A car dealership? An art shop? A research lab? A school? A hospital?
Think of something that you would love to own, run and manage. Go ahead, hit the pause button until you have thought of something that you will really be passionate about.

Alright, let’s make sure you have really got something in your mind. So let me ask you a few questions to help you really make sure that you got it.

How do the employees dress there? Is it in a building? Which floor? Where is your office? How big is it? How do you dress up there?

Now imagine somebody who currently owns this business comes up to you and says, “Hey you know what? I want to give this business to you as a trust. You can go ahead and run it for a while and to make it interesting I am not telling you how long I’ll let you run it. So it could be a few years or a few decades. Don’t worry about the exact timings but go ahead and do your best”

I want you to imagine with me if this were to happen for sure, how would you feel? How would you sleep tonight? Or what time would you sleep? What time would you wake up? How would you wake up? What kind of energy would you have when you’re waking up? What state of mind would you be in?

Hang on a second!
What is really more valuable? To own that business and having the ability to make decisions about how to run it? Or having the soul, the mind, the body that you have, how much value do you give to yourself?

Before we continue now is the time to introduce a new podcast series,
Muslim Mastery Breakthroughs.
Each week we will bring ideas and practical implementation tips to help you in achieving breakthroughs in your relationship with Allah, your relationship with yourself, your loved ones and overcome your fears, master your emotions and live a fulfilling life. Striving for the pleasure and paradise of your Lord to retire in it forever.

These tips would be based on the knowledge from Qur’an and Sunnah, explanation of the scholars of Islam, modern experimental research and our own experience in transforming our own lives and the lives of many around us. And all praises and thanks belong to Allah.

Now back to our first point for this episode. The idea there was to help you realise that your feelings, energy and action depend a lot on how you view yourself.

If you really did the exercise with me you would have realised that your energy level and excitement would have gone up on the thought of owning that business. You would have thought “Oh wow! I have the ability to run this. I am going to put in my time and my best efforts.”

Now think about how you view your life and abilities. If you really believed in being able to achieve greatness and success in your life. Now I am not defining what is greatness and success here. The idea is that if you believed that you are able to do that and you felt the same way as owning the business your mindset, your level of energy, your passion, your efforts would change.

Now how can we start applying this idea? What I would recommend is to grab a notebook, whether pen paper or even a digital notebook and start writing down how you view yourself. What we are trying to do is to start writing down your own mission statement. The mission statement of your life. Your own incorporation. Your own business.

Now here are some ideas to consider. Would you consider saying I am a multimillion or a multibillion-dollar business owner?

I have the ability given to me by my Lord to think, see, hear, observe, process and act. I am on a mission to earn the pleasure of my Lord and retire in paradise forever. My personal path to there is to take care of my soul and my self. And…

Now you go ahead and you write down whatever is important; what do you want to take care of other than yourself.

I am growing my knowledge in the areas of…
write down what areas of knowledge that you are interested in.

I am gaining more experience in the areas of…

I am serving people around me as a…
It could be a father, a brother, a sister, a husband, a wife, a student, a teacher, an investor, a social worker. Whatever it is for you I am serving people around me as a…

I am focused on how I spend my time.
Where and what I focus my thoughts and energy on.

Where should I improve?

I am not over-concerned about things outside my control.

I look for opportunities not excuses for myself.

I don’t play the blame game nor am I always complaining.

My goals for the next month are to improve…
Write down what’s important for you.

To gain…
Write down what’s important for you.

And to quit…
Write down some bad habits that you would like to quit.

My goals for the next 6 months are to improve, gain and quit what?

In 10 years I want to achieve…

Now I would really like you to make an effort. Go ahead and write this all down. Don’t worry about perfecting it. The point is to start somewhere and to observe how things change. We can always come back and revise it. Now if you are listening to this while driving or multitasking its okay. You can use this round to prepare your mind. Revisit this episode when you can focus more and complete the recommended action items.

What we have discussed so far was around having a value for your life. Realising the potential that you have and having your own personalised mission statement. We want to get things started but note, as we go along we will share more ideas with you that will help you refine this mission statement.

The next thing we want to talk about is the concept of core values or some people call it identity or you can call it roleplaying.

What I want you to do is imagine with me again.
Let’s fast forward a year from now.
Imagine a person like you who have achieved massive success in the areas that you wanted to achieve success in. I would like you to give him or her a name. Take a moment and give him or her a name. It’s going to be very important to distinguish that person and to have a name to refer to him or her. For the purpose of these episodes I will call him or her; The Stronger Me.

The Stronger Me.

Now here’s a question for you. If you were to look at how the stronger me, this new person, this different person that we are talking about. If you were to think about how the stronger me behaves in different situations.

What are his or her core values?
What is his or her attitude toward life? Towards tough times?
What kind of fears does he or she have?
Has he or she overcome those fears?
What kind of level of trust and level of commitment to the deen of Allah does he or she have?
How does Strong Me think?
What does Strong Me focus on?
How does he or she react in difficult situations?

Now the idea is that I want you to start writing down how that person would be. Cause a lot of the time we do have an idea of how we want to be, how we want to act. But the thing is we do not do that. What I have noticed is if you were to write down these points, these details, if you were to write down a script that “Hey, the stronger me would act like this.” And you do what I was calling earlier as roleplaying. If you were to act that person, if you were to mimic that person In Shaa Allah you will see the results that you are associating with that person.

Alright. I don’t want you to get overwhelmed by this I really want you to take a step, take the first step and trust me with this and write down these things that I am asking you to write down and remember we have tried this several times with different people not only have we seen this working for our own selves but we have tried this with several people and Alhumdulillah it has helped.

And we see the similar things being taught by other organisations and other programs so Insha Allah this is of great value and the best way to see it is to try it while you believe in it, while you trust it, while you are fully immersed in it. Now while you are doing it and you are like “meh I don’t know if it’s going to work for me or not and you are doubting it and you are trying to understand whats going on and you are not fully committing yourself to this process, then again obviously you won’t see the results.

We really want this podcast to be about results and we really want you to have amazing results coming out of this podcast. And again this is going to be dependant on how much time you put in. How much effort you put in. How you apply the advice and the ideas that we are sharing.

Now I want to share with you something very very important. It’s not something that I am just making out of thin air. Allah (SWT) the creator of the heavens and the earth and everything in it tells us something very very important in his Kitaab, in his Book, Quran.
He says;

Which means that Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves.

So this is very important. If you want to hold on to the blessings of Allah that you have or you want to achieve new blessings, you want to change your state.
You have to look at your present state.

Now another thing to think about. A lot of times in the Quran, Allah compares the statements, the mindset, the belief and the actions of successful people versus the unsuccessful people. I’ll give you some pointers and hope you will take the time and start observing it.

So you start with the first chapter of Qur’an, the one that we recite several times during our prayers, the one that we hear several times during prayers and this is the first chapter; Al-Fatiha. Now if you look at the end of Al-Fatiha there are 3 types of people that are mentioned.

So we say O Allah put us and guide us towards the path of those whom you favoured and do not put us on the path of those who went astray or those earned your anger.

So again, in a sense, this is kind of relating to what I was mentioning earlier about roleplaying so there is certain behaviour certain attitudes certain beliefs that you want to mimic and take note of. As you read the book of Allah observe those characteristics. Observe how Allah differentiates the successful smart people from those who are not.

Likewise, look at surah al-Baqarah, the first page. You will see a distinction in how the belief system is different from those who are successful versus those who are not. How their statements are different. How their attitude is different.

Likewise, in Surah al-Asr. Right? This is a very small surah of the last Juz of the Quran. Allah (Swt) mentions the characteristics of successful people. So as you start seeing those things in Qur’an, in Hadith, in your own experimentation try to adopt it, take note of it and observe how much you are applying it in your own life.

Let’s take a look at the hadith of a Messenger of Allah Sallallahu alayhi wasallam reported to us by Abu Huraira (RA). He said that the Messenger of Allah (pbuh) said;

حَدَّثَنَا أَبُو بَكْرِ بْنُ أَبِي شَيْبَةَ، وَعَلِيُّ بْنُ مُحَمَّدٍ الطَّنَافِسِيُّ، قَالاَ حَدَّثَنَا عَبْدُ اللَّهِ بْنُ إِدْرِيسَ، عَنْ رَبِيعَةَ بْنِ عُثْمَانَ، عَنْ مُحَمَّدِ بْنِ يَحْيَى بْنِ حَبَّانَ، عَنِ الأَعْرَجِ، عَنْ أَبِي هُرَيْرَةَ، قَالَ قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ ـ صلى الله عليه وسلم ـ ‏”‏ الْمُؤْمِنُ الْقَوِيُّ خَيْرٌ وَأَحَبُّ إِلَى اللَّهِ مِنَ الْمُؤْمِنِ الضَّعِيفِ وَفِي كُلٍّ خَيْرٌ احْرِصْ عَلَى مَا يَنْفَعُكَ وَاسْتَعِنْ بِاللَّهِ وَلاَ تَعْجِزْ فَإِنْ أَصَابَكَ شَىْءٌ فَلاَ تَقُلْ لَوْ أَنِّي فَعَلْتُ كَذَا وَكَذَا ‏.‏ وَلَكِنْ قُلْ قَدَّرَ اللَّهُ وَمَا شَاءَ فَعَلَ فَإِنَّ ‏”‏ لَوْ ‏”‏ تَفْتَحُ عَمَلَ الشَّيْطَانِ ‏”‏ ‏.‏

“The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: ‘The strong believer is better and more beloved to Allah than the weak believer, although both are good. Strive for that which will benefit you, seek the help of Allah, and do not feel helpless. If anything befalls you, do not say, “if only I had done such and such” rather say “Qaddara Allahu wa ma sha’a fa’ala (Allah has decreed and whatever he wills, He does).” For (saying) ‘If’ opens (the door) to the deeds of Satan.'”

This is something that can be paraphrased as to mean that number one;
the strong believer is better and more beloved to Allah than the weak one.
Let’s try to be strong in our activities, in our belief, in our efforts. After that in continues on to saying that strive and work towards what will benefit you. It’s not suggesting or advising us to not take any action but to work towards, you know, putting our mind, our time, our efforts in what will benefit us.

And on top of that seek the help of Allah so your heart is attached. Success is from Allah. So you are seeking the help of Allah which means and which would imply which would necessitate that you will not be taking the haraam the forbidden means to achieve success.

And it continues to say “Do not feel helpless”. Now, how many times do we think “Oh”, give excuses, “I don’t have this”, “This person did this to me”, “they don’t provide me with opportunities”, “I have these issues”. But look. This is something that the messenger of Allah is discouraging us from.

Now if you have done your part and something befalls you that you do not like. It’s not what you were aiming. It’s not how you planned it. It may be painful. Regardless of how it is if something befalls you then you do not go on to this discussion of, “Hey if I had this or that or if I had acted in this or that manner” cause now you will be going into useless regret.

Now this does not mean again, we are not going into the explanation of hadith but obviously, there’s a lesson to be learned if there was some shortcoming, some laziness on your part, you definitely want to take note of and you want to improve that. But this is more on the lines of, you know, just living in your past. And just conjecturing and thinking, “Okay what if I had done this or that?”. If something happened to you at the end of the day it is from Allah (swt) regardless of how painful it is. There’s some greater wisdom behind it. So be patient on what struck you. Learn from it and move on. So we will leave it at that.

What I want you to do is. I can understand that some of you may still be thinking that you know what I don’t think I can ever transform, I can ever become this strong me. I know what a strong me would look like but you know what I know myself, I cant become like that. I would like to challenge you on that concept. I think you, yes, YOU. You have done great things in your life and you may not be aware of those or you may not be conscious of those. I would like to challenge you to think about three amazing skills, three amazing things that you have achieved in your life by working hard consistently over a long period of time. So I would leave you with that and In Shaa Allah in the next episode, I will share with you these three points or more.

In the meantime what I would really like you to do is;

read your mission statement and your identity multiple times throughout the day.

Why multiple times? Look what would typically happen is that you would search rose during the day. So typically your morning would be different you might be a student you, might be going to work, you might be going and staying at home and taking care of the family and then things would change in the afternoon or evening with more people coming to the house or you coming back to the house or you may have a part time job in the evening or part time course in the evening and then you would have a different routine at night. So as you go and change from these roles to roles, I’d like you to focus on your mission statement and your core values, the way you behave the way you deal with things cause this will have a great impact.

Let me give you a quick example, so if you were to read that when you are coming back home, right? And at that point, you may have something about being an awesome husband. This will help you switch from the way that you are at work how you deal with your colleagues and how you are at work.
Likewise, if you are a stay at home mother or a wife, in the evening if you are reading it, it may help to change your mindset to being this awesome wife.
Now at night time if you are reading this it will help you to go to bed in a state of wudhu and doing your recommended remembrance of Allah and planning to wake up early enough to catch Fajr or perhaps catch the night prayer and so on and so forth.
It is very important to remind ourselves because we get into this autopilot mode. So as you are shifting from role to role you have to be conscious about what the mission is, what’s your mission statement, what is your identity and what are your core values.

So again in summary;

Value your life.
Amazing things can happen and will happen Insha Allah,
Start noticing your core values and the core values are the stronger me.
Take notes of that, review that and
Do a roleplay.

Act it till you have it.

So until next time, we will leave you with that.

Subhaanaka Allaahumma wa bihamdika, ‘ash-hadu ‘an laa ‘ilaaha ‘illaa ‘Anta, ‘astaghfiruka wa ‘atoobu ‘ilayka

Wa assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu

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Muslim Mastery Breakthroughs is our weekly 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.

If you liked the ideas we shared please like and share them NOW. We always love to hear from you so tell us how this system is working for you, how you will apply this episode in your life and the changes you are noticing. We welcome your questions, comments or suggestions, you can send us an email at breakthroughs@muslimmastery or leave a comment here.

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