Success : God Given Opportunity for ALL

Success can be simply defined as “the ability to achieve what we set out to do”. Just by the definition, every living soul has the ability to be successful regardless of colour, race and education background.

We often hear that success needs a little bit of luck and a lot of hard work. Well, this may surprise a lot of people, but luck has nothing got to do with it. How do we explain luck? It is unexplainable. Why is it then some people are bestowed with all the good luck while others are cursed with all the bad luck? This is just not right.

Lets take a few steps backwards. In some cosmic perspective lets try to understand the purpose of our creation and everything else around us. The Almighty God created the earth, the sky and the universe to submit without question to Allah SWT, the All Powerful, Ruler of the Judgment Day. To express their submission, the sole purpose of their creation is to serve humans. God created cotton and with cotton humans are able to produce bundles of thread from which cloth were made. Cloths were then made into dresses so that humans could cover their aurat in observing their deeds to the Almighty Allah SWT. God created animals that could be slaughtered, plants that would bear fruits and vegetations as food so that humans could consume them for energy and nutrition so that humans could be thankful and steadfast in observing their deeds to the All Knower Allah SWT. God created rain so that all life forms could benefit from the bounties of the Almighty Allah SWT.

Allah SWT had repeatedly narrated this phenomenon by saying “humans and jin were created for the sole purpose of worshipping Me”. Humans have to use their intelligence to transform resources around them so that humans could observe their deeds and make the necessary preparations to face the grim challenges of the Hereafter where the promise of Jannah (Heaven) is the goal of every soul. Heaven is the ultimate destination and the ultimate reward of success where we live eternally.

Therefore, we have the divine right to be successful both here and the hereafter. Allah SWT presents countless opportunities to enable us to pursue the right to be successful and to seek freedom. How many times have prayed to Allah SWT to bestow us with “rizqi” and to shower us with His Blessings. Allah SWT the All Sustainer and the All Maintainer, the Ruler of the Entire Universe, do not lose anything if He were to Grant all of our prayers. As a matter of fact we are obliged to believe that Allah will grant all our wishes, it is just a matter of time. How do Allah help us? By presenting opportunities so that we would make every effort to transform those opportunities into actual results.

But time and time again we have turned Allah down by making up endless excuses when opportunities start to knock on our door. Excuses such as “I do not have the time”, “I do not know how to do this”, “Can someone do this for me?” and “I do not have the money to do this” are commonly heard and enough to deter anyone from making an honest effort.

We need to understand that every single event happened with the Blessing of the Almighty and these events happened for a reason or several reasons. Therefore, from the standpoint of religion, to aspire to be successful is a duty of every man and more importantly to be successful here today and in the hereafter.

Note : This article was extracted from my book “Success, Happiness and Performance : They Are Within Our Control” published in 2007 by Pekan Ilmu Publications. Your comments are greatly appreciated or email me at azmantaher@gmail.com or gemasia2u@yahoo.com.