Success : Believing in the Invisible

We have to understand that success is a choice we make. Life is the result of choices that we make and time merely enable them to happen. Nobody else can make us successful except us. We have a personal obligation to our own self to be successful. At the same token, we can choose not to be successful. We have probably seen this happening around us and there is nothing we can do about that. If we choose to be successful, we need to first of all believe in the Invisible. You may say, “What?” I say, “YES”. You see, success started out as invisible because we are not there yet. Success needs to be built over time. We started out our quest for success with nothing and all we have is time. I always say that the most critical resource that we need to manage is not money but it is time. With time we can find or make the money. But money could not buy back for every lost time. What we do with the time that we have will very much determine our level of success. But, time is invisible.

To be successful, we need to have our priorities straight. We need to have the discipline and perseverance to see things through. We need to have the undivided commitment and the endurance to make our dreams a reality. Again, priorities, discipline, perseverance, commitment, endurance and dreams are all invisibles.

Life is about believing in the invisible (ghaib). Life will loose its soul if we stop believing in the invisible. In Islam, the basis of life is the total submission to the Invisibles outlined by the Rukun Iman. Allah is the All Invisible but we believe in Allah as if we can see Him Bestowing His Blessings. The Angels, the Holy Book and the Scriptures, the Day of Resurrection, the Prophets and His Messengers and the Qada’ and Qadar are all Invisibles. The Rukun Islam, through the physical evidence of “ibadah” (practice), realizes the manifestations of the Invisibles. The only way to see the Invisibles is to see things with our heart and our soul will live to believe … until the end of time. Seeing with the heart will penetrate all barriers of sight.

Therefore, since success is invisible, we need to see success with our heart. If the heart could see the light at the end of the tunnel, if the heart could taste the sweetness of success and if the heart could believe then the mind, body and soul could transform the ray of hope into powerful actions that could shake and move the world around you. Believe in ourselves that we can make things happen and let the Almighty with all His Blessings take care of the rest.

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.

Success : Its About Building a Better Us

Success and happiness are very much related to one another but not necessary a pre-requisite of each other. Success although every living soul yearns, prays and asks for it could not guarantee happiness. We have heard or read stories about how successful people lived in frustration, seclusion, depression and loneliness. Success if not properly handled could drive someone to total destruction. Success without proper education and discipline could lead to insanity. However, in order for us to achieve happiness we need to have a sense of success. Therefore it is the aim of this book to explore and develop the diagnostic approach to understand the basic philosophy of success and happiness and understand the methods in getting there.

Success is not strange to anyone’s vocabulary. Success maybe commonly defined as “the ability to achieve what we want and set out to do”. But how someone perceives and interprets success varies. Some may measure success by the materials they own such as the cars that they drive, the house that they live in and the real estates that they own. Some may measure success by the success of their children. Some may measure success by the amount of money they have in their bank accounts. Measuring success through merely worldly possessions is inevitable but a lot of times quite dangerous, because there is no end to it. You will continue to work until you drop.
Success is about satisfying your aspirations. Success is about reaching for the stars and knowing for a fact that the process of reaching for the stars and the journey of building your dreams has made you the best that you can be. More importantly, success is when you know when to stop and saying to your self “I have made it!!!” Contrary, success is not about being better than the person next door. Success is about building a better us.

Success is often times taken lightly and sometimes being ridiculed. Although success is an interesting subject to discuss which could garner a lot of interest when taken on the academic forum but we naturally shy away from discussing success in its true sense because success has its pre-requisites and there is always a price to pay for success.

Note : This article was extracted from my book "Success, Happiness and Performance : They are Within Our Control" published in 2007 by Pekan Ilmu Publications.

What Do I Really Want?

More than twenty years ago in the 80’s, when I was pursuing my degree in Computer Science in the United States, I saw a commercial on TV that said something like, “Be the best that you can be” about encouraging teenagers to get enlisted into the Army. The commercial basically promotes the vast career possibilities to be pursued by aspiring teenagers. Although it has been decades since I last saw the commercial but those very words had some profound effects as to how I would see myself from then on. Consciously, I began asking myself what and who do I want to be? Am I on the right path of being that person I want to be? Subconsciously, I began to search for the answers.

At the tender age of 20’s I began on a personal voyage to find the answers to my daunting questions. I might not have lost sleep over it. I might not have chosen the life of a hermit to look for the answers. Nevertheless, I was looking for answers that I believe would give me a sense of purpose in living. I was looking for answers that would give me a sense of direction. I sought answers that would give me a sense of self-esteem and self-actualization. I wanted answers that would help me to make the right mould and continue to churn the right product.

Of course, I do realize that making the right product is just part of the search. I need to first of all understand whether or not I was clearing the right jungle. I need to know whether or not I was climbing the right wall. At this point, I may not want to deliberate on this matter because it is quite a complex issue to elaborate. For the sake of simplicity lets just leave those things as they are and focus on the issues of “what do I want from life?”

It was not until sometime in 1995 when a friend who was in the insurance business invited me to deliver a lecture to a group of insurance agents about the meaning of commitments for excellence. I was very comfortable with the invitation because lecturing has always been my cup of tea. After being a lecturer for seven years at a local university, lecturing comes naturally to me. But then again, this was different. My audiences were aspiring individuals seeking some form of an inspiration to burn their desire, reasons that could drive them to scale greater heights of achievements and who wanted to go out there and produce immediate results. They did not need concepts. They were not looking for theories. They were not looking for some textbook definitions or explanations. They were not going to listen to me so that they could pass some examinations. This was not an academic exercise. This was real life! While I was trying to gather my thoughts to decide on what to talk about, a familiar question that was once playing like an old tune of yesteryears came humming into my mind … “what do I want and who do I want to be?” That was when the twists and turns started to unfold. The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle started to come together. And with a sigh of revelation I realized that we only need two things that could unravel the whole enigma. And those two things are no other than SUCCESS AND HAPPINESS.

Note : This article was taken from my book "Success, Happiness and Performance : They are within our control" which was published in 2007 by Pekan Ilmu Publications.