The necessity of feeling uncomfortable

Morning readers,

How often do we engage in activities that make us feel uncomfortable?

How often do we deliberately avoid activities because they make us feel uncomfortable?

As children, our parents constantly made us do things that made us uncomfortable in order for us to expand and yet the moment we are left to our own decisions, many of us shrink away from participating in activities that force us to grow.

Could you imagine if a parent didn't ever cut their child's hair or give them a bath because they always cried out of the discomfort and the parents wanted to safeguard the child's comfort?

Why are we then so negligent when it comes to facing our own discomfort?

Just under a week ago, I was sat in the dentists chair with a bib on drooling while holding my mouth open wide and it dawned on me that so many people never go to the dentist because of the fear of this discomfort. Yet these same people are able to overcome discomfort on a daily basis when it comes to things like not eating as soon as they feel hungry or not sleeping as soon as they get tired.

Everyone hears sayings like "no pain, no gain" often enough, but the sad reality is that so few try to implement this monumental and yet so simple rule of growth and development.

I will leave you with a quote that I find particularly useful on this subject:

Everything you have ever wanted is one step outside your comfort zone.

I hope that you have found reading this uncomfortable :-)

I will hopefully be back in the next week or so with a new post.

Reflections from Ramadan

Morning everyone.

With the Muslims from around the world having completed a  month of fasting which has been observed by Muslims around the world for one month every year for the last 1400 or so years, I feel that it is important for everyone who participated to reflect on what they sought to achieve through this action, why they wanted to achieve whatever the objectives were, what actions were taken during the fasting month to meet the objectives and most importantly what actions and lessons can be exercised and learnt to take forward for the next 11 months before the fasting starts again.

The thing that I personally wanted to achieve was a closer relationship with the Quran. As Muslims, we believe that the Quran is the final revelation of God Almighty and contains within it the answer to all of human beings important questions. The sad thing however is that too many of us are unwilling to read it.

The sadder reality is that as a people, Muslims are negligent in reading period! We live in a world of mass distraction and quick access and entertainment. How ironic it is that in the first revelation we are commanded to read and we often want to ignore the first command and debate others.

Anyhow, I wanted to have a better relationship with the Quran in that I wanted to be in the habit of reading from it in Arabic, listening to it in Arabic, reading some translation and listening to fragments of lectures available online improving my knowledge and application of the book.

The reason for this objective is that I shouldn't be shy when I am asked about how I treated the book that was revealed as a source of guidance for me when I am to be judged after I die.

In Ramadan, I started reading the book in the original Arabic text for at least a few minutes a day. I really enjoyed the experience. I also discovered that the YouTube app allows you to filter your search for short, long or any duration forthe length of videos. This has eased my ability to watch short punchy messages from the Quran being explained by lecturers and teachers.

After Ramadan, I have found a shift in my focus from what time the morning prayer expires to what time it starts. This is because in Ramadan, we start our fast at the time of the morning prayer so we were typically awake to pray as soon as it became time to do so.

This has created more time in the mornings, but I do get tired quicker in the evenings. I think there is still a learning curve of trying to maximise my productivity in the mornings, but I am thoroughly enjoyingthe journey.

As I often do, I will share with you with a quote. This is from imam Ali  (as).

He said that many people get nothing from fasting except the experience of hunger and thirst.

I would hate to be included in this group as it would represent a huge waste of the opportunity to make some lasting change!

A lot more could be said about the subject of fasting but I will end it by urging you all to reflect on your own experiences of Ramadan.

Peace

Reflections from my birthday

Morning readers,

As many of you will probably be aware, my birthday was yesterday and like most years, it got me thinking and reflecting on my achievements, current situation, goals and most importantly my mortality.

I remember speaking to a family member a couple of years ago or so about his 30th birthday "party". I put the word party in air marks because he celebrated this birthday by playing a game with his friends that required everyone to write a eulogy for their own selves.

The purpose of the exercise was to make himself and his friends think about what kind of people they want to be remembered as when they die and how close they are to becoming that person.

Now before you all get nervous or excited,  I didn't do that yesterday and am not about to post my eulogy here. I just thought it was a wonderful conversation that I had that deserved a mention in this post.

The things that I would like to talk about are a bit abstract so there will be no particular order as to how these thoughts come out.

1) with each birthday, I have seen more of life and should therefore be a more patient, humble, forgiving and cheerful person.

If any of these things are not increasing with each birthday, then my lifestyle would need a huge evaluation.

2) No matter how old you get, you can still take lessons from the innocence of children. Their satisfaction with playing with packaging rather than the toy that came out is bewildering. Happiness is making the most of what you have rather than finding fault in it by comparing it to others.

3) life is short. If you blink, you can miss it. Therefore it is important to not be stuck in the monotonous routine of day to day existence without making time to work on projects that are important, but not urgent.

4) it is not so important that you have a large number of years in your life. It is infinitely more important to have a large quality of life in your years no matter how many or few they may be.

5) Age well and truly is just a number. People die at all ages. People achieve amazing goals at all ages. I read about an 85 year old woman who learnt to read and write. I have seen pictures of old men with 6 packs. I have read about children who achieve amazing academic success. We are never too old to set a new goal or dream a new dream.

6) finally life is a gift. I didn't do anything to justify my coming into existence. For me to make the most of the gift, I need to become the most of the good potential that sits within me.

This year, eid  (the Muslims celebration at the end of Ramadan) and my birthday were within a few days of each other.

God willing, I will share some reflections on Ramadan in the next few days.

Peace.

The power of observation

Morning readers,

How powerful is our ability to observe?

How often do we reflect on this great power?

With great power comes enormous responsibility. The gift of sight is one of the greatest assets that we will ever possess and yet the sad reality is that most take it for granted neither appreciating it as a gift, nor reflecting on the responsibilities that it comes with.

How much would you sell your eyes for?
1 million pounds?
10 million?
100 million?

How about just one eye? You would still have one left.

What can we observe? The obvious answer is everything. Open your eyes and there is the whole world to behold.

It is how we take in most information and also how we remember things too.

There is a lesson for us in everything we look at if we are only willing to pay attention to it.

With the great gift comes great responsibility. Do we spend our time looking at things that will grow and develop us into better people or do we waste the gift looking at things that merely entertain us? How often do we make a point to utilise the gift to make our lives or others lives better? How often do we express gratitude out loud or even silently internally for the gift?

For some people all the money in the world could not buy them sight. For others, they have it for free and spend a lifetime wasting the gift without ever having even thought about it.

I would like to end this post with a quote:

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

The power of controlling our emotions

Readers,

Have you ever stopped to consider how much control you have over your emotions?

When you are feeling sad, you are the one who eventually decides when to stop feeling sad.

Likewise when you are happy, you decide how much you are going to let bad news affect you and for how long.

The ability to keep your emotions in check and under your control is known as emotional intelligence or emotional quotient  (eq).

Most people have heard of an intelligence quotient  (iq) and yet so few have been told about emotional intelligence.

The beautiful thing about emotional intelligence is that unlike iq, it can be learnt through practise and concerted effort.

Emotional quotient plays a far greater role in our success both in terms of our income and happiness than our intelligence quotient and yet is so sadly neglected by so many.

Does emotional intelligence mean to suppress ones emotions?
Not at all. A true master of their emotions is able to express all the emotions.

The difference then is the ability to express the right emotion to the right person for the right amount of time and for the right reason.

Any fool can get angry with anybody at any given time. It takes emotional wisdom to express anger at the right time and to the right degree.

I would like to leave you all with a quote by Aristotle :

Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.

The blessing of role models

Readers,

When was the last time you stopped to consider who your role models are?

In life, we have the choice to ponder, reflect and choose who we want our role models to be or we will be attracted to what is sold to us as good role models in the media.

To determine who the best role models will be for us in our lives, we must first naturally determine what our goal in life is.

If we want to become rich financially for example, we should seek out role models who are rich.

If we want to become physically fit, then we should seek out role models who are the fittest.

What about if we want to become honest, truthful, humble, honorable, wise and brave? In my life, I have found no role model greater than the holy Prophet Muhammad  (peace be upon him and his family).

The question we must ask ourselves as often as possible is:

How am I modelling my own behavior on the person I claim to be my role model?

You see if we are impressed by someone, but don't try to model our lives on their lives, then we can't really claim that they are our role models. Rather we are simply fans or a more polite word is probably admirers.

I summarise by saying that as a human race, we are blessed with the ability to achieve success through imitating the actions of  people we have seen produce the results we desire so let's try and utilise this blessing more consciously for greater results.