The power of questions

Morning everyone

Have you ever stopped to consider how awesome the power to ask questions is?

One of the main ways that we learn anything is from attaining answers to questions that we ourselves have posed.

As children, we are blessed with an unlimited supply of curiosity that drives us to constantly ask questions. "But why?" is the favourite choice of words from so many young children who are beginning to find their way in life.

The sad thing is that as we get older , our will to ask questions seems to diminish for so many of us as we get busy surviving day to day.

I would like us all to reflect on a few questions about our power to ask questions.

1) How many questions do we ask daily?
2) who do we ask these questions to?
3) What benefit do we get from the answers?
4) What information are we lacking because of the failure to ask questions?
5) who can answer these questions?
6) when is the best time to ask?
7) What has stopped us asking until now?
8) who is to blame for my ignorance?

I would like to end this post with a couple of quotes and a short reflection of my own on the quotes.

1) knowledge is power.

2) knowledge is a lock and it's key is the question.

Power is one of the most sought after and admired things in the world and yet the key to its lock is available to each and every one of us, but we don't care to utilise it.

I hope that you have enjoyed reading this and it has inspired you to ask more and better questions.

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

The power to chart your daily activities

Morning everyone.

Have you ever planned to start a simple new habit like eating a piece of fruit every day, but found yourself failing to keep it going for longer than a few days?

This has happened to me countless times. I have always ended up frustrated and disappointed with myself. This is because most habits I have sought to make a part of my life are easy to do, but also easy to skip as well.

Just over a week ago, I purchased a white board and white board markers. I used a permanent marker to create a 10 by 7 grid and on the left hand side of the grid I put the days of the week. Across the top, I put in the 10 habits that I want to be measuring myself on daily.

Each day, if I do the task, I put a green tick in the grid. If I fail, I put a red x. What I have found over the last week that I have been using this chart is a lot of green ticks.

It has led to both increased productivity as well as greater happiness.

I hope that I have the discipline to maintain the using of the chart.

It is a system that I would recommend to everyone. It takes very little time to set up and maintain and could help focus your day to day activities beautifully.

I hope that you have found this post useful. I will hopefully be back in the next week or so with another post.

The power to reflect

Readers,

How often do we utilise our power to reflect?

Too many of us are too busy surviving day to day without ever taking time out to actually ponder
upon life's most important questions.

Where did we come from?
What happens to us after we die?
Are we going to be held accountable for our actions?
How are we supposed to know how to live our lives?
How are we supposed to know if we are living successful lives?
What is the barometer for success and failure?
How do I even know that my barometer for success and failure is correct?
Is everyone free to make their own barometer for success and failure?
What if I have thought about these things and come up with the "wrong " answers?
What about if I haven't even bothered to think about them and the whole point of my existence
was to reflect on them?

Life is very short and very important. We only get to live once so it's imperative to do it right! If we get it wrong, we have to live with the consequences forever thereafter.

Be thankful for the opportunity to reflect and utilise this most important gift that has been
bestowed upon us.

Remember that there are multiple
religions with multiple sects within each religion. It may not be
possible to study them all. However it ought to be the goal of every seeker of truth to explore the
world religions with as an open mind as possible in the hope of finding a way of life that
brings about peace, hope, tranquility and the confidence to be able to defend your beliefs if and when
we are questioned and/or challenged about them by the creator who bestowed upon us the
power to reflect.

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.