It was early in the morning at four, When death knocked upon a bedroom door.
Who is there? The sleeping one cried. I'm Malkul Maut, let me inside.
At once, the man began to shiver, As one sweating in deadly fever,
He shouted to his sleeping wife, Don't let him take away my life.
Please go away, O Angel of Death! Leave me alone; I'm not ready yet.
My parents and family on me depends, Give me a chance, O please prepense!
The angel knocked again and again, Friend! I'll take your life without a pain,
Tis your soul Allah requires, I come not with my own desires..
Bewildered, the man began to cry, O Angel I'm so afraid to die,
I'll give you gold and be your slave, Don't send me to the unlit grave.
Let me in, O Friend! The Angel said, Open the door; get up from your bed,
If you do not allow me in, I will walk through it, like a Jinn.
The man held a gun in his hand, Ready to defy the Angel's stand..
I'll point my gun, towards your head, You dare come in; I'll shoot you dead.
By now the Angel was in the room, Saying, O Friend! Prepare for you doom.
Foolish man, Angels never die, Put down your gun and do not sigh.
Why are you afraid! Tell me O man, To die according to Allah's plan?
Come smile at me, do not be grim, Be Happy, to return to Him.
O Angel! I bow my head in shame; I had no time to take Allah's Name.
From morning till dusk, I made my wealth, Not even caring for my own health.
Allah's command I never obeyed, Nor five times a day I ever prayed.
Ramadan came and a Ramadan went, But I had no time to repent.
The Hajj was already FARD on me, But I would not part with my money.
All charities I did ignore, Taking usury more and more.
Sometimes I sipped my favorite wine, With flirting women I sat to dine...
O Angel! I appeal to you, Spare my life for a year or two.
The Laws of Quran I will obey, I'll begin my SALAT this very day.
My Fast and Hajj, I will complete, And keep away from self-conceit.
I will refrain from usury, And give all my wealth to charity,
Wine and wenches I will detest, Allah's oneness I will attest.
We Angels do what Allah demands, We cannot go against His commands..
Death is ordained for everyone, Father, mother, daughter or son.
I'm afraid this moment is your last, Now be reminded, of your past,
Do understand your dreadful fears, But it is now too late for your tears.
You lived in this world, two score and more, Never did to you, your people adore.
Your parents, you did not obey, Hungry beggars, you turned away.
Your two ill-gotten, female offspring, In nightclubs, for livelihood they sing.
Instead of making many more Muslims, You made your children non-Muslims?
You did ignore the Mua'dhin Adhaan, Nor did you read the Holy Quran.
Breaking promises all your life, Backbiting friends, and causing strife.
From hoarded goods, great profits you made, And for your poor workers, you underpaid.
Horses and cars were your leisure, Moneymaking was your pleasure.
You ate vitamins and grew more fat, With the very sick, you never sat.
A pint of blood you never gave, Which could a little baby save?
O Human, you have done enough wrong, You bought good properties for a song.
When the farmers appealed to you, You did not have mercy, tis true.
Paradise for you? I cannot tell, Undoubtedly you will dwell in hell.
There is no time for you to repent, I'll take your soul for which I am sent.
The ending however, is very sad, Eventually the man became mad
With a cry, he jumped out of bed, And suddenly, he fell down dead.
O Reader! Take moral from here, You never know, your end may be near.
Change your living and make amends For heaven, on your deeds depends.
if this poem inspires you, It can help someone too.
At least take sometime, and do not ban And send it to as many people as you can.
This poem may change many lives, And Allah may have for you a great surprise.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Ideas For Studying Quran At Mosque Like A Pro
Ideas For Studying Quran At Mosque Like A Pro
Monday, 12 September 2011
In the name of God, compassionate, merciful بسم الله الرحمن الرحيمِ | Peace be with you السلام عليكم
When you're 7 years old and sat on the floor of a shed-like building adopted for the madrasa, you do slip into an unanswerable thought of an unquenched mind. "Why is after-school mosque so boring? How come school, that's longer and more far away, is really fun and you get to play?
But the only happy time is on Fridays when Ustadh gives us a reward for leaving."
I didn't hate mosque teaching. Mosques are the go-between steps from our first education with our parents, to being raised by state schools. But I had justified my dislike of an institution that used chalkboards for data storage, and public Qur'an recitals as disciplinary action. I resigned from madrasa aged 9.
Studying the Qur'an to this day still excites me. It's exciting in the way a theme park is. Our mosques in Britain have kept the tradition of traditions yet a majority of them lack the basic attitude required to invite new minds: enthusiasm.
When iPads and retina scans are the paper and ink of our state schools, I desperately want to see more resources being used in mosques. And I believe it begins with a more creative approach to presenting the Qur'an. Whether the student is aged 5 or 40.
Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said,
"The deen (lifestyle) of Islam is very easy and whoever overburdens himself in his religion will not be able to continue in that way. So follow a middle course (in worship), but try to be near to perfection and receive the good tidings that you will be rewarded; and gain strength by worshipping in the mornings, and some part of the night." (Bukhari)
Idea: Use Qur'an apps and create posters
I memorise Qur'an quite basically using the mushaf, the text book copy, and study it using contemporary technologies - whatever is available to me, computers, mp3s and apps. Nothing beats holding the book itself though.
What you need to make Qur'an learning awesomely fun
Coloured markers, pencils, highlighters, stationery, crayons
Binders, flash cards, poster paper, tabbed project books, hifdh log book
White boards, illustrated Arabic alphabet guides, sticky notes, zipped folders
MP3 player, Qur'an CDs, simple Qur'an translations, audio recorder
A computer, Microsoft Office software, USBs
Idea: An illustrated Qur'an
For the message to penetrate a young heart so it's permanent, the person has to be constantly engaged with it. Breaking down chapters into mind-maps and posters to hang on the mosque wall makes a school-like environment of visual learning.
After a reading and memorising session more hands-on activity needs to take place. Computer tests, Qur'an board games, connective "trump" cards to jog a child's memory are what my parents and I already use (we're a bunch of teachers).
Using active tools is for kinesthetic learning and it's a predominant learning style (especially in boys) so unless the Qur'an reader has a groupie to sit and regularly recite to, the words will jumble around without implementation in real life.
On MUSLIMNESS we interviewed the 'Reading With Meaning' photographer who recreated each Qur'an ayat using Lego. That's innovative learning and it enhances the message.
Read {20 Time Management Tips For Muslims}
Idea: Keep tabs on your Qur'an
Both students and teachers have to find the Qur'an contents captivating in a similar style. It's not enough that the teacher is spiritually in love with the Holy book - how does this love transcend to a mind in order to broaden his or her thinking?
A simple investment in 'Dhikr Notes helps the student mark out similar themes, goals to achieve, and duas or verses to learn. Larger post-it notes can be used as book marks and do underline areas for improvement. Teachers can list strengths and weaknesses in a planner for the child to show parents. Simple reports are already in use throughout mosques and with a little expansion, a high quality table format using a PC can be sent home periodically to say, "your child's done all this, masha'Allah!"
Never, ever, ever write in your Qur'an with a pen! Encourage your students and yourself to make notes in the blank margin of a translation in pencil. A notebook should be used as a homework planner, to jot important references and to take down tafsir. If you've taken a break from Qur'an reading in a state of wudhu, get a translation and read up on the prophets' stories - Surah Yusuf, the romance between Musa `alayhisalam and his wife Safura, the difficulties of Prophet Ayoub `alayhisalam, and qualities of Heaven, life after death, halal food and environmental practices. It's all there in that Glorious Book. You just need to find and remember it.
And to achieve this, we invest in colour, marker pens and a whole lotta drawing.
Idea: Organise your Qur'an
I got a hold of an A6 sized binder made specifically for flash cards (note cards, revision cads, whatever you want to call them). It's about 15 cm in length, is slightly larger than a travel size Qur'an and is perfect for older students who are memorising the holy book.
Qur'an hifdh memorisation traditionally begins with a qualified teacher who has ijaza. He or she must ensure the students use the same large print copy of the Qur'an, are recapping each verse daily without break and are engaged with the text, using appropriate creative methods.
After I've memorised a few verses I like to get them checked by my teachers. I repeat them to everyone I know, and I will record my recitation to keep a log of mistakes and corrections. I will also copy out the Arabic to understand how the words are connected what each letter means. For children, a hifdh log book is a fantastic idea, available from Learning Roots. *Review to follow.
I take my travel size Qur'an (10cm) to weddings, on trips and public transport
Eventually, when the memorisation and applciation of higher level tajweed and translation is complete, you want to condense it down. It needs to be in a "documented file" in your brain so reading the Arabic text alone, you're able to give a talk on a chapter or a theme and create entertaining powerpoint presentations to show children the content.
For myself, flash cards are the peak of learning as I use just one card to bullet point the entire history, context, message and Arabic linguistics of one chapter - mostly those shorter chapters in the 30th 'juz, volume of the Qur'an.
Surah al-Maun for example is a 7 versed chapter in the 30th 'juz, related to charity. It compares the believers who worship God through physical prayer only to appear pious, with those who are real tight (mean) with their generosity towards orphans and the needy.
After memorisation, a study period of tafsir, interprepation and explanation, all I need are two keywords to bring forward the whole chapter in my mind.
1. Ya du`u = (يَدُعُّ) a verb that comes from the root da`a (دَعَّ) and means to "repel, repulse, thrust, push back and drive away with violence".
2. Ya Huddu = (يَحُضُّ) another verb, is from the root word hadda (حَضَّ) meaning to "encourage, urge, pull, inspire."
Ya huddu: encourage, is mentioned in verse 3 and is the exact opposite of ya du`u in verse 2: repel. For me, these two words represent the core of the chapter which is why I focused on them.
I wrote these two verses out, highlighting the two keywords and connecting them with their meanings. Surah Maun is in my head but I can recall some of the detailed meaning from beginning to end using one flash card.
Now that's exciting.
Monday, 12 September 2011
In the name of God, compassionate, merciful بسم الله الرحمن الرحيمِ | Peace be with you السلام عليكم
When you're 7 years old and sat on the floor of a shed-like building adopted for the madrasa, you do slip into an unanswerable thought of an unquenched mind. "Why is after-school mosque so boring? How come school, that's longer and more far away, is really fun and you get to play?
But the only happy time is on Fridays when Ustadh gives us a reward for leaving."
I didn't hate mosque teaching. Mosques are the go-between steps from our first education with our parents, to being raised by state schools. But I had justified my dislike of an institution that used chalkboards for data storage, and public Qur'an recitals as disciplinary action. I resigned from madrasa aged 9.
Studying the Qur'an to this day still excites me. It's exciting in the way a theme park is. Our mosques in Britain have kept the tradition of traditions yet a majority of them lack the basic attitude required to invite new minds: enthusiasm.
When iPads and retina scans are the paper and ink of our state schools, I desperately want to see more resources being used in mosques. And I believe it begins with a more creative approach to presenting the Qur'an. Whether the student is aged 5 or 40.
Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said,
"The deen (lifestyle) of Islam is very easy and whoever overburdens himself in his religion will not be able to continue in that way. So follow a middle course (in worship), but try to be near to perfection and receive the good tidings that you will be rewarded; and gain strength by worshipping in the mornings, and some part of the night." (Bukhari)
Idea: Use Qur'an apps and create posters
I memorise Qur'an quite basically using the mushaf, the text book copy, and study it using contemporary technologies - whatever is available to me, computers, mp3s and apps. Nothing beats holding the book itself though.
What you need to make Qur'an learning awesomely fun
Coloured markers, pencils, highlighters, stationery, crayons
Binders, flash cards, poster paper, tabbed project books, hifdh log book
White boards, illustrated Arabic alphabet guides, sticky notes, zipped folders
MP3 player, Qur'an CDs, simple Qur'an translations, audio recorder
A computer, Microsoft Office software, USBs
Idea: An illustrated Qur'an
For the message to penetrate a young heart so it's permanent, the person has to be constantly engaged with it. Breaking down chapters into mind-maps and posters to hang on the mosque wall makes a school-like environment of visual learning.
After a reading and memorising session more hands-on activity needs to take place. Computer tests, Qur'an board games, connective "trump" cards to jog a child's memory are what my parents and I already use (we're a bunch of teachers).
Using active tools is for kinesthetic learning and it's a predominant learning style (especially in boys) so unless the Qur'an reader has a groupie to sit and regularly recite to, the words will jumble around without implementation in real life.
On MUSLIMNESS we interviewed the 'Reading With Meaning' photographer who recreated each Qur'an ayat using Lego. That's innovative learning and it enhances the message.
Read {20 Time Management Tips For Muslims}
Idea: Keep tabs on your Qur'an
Both students and teachers have to find the Qur'an contents captivating in a similar style. It's not enough that the teacher is spiritually in love with the Holy book - how does this love transcend to a mind in order to broaden his or her thinking?
A simple investment in 'Dhikr Notes helps the student mark out similar themes, goals to achieve, and duas or verses to learn. Larger post-it notes can be used as book marks and do underline areas for improvement. Teachers can list strengths and weaknesses in a planner for the child to show parents. Simple reports are already in use throughout mosques and with a little expansion, a high quality table format using a PC can be sent home periodically to say, "your child's done all this, masha'Allah!"
Never, ever, ever write in your Qur'an with a pen! Encourage your students and yourself to make notes in the blank margin of a translation in pencil. A notebook should be used as a homework planner, to jot important references and to take down tafsir. If you've taken a break from Qur'an reading in a state of wudhu, get a translation and read up on the prophets' stories - Surah Yusuf, the romance between Musa `alayhisalam and his wife Safura, the difficulties of Prophet Ayoub `alayhisalam, and qualities of Heaven, life after death, halal food and environmental practices. It's all there in that Glorious Book. You just need to find and remember it.
And to achieve this, we invest in colour, marker pens and a whole lotta drawing.
Idea: Organise your Qur'an
I got a hold of an A6 sized binder made specifically for flash cards (note cards, revision cads, whatever you want to call them). It's about 15 cm in length, is slightly larger than a travel size Qur'an and is perfect for older students who are memorising the holy book.
Qur'an hifdh memorisation traditionally begins with a qualified teacher who has ijaza. He or she must ensure the students use the same large print copy of the Qur'an, are recapping each verse daily without break and are engaged with the text, using appropriate creative methods.
After I've memorised a few verses I like to get them checked by my teachers. I repeat them to everyone I know, and I will record my recitation to keep a log of mistakes and corrections. I will also copy out the Arabic to understand how the words are connected what each letter means. For children, a hifdh log book is a fantastic idea, available from Learning Roots. *Review to follow.
I take my travel size Qur'an (10cm) to weddings, on trips and public transport
Eventually, when the memorisation and applciation of higher level tajweed and translation is complete, you want to condense it down. It needs to be in a "documented file" in your brain so reading the Arabic text alone, you're able to give a talk on a chapter or a theme and create entertaining powerpoint presentations to show children the content.
For myself, flash cards are the peak of learning as I use just one card to bullet point the entire history, context, message and Arabic linguistics of one chapter - mostly those shorter chapters in the 30th 'juz, volume of the Qur'an.
Surah al-Maun for example is a 7 versed chapter in the 30th 'juz, related to charity. It compares the believers who worship God through physical prayer only to appear pious, with those who are real tight (mean) with their generosity towards orphans and the needy.
After memorisation, a study period of tafsir, interprepation and explanation, all I need are two keywords to bring forward the whole chapter in my mind.
1. Ya du`u = (يَدُعُّ) a verb that comes from the root da`a (دَعَّ) and means to "repel, repulse, thrust, push back and drive away with violence".
2. Ya Huddu = (يَحُضُّ) another verb, is from the root word hadda (حَضَّ) meaning to "encourage, urge, pull, inspire."
Ya huddu: encourage, is mentioned in verse 3 and is the exact opposite of ya du`u in verse 2: repel. For me, these two words represent the core of the chapter which is why I focused on them.
I wrote these two verses out, highlighting the two keywords and connecting them with their meanings. Surah Maun is in my head but I can recall some of the detailed meaning from beginning to end using one flash card.
Now that's exciting.
7 Attributes that Matter
[Taken from Simple Dollar]
A while back, I sat down to make a list of the attributes of the people I consider to be great people. I could give you a long list of them, from Theodore Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi to my dad, but the point isn’t so much the list of people but the attributes of those people.
The people I admire are usually people who made something great from auspicious backgrounds or stepped up to the plate during challenging moments or were able to find incredible success in different areas. Some of them were rich and others were poor. Many of them paired traits I admired with traits that I didn’t (like Steve Jobs).
I was trying to figure out what made each of them great. In each case, the list was somewhat different. I would try to think of several traits that would make one person great, then find myself making a different list for another person.
When I was doing this, I found myself looking for patterns. I found no two people had all of the same traits, but I began to find lots of overlap between people. I’d see some of the same traits popping up over and over again.
Eventually, I began to realize that there were seven traits that kept showing up again and again in the people I admired the most. None of them had all of these traits, but they were shared so often among the people I considered that I began to see them as seven attributes that really matter. If you have these attributes inside of you or, even more importantly, are willing to work to improve yourself in these areas, I think you’ll find a path to whatever your dreams may hold.
Lately, these seven traits have become something of a self-improvement checklist of mine. I hope they do for you, too.
Self-Belief
Self-belief simply means that you believe you can accomplish things. When you see a difficult task before you, do you start convincing yourself that you can’t do it or do you start looking for a way to make it happen? Self-belief is, of course, the latter.
Without self-belief, it becomes very hard to take on large challenges in your life. Instead, you’ll avoid the challenges, seeking easier paths which won’t be particularly rewarding.
How can you build self-belief? The easiest way is to show yourself that you can do it. Start challenging yourself with personal projects that aren’t easy (but that are actually achievable). Can you walk 2,000 miles this year? Can you write a novel before the end of March? Set that plan down and focus all your energy on making it happen. The more you achieve, the more your self-belief will grow.
Humility
Of course, it’s easy for self-belief to turn into arrogance, which is a dangerous trait to have. You can easily begin to believe that you are the secret sauce that makes things happen and that you make the world go around.
Sorry, it’s not true.
Humility simply means that you understand that the world doesn’t begin and end with you. Virtually everything in your life is a collaboration. As I type this post, I’m relying on software from Microsoft and Apple and several open source projects. The ideas that flow through my head came through countless sources. The inspiration for this post was other people. I know that I am merely a small part of the reason for the success of this site or this article, and without those tools and things created by others, I wouldn’t be here and there would be no Simple Dollar.
A good way to practice humility is to think about how many people had to be involved to bring you the things you take for granted. Start with the device you’re reading this on. Who made it? Who wrote the software that runs on it? All of those people deserve some credit for making what you’re doing right now happen. You’re actually just a very tiny part of that exchange.
Self-Reliance
Let’s turn this rock over again and look at another facet: self-reliance. Self-reliance simply means that you’re able to come up with solutions to problems with as little direct outside help as possible. A self-reliant person is willing and able to fix their own toilet, grow their own food, and figure out what they’re supposed to do next.
Self-reliance combines well with self-belief. Self-belief means you think you can do anything. Self-reliance means you’re able to start coming up with methods to actually do it without someone guiding you.
How do you improve self-reliance? Start taking on tasks that you think might be difficult. Yes, you might mess them up. Yes, that’s okay. The key is that you’re trying to do things on your own and, more often than not, you’re succeeding at them. Self-reliance becomes something of a snowball rolling down the mountain, where you start to tie achieved tasks together and before you know it, you’re planning large projects on the fly.
Love of Learning
A key part of one’s ability to succeed in any area is knowledge acquisition. Do you know what’s going on in that area? Do you know the people involved? Do you have a thorough base of knowledge upon which you can interact with other people driven to succeed?
Obviously, one can acquire knowledge without enjoying the process, but a love of learning certainly makes the process easier. If you love learning, then the thought of tackling something new in order to understand it in depth sounds exciting. You can’t wait to get started!
My perspective has been that a love of knowledge is often a snowball effect. If you start off just picking one topic you really want to understand and focus on learning more about that topic, you often tend to slowly spread into other topics. Eventually, learning itself becomes a joyful journey.
Adaptability
Situations change. Opportunities appear and disappear. One day you find yourself in a scientific research field, another you find yourself being a writer on financial topics (not that I’m speaking from experience or anything…).
Some people are able to roll with the punches. If the problems and the situations change, then they change their tactics to go along with it. Others just lock down in uncertain and changing situations.
The more adaptable you are to change, the more likely you are to succeed at whatever life throws at you.
Adaptability, of course, draws on self-reliance, but they differ in one key aspect: adaptability sometimes causes you to inherently rely on others. Self-reliance, in a way, is just a key tool for adaptability.
How do you build adaptability? The key is to watch your own behavior. When a situation changes, do you respond by retreating into your shell? If you do, make a very focused effort to come out of that shell and just deal with the new situation. The more you do it, the easier it becomes.
Passion
By passion, I mean that whatever it is that you choose to be doing, you get swept away in it. It consumes your thoughts. It brings you incredible joy when you’re doing it, particularly when you see improvement at it.
When you wake up in the morning, you’re raring to get started on that thing you’re passionate about. When you go to bed, it fills your thoughts until you go to sleep.
Some people are prone to passion. Others are more withdrawn. Yet, time and time again, when I witness someone doing something great, passion is at work.
How can you build passion? The key, really, is just letting go of a sense that you shouldn’t dive in deep. So often, I see people afraid to be passionate because of the cultural constraints around them. They don’t want to be a “nerd.” So often, though, the people who do amazing things are nerds. Their passion drives them to do something special. Let go. Be a nerd.
Detail-Oriented Focus
When you work, do you find yourself focusing hard on the project at hand? Do you often notice details that other people miss? Do you want the details to be right when you care about a project? Can you get so involved with a project that wild horses can barely drag you away?
A person who can answer “yes” to those questions has detail-oriented focus. They have the ability to take something they’re working on and make it great.
Detail-oriented focus can be built by training one’s attention span. Start by eliminating all distractions when you’re working on a project. When you find yourself daydreaming, take a break and do something else for a while, then go back into focus mode. The more you practice this, the better you’ll get at focusing. You’ll eventually be able to reach what I call “the zone,” where time just seems to slip away as I focus on a project.
These seven traits pop up in some combination in every great person that I know. They’ll lead you to success, too.
A while back, I sat down to make a list of the attributes of the people I consider to be great people. I could give you a long list of them, from Theodore Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi to my dad, but the point isn’t so much the list of people but the attributes of those people.
The people I admire are usually people who made something great from auspicious backgrounds or stepped up to the plate during challenging moments or were able to find incredible success in different areas. Some of them were rich and others were poor. Many of them paired traits I admired with traits that I didn’t (like Steve Jobs).
I was trying to figure out what made each of them great. In each case, the list was somewhat different. I would try to think of several traits that would make one person great, then find myself making a different list for another person.
When I was doing this, I found myself looking for patterns. I found no two people had all of the same traits, but I began to find lots of overlap between people. I’d see some of the same traits popping up over and over again.
Eventually, I began to realize that there were seven traits that kept showing up again and again in the people I admired the most. None of them had all of these traits, but they were shared so often among the people I considered that I began to see them as seven attributes that really matter. If you have these attributes inside of you or, even more importantly, are willing to work to improve yourself in these areas, I think you’ll find a path to whatever your dreams may hold.
Lately, these seven traits have become something of a self-improvement checklist of mine. I hope they do for you, too.
Self-Belief
Self-belief simply means that you believe you can accomplish things. When you see a difficult task before you, do you start convincing yourself that you can’t do it or do you start looking for a way to make it happen? Self-belief is, of course, the latter.
Without self-belief, it becomes very hard to take on large challenges in your life. Instead, you’ll avoid the challenges, seeking easier paths which won’t be particularly rewarding.
How can you build self-belief? The easiest way is to show yourself that you can do it. Start challenging yourself with personal projects that aren’t easy (but that are actually achievable). Can you walk 2,000 miles this year? Can you write a novel before the end of March? Set that plan down and focus all your energy on making it happen. The more you achieve, the more your self-belief will grow.
Humility
Of course, it’s easy for self-belief to turn into arrogance, which is a dangerous trait to have. You can easily begin to believe that you are the secret sauce that makes things happen and that you make the world go around.
Sorry, it’s not true.
Humility simply means that you understand that the world doesn’t begin and end with you. Virtually everything in your life is a collaboration. As I type this post, I’m relying on software from Microsoft and Apple and several open source projects. The ideas that flow through my head came through countless sources. The inspiration for this post was other people. I know that I am merely a small part of the reason for the success of this site or this article, and without those tools and things created by others, I wouldn’t be here and there would be no Simple Dollar.
A good way to practice humility is to think about how many people had to be involved to bring you the things you take for granted. Start with the device you’re reading this on. Who made it? Who wrote the software that runs on it? All of those people deserve some credit for making what you’re doing right now happen. You’re actually just a very tiny part of that exchange.
Self-Reliance
Let’s turn this rock over again and look at another facet: self-reliance. Self-reliance simply means that you’re able to come up with solutions to problems with as little direct outside help as possible. A self-reliant person is willing and able to fix their own toilet, grow their own food, and figure out what they’re supposed to do next.
Self-reliance combines well with self-belief. Self-belief means you think you can do anything. Self-reliance means you’re able to start coming up with methods to actually do it without someone guiding you.
How do you improve self-reliance? Start taking on tasks that you think might be difficult. Yes, you might mess them up. Yes, that’s okay. The key is that you’re trying to do things on your own and, more often than not, you’re succeeding at them. Self-reliance becomes something of a snowball rolling down the mountain, where you start to tie achieved tasks together and before you know it, you’re planning large projects on the fly.
Love of Learning
A key part of one’s ability to succeed in any area is knowledge acquisition. Do you know what’s going on in that area? Do you know the people involved? Do you have a thorough base of knowledge upon which you can interact with other people driven to succeed?
Obviously, one can acquire knowledge without enjoying the process, but a love of learning certainly makes the process easier. If you love learning, then the thought of tackling something new in order to understand it in depth sounds exciting. You can’t wait to get started!
My perspective has been that a love of knowledge is often a snowball effect. If you start off just picking one topic you really want to understand and focus on learning more about that topic, you often tend to slowly spread into other topics. Eventually, learning itself becomes a joyful journey.
Adaptability
Situations change. Opportunities appear and disappear. One day you find yourself in a scientific research field, another you find yourself being a writer on financial topics (not that I’m speaking from experience or anything…).
Some people are able to roll with the punches. If the problems and the situations change, then they change their tactics to go along with it. Others just lock down in uncertain and changing situations.
The more adaptable you are to change, the more likely you are to succeed at whatever life throws at you.
Adaptability, of course, draws on self-reliance, but they differ in one key aspect: adaptability sometimes causes you to inherently rely on others. Self-reliance, in a way, is just a key tool for adaptability.
How do you build adaptability? The key is to watch your own behavior. When a situation changes, do you respond by retreating into your shell? If you do, make a very focused effort to come out of that shell and just deal with the new situation. The more you do it, the easier it becomes.
Passion
By passion, I mean that whatever it is that you choose to be doing, you get swept away in it. It consumes your thoughts. It brings you incredible joy when you’re doing it, particularly when you see improvement at it.
When you wake up in the morning, you’re raring to get started on that thing you’re passionate about. When you go to bed, it fills your thoughts until you go to sleep.
Some people are prone to passion. Others are more withdrawn. Yet, time and time again, when I witness someone doing something great, passion is at work.
How can you build passion? The key, really, is just letting go of a sense that you shouldn’t dive in deep. So often, I see people afraid to be passionate because of the cultural constraints around them. They don’t want to be a “nerd.” So often, though, the people who do amazing things are nerds. Their passion drives them to do something special. Let go. Be a nerd.
Detail-Oriented Focus
When you work, do you find yourself focusing hard on the project at hand? Do you often notice details that other people miss? Do you want the details to be right when you care about a project? Can you get so involved with a project that wild horses can barely drag you away?
A person who can answer “yes” to those questions has detail-oriented focus. They have the ability to take something they’re working on and make it great.
Detail-oriented focus can be built by training one’s attention span. Start by eliminating all distractions when you’re working on a project. When you find yourself daydreaming, take a break and do something else for a while, then go back into focus mode. The more you practice this, the better you’ll get at focusing. You’ll eventually be able to reach what I call “the zone,” where time just seems to slip away as I focus on a project.
These seven traits pop up in some combination in every great person that I know. They’ll lead you to success, too.
More Valuable than Money or Possessions
[Taken from the Simple Dollar]
There was a time about eight years ago when I woke up thinking about the possessions I had and the money I was earning. I was a collector of stuff and I was immensely proud of the money I was earning. Not only did I want lots of stuff for my own enjoyment, I also wanted to flaunt it to a certain extent.
Over time, though, I began to realize that something was missing in my life. There were things that I wanted in my life that were drifting farther and farther away from me.
I wanted the freedom to write for a living because I deeply enjoy the written word.
I wanted a strong relationship with my wife.
I wanted a strong relationship with my children and to raise them into a self-reliant and curiosity-filled adulthood.
I wanted time to read and enjoy books – not to collect them, but to read and enjoy them.
I wanted to build a close circle of friends that would stick with me through thick and thin (as I would stick with them).
My life was focused heavily on my income and possessions, but it really felt empty after a while.
Eventually, after I realized that I really needed to turn my financial situation around, I began to really focus on the things above as the center of my life. Each of them – along with another focus or two that I’ve added since then – pushes me to build a great life that I enjoy without spending money.
Writing only requires a computer and trips to the library to do research.
A relationship with my wife requires just time and attention, as does a relationship with my children.
Reading just requires time, along with those aforementioned trips to the library.
A close circle of friends mostly just requires time and attention.
Better health (a newer focus) requires time to exercise and attention to the foods I eat.
There’s no significant money being spent on any of these things, yet they fill up the vast majority of my time and attention. These are the components of a life that I’m happy leading.
For me, a major key to financial success was simply taking stock of my life and figuring out what I wanted most from it. When you’re not doing that, it’s easy to get distracted by the constant hum of consumerism that fills life in the United States, from the advertisements to the product placement within programs, from the social influences to the pressure to be seen as affluent.
Take some time to step back and ask yourself what’s genuinely important to you. What really matters in your life? Step back from the things you invest your time, money, and energy into and focus instead on maximizing those things that matter most to you.
You might find that financial success comes easier than you think.
Over time, though, I began to realize that something was missing in my life. There were things that I wanted in my life that were drifting farther and farther away from me.
I wanted the freedom to write for a living because I deeply enjoy the written word.
I wanted a strong relationship with my wife.
I wanted a strong relationship with my children and to raise them into a self-reliant and curiosity-filled adulthood.
I wanted time to read and enjoy books – not to collect them, but to read and enjoy them.
I wanted to build a close circle of friends that would stick with me through thick and thin (as I would stick with them).
My life was focused heavily on my income and possessions, but it really felt empty after a while.
Eventually, after I realized that I really needed to turn my financial situation around, I began to really focus on the things above as the center of my life. Each of them – along with another focus or two that I’ve added since then – pushes me to build a great life that I enjoy without spending money.
Writing only requires a computer and trips to the library to do research.
A relationship with my wife requires just time and attention, as does a relationship with my children.
Reading just requires time, along with those aforementioned trips to the library.
A close circle of friends mostly just requires time and attention.
Better health (a newer focus) requires time to exercise and attention to the foods I eat.
There’s no significant money being spent on any of these things, yet they fill up the vast majority of my time and attention. These are the components of a life that I’m happy leading.
For me, a major key to financial success was simply taking stock of my life and figuring out what I wanted most from it. When you’re not doing that, it’s easy to get distracted by the constant hum of consumerism that fills life in the United States, from the advertisements to the product placement within programs, from the social influences to the pressure to be seen as affluent.
Take some time to step back and ask yourself what’s genuinely important to you. What really matters in your life? Step back from the things you invest your time, money, and energy into and focus instead on maximizing those things that matter most to you.
You might find that financial success comes easier than you think.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Are you ready to change?
[Taken from Simple Dollar]
When I first entered college, I was not mentally prepared for it. I didn’t have adequate study skills, nor did I have the focus or patience to do the work that needed to be done to really succeed. My first two and a half years of college were spent simply focusing on doing the minimum I needed to do to keep my scholarships.
At about the end of my fifth semester or so, I woke up. I went from struggling to stay in school to making the dean’s list while majoring in two hard sciences. I couldn’t completely undo the performance of my first three years in school, but I certainly left college on a completely different trajectory than when I entered it.
When I was mentally ready for it, I was completely able to take control of my education and career trajectory.
Later on, I spent myself into a pretty deep financial hole. We had a mountain of credit card and other consumer debt. Throughout 2004 and 2005, we just kept spending and spending, digging the hole deeper and deeper.
When our first child arrived on the scene, my perspective began to change on a lot of things in my life. I began to realize that I was not only responsible for my own path, but for the path of this tiny child. I turned the ship around, and today Sarah and I own a home and are completely debt free.
When I was mentally ready for it, I was completely able to take control of my finances.
Sometimes, we’re not mentally ready for the things we need to do in our lives.
I see it all the time in people around me. There are people who are just not ready to go through the hard steps needed to correct their finances or get on a different career path. They’re more interested in maximizing their enjoyment of this very moment and they just assume tomorrow will figure itself out.
I see it in myself. There are personal challenges I’d love to take on, but I often feel like I just don’t quite have it in me to make a success out of those things.
If you’re not fully on board with the changes you want to make, you’ll find it very difficult to make those changes.
So, what can you do? You’re aware of a change that needs to be made, but you’re just not quite on board with it. What’s next?
For me, introspection works better than anything. I’ve found that, time and time again, I’ve reached breakthroughs in my life by constantly looking at my life and asking myself what I want out of it and what I need to do to get there.
When I’m not ready to achieve something, the answers aren’t there yet. The key is to keep asking. Keep thinking about it. Keep reading. Keep translating that reading into the reality of your own life.
The first step is recognizing that a change needs to happen.
The second step is digging into your life and really understanding what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed.
After that, the journey can go in a lot of different directions. Different things work well for different people as long as you have that foundation of understanding what needs changed and you’re truly committed to it. Without that foundation, changing your life is next to impossible.
When I first entered college, I was not mentally prepared for it. I didn’t have adequate study skills, nor did I have the focus or patience to do the work that needed to be done to really succeed. My first two and a half years of college were spent simply focusing on doing the minimum I needed to do to keep my scholarships.
At about the end of my fifth semester or so, I woke up. I went from struggling to stay in school to making the dean’s list while majoring in two hard sciences. I couldn’t completely undo the performance of my first three years in school, but I certainly left college on a completely different trajectory than when I entered it.
When I was mentally ready for it, I was completely able to take control of my education and career trajectory.
Later on, I spent myself into a pretty deep financial hole. We had a mountain of credit card and other consumer debt. Throughout 2004 and 2005, we just kept spending and spending, digging the hole deeper and deeper.
When our first child arrived on the scene, my perspective began to change on a lot of things in my life. I began to realize that I was not only responsible for my own path, but for the path of this tiny child. I turned the ship around, and today Sarah and I own a home and are completely debt free.
When I was mentally ready for it, I was completely able to take control of my finances.
Sometimes, we’re not mentally ready for the things we need to do in our lives.
I see it all the time in people around me. There are people who are just not ready to go through the hard steps needed to correct their finances or get on a different career path. They’re more interested in maximizing their enjoyment of this very moment and they just assume tomorrow will figure itself out.
I see it in myself. There are personal challenges I’d love to take on, but I often feel like I just don’t quite have it in me to make a success out of those things.
If you’re not fully on board with the changes you want to make, you’ll find it very difficult to make those changes.
So, what can you do? You’re aware of a change that needs to be made, but you’re just not quite on board with it. What’s next?
For me, introspection works better than anything. I’ve found that, time and time again, I’ve reached breakthroughs in my life by constantly looking at my life and asking myself what I want out of it and what I need to do to get there.
When I’m not ready to achieve something, the answers aren’t there yet. The key is to keep asking. Keep thinking about it. Keep reading. Keep translating that reading into the reality of your own life.
The first step is recognizing that a change needs to happen.
The second step is digging into your life and really understanding what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed.
After that, the journey can go in a lot of different directions. Different things work well for different people as long as you have that foundation of understanding what needs changed and you’re truly committed to it. Without that foundation, changing your life is next to impossible.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)