The Burning Issue
We do not think and take action effectively about where we want to see ourselves in life in 1, 2 or 5 years from now, let alone at the end of our lives.
Causes
The causes for delaying this planning are many in number, ranging from laziness, uncertainties as there are too many variables to consider, lack of awareness of the consequences, carelessness, indifference as we are not concerned about finding the purpose of life, etc.
Consequences
The consequences include poor or no planning, stress, hopelessness, more stress, mediocre or poor quality results, even more stress, lowering of self-standards, repetition of all these in a continuous cycle. These lead to us living a life not lived to our full potential and uncountable gifts from Allah Al-Wahhab, the One Who gifts continuously, being not used and appreciated well enough. And inevitably so, how can anyone ever be appreciative of a magnificent flower that never bloomed in the first place?
This applies quite a bit both in our worship and life decisions. Like most people, I have been there and can totally relate to this situation. I am here to tell you that there is a solution to end this once and for all.
The Recipe of Redemption
Everyone needs to plan in life, even if they don’t want to or fool themselves by thinking that they don’t need to. Whether we realise it or not, there is usually always something vague sitting at the back of our mind about issues that matter to us. Planning is a lot about allowing these hazy thoughts to come to light. The life of the Prophet (sallallahu alaihi wa sallam) is full of lessons where he planned to the best of his abilities even though Allah was the One taking care of him miraculously. As the famous saying goes, Failing to plan is actually planning to fail.
Often people do make conscious efforts and take decisions to achieve something in life. Unfortunately, this mostly surfaces as New Year resolutions. This gradually vanishes as the year gets ‘older’. At best, some people put some deep thought into the major events coming up in their lives but eventually these events take the form of chronic stress to haunt them and voraciously consume their peace of mind.
The thing to always remember about plans is that, successful execution of a plan only occurs when your plans are aligned with Allah’s Will. The best and ultimate Planner is Allah Al-‘Aleem, the One who is most knowledgeable. He knows exactly which path leads where, the time that path will take, the bumps waiting in that path and, most importantly, if there is any other path more suited and beneficial for you. This automatically means that if you have Allah on your side, you will never have to walk away empty-handed – a simple logic that so many of us fail to realise. If we really could internalize this simple lesson, it would manifest in our total submission to Him.
And there is no better time to plan for life than Ramadan, when it becomes easiest to submit to Allah wholly and connect with Him like never before.
The Ingenious Ingredients
Here comes the C-WAR lists to help you take effective steps in future planning this Ramadan!
- The List of Changes
- The Wishlist
- The List of Actions
- The List of Repentance
#1 The List of Changes
This is something to be started on as soon as possible and continued throughout Ramadan and hopefully life. Make a conscious effort to ponder upon your own preferences in life – how you see things to be in an ideal scenario. Try to picture how they are now and identify your strengths and weaknesses regarding them. Seems too vague? Read on.
Our habits determine who we are and who we become. Analyze your daily habits carefully, good and bad. Then start making a list of things you would like to change – bad habits you want to get rid of and good ones that you want to engrain in life. Just being aware of where we are at a particular moment and where we should be is about 50% progress in successfully changing ourselves for the better. The rest is done when you keep the following in mind and act accordingly:
- Start small and take little but measurable steps towards your goal. For example, if you want to get rid of a bad habit like smoking, decrease your daily number of puffs over time. 10 to 8 to 6, small but measurable. If you want to make a habit of reading Qur’an and its meaning daily for 20 minutes, start with 3 minutes of recitation and 3 minutes of translation reading.
- Replace bad habits with good ones – alternatives are essential for change! I would say sleeping through Fajr or after Fajr is definitely not a good habit. Introduce good habits like sleeping early and having a plan for doing significant things after Fajr. If you are into music and want to leave it, try replacing it with Qur’an recitations, nasheeds and/or talks of speakers you enjoy listening to.
- Utilize the three R’s of making new habits – Reminder, Routine, Reward. Habits are all about repetition. Use reminders to trigger you into action, routines to consolidate the habit and rewards to make you want to do it again. For example, if you want to make a habit of exercising or praying in congregation, a particular time of the day should act as a reminder, the habit itself will be the routine and you will feel rewarded as you see yourself getting fitter or find yourself never missing any prayer.
- Du’a, the ultimate weapon of a believer! If there is anything absolutely essential here, it is that dua can change things for you like nothing else. It is impossible to ingrain a new habit in life or get rid of a bad one without the help of Allah.
Do your best to start off in the month of Ramadan itself, especially the spiritual changes, when spirituality is virtually in the air. It is quite understandable if you want to get fitter but don’t want to join a gym in Ramadan. But you have to get into a routine if you want to enjoy the reward and that may be possible in Ramadan too, subject to expert opinion. As a strategy against laziness, you can definitely take proactive steps as your habitizer (habit-appetizer).
#2 The Wishlist
The second list is a list of everything you want to achieve in life and ideally should be an ever-increasing one. Include every crazy and allowed thing you can think of – be it being the President of your country or surpassing Google and Facebook in terms of success. This is a ‘wishlist’ by definition in case you missed it.
A quick reminder: don’t limit your wishes to worldly achievements. Include points like learning Arabic in depth, memorizing the entire Qur’an, establishing a multi-national charity organization, etc. This world is temporary after all, and the smart thing to do would be having achievements whose benefits transcend the shackles of dunya so that you can literally prepare for infinity and beyond!
#3 The List of Actions
Now comes the crucial part, forming a bridge between expectations and reality. I hereby introduce to you a game-changing life-view that has the potential to change life as you know it: Living Life Ramadan to Ramadan. Well, I’m not exactly taking credit for this, given that this has already been said by someone somewhere.
Make a list of the major life-decisions coming up till next Ramadan and the things you want to achieve in the next one year, and set possible deadlines for each of them. The contents of this list can come from ‘The Wishlist’ above or just randomly from your mind over time, and may even make their way up to ‘The Wishlist’ eventually. A quick example can be: you have never cooked in your life but you suddenly enrolled in a cooking class and by the end of it, you realise that you truly love it, so you include a new point in your Wishlist that you want to have your own world-class chain restaurant, and then work towards it in your List of Actions.
Typically, this list will include things like completing an educational course, acquiring a new skill, getting a job, starting your own company, business decisions, choosing a spouse, marriage, buying a new house etc. But, again, we don’t want to limit ourselves to worldly desires, right? Decide the name of Surahs of the Qur’an you will memorise by next Ramadan, the number of duas you will learn every month, the amount of Arabic you will learn, the Islamic classes and courses you will enroll in. The percentage of successful completion of your List of Actions is a reflection of your progress towards fulfilling your Wishlist and turning it into an Achievement-list. A lot of this Ramadan-to-Ramadan approach is about realising that Ramadan is a gift and your life itself is a gift that should not be taken for granted. The way of cherishing this beautiful gift is by trying to make the most out of it.
Quick tip: Learn the dua of Istikharah this Ramadan and implement it in your life. Its meaning is so beautiful and comprehensive that this one thing can make your life a million times easier. It enables you to really know Allah and seek His guidance in both the little and the crucial decisions of life. You can just make the intention of Istikharah before any two-rak’ah prayer which is not obligatory and make the dua at the end of the prayer, so include this good habit in your List of Changes and use it repeatedly for even the most insignificant of decisions in your daily life. Just reading the meaning will make you realise that it kills stress and gives you peace of mind.
#4 The List of Repentance
Just to remind you, why choose Ramadan in the first place?
It’s because Ramadan is by definition a time of making ourselves better. And the prime way to do that is by getting rid of sins and doing things that pleases our Merciful and Generous Lord, Allah Ar-Raheem Al-Kareem. So, the last list is a list of the sins you have turned away from and repented from in your life, and the ones you plan on repenting from this Ramadan. These, my friend, will be your path to salvation and enable you to come closer to Allah. Repentance has an amazing effect on sins – the bad deeds turn into good ones!
Do you know that good deeds can be used as a medium to ask things from Allah? The Messenger of Allah (sallallahu alaihi wa sallam) once said: Three men of a people before you, were on a journey when they were overtaken by a storm and therefore they took shelter in a cave. A rock slipped down from the mountain and blocked the exit from cave. One of them said, “The only way for deliverance left is to beseech Allah in the name of some virtuous deed.” Thereupon one of them supplicated, “O Lord, my parents were very old, and I used to offer them their nightly drink of milk before my children and the other members of the family. One day I went astray far away in search of green trees and could return only after my parent had gone to sleep. When I had milked the animals and brought their nightly drink to them. They were fast asleep, but I did not like to disturb them, nor would give any part of the milk to my children and other members of the family till after my parents had their drink. Thus, with the vessel in hand, I awaited their awakening till the flush of dawn, while the children cried out of hunger at my feet. When they woke up, they had their drink. O Lord, if I did this thing seeking only your pleasure, then do relieve us of the distress wrought upon us by this rock.” Thereupon, the rock moved a little but not enough to let them pass out.
Then the second man supplicated, “O Lord, I had a cousin that I loved more passionately than any man could love a woman. I tried to seduce her but she would refuse, till in a season of great hardship due to famine, she approached me (for help) and I gave her one hundred and twenty Dinars on the condition that she would have sexual intercourse with me. She agreed, and when we got together and I was just going to have intercourse with her, she pleaded, ‘Fear Allah, and do not break the seal unlawfully’, whereupon I moved away from her, despite the fact that I desired her most passionately; and I let her keep the money I had given her. O Lord, if I did this thing seeking only your pleasure, then do move the distress in which we find ourselves.” Again the rock moved a little but not enough to let them pass out. Then the third supplicated, “O Lord, I hired some labourers and paid them their dues, but one of them left leaving behind what was due to him. I invested it in business and the business prospered greatly. After a while, the labourer came back and said, ‘O servant of Allah, hand over to me my wages.’ I said to him, ‘All that you see is yours; camels, cattle, goats and slaves.” He said: ‘Don’t play joke with me, O servant of Allah.’ I assured him, ‘I am not joking.’ So he took all of it sparing nothing. O Lord, if I did this seeking only for your pleasure, do relieve us of our distress.”The rock then moved away, and all the three came out of the cave safe and sound. [Sahih al-Bukhari]
Note that the second man was in fact not intending to do a good deed in the first place. He feared Allah and refrained from sinning. So think about this, now you can use the repentance list and name each of your sins one by one in du’a but they will actually increase the chances of your dua being accepted! Just because you chose to control yourself for the sake of Allah though you were and probably still are inclined to those sins. Allah is truly Ash-Shakoor, the One who is most appreciative. Do remember to ask Him for steadfast- ness in His path and thank Him for enabling you to leave the sin in the first place!
Quick tip: Though du’a can and should be made anytime, there are some special times when they have a higher chance of being answered and Ramadan is full of such timings! This includes the whole time you are fasting, especially just before iftar and the last third of the night . Don’t forget to use each of your C-WAR lists at those times. This is crucial! Another medium that you can use to improve your dua is Allah’s Names and Attributes. Use them to ask from Allah what you desire. Call Al-‘Aleem for knowledge, Al-Ghaniyy for wealth, As-Saboor for patience, etc.
Ramadan and Destiny
Perhaps the most significant thing that connects Ramadan and life-plans is Lailatul Qadr, the night in Ramadan which is better than a thousand months. Of the many virtues of this special night is the event of angels writing down destinies for mankind for the following year. “The angels and the spirit [Jibril] descend in waves in it [Laylatul Qadr], by the permission of their Lord, with every matter.” [Qur’an 97:4]
Pretty relevant to our future planning, isn’t it? Decree of every meal you have, every bit of wealth you earn, every success and every disappoint- ment of the following one year! As the Prophet (sallallahu alaihi wa sallam) taught us, this destiny can be re-written by your heartfelt duas. He also informed us that the night of Qadr can be in any of the last ten nights of Ramadan, especially the odd ones. So make sure to delve into worship and make extensive dua in those nights as best as you can!
