#071 How to Keep Going without Slipping

This challenge came up when I was coaching one of my clients, and it’s something many of us experience, me too.

It’s the post-Ramadan blues, where you’re maybe feeling a little uneasy, your Emaan is not rushing and isn’t as strong as it was in Ramadan.

We’ve all experienced it and that post-Ramadan blues feeling comes from an immersive experience in Ramadan. 

Ramadan is meant to pick you up and give you the Emaan boost that you need. It’s like a battery recharge. 

But it gives you the boost you need so that you can keep going. 

You want to become someone who is constantly replenishing so that you can take the next leap. 

This is the key thing I want to share with you. 

RAMADAN TO-DOS 

I’m sharing two things that you can do to carry on that Ramadan charge but keep on leaping. 

Because in Ramadan, we feel like we’ve taken this leap of Emaan; a leap of faith and strength.

It’s as if we’ve come out of the stagnant feeling of very little movement and then all of a sudden we’re recharged.

But what often happens after Ramadan is that we go back to normality or reality as it was pre-Ramadan. That’s not how it’s meant to be folk. 

I want to address this in this article. 

How to keep it going, how to keep yourself moving to the next level.

In the Nafs Transformation Coaching programme, we uplevel each year. 

If you’re on the Ramadan reboot with me, then you know we set ourselves up for the expectation of creating something amazing for the coming year.

We don’t want to just be solution-focused, with all of the struggles in mind. What we want is to create a solution without all the struggles.

It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to experience different challenges because life’s always a mixture of everything. 

As Allah (swt) teaches us in the verse:

إِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا ‎

Indeed, with hardship [will be] ease.

You always get the ease and the hardship coming together. 

So the thing is, you want to expect that but you want to focus on what’s going to help you grow and become who you want to be in the next 12 months.

THE SIMPLE AND EASY WAY TO LEVEL UP YOUR LIFE

The focus is not just on how to feel better, but how to get to a better place and specifically what it’s going to take to get us to the next level. 

In case you’re wondering about the uneasy feelings, don’t allow your mind to slip into that, because it will  automatically go there. 

Making the most of your life is where you want to focus. 

That’s where you want to direct your mind to. 

To make the most of your life, you’ve got to make the most of your mind. You’ve got to use your God-given power to create the life that you want. 

How we feel about our day-to-day life determines the quality of our life experience. 

So your experience might be to get overwhelmed by the amount of things you feel like you’ve got to do now.

Life goes back to what it was before and you’ve got all these responsibilities, but the reality is responsibilities and life in general, didn’t just stop in Ramadan. 

We directed ourselves to enhance life through a spiritual connection. 

The spiritual connection isn’t periodic. It shouldn’t be something that you experience once a year. 

It’s something that will help you to regenerate, to grow, to overcome challenges, but also to live an exponential life. 

My suggestion is that you keep this blog post safe and follow this going forward over the next 12 months so that you know what it takes to create an exponential life, being in the solution and living the solution.

This is what we want to do.

We want it to affect our lives, our families, our income. We want it to affect our ability to grow and progress. 

If you allow your mind to just slip back into the default state that it was in before Ramadan, then whatever dominated your mind pre-Ramadan will dominate it post-Ramadan.

It will bring about the fears, anxieties, overwhelm, procrastination, and the trying to make everything perfect.

It will take you back to all of the things that we struggle with on a day-to-day basis. 

So you want to stay on that Ramadan high.

It’s like a surge that we’ve got in Ramadan and you want to keep on riding that. 

We don’t want to rely on Ramadan as an annual crutch because that’s almost what we do. 

But we don’t want it once a year, we want it to pick you up and for you to ride that high.

To do that, you’ve got to decide on doing that. 

I want you to decide. Are you going to do this for the next 12 months?

Are you going to actually create the next 12 months?

I’m not saying the next 12 days or the next 30 days.

It’s the next 12 months.

Are you going to invest in your mind, invest in your life,  and invest your time into yourself so that you can grow exponentially?

Because that’s what it takes. 

WHAT YOU FOLLOW WILL BE THE KEY 

We know that Shaytaan is always around. 

During Ramadan, we count on the fact that the Shayateen are locked up but the reality is even if the Shaytaan is locked up, your mind is not locked up. 

The negative thinking is not locked up. 

The negative comments and the things that we hear from the people around us are not locked up. 

But regardless of all of that you still did still did good. You still stepped up. 

So if you want to stay in that next level that you stepped up into, then you’ve got to embrace the belief. 

Now, you can ride out that belief. But you have to replenish it.

To make this happen there are 2 things that we have to do. 

Because if you don’t follow the belief, then you’re going to follow your fears.

You’re going to run with the poverty thinking.

This is what Shaytaan does.

He induces us with this poverty thinking. He frightens and threatens us with poverty.

Not just in financial terms, but poverty in your quality of life, poverty in your relationships, poverty in your spiritual connection.

In your connection to people.

If you want to ride it out, and hold on, and extract from all of the beautiful experiences that you gained in Ramadan, then you have to follow the beliefs.

Follow the beliefs and not the fears.

This is what I did for much of my life before I figured it out. 

This is what I find that most of my clients, most of my students, and most of you who send me all of these messages do.

This is what we do. 

We fall into following fears, following the nonsense that the mind conjures up, the nonsense that we hear from the Waswas, the nonsense that we pick up.

All the negative stuff that drags us down. If you want to do well, you’ve got to follow the belief and rejuvenate that belief. 

You’ve got to reinstate it.

Be active in creating your beliefs and driving your mind based on those beliefs. That’s what’s going to get you the results that you want. 

That’s what we all want. 

Over the next 12 months, we want results so you’ve got to stop and decide on that now!  You can’t wait until the end of 12 months to decide on that.

PLAN LIKE A PRO 

Take out your pen and pad, or pull out your phone, get your note apps out, and just do a complete brain dump. 

Take out everything in your mind. 

Then look at what you want, clear away all the junk, and focus on and direct your mind and your life to the things that you want to create in your life.

If you do that, it’s going to actually help you to create all of the things that you want over the next 12 months. It’s going to help you to ride right out this high that you picked up on. 

You don’t have to be in an immersive state of worship like you were in Ramadan to be able to ride it out. 

Ramadan is like the recharge, the pick me up and help me to ride for the next 12 months. That’s what you want. 

That’s how you want to treat it. You use everything you gain to help you along the way for the next 12 months. 

So what are the two things that we should do?

You’re going to follow your beliefs, or you’re going to follow your fears. 

Decide which one you’re going to follow. 

So my suggestion to you, especially if you’re coming along on this journey with us, is you want to follow your beliefs, and once you’ve taken out all of the stuff in your mind, and you see stuff there that is taking you away from belief, then clear away that junk.

That’s junk. That’s the stuff that pollutes and intoxicates all of the goodness.

Direct yourself to the things that you not only believe but that you want to believe.

You want to take yourself towards that. Ask yourself the whole yea,r all the way through this year, What am I doing, am I following my fears or am I following my beliefs? 

Then get yourself back on track. 

So number one:  you want to be focused on the grounding effects of your own personal spiritual connection. Your worship in other words, Your Ibaadaat.

You want to be focused on this. Make sure that this is a constant in your life because what you felt during Ramadan was because of that spiritual connection.

So keep that going. 

You don’t have to be in this completely immersive mode for 30 days in a row. But make sure that there’s a routine. 

You want to make sure that there’s something you’re doing that’s going to drive you up and keep you up.

That’s how you keep the charge of Ramadan going. 

You were charged up in Ramadan and you want to keep going after Ramadan. 

That’s what you have to do. Now if you felt like you didn’t get the charge in Ramadan, then it doesn’t matter. Do it right now. 

Begin that journey right now. You don’t have to be in Ramadan to get the Ramadan experience.

HOW A FOCUSED THOUGHT BLEW MY MIND

The first time I made Umrah during Ramadan, I’d never done it during Ramadan before. And it was totally different to doing Umrah outside of Ramadan.

It completely blew my mind. 

Pre Ramadan, I was thinking, I want to do I’tikaaf. I want to create this solitude or this connection, my spiritual connection.

Connecting to Allah in other words. 

I want to nurture that.

I want to make it such that it’s not connected to anything else except worship, except Ibaadah, except my connection.

I didn’t know that I was going to the Haramain. It wasn’t in my plan.

In fact, in my mind it wasn’t going to happen. 

Because there were lots of obstacles. 

However, I was yearning for it. I wanted it.

I was looking for a way to do this. And I was thinking, ‘How am I going to do this in the last 10 days anyway,’ but Alhamdulillah it happened.

It happened because I stayed so focused on creating it, that I kept asking myself, How am I going to make this happen, what am I going to do?

I wasn’t even thinking about the Haramain, I wasn’t thinking about Umrah. But I was thinking about this connection. That was the key. And, in that, what happens is, you get into the immersive state of belief and expectation.

This is what we’re doing. Beliefs and expectations. 

So I kept myself in belief and expectation. It’s not something that just happens by default. You’ve got to do it on purpose, deliberately.

So, keeping myself in that state, Allah (swt) just opened up the doors. Because I focused my attention on the grounding effects of my spiritual connection.

It’s truly a grounding effect. 

It totally grounds you. It brings you into reality but a reality that you can’t experience without that connection. 

Now, if you didn’t experience that in Ramadan because you’re focused on all of the challenges and all the rest of it, that’s what ruins the connection.

When you’re forever focused on all the challenges and what you feel you lack, you don’t get what you wanted out of Ramadan. 

But that doesn’t mean you can’t have it now. 

HOW TO  MAKE IT HAPPEN 

Create it now. You can create it any time of the year.

You do it through belief and expectations. Follow your beliefs. 

It’s not about the place that you’re in. You don’t need to be in the Haramain, you can be anywhere in the world. 

It’s not about being in a community of people who you can feed off.

Of course, that helps, but you don’t need that, because it’s the connection that’s key. 

It’s the way that your mind is focused on that connection with Allah.

Being focused, even though it’s on and off because we’re humans who can’t be constant.

A constant 30 days like in Ramadan is extra special.

Regardless of that, you can still be constant throughout your life.

On and off is constant, on and off is a part of life. 

So staying focused on that on and off, but doing it consistently and deliberately, is going to help you.

That’s number one, focus on your grounding, the grounding effects of your spiritual connection, and keep that going, day in, day out, week in, week out, month in month out, and it’s going to create the most amazing experience of your life. 

Trust me, it will. By explaining or describing it to you I can’t give you the experience. You have to experience it by being in it. 

That’s something that you have to do by choice; deliberately. 

Number two: goes back to what I started this with, which is that you want to plan your year ahead. Get into that solution focus.

What are you creating in your life this year? You have to decide that. 

You can’t wait until you get to the end of the year. Because when you get to the end of the year, the whole year is gone.

The time has gone by. Time is one thing that you can’t hold on to. 

So ask yourself that question now. What are you going to create in your life this year?

How far are you going? How far will you take it? Who will you become?

How will you grow and then become the person who lives Ramadan to Ramadan, becoming the most amazing A’bd?

The most amazing human being, the person in a constant state of returning. Constantly returning because we get disconnected, that’s part of life. 

If you’re that person, and you live into that, then you’ll stop being afraid of the uncertainties of the future. 

Who will you become this year? Who do you have to be to create the life that you want, the results that you want, this year?

Tangible in your life this year.

Who do you have to be today to make that happen? 

Once you’ve put your mind to this, then your mind will be directed by you. 

It will be directed based on the beliefs that you have and not the fears that you have.

If you do that, you’ll stop being afraid.

You’ll start to live a life that will create the results that you want.

You’ll start to live into the person that you are. 

And you’re deciding on that today, not at the end of the year.

Your thoughts of Allah shouldn’t be dominated by fear. That’s a very important thing I want to point out.

It should be dominated by hope, aspiration, and expectation of an amazing present and a future. 

If you do that deliberately, then you will create that in your life. 

If you struggle with that, then come and join me on the Nafs  Transformation Programme. 

That’s what we do, we create an exponential life. 

It’s not just about fixing all the problems in your life.

It’s about getting beyond the problem and creating the most amazing life. But in order to do that, sometimes we need the community, the support, the guidance, the mentorship, we need the coaching.

We need the support to make it happen. 

You have the choice to create the life that you want. Don’t let that go, by allowing your fears to dominate you.

You don’t want your life to be dominated by fear that keeps you stuck. You want it to be dominated by the beliefs that actually set you free and help you to live an exponential life, to grow, and to truly be abundant in your life. 

The abundance begins in your mind. You cannot live that exponential life until you set your mind free. 

The only way to do that is to nurture that belief. And you will do it. 

You’ll do it with the support that you have within this community. 

We will take our lives to the next level.

I want you to slow down, stop, think about this, and take action in your life.

Take action on the things I’m teaching you here. It will help you to take your life somewhere you’ve never experienced before. 

You’re the one who will do that because you’re going to create those beliefs and help yourself by being willing to back yourself.

Being willing to be compassionate to yourself. And being willing to grow yourself to who you want to be.

That’s what it’s going to take to create the life that you want. You’ve got to be dedicated and committed to yourself, to your life, to your connection. 

Be it spiritual, psychological, or physical and material in your life, your career, your relationships, you name it, whatever you want, you’ve got to be willing to focus on those two key things. 

The two actions that you’ve absolutely got to focus on are 

1. Getting yourself grounded.
2. Deciding ahead of time, where you’re headed. 

Do that,  and Insha’Allah you’re going to create the most amazing life.