Difference Between Success and Failure

By Imam Abdullah El-Amin, TMO

Have you set out on a difficult course lately?  Are there things that you want to do, haven’t done, and are afraid to attempt because of fear of failure?  Don’t feel alone.  There are a great number of people with the same self-doubt lurking in their brains.  Maybe you want to go back to school and study.  Maybe you want to change careers or go into your own business.  Maybe you just want to get that exercise program started.  These things will be all but impossible if you posses a negative mind from the start.  That negative mind will have you moving in slow motion.

There was a lady that bought a new car and didn’t know how to drive.  The salesman got her started on a few things and then sold her the car.  (A car salesman is not going to turn down a sale.)  Anyway, the lady came back and complained that the car would not operate well.   Finds out she was driving in low gear.  When she changed gears, the car worked well. 

There are many people in this world still driving in low gear.  They are struggling, just crawling along through life, getting more and more bitter, more and more frustrated, and more and more discouraged because life is so hard for them.  But there is a remedy for this.  I don’t doubt that life is difficult.  Everyone has obstacles, but what we should concentrate on is the great powers we have within us to overcome the perceived weaknesses. 

We must change gears in our thinking.  We must change gears in our faith.  We must ask ALLAH to allow us to partner with Him so that we are aware that we are constantly in His sight (Ihsan).  Somewhere in our mind we are aware of what we can really do.  I believe we have an innate knowledge of the real power within us.  But it has never been let loose.  So we go along in low gear, never realizing our potential.  If we let Almighty ALLAH release these powers from Him, no situation of any kind, can be to great for us because there is a balance in the creation.  ALLAH never allows a situation to exist for which there is no corresponding solution.

1. By the time.  2. Surely mankind is in loss.  3. Except those who have faith, and do good deeds, and join with one another in truth, and have patience and constancy.”  103:1-3

This last word of the above sura,  sabr (patience and constancy)  sums up the necessary ingredients for success.   You must not quit just because you run into a little difficulty – because you WILL run into some problems.  The difference between success and failure is one more try. 

This is a very profound statement.  You can fail 100 times and the 101st time you may succeed.  But if you quit after failure it is guaranteed that you will not be a success.  In American baseball, Babe Ruth was known as the home run king.  He hit more homeruns than anybody and the record stood for many decades.  But he also made more strikeouts than anybody.  If he had quit, or become disillusioned from those strikeouts, he would never have been successful with the homeruns.  That is sabr on a high level.  You can do the same thing with your projects.

So let us have faith that ALLAH has put greatness in us.  Let us go into high gear in our opinion of ourselves.  Let us remember that with difficulty, there is relief.  And always remember, the difference between success and failure is ONE MORE TRY.

As Salaam alaikum
Al Hajj Imam Abdullah El-Amin

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