What is success for you?

 

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

| In the name of Allah the Most Gracious, The Most Merciful |

I've heard a lot of people saying that failure is what makes you successful. Back then, I thought that success is merely about the title that you've gained for yourself. What I mean by title here is your status in your education or your career. During that time, failure for me is very synonyms with exams, grades, and even your status in the eyes of our society. But then I come to realize that we can fail in many, many ways. Not only in exams. We can fail in controlling our anger, we can fail as a daughter/son, we can fail as a friend. If we can fail in so many ways, we can also succeed in many ways too. Life itself is a test anyway...

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As long as you're breathing, you always have the chance to keep on trying, and trying and trying again, until you can successfully control your temper, successfully become a good daughter/son/friend/person, successfully love yourself. Yes, that's right. Sometimes we fail to love ourselves and that's completely fine. It's a process. If you can fail then you can succeed. Define your own success. Never let anyone other than yourself do that for you. Be humble too. Never look down on people who do not have the same success as you do. They might be striving for something else. Also, there's something that we need to bear in mind. No matter in what area you want to be successful, do not stop seeking knowledge.

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Here's an example, in Islam, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) teaches us how to control our anger. He (PBUH) teaches us to:

1. Sit down if one is standing, lie down if one is sitting.

2. Perform ablution (Wudu')

3. Avoid making any major decisions

4. Stay silent

Unfortunately, if we don't have the knowledge on how to control our anger, chances for us to fail to overcome our emotion is high. Of course, there's another way you can do to battle your temper. Breathing technique, but again, if you don't have knowledge on how to do that, the same thing will happen. However, always remember, if you can fail, then you can succeed. But we need to learn. Learn what the Prophet PBUH teaches us, learn how to pause and breath, or any other relatable calming mechanisms, IF your problem is anger management.

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Oh one more, be conscious. Be conscious of what you're lacking that leading you to that failure. We can't fix something if we didn't know that it needs to be fixed. Maybe we can spare some time to ask ourselves what we need to fix, what we need to learn, how can we learn it, etc. Indeed, we can't change people, but we can change ourselves. So stop looking at other people's weaknesses, instead, focus on our own weaknesses. That's one of the efforts that we can do to love ourselves better. How come? For me, to love means to accept. We need to accept our weaknesses, fix them, then after that you'll feel satisfied and started to love ourselves more and more.

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I think that's it for today's entry. I hope, this post can bring benefit to whoever reads it. Please make du'a for me dear brother and sister, so I'll be able to post more beneficial content in the future.