Invite the ‘ghost competitor’ and beat your own record.
The ‘ghost competitor’ is a tool that great athletes use to improve their own standards of performance. If you are Usain Bolt, you are already the fastest man on the planet. That you are actually slightly slower than a hippo is neither here nor there, because hippos don’t compete in the Olympics. So how will you improve your time? What they do is to imagine their competitor running at their shoulder, about to overtake them. That drives them to ever greater effort. That is the ‘ghost competitor’, which we all need, to stay alive, to stay current, to stay relevant.
Beware of complacency. Cancer is not the deadliest killer. Complacency is. Interestingly, complacency is often the result of success. It comes in the same package. It is brought on also by lots of praise that you will get when you do something well, which, if you are not careful, will lead you to start believing that you are truly great.
Remember then what you say in Salah: Allahu Akbar – Allahﷻ is the Greatest. You are not the greatest. Allahﷻ is. And about you? Look at the weakest, meanest, lowliest of people and say to yourself, ‘There, but for the Grace of Allahﷻ goes Yawar’ (Remember to substitute your own name for mine in this sentence). Push yourself beyond whatever you thought was your limit because nobody knows the best that he/she can do. Nobody dies of working too hard if they are doing it voluntarily. And if you do die, remember that you will die anyway. It is not that you lived or died that are important but how you lived and how you died.
Key word : SOMEHOW!!
As they say, ‘Even if you are on the right road, if you simply sit there, you will get run over.’
Change is the name for circulation – of blood in your veins. If that stops, you die. Flowing water sees change, brings about change, is change itself. Stop it and it stagnates and starts to stink. You stop changing and you die because the rest of the world doesn’t stop changing. Dinosaurs and Nokia died. That is not sad. What is sad is that they didn’t even know why?
You don’t die when you stop breathing; you die when you stop living. You stop living when you stop changing. You stop living when you stop feeling excited, inquisitive, energetic, and enthusiastic. You stop living when you have no more mountains to climb, no rivers to cross, no tears to cry, no laughs to laugh.
You stop living when you have no great goal to achieve – no matter that you may not live long enough to see it achieved, but having the goal to work towards keeps you alive.
You don’t die when you stop breathing; you die when you stop dreaming.
Complacency defunct's your mental faculties….and closes the preceptors/receptors of your brain.
A great advice to listen and follow through out our life… Jazakallah Khair Shaikh Yawar Saab.
Great post. How true.
Dear Yawar,It is an insightful post. It spotted a light on different words /worlds like complacency, criticism, death, dream, life, victory and change. Your perception on ‘Change’ is something very interesting. Leo Tolstoy words are coming to my mind – “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself”. You said “change is the name for circulation”. Absolutely beautiful and meaningful. The flow exists within one’s own body-mind and flows to the nature and back to self. One should dream for change, it circulates life even in death. One should learn to appreciate and enjoy the… Read more »
That was powerful. Thank you!
An Excellent Post – Reminder!!
Reality is that complacency is like the comfort zone – a behavioral space where our activities and behaviors fit a routine pattern that minimizes our understanding, stress, risk etc. It’s important to push the boundaries of our comfort zone, never stepping into the unknown limits our horizons / growth. Great things never came from comfort zones…it applies to all aspects of our being. ‘Growth for the sake of growth is the philosophy of the cancer cell. – Shaikh Mirza Yawar Baig’
Very good blog. Jazakallah for the reminder on 'Living' and not 'contemplating'.