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- asking for advice is delaying your success
Asking for advice is delaying your success
and potentially derailing you from your path.
“How can I leave my 9-5?”
“How do I start a business?”
“How do I make money from home?”
These are probably the most repeated dm’s I get.
I get over 50 messages a day.
and I don’t respond to any of them who ask that.
Why?
Because even if I gave you the exact blueprint of how I did it
It wouldn’t work for you.
It’s like trying to navigate your unique journey using someone else’s map.
It won’t lead to your destination.
Now don’t get me wrong, asking for advice isn’t always bad.
But the answer to all the questions in my dm’s is:
To start.
Asking for advice is not starting.
Stop seeking and start doing.
The Lazy-Side of Advice Seeking
It’s a familiar scenario — you’re brimming with ideas but you find yourself constantly reaching out for advice.
While this is well-intentional,
It often morphs into a procrastination tool, delaying action.
The hard truth?
Continuously seeking advice is laziness.
“How do I leave my 9-5”?
Yeah let me narrate my whole life story of how I got here and write 3 books of all the skills I learnt and make 100s of videos about my trial and errors so you don’t have to do any of the work.
No.
Live your own life.
Write your own book.
Stop sitting around and doing things that don’t help you learn.
Asking for advice starts to become a crutch, a way to offload responsibility, and an excuse for inaction.
When things go wrong, it’s easy to blame the advice someone else gave you instead of your own decisions.
This cycle of dependency stunts growth and delays the journey to success.
The problem is most people don’t know how to start.
You need to:
Have a conscious intentional goal
Start forming the habits to become the person who can achieve your goals
Reprogram your mind according to your goal
Take action and experiment
Seek advice from people who’ve already done it when you encounter problems along the way
Notice how seeking advice is at the bottom of the process.
There’s a lot of good advice out there in books, podcasts, and the internet.
But here’s the thing: Most of it might not just be right for what you’re going through.
Imagine wearing a giant backpack.
Every piece of advice you hear is like putting a rock in that backpack.
If you keep adding rocks that aren’t helpful, your backpack gets super heavy, and it’s hard to walk, right?
Now think about when you’re having a tough time, like when you’re really trying to figure something out or you’re stuck.
Those moments are the magical keys.
They help you find the exact piece of advice that’s like the right-sized rock for your backpack.
It’s not too heavy and it helps you keep walking forward.
Allah tells us that life will have challenges. But it’s these challenges that help us grow and learn.
It’s like when you’re playing a video game and you reach a hard level. You might struggle but that’s when you learn the most and get better.
Unlocking The Secrets of Success
The one thing that’s going to differentiate how fast you will succeed is the time it took from getting the idea to taking action.
Research from the Harvard Business Review highlights that CEOs who make decisions swiftly, regardless of perfection, lead higher-performing companies.
Sometimes a wrong decision now is better than a perfect decision too late.
The key is to act, learn, and pivot quickly.
1) From Thoughts to Reality: Unleashing the Power of Intentions into Actions
Islam emphasizes the importance of intention in our actions.
Actions are according to intentions, and everyone will get what was intended. Whoever migrates with an intention for Allah and His messenger, the migration will be for the sake of Allah and his Messenger. And whoever migrates for worldly gain or to marry a woman, then his migration will be for the sake of whatever he migrated for.
This hadith reminds us that our intentions set the stage for our actions.
When your actions are driven by clear, purposeful intentions
They become more meaningful and focused.
It’s not just about the end goal
It’s about the journey and the process
Before embarking on any journey
Whether it’s starting a business or personal development
Clarify your intentions.
Why do you want this?
How does it align with your values and beliefs?
This method is going to make sure that your journey is not just about achieving an external goal but about internal growth and alignment in a way that’s going to breed fulfillment.
2) The Identity Shift: You Need To Change Who You Are
If you want to leave your 9-5
Or start your own business and make more money
Or want to be able to do what you want, when you want
You need an identity-shift.
You are not yet the person who can achieve your lofty goals.
Your current habits, thought patterns, and mindset all make up your current life.
If you want to upgrade your life, this is not possible by staying the same person.
You need to become the person who can have your dream life.
Although I’m no where near my vision life
The process to getting to where I am now took about 2 years.
And the steps of getting to where I want to be is becoming clearer and clearer.
It probably would’ve been faster if I implemented early on what I’m telling you guys now.
Understand that it’s a process and you need to start today.
This transformation in your identity is like leveling up in a video game.
It’s going to require a change in
your habits
your routine
your mindset
The change in these three will lead to a change in your identity.
Exercise: I want you to envision what your ideal life looks like.
Maybe its:
to travel anywhere anytime
to do what you actually like doing
to buy a big house
to retire your parents
to have a healthy body
to start a family
to have a bigger bank account so you never have to look at prices
to be able to give $1m in charity
Now ask yourself: what kind of person would have the things you want?
How would they dress?
How would they act?
How would they speak?
What would they eat?
What time would they wake up?
What time would they sleep?
What would they listen to?
What would they read?
What kind of friends would they have?
What would they be doing on social media?
Grab a journal. Answer the questions above. Start building those habits. Just start.
And if you want more questions to answer that also revolve around Islam, check out The Timeless Journal that I created for Eternah. You can also get a digital version.
3) The Universe Is Growing and Infinite: Let Go of Your Narrow Mindset
Adopt a mindset shift of continuous learning and improvement.
Shift your narrow thinking into one of growth with unlimited potential.
Look at challenges as opportunities to grow rather than impossible obstacles.
Embrace the concept of Tawakkul (reliance on the One and Only God).
Because all He needs to say is “Be” and it is.
Start reprogramming your mind to things relevant to your goal.
What you feed your brain is what your brain will use to make thoughts and ideas.
If you put in good-stuff → you’ll get good stuff out. And vice versa.
If you eat lots of sugar and fast food → you feel icky and become fat
If you eat lots of fruits and vegetables → you feel energetic and stay healthy
If you mindlessly scroll → you end up anxious and depressed
If you watch educational content or read interesting books → you get smarter and start getting cool ideas
What we put into our mind and body really matters.
It’s like planting seeds in a garden.
Good seeds grow into beautiful flowers and plants.
But if we don’t take care of them or plant weeds instead
We don’t get pretty flowers.
You reap what you sow.
4) I Tried 7 Different Business Ideas: None of them Helped Me Leave the 9-5
The sooner you fail, the sooner you will succeed.
My personal journey of entrepreneurship started while I was still working the 9-5.
I tried a lot of stuff:
Affiliate marketing with Youtube & Facebook Ads - I got to the point of making $1000/day but it was so time consuming with a 9-5 and I didn’t know how to scale so I stopped.
Dropshipping - had 3 different stores and they all flopped. I think it was because I hated the idea of being inauthentic, of not selling my own products.
My own clothing line - traveled to a foreign country and spent over $1000 getting samples made. They were great but what held me back here was my mindset.
AirBnB - invested a lot of money, time and tears doing this. Alhamdulillah it still makes me passive income to this day but I would do this so differently if I were to start now.
Notice that there are people who make tons of money doing the above.
But it didn’t work for me.
My life experiences ultimately helped me decide what it is I enjoyed doing and how to make a living from it.
You know, when I look back, I don’t see any of those as setbacks anymore. Although at that time it felt like it. And I was really upset and felt defeated.
But they were all essential steps in my learning curve.
They taught me resilience, adaptability, and most importantly self-reliance.
Failure is not the opposite of success — it’s a crucial part of it.
Don’t be scared of the embarrassment and failure that’s needed to achieve goals.
Authentically Achieving: Create Your Own Path
While advice can be valuable, it should never be the start.
Start by setting intention-driven goals.
Shift your identity to the person you need to become to achieve your goals.
Consume content that drives you towards your goals.
Embrace failures as learning opportunities.
Find what works best for you.
Remember your journey is unique and your success lies in your hands.
Seriously.
Authenticity will get you much further than copying someone else.
May your path be blessed with success and enlightenment. Ameen.
Until next time.
مع حبي (with love)
— Saufiyah ♡
P.S. join the private community of discord here: http://discord.gg/PxuX7rE5kc
P.P.S. its still in construction mode (i’m lining up activities for everyone to do in the coming weeks so if you don’t see anything it’s okay)