[Gymngatagaica]

السلام عليكم و رحمة الله و بركاته

JazaakAllaahu Khayran for that beautiful advice, I especially liked:

1) "Faith – ISLAM – Make it your no. one priority." - so many Muslims nowadays are unfortunately willing to sacrifice their religion and its teachings for paltry worldly gain, and sometimes even worldly loss. "If I pray 'asr salaah in the masjid, then I'll miss the kick of and first ten minutes of the champions league final, so never mind I'll just delay it till half time. It's not like I'm doing wrong, I'm still praying after all." True, you're still praying but you have just chosen worldly pleasure and entertainment (probably can be considered worldly loss, as watching television is known to have adverse effects on people. I once read a very good book about television, and media in general, called 'Amusing Ourselves to Death') over the religion of Allah and the way of His chosen and beloved messenger صلى الله عليه و سلم.

6) "Self discipline – process that ties together all your efforts of controlling your mind, your personal initiative and positive mental attitude. It makes your think before you act." - from my experience of life, which I'll admit is nowhere near comparable to most of the brothers on here, we humans don't get very far either in terms of this world or the hereafter without self-discipline and will power. Okay, we can take encouragement and help from friends, colleagues, family, etc. in order to assist us in stopping a bad habit, for example, but at the end of the day we're going to have to use our self-control to take the final (and greatest) step.
It applies in this world as well, many youngsters nowadays unfortunately end up performing poorly in exams because they do not have the self-control to study, revise and apply themselves properly to their education. They do not have the self-control to switch of their television, cancel their football, lock away their PlayStation and limit their mobile phone usage to a minimum.

9) "Personal initiative – creates opportunities, the inner power that starts all actions." - Again, amazingly correct. We dream of becoming a great personality and aspire to change the ummah for the better and do great works for the deen of Allah, which is all very good. But we must remember, opportunities aren't going to (in most cases) come to us and politely request us to take them; we've got to go out there and make ourselves available for these opportunities.

11) "Controlled attention – keep your mind ON things you want and OFF thinks you don’t want. Its easier to keep your attention on things which you believe in." - So many times we think that we're engaging all our time in useful activities, and yet at the end of the day we realise that we haven't really accomplished much. I find that it is often more useful to engage ourselves completely in a few activities rather than becoming involved in many activities but not being able to fully complete them. "Jack of all trades and master of none" comes to mind.

13) "Learning from defeat – it is a stepping stone. "learning from the failure" opens your doors to success. It’s a blessing in disguise." - We're going to experience defeat as some time or another. That's guaranteed. If we let that put us off whatever we're doing, we've just turned it into total defeat. Why not change that defeat into success by learning from it and improving?