You are not falling behind…

Your walking the path Allah designed for you. Every small turn and every accidental stumble.

There’s this silent expectation of us to achieve certain things by a certain age. Even WE expect ourselves to check off few things by the time we reach some specific age.

And it really is unhealthy. It sucks the joy out of life, robs you of your motivation and punctures your tawakkul in Allah.

We start to question…

Why are we so lost?
Why do other people achieve things and we don’t?
Why does a cousin get into your major but you don’t?

Why do others get to travel and not me?
Why is everyone getting married but not me?
Why is your colleague getting a promotion and not you?

Why is your brother buying a house and not you?
Why is your friend having kids and not you?
Why is your neighbor going to hajj and not you?

In a way, it makes us feel competitive.

Everyone can’t be happy and achieve things.
It has to either them or me. It can not be both.

It harbors jealousy and ungratefulness.

It harms relationships and destroys your connection to Allah.

Let’s pause here for a sec.

Where did this notion come from?
Why are we threatened by the joy and achievements of others?
We will get our blessings and achieve our goals too.

ON OUR OWN TIME!

Being jealous and feeling insecure is only distracting us from our own progress.

Its counterintuitive!

We have a unique timeline with timestamps that Allah has customized for us. And its different for both you and me.

We need to let go of this unhealthy obsession with timelines.

And I struggle with it as much as you…

For the past decade in my life, everything has been measured against time.

I’m only learning to let go of that expectation and frustration of not being able to time bound my goals this year. (Also I just realized, how’s 2025 already coming to an end?!)

I’ve always wanted to finish school early because I could save one year of my life. When I had the chance to skip a grade, I applied for it and… I didn’t get selected though others did.

Was it an age thing? Not quite. A girl born in June was selected yet another born after the cut off date was still selected to skip the grade.

Was it a grades thing? Not quite. Although I wasn’t the top of the class then, I did have the best grades among everyone who applied.

But I swallowed the bitter reality and moved forward. Allah opened a door for me to do Hifdh that year. Hifdh was never on my bucket list. Even if you told me, I can just install it in my mind without having to memorize. It just wasn’t on my radar.

Maybe I should have taken that as a sign that timelines aren’t the defining measure of success. There’s hidden blessings behind closed doors and delays you didn’t want.

But I turned my hifdh into a time thing too 🤦🏻‍♀️

Initially I planned to finish my hifdh in seven months. I know sounds crazy right?

Why such a rush you ask?

Because I had one year left of high school, and I wasn’t ready to fall one year behind by delaying my last year in school.

Remember I was just trying to finish school a year early… I was so not gonna let hifdh be the reason I finished school a year late.

I even made a detailed plan with the breakdown of pages per day and from which ayah to which ayah.

EVERYTHING!

I still have the plan.

Well, guess what? Hifdh wasn’t as easy I was hoping it would be.

Because I had no teacher. I had no idea how to memorize and also retain the surahs that I had already memorized. I had no huffadh in my family at the time. Only one cousin, who lived miles away who lived in his own world.

The first two months I was clueless. I memorized close to 5 ajza’ but couldn’t recite a single page from memory. Then I joined the hifdh class in my school on July the 3rd. Yes, I remember the exact date!

Anyways long story short, it took me a while adjust to the hifdh system of the school, the exams, the new sabaq and everything else. And on April 27th the following year, I recited my last sabaq to my teacher Alhamdullilah.

I rushed right into my last year of school then started college. I did college from home so I could prepare for my hifdh exam along with it. Then started learning Arabic and applied for Islamic studies.

Even with my Islamic studies, I took two summer semesters to graduate a semester earlier.

When I was publishing my book, it had a deadline too. One tied to the time taken to write & publish and another tied to my age.

In my mind, the earlier I published the more proud of my accomplishment I’d be.

It was only when my work-life started spiraling backwards that I was forced to take a step back and re-evaluate my metric for success.

There were way too many obstacles and choke points.

My progress was not stagnant, it was moving in the opposite direction. I wasn’t staying on the same step. Suddenly. I was climbing down the ladder I was climbing.

I was doing all the right things too. A lot of the things in my strategy where very well thought and executed. Especially considering my resources and time constraint. But the outcome was disproportionately depressing.

And that’s what really put me in a tough spot.

It’s one of three very important lessons I’ve learned last year. And accepting it was hard.

Being a goal oriented person meant letting go of that control was hard. And a lot more stressful and depressing.

Yes, I have my own reasons for why I was trying to achieve my goals early. Reasons why I had specific timelines. Maybe I’ll write about it someday.

I had to remind myself that Allah knows what my intentions are. And why I want to stick to my timelines…

But if He thinks that this is not when things are supposed to take off for me, then that must be what’s best for me.

And I know its so easy to say that. But so hard to live with.

I still struggle to internalize it when I feel behind.

But hey, you have your own journey. What you want is different than what other people want.

Be happy for them that things are working out for them. You’re puzzle is coming together piece by piece as well.

At the same time…

I know the feeling of falling behind is especially true in our work/financial life and… you guessed it… love life!

If your friend lands a dream job, be happy for her. Yours is coming too.

The things you value are different from her, your priorities in life are different from her priorities, and Allah is putting together your custom package.

Your business isn’t taking off when others are hitting six figures. Your sales are non existent when others’ blow through the roof.

When you see someone post “thank you for buying, we sold out in 20 minutes”, it makes you question everything.

The truth is everyone is on their own journey. Life doesn’t show us when others fall and fail. We only see them when their ship has already set sail.

Your job, your business, your pay raise, your rizq… it’s coming too!

And then lets talk about marriage, shall we?

Witnessing friends and cousins getting married is all fun and good, until you’re alone in your room struggling to sleep.

But hey, you wouldn’t be happy marrying the person they’re marrying.

Your values are different, your priorities and ambitions are very different.

What you want is way different from what they want.

I know of people who got married just because they had to get married at a certain age and it wasn’t good.

You’re not gonna “expire”. Hold out for a person who shares your values. It’ll be worth it.

You better believe that Allah is preparing your spouse to meet you and preparing you to meet them. He’s equipping you both with character, skills and values that you both need.

He’s coming girls! She’s coming boys!

Take comfort in the fact that Allah is crafting both of your paths to cross at the right time in the most perfect way. I mean who better to trust this to than Allah?

So after all that talk, if you were to ask me: do I regret focusing so much on the time line?

Yes and no.

Yes, because it took away the joy of living. I was always stressed about reaching the next milestone. I was afraid of falling behind. I would blame myself for not achieving things on my timeline, not realizing that I was lagging behind only to follow Allah’s timeline. And there can be nothing better than that.

No, because I don’t think I’d achieve the few things I have achieved if I didn’t take my time seriously. It made me value my time and make use of every small pocket of time I had. It did burn me out though.

So if I were to go back would I do anything different? No.

But going forward, I think there should be a balance with how I approach my time.

Because if I just stop taking my time seriously and waste it instead of working towards something, that’ll be foolish of me.

While I should value it and make use of it in the best way possible, I should also take breaks and most importantly, let go of the timelines.

Put in the work when I have time, try every opportunity, work towards my goals and not expect the result at the time I have in mind.

So don’t let other people’s success make you impatient, don’t let the societal timelines dictate your life, don’t let your self shame you for falling behind.

With that I’ll see you the next time.

With love and duas,
Hiba