Passion

“You’ve got to find what you love. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”
—Steve Jobs, Co-founder of Apple Inc.

Do you like your life movie? Are you the main hero? Do you love what you do? Do you do what you love so it doesn’t feel like work or a job? Are you great at what you do so you feel confident and others look up to you? What about helping others? Does your work create so much impact in others’ lives that it is so fulfilling? Do you get paid well by doing what you love?

If your answer is not a resounding yes to the questions above, keep reading. Before we move on though, let’s recap our analogy. Life is a journey, and every part of us plays a vital role in navigating it. The Body is the car, requiring care and discipline to keep moving; the Mind is the dashboard, providing clarity and direction; the Heart is the headlight, illuminating the path with faith and empathy; and the Soul is the driver, steering us toward our ultimate destination: closeness to Allah.

Our Purpose defines where we’re going, while Passion shapes how we feel during the journey and the type of car we’re driving: racecar, land rover, sedan, convertible, SUV, etc. Passion fuels the engine, bringing energy and meaning to the trip. By knowing ourselves—our strengths, talents, superpowers, and gifts—we align our calling with our capabilities, ensuring that our journey isn’t just purposeful but fulfilling and empowering, allowing us to thrive and get into the state of Flow as we move closer to Allah.

Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one…
—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Today, I can truly say that I love what I do. Alhamdulillah, I am good at what I do and I am getting better every day. My team and I serve millions of Muslims by helping Muslim Entrepreneurs and Professionals. We get paid well, alhamdulillah.

However, it was not always like this. If you asked me these questions 20 years ago, I would reply to you not to waste my time.

The Question I Hated The Most

You see, years ago I was in a different state: survival mode. Have you been there before? Are you there now, maybe?

This may sound familiar: I did everything I could legally do in order to earn money. Growing up in poverty in a single-parent household had a long-lasting impact.

As a child, the question I hated the most was: “What is your favourite colour?” It is not that I didn’t understand the question. I did. Let’s say you have a blue pen, red pen, and green pen. With those three pens in front of you, the questions “What is your favourite colour? Which one do you like better?” are easy.

My problem was: that I didn’t have a pen at all. Not a blue one, a red one, or a green one. So when you presented a pen to me, it didn’t matter what colour it was. I would take any pen with any colour.

The moral of the story is that you can’t think about passion when you are in survival mode. It is a luxury.

Fast forward to today, and I know my favourite colour. I know even the favourite colours of my kids. What changed? Now I can afford to buy things for myself and my family. They have options. They have a choice.

Money-Driven Only

Most people live just in the pursuit of money. In my first 10 years abroad in Denmark, I got a house, a car, and a well-paid job, alhamdulillah. But as I said earlier, something was missing.

We need money only to a certain point, but then it has a lesser and lesser effect on the quality of our lives. If you are reading this, you are one of two states: either you have been through what I am describing and you know what I am talking about, or you are still on your way and you may think, “No way. If I only had money, I could get anything in life!”

But if money isn’t everything, what is?

Passion-Driven Only

Then you see some people, who talk only about passion, passion, and passion. I love this and I love that. Unfortunately, I see that most of them are also broke, financially. What comes to my mind are countless artists, singers, and people who mainly deal with self-expression and art.

These people think only about their passion and themselves. They may miss the part about how their work will serve others and how they can turn it into something valuable that others will support. Without these missing parts, these people will not make it.

But if passion isn’t everything, what is?

Ikigai

If money or passion is not enough, what is? I am glad you asked. There is a better and balanced middle path. In the previous chapter, we talked about finding your purpose and why.

When we as Muslims as well as human beings seek our purpose in life, we eventually discover that our purpose is to serve God by serving His creation. So how do we serve? Once you understand that you are here to serve humanity and all types of Creation (God doesn’t need our service), your passion becomes easier to uncover.

So the question is, how do we best serve Him? This is a question I’ve been asking myself for the last 10 years. I’ve found the best example to illustrate this point and have found it in the Japanese term ikigai.

Ikigai: (生き甲斐, literally. ’a reason for being’) is a Japanese concept referring to something that gives a person a sense of purpose, a reason for living. It encompasses four primary elements:

what you love (your unique passion – your superpower),
what the world needs (your mission – how you serve Allah SWT by serving others),
what you are good at (your work – your profession), and
how you can make a living by doing what you love.

How do you find your Ikigai? It requires some thinking and some alone time. Go for a walk in nature. You can also go to a room where you are alone. Take some paper and a pen, but no device. Make a du‘a: “Oh, Allah! Open my heart and my mind so that I will discover the gifts You have given me so I can serve You by serving Your creation in the best way.” Then ask these questions.

What Do I Love?

What would you do for hours that are so fulfilling to you, even if no one paid you? What are the things that when you do them, you lose track of time? Make a list of as many of those things as possible and write them down one by one. Treat it as a brainstorming session. Keep writing. You need at least 3 to 5 things you love. If you have 10, even better.

What Does the World Need?

How does this thing you love connect with your purpose of serving God, by serving His creation? Ask this for each thing you love that you listed in the question above.

The next element of ikigai is what the world needs, your mission. As we discussed in Step 1 Purpose, this is the most important thing. Aligning with your purpose will not only give meaning to your journey but also give you a reality check that what you love to do can actually benefit others, not just yourself. This is extremely important because helping others leaves our souls feeling satisfied, and draws us nearer to God.

For example, you may love lying on the beach. You may love it and even be good at it, but who benefits from you lying on the beach besides yourself? The key here is to hone in on the things that help you and benefit others at the same time. The intersection of what you love and what benefits the world is what we are trying to uncover. Spend some time pondering what the world currently needs. What are some major and minor social issues? Do you see any overlap with areas that interest you?

What Am I Good at?

Next, let’s examine another element of ikigai–what you are good at. You may be good at math, drawing, or computer programming. If you’re not sure what you’re good at, consider what others compliment you on. What have colleagues or previous superiors told you that you do well? Did you receive formal recognition for work performed or an award or acknowledgment? Begin writing a list of what you are good at, including personal accomplishments for which you have been recognized. This exercise aims to get to know yourself better before diving head-first into your business.

Are you good at any of the things you love to do?

How Do I Get Paid?

You now want to list things that you love doing that you can get paid for. This can be uncovered by detailing tasks you have done in the past for income. Also, add jobs to the lists that you would like to be compensated for. When your “what the world needs” and your “what I can be paid for” lists align, all that’s left to do is to learn the business side, and all other elements will quickly fall into place. There are many ways to make money from what you love and what you are good at. Ideally, you want to couple those passions with a solution that solves a problem for someone. When all the pieces come together, you’ll realize that you can get paid for doing what you enjoy while helping people.

Connecting the Dots

Once you check all the boxes on the four elements of ikigai, you come away with work that is both meaningful and worthy of doing. Passion alone is not enough, because if you cannot figure out how to make money from your passion, you won’t be able to transition it from a hobby to work that is sustainable financially. We aim to find something for you that’s worth making a living from–to find purposeful work that becomes the main thread of your life.

Frequently people find that when they apply themselves to work that they genuinely care about, they naturally elevate to being among the best in their field. When you do things you love and that the world needs, it can become your mission. When you combine your passion with your mission, you get an irreverent sense of satisfaction from your work.

But I don’t want you to settle for just finding your passion, going after a significant mission, or achieving a certain level of education. My advice would be to strive for excellence that is exhibited when all of these essential elements meet. I want to believe that you can have it all and go after your heart’s desire, especially when it comes to the work that you focus on in your life.

Delight, but No Wealth

Look at the ikigai diagram again. Maybe you find something you love, are good at, and that the world needs, but you cannot get paid for it. At the top of the diagram, you see you can be delighted and full but have no wealth. Consequently, if no wealth is involved, your work may still be doable but present challenges. Without financial means, you may not be able to offer your family a good life; of course, we all want a good life with our families that allow us to provide them with a good education, food, shelter, etc. So while attaining wealth is not the sole focus, we also don’t want to be in a position where we don’t have sufficient means.

Feeling of No Purpose

Let’s look at another example. Say you find work you love, are good at, and can even be compensated for. However, if your work consists of things the world doesn’t need, you may feel some sort of complacency. You can feel satisfaction from doing constructive work and still feel you need to improve if you’re solving a problem. A good example of this is found in some YouTube personalities, who make videos with no particular point and may feel useless because they’re not solving a real problem.

Feeling Empty

Alternatively, you might be in a position of doing what you’re good at, being paid for it, and the world needs it, yet you may not love it–your passion lies elsewhere. It’s comfortable, but the feeling that something is missing causes you to continue to ponder other career paths.

Feeling Uncertain

Lastly, you might love your work, the world needs it, and you’re being paid for it, but you may feel you’re not good (or not good enough) at it. Perhaps you’re struggling in your work, and your skills are not where you want them to be. Not feeling like your work is good enough can lead to uncertainty because certainty and confidence come from being good at what you do.

As you seek to gain a better understanding of this multi-layered philosophy, I’d ask you to focus on ‘what you love’ first. This is because when you find what you love, your passion lies there, and with time and effort, you can also become skilled at your optimum passion.

From Stutterer to Speaking World Champion

I recently interviewed Mohammed Qahtani – the 2015 Public Speaking World Champion. On his first day of school, his teacher scolded him for stuttering and told him that he would never amount to anything.

Mohammed believed in what his teacher said. For the next few years, he didn’t speak at all in class, all the way until high school. Then a friend suggested that Mohammed could speak, but told him that he needed to challenge himself by making the school’s morning announcements.

The first time Mohammed made the announcements, he stuttered. Everyone laughed. He was ashamed and went back to his friend in defeat. But his friend encouraged him to keep trying and gave him hope that eventually, he would improve.

Mohammed persevered. He kept making the school announcements every morning. He began to stutter less and less. Fewer and fewer people laughed. He also joined a Toastmasters Public Speaking club. He knew it would take years to master public speaking, but he kept at it. In 2015, he became a World Champion of Public Speaking.

Mohammed’s story is incredible. He faced his most avoided fear–speaking–and kept at it until he mastered it. Now public speaking is his passion and purpose. He is great at it and he gets paid all around the world. I encourage you to watch his award-winning speech here: www.deenpreneurs.net/champion

Life Mastery

Canadian journalist and New York Times bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell has popularized a notion called the 10,000 rule. The rule states that it takes about 10,000 hours of intensive practice to achieve mastery of complex skills and materials. That translates to ten years of study.

Would you spend ten years studying something you weren’t passionate about? Of course not!

Ottoman Schools Motto

In Ottoman Schools, every child was evaluated due to his/her talents and every child had different courses. The Motto of the schools was written on the walls:

“Here No Fish will be forced to Fly and No Bird will be forced to Swim”

My Ikigai

We learn by example and by doing, not just by theory. That’s why I want to share with you some examples of how I myself have implemented the ikigai approach in my own life. It has allowed me to help others in the form of helping Muslim entrepreneurs. In doing so, I discovered by experience that one of the best things in life is to do meaningful work that helps others. It brings true satisfaction to the soul.

Ten years ago, when I decided to start my business, it was because I wasn’t feeling fulfilled. I was at a point where I was paid well, good at my job, and solving a problem; I was a part of the team. I worked at a company called Vestas, which made wind turbines. Yet still, I thought, this is not something I love doing. That love is what I was lacking, and I just felt a sense of emptiness.

I was also soul-searching during this time; I wanted to find my purpose and do something impactful, but I just didn’t know what it was. That was around the time I came across the concept of ikigai, so I started creating my own list of things I loved to do. Here was the list of things I loved at that time: design, startups, entrepreneurship, Islam, learning, and serving the Ummah.

This list would expand and change at a later point in my life, which is normal. After I made the list, I didn’t know what to do or how it would play a role in the next phase of my life.

What I did know is that I wanted to follow my purpose and my passion somehow and someway. So I made a du‘a to Allah (SWT): “O, Allah! Help me to find a way so whatever I do will be a full-time service for You in this world and the next.”

The answer to that prayer began to unfold in my own life story. It started through an old friend of mine named Jamaliddin. Together, we started the world’s first social network for Muslims called Ummaland. You can read the full story later in the book “7 Steps To Success In Deen & Dunya”. While it was not a success financially, it was the starting point for Halal.Ad and many more ventures to come. One of those ventures is Quran Era.

Quran Era

This adventure started through yet another old friend of mine named Nadir, who I have had the privilege of getting to know very well while we both studied in Denmark. He is originally from Uzbekistan like me. He’s known for being very kind, and also passionate about teaching the Quran. In fact, I have even taken Quran lessons from him.

He moved from Denmark to Australia and settled there with his family. He and I kept in touch, as he studied and taught Down Under and I also studied and worked in Denmark.

He followed the work I was doing with different startups and companies, and I followed his work as well. And at one point, he reached out to me, saying he wanted to create something to help teach the Quran to children. “That’s great,” I told him, “Just go do it. You don’t need my help because you are an excellent Quran teacher.”

He replied, “No–I want to do something special here, but I don’t know exactly what that is.” That prompted us to have a deeper conversation.

I’m telling you his story because it is an excellent example of what we’ve been covering. I knew he was passionate about teaching the Quran, but he hadn’t outlined the other principles of ikigai that would create a foundation for what he was trying to achieve. He needed to take time to specify the things he was good at, what particular problem he could solve, and how he would be paid for his concept.

He was clearly passionate about teaching the Quran to children. But he needed to figure out the other pieces to the puzzle. For six months to a year, we had ongoing conversations about his goal, where we would ping-pong ideas back and forth between each other. He wanted to do something different than what was already being offered, but couldn’t quite figure it out.

Eventually, I said to him, “Look, if you’re just doing a basic Quran academy, I don’t think that’s going to be enough. It’s been done, repeatedly. What you really need is something unique and meaningful to the Ummah, something that no one else is doing.”

These conversations and ideas were the early stages of a startup company that Nadir and I co-founded, now known as Quran Era, an online Quran reading app that teaches how to read the Quran the most fun way via games, video stories, songs, and many other activities.

When it came to purpose, Nadir and I were aligned. As Prophet (SAW) said: “The best among you are those who learn and teach the Quran.” Our purpose was to serve Allah SWT by teaching Muslim children to get introduced to His Book in the most fun way, while also teaching them how to read the Quran in the best way.

Nadir and I also had aligned passions. He had been learning and teaching the Quran for years.

Yet, these two elements–passion and purpose–were still not enough on their own to get us to what is now a world-class product that thousands of Muslim children love, and that thousands of Muslim parents pay to access.

The next chapter explains more about the next step we need to take. For now, however, let’s review what we learned in this chapter through the next set of action steps.

Write down your reflections on the four ikigai elements:

What you love (things that put you in a flow state)
What the world needs (your mission)
What you are good at (your skills, talents)
What you can earn an income from (get paid)

Be sure to do each action step carefully, especially step two. Don’t rush through this step; you may want to ask a spouse or close friend, or family member to help you with some options here if they do not come to you easily. Try to aim for a minimum of three items for each element, but more items are preferred. This will give you plenty of ideas to work with as we expound upon them later.

Dua
O Allah, help us find our passion in serving You. Grant us the clarity to align our love, skills, and mission with what pleases You. Make our passions a means of benefiting others, and let us find joy and fulfillment in living our purpose. Ameen.

Goals:
On a scale of 1 to 10, how you evaluate your Passion?
What are your Passion goals to achieve 10?

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Beliefs:
What are your beliefs about your Passion?
What is holding you back to achieve 10 out of 10?

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Motivation:
Why does it matter to achieve these goals?
What happens if you do? What happens if you don’t?

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Methods:
What is your plan to achieve your Passion goals?
What simple steps can you take today?

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