Since finishing The Defining Decade last year, one word has been playing inside my head.
One word that seems to make sense is to explain why people get what they want, achieve what they strive for, and what separates them from those who don’t.
In Ramadan, I know some people/businesses that close fully for the whole of Ramadan, finish the Quran and do many other things that I once wondered how they could do.
Among many words that could explain contributing factors to the cases above, first and foremost, it starts with one thing :
Intention.
Those people above are all being intentional in the first place.
They know what they want to do and achieve; they know Ramadan is coming, so they’re intentionally preparing for it.
When we are intentional, we choose to make decisions and take action on what’s important to us. Being intentional means getting clear and upfront about what you want to achieve. We intentionally set an intention to achieve a specific outcome or result in the future that is important to us.
Setting goals without the proper intention won’t take us far and long. That explains why many New Year resolutions fail, diet regimes lasts for a while, and many more. When we only hav goals, we only play for a short term. But, when we’re being intentional, we’ll keep playing no matter what.
It also makes sense why In Islam our reward is only as good as our intention. It emphasizes being intentional is the foundation of all the deeds that we do.
Our Ramadan and our life in general, here in this dunya, and later in the hereafter, is only as good as our intention.
It is both this simple and this hard.
A Penny for My Pensieve 