Faith can move mountains for you

Are some things destined for you? and why you shouldn’t run after things not meant for you and your happiness.

Zayn wakes up to his dingy bedroom in a shared 4-bedroom apartment at the outskirts of Karachi. Zayn is a freelance mechanic. He knows that if God is on his side today, he will be able to make a daily wage sufficient enough to feed him with a basic meal at the end of the day.

Chris wakes up in Detroit to a lavish 2-bedroom condominium. As he hits the button on his ringing alarm clock, he is filled with dread on how much work he has piled up for the work day. He has to make the quarterly budgets for the marketing campaigns of 4 different clients, hold meetings with different agencies to accomplish said budgets, and explain his branding strategies to his reporting authorities by the end of the week. He is stressed out by how much he has on his plate and how he can mess it up by making just one mistake. It all depends on him and his actions.

In the long run, who do you think will have the healthier outcome in their life? Most studies have shown that “religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide.” Before we start chasing the goals and outcomes we deem best for us, it is important to know that we are viewing things with a limited mind-frame and perhaps there are things out there that could provide us with more peace and fulfillment.

Going about our work days and personal lives without having the comforting shade of faith is equivalent to being busy for the sake of feeling productive. You need to have an overarching purpose which will enable you to do the things that come in your path with ease. In the same way as a cellphone manufacturer gives an instruction manual on how to operate a cellphone, we have been given an instruction manual through our religion.

Success is predefined by our Creator. For those amongst us who are to indulge in the sustainable plan proposed by God, we are to realize that real success is already promised to us. By success, I don’t mean bling bling and fast cars or a high-end corporate life with lots of suits. Success for me means to have peace and joy, gratitude and bliss, and health and prosperity in all dimensions of life. It means emotional, mental, spiritual and physical well-being.

Real success comes from within. All else and all external is secondary. Merely a by-product of the peace and happiness that we feel every day when we start living according to the commandments of religion and the lessons of spirituality. Career, relationships and even health comes secondary to our journey towards our destiny. So what is our destiny? What is the inherent point to life and being alive? Why are we here? We are here to feel the unknown, the unseeable, and the subconscious. Our success depends on the following: being conscious of the hidden forces of the divine aka God.

Faith is the colour that fills the earth below the horizon and the skies above it. Without it, life would be black and white. To reach to the top of the hill, you need faith otherwise the sheer height will frighten the life out of you. Without faith, it can be easier to run after temporary fixes and superficial achievements that have little value to please you in the longer run.

So what are we to do then? Quite simply, we are a creation hence we have a Creator. By remembering our Creator daily, we can easily pave our path towards everlasting success. This also ensures we don’t take this life too seriously and learn detachment regardless of the amount of superficial success we earn.

I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer — Jim Carrey

So before you go on with your day, I would like to remind you of the impending doom brought about by the mental heart crisis in the 21st century. Depression and Anxiety statistics are sky-high and everybody is beginning to feel sick and tired on a frequent basis. Even rich and famous musicians and entrepreneurs show up in suicide statistics and this can pose a real problem for many of us. It is high time that we make life an internal journey and stop running after external stimulus to bring us peace and happiness. We need to alter the trajectory that we were previously following and make health, peace and well-being our top priority. By being conscious of God and understanding the transience of this life, you can take your life to divine heights and become a spiritual embodiment of joy and serenity, which is one thing lacking in the modern era.