Last month, I went to Faisalabad for the National Biology Talent Contest, NBTC, held annually at the National Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering (NIBGE). Being a considerable distance from my native Karachi, my parents considered it unsafe to send me for the contest by road, so I went by air, and reached a day and a half before the competition was supposed to begin. Luckily for me, all the participants from Karachi arrived later the same day, and so I was spared of the boredom that I could have possibly encountered.

That evening, when my roommate and I went to the hostel’s prayer hall to perform our Maghrib (dusk) prayers, we found no one there. Since we ourselves were late, we presumed that everyone else had already fulfilled the obligation, and it was we who were the procrastinators. However, we reached for Isha (night-time prayers) well in time for the jamaat (congregational prayers), and I was taken aback with great disappointment when I discovered that my roommate and I were the only people there. After a wait of yet another five to seven minutes, when no one arrived, with a heavy heart, two of us held our own jamaat.

The next day, participants from other parts of the country arrived, and it only added to my depression that despite a now-increased population in the hostel, the number of people coming for the prayers remained consistently very low. When I thought about it, I realized that the reason was simple—the university’s mosque was at quite a distance from the hostel, and so the voice of the Azaan (call to prayer) was never heard. Nor did anyone in the hostel get the idea to deliver the Azaan there, to announce that it was time for prayer. So, in a daring move, at Isha, I walked up to a central place in the hostel, and delivered the Azaan.

A thought once did strike me that whether or not the administration would approve of this act or not. Whether or not would I be allowed to continue delivering the Azaan during my stay was yet another thought that bugged me.

But I decided to discard these thoughts. After all, the administration could do nothing more than just reproach me. After all, if I didn’t shoot, it was going to be a hundred per cent miss, anyway.

The technique was, by the Grace of Allah, a success, and a great deal of people turned up for Isha that night. Thankfully, no one stopped me, and I continued with delivering the Azaan.

When I reflected on this incident, a few things dawned upon me. Many a times we have worthy cogitations in our bosoms, worthy goals in our minds. But some mental barriers inhibit us from pursuing those goals, from making those thoughts a physical entity. Somewhere in our minds there is something like a phobia that stops us from pursuing our desires. You might want to stop someone from, for a simple example, walking on the left side of the road as it is against the way of the Prophet (peace be upon him), but due to unexplained hesitations, refrain from doing so. Probably you fear a harsh comment from that guy. Similarly, a cricketer might hesitate from hitting big shots despite being an able and energetic batsman. We humans generally prefer to stay in our comfort zones, living as per the motto of ‘Mind your own business’, and in our self-centered lives, never aim to create a large impact. It is this DMR (mental script) of ours, which manifests itself when we hesitate to take a daring move, when we refrain from taking risks in life. This lack of nerve which barricades us from taking risks in turn, makes us kind-of timid. We become over-cautious of ou actions, and in this way, make our minds aloof from creativity, feeling satisfied with the orthodox way of doing things.

Once we begin to practise this, we gradually lose our ability to be leaders and initiators. Take a glimpse at history, and you will see that all the prominent leaders out there were risk-takers. Muhammad bin Qasim took a huge risk when he fought against Raja Dahir. For a more recent example, Mr. Jinnah’s anti-British and anti-Congress stance in the twentieth century subcontinent was nothing less than a grave risk itself. Yet he led--a risk well-rewarded.

The fact that we need to realize today is that there is only one person who can be labeled as an ‘initiator’. The rest of them are all followers. No matter how large the group of followers becomes, and no matter how prominent a follower you are, you will always be overshadowed by the initiators.

Risks are an integral part of a leader's life. Once an individual is mentally prepared to take all sorts of risks, he or she can achieve seemingly unattainable heights. What we need is nerves of steel. And we all have them.

Believe me, they are there. Undiscovered.

Areeb Nafay Uddin Siddiqui is a Timelenders family member and is currently an A level student at Generation’s School, Karachi. He has attended the Strategic Visions, Strategic Time Management and Visions Retreat (Malaysia) workshops. He is simultaneously a poet, satirical writer, and also addresses serious issues like organizational and personal skills. He writes in both, English and Urdu. He has also conducted the Strategic Time Management training in his school for the domestic staff. Currently, he is doing an extensive internship with Timelenders.

It’s an overwhelmingly difficult confession to make that even though I’ve known about Malcolm Gladwell’s first bestseller The Tipping Point since its publication in 2000, it took me fourteen years to finally finish reading it. Life has just been too busy. But now I wonder, how busy could I have been to make sure I was busy in the right direction, towards the right goal, and with the right people. I did start reading it on various occasions but this little reading does nothing to grab you by the collar, look you in the eye and say ‘Hey, this book is about you!’. This book really is about us all as individuals, the way we interact, and how these interactions can tip our world dramatically for the better. 

So what is this ‘tipping point’ that Gladwell talks about? Basically, the tipping point, in the words of the French poet Victor Hugo, is an idea whose time has come. However, Gladwell goes a step further. He gently reminds us, as all of us know from personal experience, that just having an idea isn’t enough. The timing, the people involved in its execution, the context, the setting, and the manner of its transmission is what makes an idea a great idea. These are the factors that make an idea an epidemic. The book transcends borders, nationalities, race, and creed.  It shows us how to fling our idea out at the world with such precision, confidence, clarity of vision, and surety of success that it explodes across the sky with all the glamorous colors of a rainbow and with all the far-reaching effects of an epidemic.

Using case analyses and statistics to support his claim, Gladwell shreds apart the myth that only big ideas can succeed. The book is littered heavily with examples, testimonies, and results of a myriad of studies that hammer in the point that you don’t need a big idea to succeed; you just need to find that linchpin in that huge, impressive grenade of an idea to make it explode. If Gladwell’s subtitle for the book is How Little Things Make a Big Difference, he reiterates the point impressively throughout the book, maintaining the crescendo from the first page to the last.

Having grown up with the characters of Sesame Street, I was seriously interested in getting the behind the scenes story of how did this show get so successful? Surprisingly enough, it was through attention to minor details that this success story came about.  Another example that hit home was Blues Clues. My children grew up on this one and needless to say I was riveted by a simplistic show that still has children glued to the TV for education that is also fun. And then there is the case of Hush Puppies, the shoes that nearly died. I wanted to know how the tipping point came for the brand that is now a wardrobe necessity not only in the US but in other countries as well. These are just three of an avalanche of examples that are compressed into a rather small book.

The interesting point that is brought home continually in each chapter, as Gladwell illustrates with his ‘chilling’ research examples, is that though the time ‘had come’ for these ideas, a number of human and material factors contributed to their eventual, overwhelming success.  And of these factors, the ones that made the most difference, or the ones that made the balance tip for success, were the seemingly, absolutely insignificant ones.

I’d be lying if I said that self-discovery and self-help were not the prime motives in my mind when I started to read The Tipping Point. The main idea was to understand how this book could help my growth as a person. But that idea soon blended into a much larger canvass where I started to realize that Gladwell’s compilation of research could help identify the ‘resolution linchpins’ in the dominant, insurmountable problems facing our communities and nation as a whole.

Consider the case of New York City in the 1980s when crime rates were at their historical peak levels with 2,000 murders and 600,000 serious crimes per year. The city’s underground trains were a terror to look at and travel on. Trains were late, there was violence inside, graffiti was all over all the cars that were unheated in winter and raging hot in summer, passengers were getting on without paying, and trains were travelling at 15 to 20 mph due to track damage. This was before David Gunn was hired to implement and oversee the rebuilding of the entire subway system. Considering the miraculous ‘revival’ of the New York subway under Gunn, one would assume that he had focused his energies on subway crime and overall train reliability. However, Gunn had actually gone for the jugular of the seemingly most mundane of all causes; graffiti. Why? Because he was sure that the Broken Windows theory would work here.

The Broken Windows theory by criminologists George Kelling and James Wilson states that crime escalates and heightens in an environment that supports it. For instance, rundown neighborhoods are more likely to invite hoodlums and criminals than areas where it is obvious that people take notice and then action. According to this theory, disorder and mayhem invites more disorder and mayhem. Hence, Gunn targeted the graffiti first. His goal was to clean up the cars so that the felons would get the message that the area was being cleaned up and will no longer tolerate mayhem. His scheme worked.

Why did I read over half of The Tipping Point in a much larger context than just self-help alone? Our communities and cities in Pakistan are crying out for people, organizations, and ideas that will finally make the scales tip in their favor. Our streets are bulging with crime, our youth is devoid of energy and motivation, and our civic services are a disaster. We need to read the theories that Gladwell has outlined in his book and mull over the different ways we can make the scales tip in our favor too. The Tipping Point first has to be read as a personal guide and then as a guide to a possibly great social change around us. 

Irum Sarfaraz is a freelance writer/editor settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, USA. Her published credits as writer and web content developer include well over 2,000 articles in both American and Pakistani publications. Her notable work is the translation of Harun Yahya's epic Atlas of Creation-Vol 1 and Evolution Deceit from English to Urdu. Sister Irum has a master's degree in English Literature and will be writing the Book Review for Envision every month. 

Dear brothers and sisters,

Assalam-o-Alaikum,

It is hard to imagine why one wouldn’t be interested in a project that he or she is not only passionate about but that also profoundly impacts the lives of the people around them and their own future generations. Chances are, the majority of us cannot come up a reason to be disinterested. I got my chance to come up with a similar goal-oriented Vision in the company of twenty-two visionaries in September 2014 in Vision Retreat-Malaysia. These twenty-two individuals not only had flaming, worthy visions but also the desire and interest to apply their visionary view in various arenas. 

To cite an example, a brother in the group was refining his vision of establishing a global organization that worked on the intellectual development of widows and orphans. Widows and orphans not only need food, clothing, and shelter but also need to be educated in order to become motivated and capable members of society. They need to be financially stable where their situation switches from burden to asset. 

A vision such as this is not only aligned with the orders of Allah (swt) but also with those of Prophet Muhammad (saw). No doubt, every practicing Muslim in the world helps widows and orphans within his or her personal capacity. However, the absence of a larger framework scatters individual efforts made in this direction and creates a huge gap that continue to grow greater over time. The solution is to institutionalize global support for orphans and widows currently present on more or less an individual basis. 

Initially, the vision to create such an institutionalized effort was sought only for one area of Pakistan. However, after continued deliberations, brainstorming, and discussions in the Retreat, the group members agreed to expand the effort on a global scale with the singular goal of positively impacting the lives of millions of underprivileged orphans and widows. Creating an institutional framework for this vision not only reduces its dependency on just one or small group of individuals, its potential for impact also grows exponentially. The founder of this vision has already jumpstarted this huge undertaking where 250 orphans and widows are being educated in one area of Pakistan. 

Similarly, another brother in the Retreat had envisioned the establishment of institutions in all walks of life, from education to food to business etc., in the underprivileged areas of Africa. The greater goal was the empowerment of the poor and oppressed in these regions through knowledge and skills that would help to unleash the people’s true human potential. The ultimate vision behind these intermediate visions is to bring the people in these areas closer to Allah (swt). This brother attended the Retreat with his two sons aged sixteen and twenty who aspire to be a part of their father’s vision and hence were attending to start honing their competency towards this goal. In addition to being Huffaz, both of these young men speak fluent Arabic and are now in the process of understanding the message of the Quran. Their general course of studies, a must for the ultimate success of their vision, continues alongside their Arabic training. This was indeed a truly inspiring vision showing a single-minded dedication and commitment towards the achievement of a goal. 

The above were some glimpses of how Vision Retreat graduates undergo dramatic processes of change. Simply put, the powerful impact of such dedicated, visionary individuals on others is quite predictable, ‘charging’ them in turn to profoundly affect the lives of millions around the world in one capacity or another. 

The second week of September was equally exciting with our debut Strategic Visions training in Europe, starting with Paris, France, home of Bonaparte, the ambitious General who became the first French Emperor. In his words, ‘Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principles that direct them’. 

The active members of the Muslim community attending this workshop were those who were realizing the huge need for implementing visioning frameworks in Europe in order to safeguard the interests of their future generations in Europe. Needless to say, extensive work needs to be done in this regard. Given the welcoming and positive response of community members at this workshop, Timelenders plans to conduct more workshops across Europe soon. 

A piece of advice at the end; take a deep breath and reflect upon your lives. Life is passing by at the speed of light, if not faster. We make time for everything else except the most important; reflection and contemplation on where exactly we are headed. We need to make changes, and quickly, if we are to leave behind a legacy that will immortalize our existence in this temporary world and create a niche for us in the hereafter. We need to create a lasting visionary framework and share it with others.  We need to change, and change never occurs overnight. Among other things, change comes through developing alternative strategies against the noise of System B. If you don’t know what System B is, you need to register for the upcoming Strategic Visions workshop. If you have already attended both Strategic Visions and Strategic Time Management, then you need to register for the next Vision Retreat and become a part of the exclusive visionary club. Remember, as Jim Rohn says, ‘You’re an average of five people you spend most of your time with’. So think about whom you are spending your time with.  

From this month, we’ve added a Book Review section in the newsletter focusing on the books Timelenders recommends its family members to read. This is to create an interest in reading, a quite forgotten habit that unclutters our mind, smoothens out those creases in our thought process, and expands our horizon of ideas. No doubt, the company of good books differentiates an up and kicking community from a dead one. 

As always, we look forward to hearing from you,

Wassalam,

Yameenuddin Ahmed

The Editor

Vision Retreat

Hotel Bangi – Putrajaya, Malaysia

05 – 08 September, 2014

Strategic Visions

Paris, France

12 – 14 September, 2014

Strategic Visions

IBA Main Campus, Karachi

13 – 16 September, 2014

Effective Leadership Through Character

Marriott Hotel, Karachi

19 – 20 September, 2014

Strategic Time Management

Best Western Hotel, Islamabad

19 – 21 September, 2014

Strategic Time Management

HUBCO, Karachi

25 – 26 September, 2014

Stress Management

Marriott Hotel, Karachi

27 September, 2014

Sleep Management

IBA Main Campus, Karachi

28 September, 2014