Today, thanks to a link a friend shared, I discovered a site called Suffagah. The site generally offers examples and lessons rooted in faith. The articles don’t carry useless content. Compared to similar sites, Suffagah was one I genuinely enjoyed reading. By the way, the title should have been “21 Things I Learned at 21,” but the person translating it on the site skipped item 8. So I changed the title to “20 Things I Learned at 21.” Plus, being 21 myself, this article felt extra-personal.
I hope the topics here add something to your life. If you have items to add, share them in the comments and we’ll all benefit. Stay well. Peace be with you.
One last thing — if you put on this song while reading, the article may leave a stronger impression on you.
1. Admit you know nothing and have no experience
Our egos do a great job of putting us at the front of the line as if we were the leaders of the game. We talk admiringly about our creative ideas and our broad thinking. But the truth is: if we haven’t worked a single day in our lives, most of those ideas and broad thoughts mean nothing. Bachelor’s degrees help you think in a certain way and signal to others (including your bosses) how serious you are about yourself and your progress. Learn to work random jobs during school to pick up skills you’ll need in your profession. Simple things — learning to talk to people at a help desk, tutoring someone to success, working as a waiter — will take you a long way.
2. Know your priorities as a Muslim
Some things in life are more important than others. That’s a basic rule everyone knows. Once you can figure out what your priorities are and give them their proper weight, life will start flowing more naturally. If waking up early has always been hard, understand that going to bed early and praying Fajr on time is more important than catching the season finales of Breaking Bad or Burn Notice. If you’re at school all week and working at night and barely making time for family, spend most of your weekend with family instead of stacking it with Islamic seminars. Your faith and your family come before everything else.
3. Work hard, study hard, play hard
Whatever you want to do in life, you’ll genuinely get better at it. Stop dawdling and give everything its due. When it’s time to work, work. Do the job thoroughly. There’s no substitute for sweat. If you’re a student, stop putting your studies off. Don’t make excuses — instead, learn for the sake of learning; you won’t regret it. Know how to rest. Have enough good time to clear your head without going overboard. Balance is the key. When school’s out, take vacations and recharge. Step away from all the stressful situations in your life. Know what entertains you, and do those things.
4. Only fools take people’s praise to heart
The moment you let praise settle into your heart, your personal growth gets negatively affected. As I mentioned at the start, the moment you accept praise as fact, failure begins. Plus there are plenty of people out there who praise you simply because they pity you. Take off the blinkers and notice you’ve been filling your whole life with air. There’s a difference between being motivated by a bit of recognition and being scammed by someone’s flattery.
5. Success starts with financial independence
If you’re not earning your own (halal) money and not working towards being independent from your family, you’re still behind on the road to success. Stop making excuses, commit to not being a burden on anyone. You probably won’t manage to cover rent at first, but you should be able to cover your gas, food and basic needs. Eventually, stop spending other people’s money. Again, having a goal and working towards it is the key — that’s progress.
6. Islam is more useful when practiced beyond mosques, weekend seminars and conferences
These are places where being a Muslim is easy. The point of faith is not “have a nice Friday-night high.” Your faith should be your safety net across the whole face of your life. Rather than killing time at a conference because your dad and everyone else will be there, it’s more important to have a heart connected to God to help you overcome hardships. Start reading the Qur’an regularly with a group, whatever your level. One day you’ll have children you’ll struggle to raise as good Muslims. Take your faith seriously. Find people with good character who have a grip on their faith, and benefit from their friendship. The time will probably come when you’ll question why you’re Muslim and the purpose of your faith. Write the questions down and go to your teachers or mentors for answers. If they can’t answer, they’ll point you to who can.
7. Forget Hollywood and Bollywood — love is not what it looks like
Around me I’ve seen enough peers and friends divorcing after short marriages or breaking off long engagements. We young people are in love with falling in love, while not knowing what a relationship requires, the rights of a life partner, the purpose of marriage, what our families expect of us, and more. It’s not that I know everything on this topic — but like everything else in life, I’m guessing real love takes time and effort. If you’re insistent that you know better, earn your own money and try to be tolerant alongside your own family. After that, maybe you can think about marriage. For everyone else: stay away from romanticized, idealized, fantasized relationships. Don’t rush, don’t make rushed moves. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham aren’t real. So stop trying to live like Shah Rukh Khan.
8. People who put you down and belittle you are completely unreliable — this may include your “friends”
When you reach success in life you’ll see that many people you were once close to will make you feel small. They make a living off hurting you and making you feel small — they love it. It’s also a good thing, because vengeful people validate that you’re doing something right. Don’t let these people waste your time and energy. Keep your cool, let them feel like the fools, and walk on with grace. The truth is, your successes and failures in life help you see who your real friends are — which leads into the next point.
9. Surround yourself with good people
Islam essentially teaches us that we are like our friends. If you have a bad circle, you automatically pick up their behaviors, actions, thinking patterns and more. If you hang out with positive people who give advice on faith and career, you’re definitely picking things up from them. As the saying goes: “Tell me your friend and I’ll tell you who you are.” Also, don’t inflate the number of close friends. Instead, have a few confidants who become precious in your heart and from whom you learn things.
10. Get mentors — yes, more than one!
Since you’re nearing graduation, get mentors you can reach in different areas. If you’re going to be a doctor, a lawyer obviously can’t help. If you’re going to be a lawyer, a doctor won’t help. So have someone — for career, faith, fitness, family, etc. — you can get help from in each area. When you have a faith question, you should know automatically who can answer in your language. If you’re job hunting for the months right after graduation, you should be talking constantly with mentors who can help you grow in your career.
The Qur’an has always favored the idea of istikhlaf — succession. Putting someone in your place. The picture of life isn’t about one person; it’s about carrying good into your life so others can build something bigger on top. A good mentor knows their success depends on training, raising and teaching others with an open mind.
11. Learn to dress better
There was no reason to keep wearing wrinkled white t-shirts, torn pants and colorful Converse in the transition from high school to the university kingdom. Actually by your first year you’d already dropped those jeans and shoes in favor of sweatpants paired with socks that always force you to wear slippers. If you want to be taken seriously by the world, dig a trench through your whole wardrobe. As men we don’t have the option of throwing a robe over whatever silly outfit we’re wearing, so before you step outside in the morning, make sure you look professional and put-together. You don’t always need a suit, but make sure everything is ironed, your hair is brushed, your shoes haven’t gone through a lawnmower. Buy a couple of nice perfumes instead of free samples.
12. Stop being ordinary
To get ahead in life, you need to rely on your skills and knowledge in your field more than on other people. That means achieving above average in life. Settling for what satisfies everyone else won’t be enough. Trying to escape mediocrity might extend to getting good grades — but it’s really worth a lot more. Each of us needs to see what we can contribute within our own field.
13. Accept that there aren’t many shortcuts in life
There’s no substitute for hard work. May your fingers turn red reaching for success. You’ll meet many people who appear to have their lives sorted but have actually done nothing. Maybe you’ll meet a 23-year-old student claiming he works with a millionaire but doesn’t even pay his own gas bill. The funniest moment I remember: a 19-year-old trying to “life coach” a married 30-year-old friend of mine with 3 kids about his career and family life for the next 5 years. Like in item 2: work hard.
14. Stop taking everything for granted
Your car, your food, your clothes and your education are privileges. Things to earn and be grateful for. Look at those less fortunate than you, and thank God you wake up to a day where you’re not in a hospital, can walk on your own two feet, can digest what you eat, don’t have cancer, and so on. When you don’t appreciate the small things, life stays tasteless.
15. Between 18 and 21, every year feels like 5 years
I’m not sure exactly what it is — maybe the amount of growth? But anyway, 18–21 feels like a long stretch. Each year seems to give you something. New experiences, new failures, new successes, new people can affect you negatively too. Just relax, take it slow, don’t rush your decisions. Again, these times are when the outline of the rest of your life gets drawn.
16. Don’t live too much in the past or too far in the future
The atonement for the past is paid right now, to build a new future. Don’t let bad decisions stop you from moving forward. Instead of being depressed and burned out about a bad experience, business deal or even a personal decision, use it to direct yourself to the success of right now. Another point: don’t think too far ahead either, in a way that ignores the present or tries to make unrealistic expectations sensible. Build a mental balance. This connects us to item 19.
17. Travel often
If you want to travel, now is the time. Spend your vacation periods entirely on traveling the world. Travel broadens the horizon, and when you come back it helps you relax and see things differently. Long trips in vacations are probably what motivates me most to keep showing up to school. The people you’ll meet, the places you’ll go and the experiences you’ll have will give you an education a university degree can’t compete with. Go somewhere! Anywhere, and everywhere!
18. If you go far away, call home
Another thing I learned: if you’re far from family, never underestimate the power of a phone call. Since I was 14, I’ve stayed away from home for school here and there. I spent the first 1–2 years of high school in New York and 2 weeks in a dorm. After my freshman year of college I took a year off to join the Bayyinah Institute’s “Dream” program and moved to Dallas. And in my senior year my family moved from New Jersey to Atlanta. For these reasons I’ve lived away from family for the last 5 years.
Always call. If possible, every day. If not every day, every other day. Your mom wants to hear your voice and tell you she loves you, while your dad wants to talk to the person he’s worked to build into a good man. If you don’t call home, you hurt your family. That simple. It means you don’t want to talk to them. There’s no other way to read it.
19. Make a plan — but be ready to change it
To be honest, no matter how much you plan, God is the best of planners. Go ahead — make a timeline for your career, plan 5, 10, 20, even 30 years ahead. Know what you want to study, where you want to go for grad school, how successful you want to be — but leave some flex room because maybe things won’t go as planned. Maybe the head of the household passes and you have to support the family (God forbid). Maybe you get into med school and the first year is too hard and then your heart wants something else. Whatever it is, always leave room for flex and accept that sometimes change is fate.
20. When everything goes wrong, look at who’s still happy to be with you. Those are the people who matter
Family matters. Those who stay matter, not those who leave. Siblings matter. Even if they’ve made some genuinely big mistakes, they still matter. A good friend and mentor once told me: “Nihal, ignore the fools in your life. People will threaten, hurt and slander you. What matters are the people who still want to be with you when everything else falls apart. Even if everyone else loses, know that you’re on the right path with that coin.”
This post wouldn’t have been possible without my family. These are some of the people who, in the past years, have sincerely worked with me across various areas of my life and helped me grow as an individual. May God be pleased with them all. Suffagah: 21 Things I Learned at 21.
