Thinking in Terms of Opportunity Cost

Opportunity Cost is a concept that I first learnt about in economics. Let’s say you have 1 piece of bread. You can either make a nutella sandwich or a cheese sandwich. The opportunity cost of making the cheese sandwich is that you’ll miss out on having the nutella sandwich. This concept of opportunity cost comes because of the limited resources that we have.

The most common economic example given for opportunity cost is let’s say you have 1,000 dirhams, and you put it under your pillow. The opportunity cost of that is the gain – or loss – you might get if you invest the money in a small business. So what helps us decide on whether to invest the money or not?

1) The risk factor of the small business

2) How much money we initially have. If we have 1 million, then investing the 1,000 is easier than if we had only 1,200 dirhams in our pockets.

Likewise, think of time as a currency. You know they say that time is money, when in reality time is more precious than money because acquiring money is a reversible process – money comes and goes – but time is irreversible, once lost, it will never come back. So everytime you spend your time doing something, think of the value of all the other things that you are foregoing by your decision, and ask yourself if the loss is worth it. So if you are spending your time surfing the internet idly, think that the opportunity cost of that action is the amount of productive work you could have done.

Taking an analogy similar to that of money, deciding with what you do with one hour will depend on the value of what you are currently doing, and how much time you already have. So when you are on holiday with so much free time on your hand, it becomes easier to waste 1 hour surfing the net, 1 hour watching tv, 1 hour sitting there and doing nothing…but let’s say you have three deadlines the next day, would you be tempted to waste time?

Plus how much time you already have is not something you can put a value on, even though you might think you can. Time is a limited commodity. Only Allah (SWT) knows much time a person really has in their life, so think twice before you spend it.

The car accident

You know how they say that 2011 is the year of revolutions. We experienced a more physical revolution – or ingilaab- on Saturaday the 17th of September. My older brother was driving and I was in the passenger seat. At around 2 pm we were on the AD-Dubai road going to AlRahba to pick up something from family friends when suddenly we heard a strange noise coming from the right side of the car (I’m assuming that was the point when the tire burst). The car suddenly began shaking violently as it looked like it lost balance, and my brother tried to send the car to the furthermost right lane. By then he lost complete control of the car, and before we knew it, the car had flipped over. The window on my side had already broken, so I slipped outside, and my brother was helped out through the window by some people who had stopped to help.

It must have taken less than a couple of minutes before everything was over, and I’m grateful to Allah (SWT) we came out of the car with minimal injuries.  So many people stopped by to help. The first questions asked was that if there was anybody else in the car, and there wasn’t. These strangers gave us water, called the police. They helped guide traffic, gave us blankets to lie on until the ambulance came. One of them even gave us a phone to call our parents, since our phones were still inside the overturned car (explains why we don’t have a picture, not that I would like to look at it anyway). After that, the ambulance came to take us to Rahba hospital where they performed normal check-ups and cleared us by 7 pm (So we did end up in Rahba after all, just for a totally different reason).

So for those who’ve been asking, both my brother and I are totally fine alhamdullilah. We were just in shock initially, but we’re totally fine now. We turned my dad’s 4 by 4 into a sports car, because that’s how its shape has been modified after turning over.

That’s it for now.

AH

Don’t Be Defeated By Defeat

Have you ever tasted the bitterness of defeat? It could break your heart, it could make you cry, it could stress you out but will it make you strong? I’ve always tried to understand the philosophy behind emotions. So what is defeat? It’s that frustration that fills you when you know that you can no longer win. It’s what I felt when I had plummeted rock-bottom in my career. I knew I couldn’t win- for I have tried so many times to make my previous job work -so I quit. There’s a saying that goes like, “If it’s hot in the kitchen then get out of it.”

I have to admit I’ve felt it more than once in my personal life; trying to make relationships work but failing miserably. For instance, when I was in high school, I used to always wonder what makes people like my brother or cousin quite popular, and I was always frustrated because I had few friends, and I wasn’t even able to keep those for long. Now, personally, I’ve come a long way and yet I’m still the loner that I’ll always be. I have a lot of friends – mind you – but my natural disposition leans towards loner-ism. I have accepted that as a fact, and I decided to just move on with life. As long as I was content with who I am, it really doesn’t matter if I don’t get the 1,000,000 million views on my blog, or if I don’t have 600 emails to respond to. The limited audience of this blog makes me quite comfortable actually, knowing exactly who I am talking to when I’m writing this, and what problems I’m trying to address.

So we were talking about defeat…Now when you lose in getting what you want over and over again, it leads to despair – or ya2s. A point reaches when you’re this close to giving up once and for all, it’s when married couples have “The Talk” preceding a divorce, or when a person throws out his plan of running his own company to go to the vegetable market and sell watermelons (nothing wrong with selling watermelons, by the way).So upon losing over and over again, you reach the crossroads, where you have to make a choice. You either keep on ploughing forward or you turn back and leave the trail for something simpler, something more comfortable, something that you can easily win.

So how do you sustain that momentum to keep on going?

1) Remember that this could be your final “Crossroad”. They say that people don’t realize how close they are to success before they give up. With that in mind, keep on telling yourself, that this could be your final burden and maybe one day it would.

2) Don’t give in to despair. Remember that as a Muslim, you have the most powerful tool in your disposal and that is the power of duaa.

3) Don’t make failure an option. Don’t make turning back an option. Be like the army that had the enemy in front of them and the ocean behind them so that they knew giving up and turning back would just mean running into the sea – definitely not for a swim.

4) Try alternate plans to reach the goal or solve the problem. Sometimes we get so caught up in the details of the problem, that no space exists in our brains to allow for solutions to be created. Let’s say, you lose your bag with your wallet, mobile phone? A lot of people’s first reaction is to complain, lament, recall all the incidents that lead to losing the bag…

“If only I didn’t put it there…”

“Who could have possibly taken it?”

Enough with expanding the problem and just work on solving it. Cancel your bank cards, get badal fa8ed for your number. Get over it!!

There’s a quote by D’Angelo that says, ” Focus 90% of your time on solutions and only 10% of your time on problems. “

Also remember the hadeeth;

عن أبي هريرة رضي الله عنه قال: قال رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم: “المؤمن القوي خير وأحب إلى الله من المؤمن الضعيف، وفي كل خير، احرص على ما ينفعك، واستعن بالله، ولا تعجز، وإن أصابك شيء فلا تقل: لو أني فعلت كان كذا وكذا، ولكن قل: قدر الله وما شاء فعل فإن لو تفتح عمل الشيطان” (1) .
صحيح مسلم

Imam Muslim narrated in his Sahih on the authority of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), the Prophet (sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said:

“The strong believer is better and more beloved to Allah than the weak believer, while there is good in both. Guard over that which benefits you, seek Allah’s Assistance, wa laa ta’jiz (do not loose hope or deem yourself incapable), and if something befalls you, then don’t say ‘If I only would have done such and such,’ rather say, ‘Qaddarallahu wa maa sha’ fa’al’ (Allah ordained (this) and He does what He wills), for verily the phrase ‘If I would have’ opens the gate for the work of Shaytan.” [1]

5) Make the best of every defeat. Make a note of lessons learnt, people met, advise taken. Maybe with time you’ll realize that the long road that took you to the solution was more beneficial than any short-cut you would have taken because the long road taught you a lot.

Quote of the Day

أليس من العجيب أن حشره كالنمله إذا وضعت أصبعك أمامها وهي تسير ..وجدتها لم تقف.. ولم تتجمد ،… ولم تبرر عجزها.. وتلقيه على صغر جرمها ،بل تذهب يميناً أو شمالاً أو تلتف أو تغير اتجاهها ،فما بال أحدنا يضرب رأسه في العائق الذي أمامه ألف مرة ،ولايفكر ولو مرة واحده في تغيير طريقتة ..د. سلمان العوده

That’s it for now. If you’ve benefited from this post, share, if not…ignore.

[1] http://maqasid.wordpress.com/2009/05/21/meadows-of-paradise-strong-believer-v-weak-believer-exposition-of-a-hadith-from-sahih-muslim-abdullah-hasan-east-london-mosque-fri-220509-7pm/

Who Are You?- من أنتم ؟

Remember this;

Now forget Gaddafi for a second, and go back to your room. Lock the door, and take a long look at yourself in the mirror. Do you ask yourself the same question? “Who are you?” Because sometimes we must adopt a different persona for the sake of leading a more peaceful life with others – but what about leading a more peaceful life with ourselves?

Today I’m going to share with you some insight from books I’ve read about demystifying yourself, or to be more accurate, to answer the question, “Who are you?”

You know, they say that it doesn’t matter where you came from but what matters is where you want to go. Now look at your past with respect to your current position. A lot of small choices and decisions led you to where you are right now. You are defined by a combination of unique talents, values and character traits. Where do you get those character traits from? Some you’ve picked up from your parents, some from pop culture, some from society, but part of your behaviors is a direct result of things that happened within your own life. Go back in time and recall what would be called “life-altering moments” or “defining moments”. Moments that could have happened when you were still a child that strongly impacted your character in a way that made you change forever.

For most people, the life-altering moment might not be so profound to someone else other than themselves. Let’s say someone gets teased by his colleagues constantly about being overweight. If the person is a confident 21-year-old, he could laugh it off. but if the person is an insecure 8-year-old, he could go home crying. This moment could be a life-altering moment for the 8-year-old.

So back to that exercise to discover what it is that makes you who you are, go back to your personal histories to point out defining moments in your lives. To identify a defining moment, it is a moment of great change, to the better or the worse. If the change had been to the worse, understanding where it came from could save you hours of pain and/or psychiatric therapy in the long-term, because once you know the source of a problem you have, you could go ahead and eliminate it.

You’re probably thinking, “Easier said than done.”

But try putting your history on paper, and unraveling moment after moment that build you up – or broke you down – made you the success that you are – or the failure – and get an answer to that question;

“Who are you?”

Or as Gaddafi said,

من أنتم ؟