4 Qualities of People Who are Highly Successful in Life

with the islamic perspective

Becoming very successful is not a complex nor complicated process as it may seem to many. Rather, a few simple qualities which we all generally have the ability to adopt, but must choose to practice, leads us to fast progression on the road to becoming highly successful. Here are 4:

1. They know exactly what they want to achieve, i.e. they’ve spent time reflecting and thinking about what they want to achieve in life or how they can become really successful, early on. They envision it and thereafter dedicate the rest of their lives working towards actualising it.

2. They are disciplined physically and mentally upon working towards realising their visions/goals.

3. They prioritise well, balancing time for all that which they need to allocate time for, including their family and of course their work/goal/project.

4. They have built productive habits that would help them easily reach their goals. This means that during the periods where they get busy with life's challenges which cause them to miss out on doing their habitual actions in order to realise their goals, their soul yearns to do those actions, as it does not feel adequate or at its best, powerful state without those habits being implemented. Thus, this pushes them to quickly return back to those habits/qualities and thereby find a way to ensure they are still maintained even during challenging times. As a result, this makes it easier for them to easily progress towards becoming highly successful since the habitual actions/qualities required to actualise their goals have now become stronger habits, i.e. they have now become second nature.

By people constantly applying the relevant parts of the above 4 qualities for a considerable period of time, they can now find it easy to also become very successful in other fields/realms of life. This is due to the fact that they have built themselves up to reach a state where they now possess a mind and body conditioned to become immensely successful.

Despite what has been mentioned so far, to be truly successful, one has to channel the aforementioned 4 qualities, ensuring they are all ultimately done for the highest purpose which is to please Allāh (God). They must also ensure the strategies, methods and actions that are utilised to reach their goals, don’t transgress the limits He has set.

Moreover, in relation to the relevant parts of the aforementioned 4 qualities, the great classical scholar, Ibn al-Qayyim (may Allāh have mercy upon him) has written a whole chapter in his book Ranks of the Divine Seekers (Madārij as-Sālikeen), where he delves into the subject of istiqāmah, translated as ‘standing firm/steadfastness.’ In the following quote, he describes what this success quality entails which results in a person becoming tremendously successful.

Furthermore, Allāh teaches us a powerful du'ā' (supplication) by which we can generally be abundantly successful in this life and the Hereafter. He says:

Footnotes

[1] Ibn al-Qayyim (2020). Ranks of the Divine Seekers (Madārij as sālikeen). Islamic translation series. Vol 2, p396

[2] Al-Qur'ān, 2:201

This du'ā' should be said in arabic and can be read as follows: 

رَبَّنَا آتِنَا فِي الدُّنْيَا حَسَنَةً وَفِي الْآخِرَةِ حَسَنَةً وَقِنَا عَذَابَ النَّارِ