Sajid Ahmed Umar – Ramadan Tips – A must consideration every Ramadan

			Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh everybody, I pray you all well, brothers and sisters in
Islam, many are asking for some advice and tips regarding Ramadan and ask Allah subhana wa Taala to
grant us Ramadan, and bless us with fruitful Ramadan. And with amazing health and ability during
this month, I mean, and to bless us with many, many, many more Ramadan after this one, I mean your
blood Lehman, brothers and sisters in Islam, one of the most important things that you need to do
before the month of Ramadan arrives, is to set a plan put a plan in place, and there's many
different angles you can look at. But one advice I would give is for you to do what is called a gap
		

			analysis. What do I mean by a gap analysis? Well, there's so many amazing qualities you want to
bring into your life you want your life to have the so many amazing acts of worship that you want to
bring into your life or if they are already in your life, then you want to excel with these acts of
worship. So list these qualities and list these acts of worship down on a piece of paper. Right? So
for example, let's say you tend to speak about
		

			you tend to speak about other people, or you tend to speak of that have little or no benefit. Or for
example, you read a quarter of the Quran. And by this stage, you wanted to be doing more. So let's
say you want to be doing half pages of the Quran, for example, you are
		

			you know, observing all your Salah, but you want to be diligent with the Sunni, neurotic and so
that,
		

			for example, okay, I'm Elaine. And it's something that is still not focused in your life. So the
good news is Ravana is there in Charlotte to be a great motivator and motivation and a great boost
for all these ambitions to come into fruition. So you want to do a gap analysis, you want to say,
for example, that I want to be reading half pages of the Quran. But at the moment, I'm reading a
quarter. So between a quarter and a half, there's a gap, there's a gap of a quarter Jews, right for
example, I had the ambition, for example to
		

			observe all my sooner robotic. So at the moment, I'm only observing the Tucson fetcher. So write
that down and then
		

			write the ideal as well above it. So the ideal would be all the sudden arrivati. But now you're only
doing two which means there's a gap of 10 units of prayer. So this is a gap analysis.
		

			For example, I want to I want to I want to, you know, I want zero backbiting in my life, but I tend
to be backbiting in a day so many times, so right, zero, and then right how many times you are
backbiting or how many times you engaging in conversation of little or no benefit. So then you
understand the gap, this is a gap analysis. And then do the same for all the other values and try
and be deep and broad as well, regarding them in terms of different characters, your relationship
with your parents, with your spouse, with your child.
		

			And then different important areas of your life in terms of your personal development. Write all
these things down and understand how close or far you are from ideals that you have set for your own
life. Now, after you've done this gap analysis, you've seen where you want to be and you actually
now understand where you are, and you've experienced the gap between you and your ideal. Now, do a
root cause analysis? What is the root cause analysis? A root cause analysis is for you to know
analyze, why are you why, you know, why is the distance between the ideals that you've set in your
life for you, the ideals that
		

			you have ambitions for? And where you are right now? What is the reason? Is it because I have bad
friends? Is it because I overuse my mobile phone? Is it because I'm just not thoughtful enough about
what I say? And what I do? Is it because,
		

			you know,
		

			I'm just not motivated enough? Or maybe it's laziness. So now this is a root cause analysis, your
understanding to try and figure out the exact reasons why do you Why do you backbite Why are you not
reading averages of Quran when it was your ambition to Why? You know, are you not upon the character
that you have an ambition to be upon with your parents for example, why are you not upon the ideal
that you want to be upon with regards to your spouse with regards to children with regards to your
adapt with regards to
		

			your worship of Allah subhanho wa Taala do this root cause analysis what are the reasons right now
once you list all the reasons and try and be detailed
		

			To them then list then move on to a third process and the third process is called the solutions
analysis. Now here this is important that before I move on you look at the solutions because now you
want to enter them along with the solutions understood so that you do something different in Ramadan
because you want to have different results as the English saying goes if you always do what you
always did, you will always get what you always got right so if you want to get what you never got,
you must now do what you never did right? So this is common sense because
		

			you know it is also said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing expecting different
results so we don't want to go into Ramadan doing the same thing expecting different results. So now
you want to do a solutions analysis find out the reasons for your lack of progress maybe sorry, now
that you have the reasons for your lack of progress, do a solutions analysis find a solution for you
to apply so that you can close the gap right so that you can close the gap between you and your
ideal so for example, maybe you need to bring a buddy into your system you know somebody who is
regular with the sooner naramata but you both keep tabs on each other that you both doing it maybe
		

			with regards to the Quran if you reading half of Jews with a buddy of Quran buddy, then you'll be
better if you're trying to memorize Quran maybe get a a Quran his buddy for example, maybe you you
know some of you you have some character flaws because you have the wrong friend circle. So now you
got to delete that fan cycle or reduce your interaction with certain fan cycles or certain avenues
this could be a means of your retrogression. Maybe you are a person who is struggling with
procrastination. So now this is
		

			I need a solution for procrastination, for example. And the solutions vary. And the solutions are
many This is just
		

			a short discussion with you all in terms of
		

			you know, a practical way forward in terms of all the wonderful advices that you've heard, you must
have heard about taco and the importance of the quarter in the month of taco and what taco means for
example, I mean, I have a talk online called taco time. So some of us have heard it and now the
question is okay, so I have an understanding of taco more eligible to bring it in my life but you
know, give me the practical way forward. So this is a some advice that I can share now before ending
of brothers and sisters in Islam another piece of advice then in don't burn out okay? Because what
happens is sometimes we get over motivated and it's not bad to be over motivated but it all depends
		

			on how you manage your motivation if you're gonna say right, I'm doing a quarter Jews and harass I'm
going to be doing a whole Jews into my van. No, it's not gonna work, you're not being you're not
being sustainable because you still have responsibilities in your day that you have any other day
you still have work to do, you might have obligation towards your family towards your children
towards your school towards education. So you want to burn in don't say I'm going to go and hit a
juice say that Look, my ideal was half a juice and I'm only doing a quarter so I want to get to half
so work your way upwards towards half Don't even try and do a half and if you see that you
		

			struggling then do a little bit less than a half and work your way up until you do a half when you
get to a half work your way up a little bit more than a half and see how that goes and if it's
working out you know in a fluid way in a successful way then build yourself up you never know you
know you might achieve the ideal that you set last Ramadan for this Ramadan and beat it right so we
might get to eat and hamdulillah you were doing a quarter Jews every day before Ramadan when it was
supposed to be half but now are you doing three quarters by the end of Ramadan eating three quarters
and then Alhamdulillah now we can set new ideals for you to achieve until the next Ramadan so burn
		

			in burn out, you know with the sooner neurotic bring them in slowly but surely, what you don't want
to do is bring everything in haphazardly at once beyond your ability to sustain the ideals that
you're practicing and then you burn out
		

			you know, in a way that even the few ideals that you used to do you stop doing it and during the
month of Ramadan, I know this advice should have reached you much earlier and I have done this in a
few lectures in the UK a couple of weeks ago.
		

			But since that talk didn't get out and many requests have come in about give us some practical tips
from Yvonne I decided Better late than never and putting this together. So
		

			please take it in summary, do a gap analysis then a root cause analysis then a solutions analysis.
And once you bring your solutions in and now you set your goals for this Ramadan Remember to make
them small, but achievable goals working your way up burning yourself in