Assignment (2). For the students of University (SBBU) Research Article: What to ask God for and why’

Help: Prophet Sulaiman's Prayer - Nouman Ali Khan - Malaysia Tour 2015. Watch this video and read articles below

 

You Just Chip Away Everything That Doesn’t Look Like David

 

A similar anecdote about an unnamed artist asked about sculpting an elephant:

Just chip away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant.

Would you please examine this story?

It is the sculptor’s power, so often alluded to, of finding the perfect form and features of a goddess, in the shapeless block of marble; and his ability to chip off all extraneous matter, and let the divine excellence stand forth for itself. Thus, in every incident of business, in every accident of life, the poet sees something divine, and carefully scales off all that encumbers that divinity, and permits it to be revealed in all its transcendent loveliness.

By 1879 a humorous version of the tale was in circulation. A weekly paper devoted to free religion called “The Index” printed a short item under the tile “The Simplest Thing in the World”. The statement was ludicrously credited to the leading art critic John Ruskin, and an acknowledgement to a periodical in Paris, France was included: ²

“That Venus” said a critic severely, “is a pretty poor piece of work.” “It is very easy for you to say so,” says a friend of the artist; “still a man has got to have some acquaintance with art before he can sculp a statue like that.” “Oh, bosh, as Mr. Ruskin says. Sculpture, per se, is the simplest thing in the world. All you have to do is to take a big chunk of marble and a hammer and chisel, make up your mind what you are about to create and chip off all the marble you don’t want.”—Paris Gaulois.

Looking up kindly into my face, he said: “My boy, I am not going to make anything out of it. I am going to find something in it.” I did not quite comprehend, but said: “Why, what are you going to find in it?” He replied: “There is a beautiful angel in that block of marble, and I am going to find it? All I have to do is to knock off the outside pieces of marble, and be very careful not to cut into the angel with my chisel. In a month or so you will see how beautiful it is.”

To take a big chunk of marble and a hammer and chisel, make up your mind what you are about to create and then chip off all the marble you don’t want.”

…it recalls the Irishman’s idea of how statues are made. “It’s simple enough,” he explained. “All a sculptor has to do is to take a big block of marble and just chip off all that isn’t necessary for the figure.”

, that the only thing necessary to the creation of a great statue is to secure a large block of marble and chip off all of it you don’t want. The saying is more or less to the point when applied to any avenue of success-seeking. Any man can rid himself of the habits of sloth, of lack of aim, of misdirected energy, and of extravagance with time and money, can chisel out his life in a fashion that will be a source of credit and satisfaction to him.

 “How do you make a statue of an elephant? Get the biggest granite block you can find and chip away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant.”

3 Ways to Discover Your Hidden Natural Talent

Finding our natural talents can be quite difficult to do. For me, it took me decades to find out that I was good at writing.

It was never a skill that I knew I had, especially since all I ever received in High School English were C’s. But here I am today, with millions of views on my content.

Much like many other people, discovering what your talents are can be extremely hard to figure out. Because of that, I sought out expert advice on how to not only identify, but embrace and hone in on your natural talents. I reached out to Doug Wilks, a talent investigator who founded StrengthsLauncher.

Doug Wilks provided these 3 key insights to discover what your natural talents are:

1.What Thrilled You As A Child?

Take two minutes and recall your most joyous memories from elementary school.

What made those moments so enjoyable? What were the common threads?

Were you highly competitive as a 9-year-old? Maybe you loved soccer and couldn't wait for recess every day. You lived for it. You cherished that moment you could run out to the practice field and start competing.

Or, maybe you enjoyed working on big, competitive, team-oriented projects? Your friends loved it when you were in their group. You had a knack for nudging the whole team's grade from B- to A . You relished these opportunities. It was thrilling.

As you ponder these childhood memories, consider what similar activities thrill you as an adult.

You may still be highly competitive, but now you're competing to win new business for your start-up. You may still love complex, strategic projects, but now you do it for an international consulting firm.

Why do we make certain choices and enjoy certain activities? Why are we better at some things than others?

If you've ever taken the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment, you know that a “talent theme” (to use Gallup's terminology) is a naturally recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied.

Understanding your unique talents gives you answers to these questions. Your unique talents show you why you make certain choices, enjoy certain activities and are better at some things than others. In fact, there's only a 1-in-33 million chance you have the same top 5 talent themes as another person!

So, understand that what thrilled you as a grade school student and what thrills you as an adult are actually very similar. You're just using those same talent themes--Competition and Strategic--in different environments.

What work tasks today most closely resemble that joy you felt 20, 30 years ago?

Find ways to tilt your work today toward those moments that thrilled you from yesterday.

Those grade school memories are powerful stories that reveal what your talents are and how to use them.

2. You Lose Track of Time

Imagine this: It's 9:00 AM Saturday morning. Your time is your own. No soccer games, no carpool, no TPS report cover sheets.

Somehow, you have a free calendar for a few hours.

You begin a favorite activity. Maybe it's playing guitar or gardening or writing that novel. Maybe it's coding Python for that personal pet project you started months ago.

This activity, whenever you do it, pulls you in like a tractor beam. Your mind, body and intuition begin working in perfect symmetry. You lose track of time. Before you know it, it's 12:30 and you haven't even thought about lunch yet.

What if work was just as fulfilling as your Saturday morning side project? Is it even possible to capture and harness that magic?

Yes-take very close note of moments like this. If you're so captivated in an activity that you lose track of time, you're experiencing one of the key symptoms of flow.

And, if you're experiencing any amount of flow on a project, you're most likely also using one or more of your natural talents.

3. What do you yearn to do?

What fire is burning inside of you at this very moment?

There's never been an easier time in the course of human history to begin fulfilling your life's mission than right now.

Do you love writing? Cool. Start a blog.

Can you crochet better than anyone in the tri-state area? Great. Make a few extra scarves and sell them on Etsy.

Does even thinking about meeting and connecting with new people send you into happiness overdrive? Perfect. Launch a meet-up for local executives in your city.

Enjoy all three? Even better. Start a monthly meet-up for expert crochet bloggers.

In a perfect world, everyone would get to use their strengths at work every day.

Unfortunately, that's not the case for most people. In fact, 63% of workers worldwide are not engaged in their work. This doesn't even include the 24% who are actively disengaged.

·        

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While there are multiple reasons for this, one of the key factors is most workers don't get to use their natural talents at work on a daily basis.

Think about it. In nature, eagles can fly between 75 and 125 miles a day. Wild elephants can roam up to 50 miles a day. If that eagle or elephant is locked-up in a cage, they're not living the way they were made to live. They've been stifled, suffocated, trapped.

Similarly, millions of workers aren't able to do what they were made to do on a daily basis.

What do you yearn to do?

-

If you find yourself in a place where you're not using your gifts, that realization can be painful and uncomfortable. Thankfully, life is a journey, not one isolated day.

Find at least one small way to begin recapturing some of that joy you felt back in grade school. Get lost in a favorite activity and lose track of time on a Saturday morning. Hone in on what you yearn to do, and start doing it.

How have you been able to hone in on your natural talents and use them in the work force?

Comment below!

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

How to Find Yourself

 

"To find yourself first learn about yourself." Finding the real you is an enlightening experience. You become self-sufficient and do things for yourself, for once. It's a hard feeling to put into words, but when you don't know who you are, it's hard to ignore. Finding yourself is not easy, but it's worth it. Ready? Let's begin.

Create your own life timeline. Write down all of your major goals that you feel you have achieved and want to achieve. In turn, write down the events in your life that have already happened and that have shaped or affected you. When life brings problems or misfortunes it shapes our belief system and makes us think differently, but it also makes us us. These things you list are organically you, not a simple reflection of society.

·         This isn't an exercise in wallowing. It's about clarification and identification of issues. These issues might be keeping you from reaching your present potential and letting your true self blossom.

·         Spend a little time clarifying the past in your timeline. A timeline is an incredibly objective method for marking down past occurrences in your life that you consider to be major. You can look at them as formation blocks and as changing experiences along your timeline without imbuing them with too much emotion (as would occur within a diary account). As if writing a résumé, keep it simple, real, and condensed to the major effects or lessons learned from each past incident.

·         When analyzing negative past experiences, focus on what you learned from them. Everyone has these blips in their timeline, but exaggerating or ignoring them won't help you. Instead, recognize that these experiences shaped you.

Distinguish your thoughts from the thoughts of others. For most people (it's more common than you may think) life is pretty easy to go through while on autopilot; we practically get handed a road map for how reality "works." Go to school, get a job, get married, think this, that, and the other, and boom — hope you had a good time. And that's all well and good — it gets the job done certainly — but it doesn't allow room for you. So sit down with yourself. At the end of the timeline, come up with a few beliefs of yours that aren't based on logic, but are based on what you've been told. We all have them. Now, what do you actually think?

·         Society has a very covert way of handing us the "misfits", condemning the "losers", idolizing the "beautiful", alienating the "strange." But here's a heads up: These describing words have no basis in reality. How do you feel about the world around you? Think about what you believe to be good and bad — not what anyone else has told you.

·         Feel free to think more concretely. Do you actually agree with your parents' political or religious affiliations? Is having a career really the most important thing to you? Do thick, black glasses really make you feel "cooler?" If the answer is no, great! There's absolutely zero problems with not molding yourself to pre-existing norms. Now all you have to do is unlearn and then relearn. Only this time, relearn based on your gut.

Start relying on yourself. Confidence and reliance are at the heart of finding yourself. If you don't have a solid sense of self-worth, you'll listen to what others have to say all the time and to be swayed by their insistence on what is appropriate. Learn to believe in yourself and trust your own feelings. Then, you'll come up with a structure to base your new sense of self on. Remember, be patient with yourself and confident in your abilities. Everything will come with time.

·         If you have been victimized in the past, confront these issues. They're not going to go away on their own. They might be coloring your approach to daily life, causing you to live up to other people's expectations instead of your own.

·         Start trusting your own judgment and decision-making processes, mistakes and all. We all make mistakes, but through mistakes we find ourselves growing, learning, and reaching our real selves.

·         Start taking responsibility for budgeting, household matters, and planning about the future. People who lack a sense of self tend to disregard the "details" of life with a carefree attitude, believing that things will all sort themselves out. But things don't always sort themselves out. Taking responsibility pulls you back from the precipice and lets you be self-reliant and self-determined, no longer carried along by the waves of fate.

Prepare to begin again with a clean slate. Develop your own moral conduct and practice sticking to it. Start by overcoming bad habits.

·         Stop smoking, over-eating, and abusive drinking. These are examples of lapses or habits that will prevent you from functioning at your peak. They also let you "off the hook" by sidestepping the analysis of why you use these crutches instead of finding better ways to brighten your life.

·         This step may take some major rehabilitation for some individuals but putting it into the too-hard basket won't make it go away. Remember, you can't drive your life forward if you are always gazing through your rear-view mirror!

Organize your world. You may find that having all your other affairs in order will help expedite the process to grabbing a firm hold on your identity. So clean your room. Do your homework. Resolve that fight with that friend. Getting everything else out of the way will clear up the path to "me" time.

·         We all have excuses for why we're not growing in the direction we want to be growing — it could be money, school, a job, a relationship, you name it, someone's used it. If you're a busy bee, take strides to clear your schedule so you can sit down and tackle this thing head on. If it's always priority #2, it'll never get done.

Immerse yourself in solitude. Give yourself some time and space to get away from the expectations, the conversations, the noise, the media, and the pressure. Take some time each day to go for a long walk and think. Plant yourself on a park bench and look. Take a long, thoughtful road trip. Whatever you do, move away from anything that distracts you from contemplating your life and where you want it to go. In solitude, you should feel independent and self-sufficient, not lonely, needy or afraid.

·         Every person needs time alone, whether they're introverted or extroverted, single or in a relationship, young or old. Solitude is time for rejuvenation and self-talk, for utter peace and for realizing that purposeful "loneliness" is not a bad place to be but rather, a liberating part of your overall existence.

·         If you are a creative person, you may find that alone-time will help stoke your creativity. While it's nice to collaborate with other people sometimes, it's hard to be truly creative when you're always surrounded by other people. Step back and tap into your creativity.

2

Seek out a passion. When you believe in something or see beauty in something, you should do it no matter what anyone else thinks. If you have found something that is worthy of your best efforts, sacrifice, and tears, then you have found the most important pursuit of your life. Often, that pursuit can lead you to something ultimately fulfilling.

·         The key here is to realize that it doesn't matter what it is. It could be preventing child hunger or it could be painting. There is no scale when it comes to passion. You either feel it or you don't; none is better than any other. When you find something that zaps you out of bed in the morning, cling onto it. You'll only bloom from there.

Find a mentor. Though ultimately soul-searching can only be done by you and it's only you that determines what you need, having a mentor will be an incredible resource when you hit those unavoidable bumps in the road. Seek out someone you trust who has a definite sense of self. How did they do it?

·         Let them know the process you're starting to undertake. Stress that you know it's your journey, but would love to use their strength as a guide. Take a look at them as objectively as you can. What seems to ground them, making them who they are? How did they find that? How do they stay true to themselves?

·         A support system is key to any self-improvement tactic. Not a lot of people will understand what you're going through and will brush off your broaching the topic as a flash-in-the-pan moodiness. Use this mentor as a sounding board, too, for what you come up against. The outlet will surely come in handy.

Sort out your career path. If you're meandering all over the place looking for the right "fit", chances are that you're not happy inside. You could be using the job-changing as an excuse for not fully realizing your true potential. Find yourself by really taking an interest in what you love to do. If money weren't an issue, what would you spend your days doing? What way can you monetize this activity/skill?

·         Spend some time free-associating. Think about what you like and don't like; think beyond those things to other ideas that simply pop into your mind while you're associating. Keep a record of these things. Then, come back to the career question and look at the free associations. What type of career seems to gel most with the things that excited, moved, and really energized you from the free-association exercise? As Alain de Botton says, this exercise is about looking for "beeps of joy" amid the cacophony of must-do's, shoulds, and expectations.^[1]

·         Bear in mind, however, that work may not be where your "calling" is. If that's the case, you'll need to work out a work-life balance that lets you pursue your "true self" more outside of the workplace, even if this means more hours and less income. It is all possible, especially if it's in the pursuit of finding and sustaining your true sense of self.

Let go of the need to be loved by all. Accept that some people will think poorly of you no matter what you do. It's important to forget about what everyone else thinks because you cannot please everyone. And while you might not want to disappoint the people close to you, they should want you to be happy. As long as you continue to exist just to fulfill other people's ideas of who you should be, you'll never know who you really are. This thought is aptly summed up by Raymond Hull: "He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away."

·         Realize that some people will become jealous, afraid, or overwhelmed when a person changes their usual habits and grows more mature and self-loving (others will love it). It's a threat to the relationship you've always had, and it forces them to take a cold, hard look at themselves, which they may not want to do. Give these people space and compassion; they may come around in time. If they don't, leave them be. You don't need them to be you.

Abandon the negative. Although it sounds abstract, it's not difficult. Make a conscious effort to minimize judging — others, objects, and yourself. This is for two reasons: 1) Positivity is nourishing and can usher in a sense of happiness which being "lost" masks, and 2) Opening your mind to new experiences and new people (that you previously wrote off) will show you a whole new world that may be better than the one you knew before — one where you can find your corner of the sky, your castle on a cloud, your niche in this crazy world.

·         Try to do something every day that you would've brushed off as "weird," "illogical," or just plain "uncomfortable". Getting out of your zone will not only teach you something, but it will force you to get to know you — what you're capable of, what you like, what you definitely don't like, and what you were previously missing.

Question yourself. Ask yourself difficult and far-reaching questions, and record your answers. Beyond your time spent in solitude, it's easy for these purposeful thoughts to slip to the back of your mind and be forgotten. If you have them written down, then every time you reflect, you can review your notes and take it a step further, instead of answering the same questions all over again. Keep them in a notebook that's easy to access and update; it will be a source of sustenance for you, by which you can continue to measure your growth through life. Here are some to get you started:

·         "If I had all the resources in the world — if I didn't need to make money — what would I be doing with my life and why?" Perhaps you'd be painting, or writing, or farming, or exploring the Amazon rain forest. Don't hold back.

·         "What do I want to look back on in my life and say that I never regretted?" Would you regret never having traveled abroad? Would you regret never having asked that person out, even if it meant risking rejection? Would you regret not spending enough time with your family when you could? Would you regret keeping your unique view of society to yourself by not sharing with friends? Did I conform/stick out beyond the level I'd have like to? This question can be really difficult.

·         "If I had to choose three words to describe the kind of person I'd love to be, what would those words be?" Adventurous? Accepting towards few? Open? Honest? Hilarious? Optimistic? Unreliable? Don't be afraid to choose words that are considered negative because that proves you're a real person, and not a lopsided combination of parts other people want to be known for.

·         Sometimes the traits that you don't like become useful in emergency situations — like being bossy. Sometimes they are valuable to the job you're meant to perform — like being nitpicky.

·         If you do have a truly negative trait, acknowledging it openly can give you the motivation to work on redirecting that energy to something positive. Try channelling that bad habit and into a hobby. Don't wash your clothes much? Try camping — maybe you'll like it. Even something like pole dancing could be your golden ticket! Know you're lazy with certain tasks? Maybe you can lead yourself to find another task that hardly ever bores you.

·         "Who am I?" This question is not static. It should be one you continue to ask yourself throughout your life. A healthy person continues to reinvent themselves throughout their life. By asking this question regularly, it updates your understanding of who you are and how you change. Instead of answering who you think you ought to be, keep it focused on who you actually are, because in all likelihood that's a very good answer, warts and all.

Act upon — and use — your newly discovered knowledge. Pick up those watercolors. Write a short story. Plan a trip to Mombasa. Have dinner with a family member. Start cracking jokes. Open up. Tell the truth. Whatever it is that you've decided you want to be or do, start being and doing it now.

·         You may shake your head and come up with excuses such as "no time," "no money," "family responsibilities," etc. Instead of using these as excuses, start planning around the hurdles in your life. You can free up time, find money, and get a break from duties if you make time how to plan and find the courage to ask for these things.

·         Sometimes, the real you is too afraid to face the practicalities because it'd mean facing up to what you've limited yourself by. Start planning what you really want to do and investigating what needs to be done to get you to that point instead of flinging excuses at them, stopping the goals and dreams dead in their tracks.

Be ready for dead ends. Finding yourself is a journey, not a destination. A lot of it is trial and error. That's the price you pay in return for the satisfaction you receive: More often than not, you hit a bump in the road, and sometimes you fall flat on your face. Be prepared to understand and accept that this is a part of the process, and commit to getting right back up and starting over.

·         It's not going to be easy — it never has been for anybody — but if you learn to see that as a chance to prove how much you want to find yourself, then you'll find fulfillment and security in your pursuit. When you know yourself, most people will respect you more and treat you kindly. Best of all, your light will shine on both you and others, making them (and you) feel even more certain about your sense of self.

Serve others. Mahatma Gandhi once said that "the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others." Being introspective without reaching out to others can cause you to navel-gaze and shut yourself off from others. Service to other people and to the community is the ultimate way to find purpose and a sense of your place in the world.

·         When you see how hard life can be for those in greater need than you, it's often a wake-up call that puts your own worries, concerns, and issues into perspective. It helps you to see what you do have, and the opportunities you've been able to seize through life. That can fuel a great sense of self because suddenly everything can fall into place for you and you realize what matters most. Try it. You'll like it.