To, The Young Leaders

Dear Young Leaders!!!

Assalam-o-Alikum,

As, Napoleon Bonaparte said, “A leader is a dealer in hope”.

We are always told that if we don’t do as the romans do, we will not succeed. A leader never accepts that. If we take an example of Pakistan, we will always be told that, “Look! This is how the society functions.” And it’s common that most of the time people do not fight the system, they can’t lead their country and take the easy options.
We must not accept this. We always have easy options but as I mentioned earlier, a leader never accepts this because he never took a trodden path. Becoming a leader means facing resistance and ignoring the trodden path. No one has ever achieved anything, if they haven’t faced failures, if they haven’t had disappointments or the days they haven’t had days when they don’t want to wake up getting out of bed. To achieve anything in life, we have to be prepared to take on the odds and face disappointments.

But all of us did not realize that the Allah Almighty has given us tremendous strength which lies within us. We can only discover that strength when we put ourselves up against resistance. If we don’t face resistance, that strength lies dormant within us. The moment we take on challenges, we will start discovering that enormous strength within ourselves because discovering the strength in the trodden path is impossible.

As a leader, we must accept that we are going to lead a society that is totally shattered, people are used too of taking shortcuts, where the morale standard of people has fallen down. Someone asked the great Maulana Roomi (R.A), “How does a nation die?” Maulana Roomi (R.A) said, “The moment a nation seizes to differentiate between right and wrong.”

Leaders face great hardships. Remember, we only lose when we give up. If we do not give up, we will win from the most incredible position. The fight is in the mind, it’s not physical at all. As long as the mind refuses to accept defeat, each set back will give us an opportunity to analyze ourselves.

Crisis is an opportunity to evaluate ourselves. Just by asking yourself a simple question, “Where did I go wrong?” Correct that, pick yourself up, again move on and you will find that you get stronger. Each time when we pick ourselves up, we come back stronger. This is what the human being is. The Allah Almighty made us ‘Ashraf ul Makhlooqat’, one of the greatest creation. But as Iqbal said, “To become the Shaheen, you have to break the chains”. The chains of impossibilities. The moment you say it’s impossible, then it’s impossible. You can achieve whatever you can dream. Simply, if you can visualize something, you can achieve it.

A leader is a visionary person whose goal is to take the people where they need to be. A leader is not a dictator who just orders his people like slaves but he leads by example, inspiring people to follow him. He is a model of integrity, a passionate person who encourages creativity not only serve as a role model but listen and communicate effectively. He has a positive attitude. He motivate his followers and never give up.

I’ll end up with a beautiful quote of Albert Schweitzer;

“Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it is the only thing.”