Why Success Was Making Me Miserable

 

If you've known me for a while, or at least read a few articles on this blog, you probably already know that Ramadan is the month where I literally put everything on hold. It's the month I dedicate to worship, and to reviewing my life psychologically, intellectually, spiritually, and in terms of my faith. Every aspect of it. I even stop working, which makes Ramadan feel incredibly long, especially because the days themselves are long, and there is so much time to reflect.

But the most important habit I've built over the years, little by little since Ramadan 2021, is using Ramadan to deepen my understanding of Islam. More specifically, my understanding of our Aqeedah.

At least for me, and I don't want to generalize, the problem was that I never truly understood my own beliefs. I simply inherited my religion. I wasn't practicing Islam because I deeply understood why I was doing what I was doing. Like many of us, I was simply following what I inherited from my parents and society.

And that's where the real danger lies.

Because you can unknowingly fall into major theological mistakes, even forms of shirk, while genuinely believing you're doing everything right simply because you pray, fast, don't harm people, and try to be a good Muslim. That's why I believe every Muslim needs moments where they sit alone, study sincerely, and purify their Aqeedah.

I already wrote a separate article about everything I learned during Ramadan 2026.

This article is about one specific lesson that became one of the biggest turning points in my understanding of faith. A lesson that determines whether you live a life filled with mercy and barakah, or a life consumed by anxiety, frustration, and a constant feeling that neither your religion nor your worldly life is truly alive.

As someone who's always been drawn toward entrepreneurship, with ambitious goals and a constant desire to become better, I naturally put enormous pressure on myself. Especially when your ambitions are huge, your goals become equally huge.

Since I consume mostly foreign content, especially from the United States, I gradually absorbed the American hustle culture. The culture that tells you to always work, always produce, always optimize. If you spend one day resting or taking time off, it feels like you've wasted the entire day and left money sitting on the table. It's a mindset built almost entirely around material productivity, a direct reflection of a capitalist worldview.

Unfortunately, many young people in Morocco, including myself, adopted that same definition of success.

According to that model, if you simply have a stable job, earn enough to live comfortably, spend time with friends and family, enjoy your hobbies, eat, sleep, and repeat, you're considered a failure. That's the standard I unconsciously adopted.

Naturally, I couldn't find that lifestyle inspiring.

For me, the inspiring models were people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Steve Jobs. People you constantly hear working 16 hours a day, building multiple successful companies, while their ambitions only continue growing.

It's almost impossible not to admire that.

So you enter a mindset where you must build extraordinary goals, create strategies to achieve them, and every time those strategies work, your confidence grows. You begin trusting yourself more, trusting your methods more, and in my case, I even started teaching those strategies to other people. They got results too.

My confidence kept growing.

My ambitions kept growing.

Eventually, I genuinely felt unstoppable.

With a weak understanding of Aqeedah, all of this seems perfectly normal. You're not hurting anyone. You're avoiding haram as much as possible. You pray. You fast. You give charity. You help people. You try to stay away from questionable business practices.

On the surface, everything looks clean.

Then December happened.

I talked about that experience in my previous article.

Suddenly, nothing worked anymore.

The strategies that had always worked stopped working. The goals I used to reach became impossible. My results collapsed. Everything I thought I understood simply stopped making sense.

Yet, Alhamdulillah, life had already taught me enough lessons to recognize this kind of situation.

I no longer saw it as failure.

I no longer played the victim.

Whenever something like this happens, I've learned to see it as pure Divine mercy.

Allah Subhannah Wataala simply stops everything from working and closes every road in front of you for one reason.

To wake you up.

Because you're slowly falling into hidden shirk.

So after trying repeatedly from December 2025 until just before Ramadan 2026 arrived, I finally stopped everything.

I stopped chasing solutions.

I stopped forcing results.

I treated Ramadan as an opportunity to understand the wisdom behind what Allah had placed me through.

The complete story is in my Ramadan 2026 article.

But the specific lesson I want to share here is this.

Allah wanted me to realize that I had slowly begun worshipping the means instead of the One who created the means.

I had forgotten that this life is not only about worldly provision.

Especially because my work as a strategist revolves around producing results.

I wasn't selling actions.

I was selling outcomes.

Without realizing it, I slowly entered a mindset where I began worshipping causes while forgetting the Creator of those causes.

It's almost as if you unconsciously remove Allah Subhannah Wataala from the equation and begin acting like a tiny god yourself, believing you control outcomes.

There is a beautiful verse in the Quran that perfectly captures this mentality.

﴿إِنَّمَا مَثَلُ الْحَيَاةِ الدُّنْيَا كَمَاءٍ أَنْزَلْنَاهُ مِنَ السَّمَاءِ فَاخْتَلَطَ بِهِ نَبَاتُ الْأَرْضِ مِمَّا يَأْكُلُ النَّاسُ وَالْأَنْعَامُ حَتَّىٰ إِذَا أَخَذَتِ الْأَرْضُ زُخْرُفَهَا وَازَّيَّنَتْ وَظَنَّ أَهْلُهَا أَنَّهُمْ قَادِرُونَ عَلَيْهَا أَتَاهَا أَمْرُنَا لَيْلًا أَوْ نَهَارًا فَجَعَلْنَاهَا حَصِيدًا كَأَنْ لَمْ تَغْنَ بِالْأَمْسِ ۚ كَذَٰلِكَ نُفَصِّلُ الْآيَاتِ لِقَوْمٍ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ﴾

A huge part of my psychological struggles and the mental health issues I experienced came from obsessing over results, something that was never in my hands to begin with.

Results belong to Allah.

My responsibility is my actions.

This is one of the most fundamental lessons of Tawheed.

And when Allah loves you, He warns you before it's too late.

He makes the means stop working.

Not to punish you, but to show you that you've started placing your trust in them instead of Him.

Little by little, your confidence turns into arrogance without you even noticing.

The greatest sin a person can commit is to slowly remove Allah from the equation and believe that they themselves possess the power over outcomes.

The moment this truth finally settled in my heart, everything changed.

That enormous mountain of anxiety about the future disappeared.

My constant obsession with other people's results disappeared.

My fear of what might happen tomorrow disappeared.

Alhamdulillah, it all vanished.

The equation suddenly became incredibly simple.

You do your actions.

Allah takes care of the results however He wills.

That is a peaceful life.

But if you do your actions while believing that achieving the outcome exactly the way you planned depends entirely on you, while forgetting the Creator of all outcomes, then you're choosing a life filled with anxiety, stress, and psychological exhaustion.

This doesn't mean ambition is wrong.

Not at all.

On the contrary, Allah Subhanah wataala doesn't want us to think small.

But our ambition should be directed toward doing greater actions, not becoming attached to greater results.

Whether the results are equal to your effort, smaller than your effort, or greater than your effort isn't your responsibility.

We're rewarded for the action, not the outcome.

So dream big.

If worldly success comes, Alhamdulillah.

If it doesn't, know with certainty that your reward with Allah will never be lost.

Because results have never been proportional to effort anyway.

Some people work less and receive far more.

Others sacrifice everything, barely sleep, and still achieve very little materially.

Worldly success has never followed a simple equation of effort equals reward.

Everything is in Allah's Hands.

Our responsibility is only our actions.

And our reward is with Him.

If we receive the outcome we hoped for, Alhamdulillah.

If we don't, then surely Allah knows what is better for us.

I was the kind of person who could barely sleep because my mind was always occupied with results.

I was living an exhausting life that had very little barakah.

Today, Alhamdulillah, I finally understand.

Whether it's Elon Musk or the simple man in your family who has an ordinary job and lives a modest life, both stand on equal ground if neither of them understands that this life includes both the Dunya and the Akhirah.

The one with less worldly success may earn far more in the Hereafter.

The opposite can also be true.

In the end, every one of us will be judged by our actions, not our results.

That completely changed my definition of success.

A successful person is someone who maintains balance between this world and the next, regardless of how much money they earn or how much worldly success they achieve.

The truly successful person is the one who wins both.

Allah Himself gave this model of success a name.

Al Falah.

﴿وَٱلَّذِينَ يُؤۡمِنُونَ بِمَآ أُنزِلَ إِلَيۡكَ وَمَآ أُنزِلَ مِن قَبۡلِكَ وَبِٱلۡأٓخِرَةِ هُمۡ يُوقِنُونَ ﰃ أُوْلَٰٓئِكَ عَلَىٰ هُدٗى مِّن رَّبِّهِمۡۖ وَأُوْلَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلۡمُفۡلِحُونَ ﰄ [سورة البقرة: 4-5]

﴿وَلۡتَكُن مِّنكُمۡ أُمَّةٞ يَدۡعُونَ إِلَى ٱلۡخَيۡرِ وَيَأۡمُرُونَ بِٱلۡمَعۡرُوفِ وَيَنۡهَوۡنَ عَنِ ٱلۡمُنكَرِۚ وَأُوْلَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلۡمُفۡلِحُونَ ﱧ [سورة آل عمران: 104]

﴿وَٱلۡوَزۡنُ يَوۡمَئِذٍ ٱلۡحَقُّۚ فَمَن ثَقُلَتۡ مَوَٰزِينُهُۥ فَأُوْلَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلۡمُفۡلِحُونَ ﰇ [سورة الأعراف: 8]

InshaAllah, may we become more than just successful people in this life.

May we become people who attain Al Falah.

Ameen.