Planning For A Successful Ramadan In The Midst Of Adulting
Ramadan and adulting is not easy.
When we were younger, the days of Ramadan felt so much longer with so much more time to do everything we wanted. Thinking back to the years before, we could spend our days reciting juz after juz, and spend our nights attending the long taraweehs at our local masjid. But it’s hard to imagine that anymore.
Over the past few years, the responsibilities of adulting have grown. We have so much happening in our life — maybe we work long hours, maybe we’re looking after a family and a home, maybe we’re full time mums. And as a result, Ramadan feels a bit more daunting.
We want to block out the thought of failing Ramadan, so we procrastinate by scrolling through our feed only to see reel after reel about Ramadan routines, Ramadan preps and more.
There’s no way we can do all this.
Ramadan has not even started yet, but we feel like we’re falling behind. We feel like we’re taking a step backwards from when we were younger or that our steps are so much smaller than everyone else around us.
But when I find myself in that storm of emotions, this is what I remind myself —
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The Point of Ramadan
Ramadan isn’t a month about throwing away all our responsibilities and retreating away to our prayer mat. If it was, Allah would have made I’tikaf (spiritual seclusion) obligatory on us.
But He did not.
Remember, Allah is fully aware of the situation He has put you in. He is fully aware of all the responsibilities you have. And He does not want us to throw away all our responsibilities just to focus on Ibadah.
That is not the point of Ramadan.
First off, remember the responsibilities that you have to provide, to look after your home, are responsibilities from Allah. So renew your intention as you leave for work or as you cook for your family, that you are doing this for His sake. And reap the reward from Him even in your responsibilities.
But apart from that, the point of Ramadan is to get us back on track. To get rid of all those small bad habits we developed over the year that take us away from Him. And to develop all those small habits that will bring us closer to Him for the rest of the year.
I see Ramadan as a training camp that Allah has given us to use to become better Muslims in the situations that He has placed us in. He even locked Shaytan up to make things a bit easier for us. So by the time Eid arrives, we are all trained back to be His best servants. Servants who are ready to excel in the next 11 months, in the situations He has placed us in. Insha Allah.
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So, how do I plan for a Ramadan like this?
Even though we’re aware of how busy our days are, the thing is, every year Ramadan comes we still have so many ideas of how we want our Ramadan to look. How we want to read x amount of juz a day, pray all these extra prayers, watch all these different lectures and…you get the point.
And you know how it ends — with everything falling apart very quickly after.
As a result, this is how I try to plan my Ramadan now.
1 to add 1 to throw 1 to boost 1 to slow.
But what does this even mean?
It’s based on the beautiful hadith of the Prophet (pbuh) who tells us that — There is nothing more beloved to Allah than the small and the consistent. It is about choosing around 4 things to focus on.
It is ok to have many more goals during the month. But the idea is to never let these 4 go even on your most busiest days. This is your base for this Ramadan, which means even if everything else falls apart, these 4 stick till the end and even past your Ramadan.
This is how I do it -
One to add
Ramadan is a month to help us get back on track. It is 30 days where Allah has locked shaytan up to make it easier for us to focus on becoming better servants. As a result, it is the perfect time to develop new habits that will form part of our lives past the month of Ramadan. It’s the New Year’s resolution time for the Muslim.
Every Ramadan, I try to pick one good habit that I want to add to my life past Ramadan that will bring me closer to Allah.
These habits can range from Salaah to Dhikr or Sadaqah. But I try to keep in mind these 2 points when deciding what habits I want to build. Firstly, my why. Why do I want to build this habit, what is my intention. This helps to stay motivated to stick with the habit.
After that, I make sure to find another action in my day that I can attach it to. This is setting up a system to help achieve the goal. Without assigning a time, it becomes very easy to overlook it. My favorite way of doing this is attaching it to my daily Salaah. Since this is an action that I am extremely consistent with, I can be sure that the habit that I attach to it will also become a consistent action too. This makes it a lot easier to build the habit.
For example:
Habit I want to build : Reciting 100 istighfar a day.
Why: Because the one who recites it a 100 times every day has all their sins forgiven (Hadith)
Course of action: Recite 20 after every prayer.
One to throw
Ramadan is a month of doing as much good as possible. However, before we think about what good habits we want to develop, we need to take a step back and decide what we want to cut out first. This is a step that is often overlooked, but one that is extremely crucial if we want to truly benefit spiritually in Ramadan and beyond.
The reason for this is because of the effect that sins have on us —
“Verily, when the servant commits a sin, a black mark appears upon his heart. If he abandons the sin, seeks forgiveness, and repents, then his heart will be polished. If he returns to the sin, the blackness will be increased until it overcomes his heart.” (Tirmidhi)
We have all been in situations where we have exerted ourselves in doing good deeds, but still struggle to connect spiritually. Think back to last Ramadan. Were there moments where you were spending your mornings with the Quran, standing the nights in prayer, listening to reminder after reminder, but still struggling to feel connected in prayer, unable to cry during your dua? This is really common and a lot of the time, it is usually because even though we are exerting ourselves in good, we are still involved in some sort of sin.
As a result, every Ramadan, I also think of one bad habit that takes me away from Allah to remove from my life past Ramadan.
One To Boost
Ramadan is a blessed month where every good deed is multiplied in reward and every sin holds more weight.
Every moment is so much more precious and so I pick a good deed that I want to do a lot more of in Ramadan. These are the main areas I consider when deciding on what extra acts you want to do.
- Quran — more recitation, reading the translation, reflecting on the meaning
- Salaah — the 12 Sunnah, Salatul Duha, Taraweeh
- Sadaqah — setting an automatic daily charity system, helping out with Iftar, volunteering
- Dhikr — morning and evening adhkar, Istighfar, Salawat like reciting x amount of Juz or praying x amount of prayer.
One To Slow
I also pick a deed I want to slow down on. This is not a deed that’s exactly a sin in itself. But it’s one of those deeds that are in between and so it’s easy to guiltlessly indulge in them without realizing that this leads to a lot of waste of time.
There’s many different acts that can cause this; excessive socialising, entertainment, etc. But the big one is (you know it!) — social media.
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And that it. That is how I plan my Ramadan now.
Yes, Ramadan and adulting can be daunting but I remind myself what a beautiful blessing it is too.
It’s through Ramadan that Allah gives us the chance to remember our true purpose on this Earth and refocus ourselves towards it. And it’s through Ramadan, we get to see how it is possible to become devout worshipers of Him in the busy (and sometimes overwhelming) situations He has placed us in, from full-time workers to mothers to students.
So alhamdulillah for Ramadan! I pray He allows us to witness it this year too and accepts our efforts in it, ameen 🌻
If you reached till the end of this post, thank you my friend. I appreciate it!
I hope we get to meet each other in my next post too. Until then, if you have any thoughts about what you’ve just read let me know (in the comments or any other way). I’d love to start a conversation!
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