We are continuing to maximize value through strategic thinking and resourcefulness. In this episode, discover the untapped potential of leveraging as I reveal the final chapter of our Wealth Mindset Series, transforming the way you think about resources and the true value of time. We learn about how to utilize every asset at your disposal, from community to technology, to multiply your gains without multiplying your workload. As we dissect misconceptions about time and money, you'll learn how a shift in perspective can result in passive income and a prosperous future, without the need for additional financial investment.
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If this podcast has benefited you, imagine the value of a one-on-one meeting with me! Click below to schedule your FREE consultation. Discover solutions with no obligation.
https://www.islamiclifecoachschool.com/appointments
We are continuing to maximize value through strategic thinking and resourcefulness. In this episode, discover the untapped potential of leveraging as I reveal the final chapter of our Wealth Mindset Series, transforming the way you think about resources and the true value of time. We learn about how to utilize every asset at your disposal, from community to technology, to multiply your gains without multiplying your workload. As we dissect misconceptions about time and money, you'll learn how a shift in perspective can result in passive income and a prosperous future, without the need for additional financial investment.
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If this podcast has benefited you, imagine the value of a one-on-one meeting with me! Click below to schedule your FREE consultation. Discover solutions with no obligation.
https://www.islamiclifecoachschool.com/appointments
Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast. Apply tools that you learn in this podcast and your life will be unrecognisably successful. Now your host, dr Kamal Uffar. Hello, hello, hello everyone. Peace and blessings be upon all of you.
Speaker 1:Today happens to be the third episode of the three part series that I'm doing on thinking wealthy. Obviously, we've talked about passive income, our relationship with hard work, and today we're going to talk about the least explored subject, which is leverage. Most commonly, when we talk about leverage, first thing that comes to mind is the connections that we're able to make so that we can rely on other people to ask them for favors to get ahead. That is one way to define leverage, but the way I'm going to help you see leverage today is going to completely change your relationship with it. You're going to be able to think about it differently and use it differently. In a way, how wealthy use it, in a way how you can use it in your favor without spending any extra money. On Google, I found way too many definitions of leverage that don't serve my purpose, but there is one that I like it's very fitting for what I'm trying to convey here. To leverage something is to use it to its maximum advantage. Ladies, if you're not leveraging, you're not thinking wealthy, and leverage comes in all shapes and sizes. You can leverage your kids to help you with laundry. Leverage your neighbors to keep an eye on your house when you're out on vacation. Leverage your cousin to house sit when you're gone. If you're exhausted, spread too thin, overworked, that's because you're either spending mental energy in trying to figure out how to do all the things or you're doing all of the things You're not leveraging. I don't mean leveraging in an extractive way. I mean it in a mutually beneficial way, because that's the spiritual way to leverage.
Speaker 1:Without leverage, you will see your time linearly, meaning the time you spend doing the work will translate into the outcome, and for that kind of a mind, time equal to work equals money. This equation is proportional, that's, in the absence of leveraging, you are not using time to its maximum advantage. When you learn how to leverage, you reduce the time you spend in working and increase the time making money. With leveraging same amount of time, you can do four times the work and it can give you eight times the output. Now, this is an exact number equation, but what I'm saying here is that you can do more work and less amount of time and make more money and be more efficient with your time and how. That's possible without cutting corners or without cheating your way out of doing the work, and it's possible because the one tool that we leverage the least is our mind. Remember, leveraging is using something to its maximum advantage. When you're putting in the time to do the hard manual labor so that the output is someday that you could get paid with money for the amount of time you put in, you're not utilizing your mind to its maximum. You're not leveraging your intelligence. You're not leveraging your resources. You are only working with the linear time, work, money relationship. First thing that we have to unlearn is that the time and income are proportionally related. We have to learn to measure the returns in terms of value we have created for ourselves or for somebody else who's paying us? When you leverage your mind to create value rather than produce work and exchange money for it, you're maximizing your mind's potential.
Speaker 1:That is not to say that you don't do physical labor. Let's say you're in need of digging a ditch. You can spend days trying to dig a ditch with your hands, or you can leverage the use of some tools and reduce that time to eight hours. You can use a shovel to dig a ditch instead of your hands. Or, if you take it a step further, you can leverage other people as more manpower. You can even leverage a machine that runs on gas that can dig your ditch in one hour. You can invent a tool that runs on renewable energy and dig the entire ditch in just a half hour and not use a carbon-fue-based machine. And if that invention doesn't exist, then maybe you create it and you solve a problem for a niche and provide value to the world in a way that hasn't been done before, all because you had a need of digging a ditch. That necessitated you to leverage your mind and to create value in the world. If you invent a machine that digs a ditch in a more fuel and time efficient manner, then even though inventing it and creating it will take time upfront that is the hard work that you're putting in in the front end it will pay off in the long run and that's what will turn into passive income that we talked about in the previous episode. Passive income requires upfront investment of money, work, some sort of time, energy or the combination thereof. This in turn leads to long-term gains with less and less effort, and all of this requires you to leverage your mind. These three podcasts that I've given you in the series are intricately related, and without you leveraging your mind, you can't leverage anything else, and here I'm going to give you a bunch of examples that you can use to maximize the capacity where you might not be doing it so far.
Speaker 1:Leverage your community resources. Utilize your local community centers or libraries for free or low-cost educational and recreational activities. Leverage with skill exchange offer to exchange your skills with a friend or neighbor, like gardening skills or cooking lessons, creating value for both parties without any monetary exchange. Leverage technology for efficiency. Use automation tools and apps to streamline your daily tasks and responsibilities, such as scheduling, bill payments, grocery shopping. Leverage social media networks you can use these platforms to promote your business. Connect with other individuals. Join support groups and communities to problem solve.
Speaker 1:Leverage work colleagues and knowledge sharing. Collaborate with them. Share knowledge. Enhance everyone's professional development. Leverage school networks. Create a platform for information exchange. Participate in community events. Leverage public transportation. Leverage bulk buying with friends or neighbors. Organize group purchases where friends or neighbors can buy stuff in bulk and share them with cost benefit.
Speaker 1:Leverage your hobbies turn your hobbies into opportunities for teaching or selling your creations. Leveraging your passion into potential income streams. Leverage friends for accountability of nothing else. Partner with a friend or a neighbor for regular exercise sessions. Provide each other motivation. Trust me, there is so much out there that you haven't yet thought about leveraging. Use a thinking wealthy mindset to start leveraging. And I know some of you might have an objection. Does this sound like a destruction or manipulation of resources to your advantage? You are using resources to your advantage, but you're not leaving the other party less valuable than when you found them. First of all, if you have a resource available to you, then others are welcome to leverage that. That's why you're creating your resources. And if you think you don't have any resources available to you, then I'm going to say that your mind is not being as resourceful that it can be. You can totally train it to be resourceful and create your resources that others can leverage off of you.
Speaker 1:Islam provides many resources at the community level that public leverages. Zaka or almsgiving, one of the five pillars of Islam. This is the form of charitable giving based on accumulated wealth. Sadaqa, or voluntary charity beyond the obligation of Zaka. Muslims are encouraged to give in charity. This is when other people can leverage your resources to help themselves. If people who are benefiting from these resources start thinking that, oh, we are extractive and we're manipulating the resources and we are undeserving of this resource, then how can they help themselves? The whole cycle will halt. This design in the Islamic economy is put in place for a reason.
Speaker 1:When a scholar shares their knowledge with you at a sermon, then that's you leveraging their intellectual resources to benefit you and it benefits the community. The scholar is not sitting there thinking, oh, all my knowledge is being extracted from me. The scholars train very hard to provide this resource at a community level, to provide people with clarity of their ideas. They attract the population towards the words of Allah and the teachings of Islam. You should be leveraging it. They're dedicating their lives to teaching you. You need to make the maximum use of that resource. Again, leveraging is using something to its maximum value. You have way too many valuable things in your life that you're not leveraging. I am sure of it. Leverage your smile, leverage your connections, leverage your knowledge, your self-trust, your personality.
Speaker 1:Rely on things other than time to create value. That's thinking wealthy. Quality of your work, rather than just the quantity of time you spend doing it determines success and sustenance. The type of thinking that blocks your wealth is that more work needs to take more time and that's the only way to make money. That is not how the wealthy think. They expand their work by leveraging their resources in less time and they make exponentially more amount of money. It's not just about how much time you put in it is never about that, and sadly that's all that's taught to us in our educational system but rather it's about the value you create during that time, no matter how much or how little that time is.
Speaker 1:The whole premise highlights the importance of value. It highlights the intention behind the actions you're taking at your work. This is all above just the amount of time or the duration of work. Industrial Revolution gave rise to the need of industrious workers who put their hours in, and the output was the result that they created, and that result would benefit the company, and the educational system was created to churn out such workers that are programmed to believe that the time they spend working is the only time they can make money in. This educational system teaches you nothing about leveraging. Teaches you nothing about non-linear relationship between time, work, value and the money earned. Relationship between these four items is anything but linear.
Speaker 1:You can make an exceptional amount of value and money with focused hard work Hard work that is defined by the previous podcast, that is very dedicated in a period of time, while you're leveraging your mind to the maximum. The common denominator in all of these equations and all of these podcasts is the best use of your mind. If and when you learn how to leverage your mind, you can leverage everything else. You can leverage your creativity, utilizing your unique skills to innovate or problem solve creatively. This could be anything from artistic talents to creative thinking in business strategies. You can leverage your network, your professional and personal connections. Seek advice, give advice, collaborate. You can leverage your reputation. If you've built and maintained a good name for yourself, for reliability, you can leverage that for expertise or a quality exchange. Leverage the expertise that you gained from focused hard work. Use your specialized knowledge or skills in a particular area to offer consulting, create informational content or mentor others.
Speaker 1:One of my favorite ones is leveraging your emotional intelligence. Utilize your ability to understand and manage emotions, both yours and others, to build strong relationships, navigate social situations, convince people of your point of view. Emotional intelligence is one of the least leveraged skill. You can also leverage your cultural insight. If you have experience or understanding of different cultures, use it to bridge gaps, create inclusive environments, advise on cross-cultural matters. There are things that you might want to leverage because you enjoy doing them. Now, there are things that you might not want to leverage because you actually just enjoy doing them and you enjoy the time you're doing them in. If you love painting and it takes you 10 hours to finish a painting, I'm not asking you to leverage that out. As with everything I teach you guys, please apply your own wisdom and your own understanding of your life and values to this concept of leveraging and use it to maximize in the area where you think you can use it most, and you don't just apply everything like a blanket statement just because I told you so.
Speaker 1:Leveraging is not extractive, it's not manipulative, it's not a one-way street. When you leverage resources from others, you're also creating resources for others to leverage from you. It's a win-win situation. Instead of counting the hours, make every hour count when you work, and do that by using your brain, knowing the right people, making the most of your skills and your resources and creating tools for yourself that you know that you can utilize, even if those tools don't exist yet, redefine value and time. It's time for you to liberate yourself from the old belief that the more hours automatically mean more success.
Speaker 1:Understand this profound truth that the money you can make is not measured by the clock hours you're putting in, but by the value you create. The world's most successful individuals know the secret they focus on impact, not just the activity. So I urge you to think about the legacy you want to leave, and any legacy is created by leveraging. If you reached high levels of passivity in your income, that means you've been able to successfully leverage your mind, and the more income you have, the more you can leverage that money further. On the modern day resources like outsourcing and artificial intelligence, digital apps they all do not mean you don't do any work. The difference between middle class and the wealthy is the difference between the relationship that they have between money, time and work. It's not like more time I spend working, the more money I will make. It's more like the more I leverage my mind, the more money I will make.
Speaker 1:Another myth I want to put to rest here is that when I talk about leveraging, I'm not strictly talking about outsourcing for money, although that is one type of leveraging Meaning. If you hired a virtual assistant to help you with your billing in your medical business, if that's a type of resource you're going to leverage by all means, that is totally encouraged. But if you don't have the money to pay a virtual assistant, then that might not be something that you want to leverage because you don't have that available to you yet. Maybe you want to automate it some other way. Maybe you want your kid to do it. Maybe you can pay them back with a play date. I don't know. I'm not in your life. I cannot give you the breakdown of every life scenario and how you can leverage it. Only your mind can do that. A small business owner automates invoicing and customer service with software tools, freeing time to focus on strategic planning and customer service.
Speaker 1:Women in scarcity mindset are not taught to leverage their mind. If this is your first lesson in the field of leveraging, then let it be the start of a new beginning, as you are now using your mind through strategic utilization of available resources, all to your advantage. While many around you will still continue to believe that more hours simply means more money. I challenge you to see beyond this. Understand that the wealthy don't just work harder, they work smarter. They leverage not just their time, but their intellect, their networks and their other resources. You have the same incredible potential within you. Your mind is your greatest asset. Use it to think outside the conventional box. Thinking wealthy is about increasing the quality of your thoughts about wealth and money, working, your relationship with passive income, hard work and the concept of leveraging very solid in your mind. And when I talk about relationship with these things, I'm just talking about the quality of thoughts you're having about these things. Relationships isn't like a solid wire that runs between you and these concepts. It's not anything tangible, nothing that you can touch. It's just your thoughts. The way you think about these things is the language in your mind.
Speaker 1:I leverage any and all of my resources around me and I use them creatively. Using my mind. I leverage your inner wisdom to make your life easier and better. I don't sit and think about all of the people that don't have the money to pay me for my incredible empowered Muslim women program. You have all of the resources you will ever need to invest in my program. I believe it from the bottom of my heart, because this program carries so much value that no amount of money, time or attention you spend on it will ever be able to quantify the value that is in this program. If you are not ready to leverage your mind at that level where you can participate in the EMW program, it's perfectly fine. You have my podcast and my Wisdom Wednesdays to get value from. But I think about all of the women that want to learn how to think, that want to become financially independent, that want to create a different future. I think about all of the women that have gotten benefits from this program, all of them that are currently getting mind blowing value from this program, and I think about all of the women that will benefit in the future. I leverage my mind, which lets me leverage my creativity, my capabilities, my abundance, the value I generate through service, and I do it from a place of sincerity and contribution. Inshaallah, allah SWT says in the Quran Allah will raise those who have believed among you and those who were given knowledge by degrees. Surah 58, ayah 11.
Speaker 1:What leveraging is going to do is that it's going to break your linear time and money exchange, relationship and thinking wealthy is all about leveraging. It's not about consuming other people's resources and hanging them out to dry. It's about reciprocating. People want to help. You can count on them for their help, their resources, just as they can count on you for yours. If you need help leveraging a connection, they gave you help and you gave them a chance to help. That's a complete bi-directional relationship of leveraging. Or you can pay them back with a compliment, praise, recognition, gratitude or dua. Pay them back with dua.
Speaker 1:I give you value in this podcast that you can leverage and in turn, I ask you for dua. That's a complete relationship With that. I ask Allah SWT, o Allah Al-Kareem the most generous, guide us in using all of our resources that you've given us through your mercy and blessings. Guide us to see value not in our spent, but the impact and legacy we can create. Let us leverage the cycle of mutual benefit and generosity, reflecting your endless grace and mercy. O Allah, may our minds be our greatest asset, used for innovation, kindness and for the ease of humanity. O Allah, help us approach wealth and work with sincerity. Make this life an ultimate leverage for success in the afterlife. Ameen, ya Rabbul Alameen, please keep me in your doors. I will talk to you guys next time.