The [Frustrating] Reason Why Most People Fail Moments Before Success

How to know when success is just around the corner and what to do when you reach that point.

Jun

Mar 25, 2025

Most people give up on their dreams at some point.

But there’s a way to know when your dream is about to come true.

And it comes at a time when you least expect it.

In fact… this is the moment most people would think you should give up.

But if they knew what I’m about to tell you…

We would have an explosion of Proactive Muslims achieving great things.

You’re going to learn:

The exact moment you’ll know your goal is about to see results.
Precisely what to do when you find that moment.
What you can do starting today to make sure you don’t fail at the last moment.

If you’re excited to read on then you probably know at least one other Muslims who would be to. Share NOW so more people can benefit!

The moment people tend to give up on their dreams

There are two common times people quit their goals:

When things start to get tough.
When they hit their lowest point.

The first one is probably the most common time people give up. We feel excited about a new goal but once the excitement wears off we find the daily work tough or boring.

I’ve written a few emails on how we’ll never achieve great things if we jump from goal to goal.

It’s a never ending loop of chasing excitement in a new thing (like a new business idea) but never pushing through to completion:

Feeling a bit of pain then looking for the initial excitement in yet another new thing.

But because we move on to a new thing we feel like we’re making progress—”the thing I was doing wasn’t worth it but this new thing is surely more valuable and worth turning my attention to.”

“This new thing will solve my problems.”

“This new thing will make me happy.”

Worst is when we never pass the idea stage. Just jumping from one new idea to another.

We also do this with things like changing jobs or trying out new diets.

Tell me in the comments if this sounds all too familiar.

I explained in those emails how staying with the temporary pain—promoting your business to more people, being patient with your job or sticking with the diet—is the only way to push through to achieve higher goals.

Otherwise you’ll be forever stuck in this endless loop of trying new things just to avoid a little pain.

But what if you stick with it yet end up hitting an even lower point?

Your business still has no customers.

The job makes you depressed.

The diet isn’t working.

Do you give up?

Not exactly…

Not if you know you’re doing the right thing.

But how do you know if you’re doing the right thing?

Goal setting.

With effective goal setting you would have gained absolute clarity on:

What you want to achieve (goals)
What you need to do to achieve them (actions)

This will help you avoid jumping from one idea to the next because you would have already made a promise to yourself about the importance of your goals.

So if you know you’re on the right path…

Your lowest point tells you if you should continue doing the right thing or stop doing the wrong thing—the actions.

When you’re working on the right thing

You’ll know it’s the right thing because you would have outlined in detail (at least if you did goal setting with me) what successful completion of the goal should look like—the dream outcome.

More customers than you’ll ever need.

Your dream job.

The ideal body.

Your lowest point is exactly what the name suggests: the lowest point.

In other words you can only go up from there.

So what do you need to do to rise up from this point?

Your lowest point will give you the answer:

If your goal was properly set. And your reasons were compelling enough to sustain your efforts…

Finding yourself at the lowest point actually means you’re right on the edge of success.

How?

Because a Proactive Muslim turns problems into solutions.

And your lowest point exposes your deepest problems.

There’s your perfect answer!

It’s crucial to remember:

Your lowest point is only a temporary setback.

The things you’re struggling with most at your lowest point are precisely what you need to focus on to push through and reach your dream outcome.

If you had started a business you were truly passionate about. And you had a great product. But weren’t getting enough customers…

You might call that a low point.

You might feel sorry for yourself for not having the customers you want.

Or…

You might thank Allah for sending you to this low point because it’s telling you exactly what you need to do:

Get more customers.

(Sounds obvious but how many times do we ignore these clear signs and look for an escape with the next distraction instead?)

If you can push through and learn what you need to do and dedicate yourself to carrying out those actions what would be waiting for you the on the other side?

Paying customers.

Or… in other words… the one thing that will accelerate your path towards the dream outcome.

As the saying goes:

“Necessity is the mother of invention.”

If you always gave up before hitting your lowest point you might never have experienced the pain necessary to find your life-changing solution.

And your lowest point not only exposes what you need to focus your attention on…

It will likely be the one thing you needed all along to shoot you towards your dream outcome.

But you might never have realised without experiencing the low point first.

What most people do (unfortunately) is use the pain felt in the lowest point as the perfect excuse to quit rather than reading the signs for what to do to next.

Examples of using your lowest point to find your solution

As a Proactive Muslim you must develop the skill of turning your problems into solutions:

I don’t have enough customers → I need to message 100 new prospects every single day until I hit my target.
I hate my job → I need to keep working so I can save up for the thing I really want to do.
I just cheated on my diet again → I need to find an accountability partner to keep me on track.
I don’t pray my salah → I need to find friends who pray so I feel ashamed to be the only one not praying.
I run out of money each month → I need to track my spending and cap it to 90% of my paycheck.
I find running too painful to stick with it → I need to find a run/rest programme to help me build up my endurance.
I’m going to fail this class because I’m too behind on my paper → I need to break my task down by word count and commit to writing 200 words a session.

Note how easy it would be to use any of these situations as a perfect excuse to quit.

But as a Proactive Muslim you should be able to recognise the causes of your problems.

It might be a behavioural problem as with the diet and salah examples.

Or it can be to do with actions as with the customers example.

Sometimes you just need to break a goal down as with the word count example.

In each of these examples focusing on the one thing you’re struggling with most would undoubtedly launch you to a new high point in your path to success.

These are the high-value actions that make the difference between average and world changing results.

Which would you rather have as a Proactive Muslim?

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When you’re working on the wrong thing

If you find yourself working on something—and even pushing through the temporary pain of hard work—but it doesn’t align with your vision of the goal…

You’re doing the wrong thing.

But it still doesn’t mean you give up!

It means you need to adjust your path to realign with the goal.

When I first started Strategic Sunnah I simply wanted a place to store my ideas about Muslim Betterment.

I used to write in forums and group chats.

Then it took the shape of a website.

I eventually settled with this newsletter format.

The path changed over time SO THAT I can work towards my goal—the goal itself never changed.

I could have given up when people weren’t reading. I could have given up at a real low point when I lost access to a large audience.

But the goal can’t change… because it’s just too important.

I had to change.

The fundamental point to understand from this:

When you hit your lowest point… you need to change the ACTIONS… not the GOAL.

Don’t change the business. Change how you’re marketing on a daily basis.
Don’t change your career. Change how you manage your time.
Don’t change the diet. Change your cooking.

However…

What if you actually need to change the goal?

There are rare occasions when you need to change the goal itself.

This is most likely due to not gaining enough clarity at the goal setting stage.

You weren’t on the right path to begin with so continuing would just make things worse.

The goal setting exercises I teach are designed to clear your mind of any doubts about your potential before digging deep into the compelling reasons behind what you want the most out of this life.

Needing to change the goal itself when you hit your lowest point looks like this:

You started the business because you thought it would make you rich quick but you weren’t all that passionate about the problem your product was solving.
You took the first job available to you because you just wanted to earn some cash at the time.
You started a restrictive diet to get skinny when you should have focused on getting fit instead.

The trick is to not be afraid of hitting your lowest point.

Use it to decide your next steps. Try this:

Do a fresh goal setting session where you write out your goals.
Get clear on the dream outcome you desire most.
Think how you can proactively adapt your current path to reach your dream outcome.
Make a detailed plan of the actions you need to take.

Click here if you want 1-on-1 help with this.

Now you’re on a clearer path. You will probably go through the same journey of initial excitement followed by the pain of hard work and maybe even hit a low point…

But now you know you’re on the right path and you just need to follow the advice in this email when you need it.

WARNING: avoid this no matter what

Trying to do everything at the same time.

This is when you know you need to change something but you also think you should continue the thing you’re currently doing because you’ve already “invested” so much time and effort.

Time and effort spent on the wrong thing is not an investment. And you will only see negative returns.

Holding onto a failing idea isn’t worth the stress and mental drain. Not to mention the damage to your confidence.

You will burn out extremely quickly.

As Proactive Muslims we have to learn when to quit so we can allow our true goals to take priority.

Quiting is never done as an excuse or an escape for a Proactive Muslim. It's always a strategic move.

Remember: always start (or restart) with goal setting as the foundation.

How to give yourself the best chance of succeeding

I mentioned there are two places people commonly give up:

When things get tough.
When they hit their lowest point.

But it doesn’t count if you reached your low point because you didn’t make the right efforts in the first place.

You can’t neglect your business or your diet then rely on your low point to show you the solution.

You hit the low point because you didn’t do the basic requirements first.

You started low and you stayed low.

This only works when you genuinely made efforts to progress your goal…

When you exhaust all the options available to you without yet knowing the pain at the lowest point.

And only then did you experience the pressing pain at your lowest point to inspire the next phase.

Your progress can go up or down—NOT YOUR EFFORT.

You must create a great product and offer exceptional service.

You must stick to the diet and not cheat.

And you must do this for a much longer time than you think.

You keep going when your initial excitement drops. And you push through when things get tough or boring.

This helps you eliminate variables such as:

Lack of skills or knowledge
Not enough time put in
Environmental factors (economy, restrictions)

First make sure you aren’t lacking in the basic requirements of the goal.

Only then will the low point expose the one thing you need to work on next.

This will save you a great deal of time and frustration in the long run.

There is another danger to not putting in appropriate efforts:

You distract yourself with low-value “busy work” instead of focusing on high-value actions.

You spend time on perfecting the logo instead of contacting new customers.

You watch more recipe videos instead of doing your meal prep.

Being “busy” with the wrong things is what tricks us into thinking we don’t have enough time to achieve our dreams.

And there is a great example for why we should be consistent in our efforts…

The excitement of starting a new goal helps you put in more work in the beginning.

Just like reciting more Quran in the beginning of Ramadhan.

But as the days pass we tend to drop in our efforts.

What does Allah gift us for the final days of Ramadhan?

Ten incredible days of unlimited rewards to help us maximise efforts towards the end.

It’s the same with any worthwhile goal. We must maintain and even increase efforts—especially in the last mile.

It’s the sustained efforts—beyond our lowest point—that pull our progress higher.

And just like in the last ten days of Ramadhan the final stretch is where the results really take off.

Like everything I’ve mentioned… it starts with goal setting.

Goal setting gives you the compelling reasons for why you want the dream outcome.

Let your compelling reasons dictate the level of effort you put in.

Action to take right now

Write down one thing you want to achieve in the next 12 months. Then write why you want to achieve it.

How will it positively impact your life? What would it mean for you or the people you love?

If it was important enough… why would you not dedicate yourself to achieving your goals?

Strategic Sunnah