Making right choices – Marriage or career

Auto-generated transcript:Bismillah wa alhamdulillah wa salatu wa salamu ala rasulillah. Wa ba'd. I am in my favorite place, which is in Florida. And you can see why I call it my favorite place. There are some mallards here, which are kind of resident. And this is a water hazard on a golf course. It's a man-made lake. And it has terrapins in it, turtles. It has these lovely oak trees, which border the course. I don't know if you can see the turtles. They dive pretty quickly. And then there is this family of mallards. Very beautiful scene. Some friend of mine asked me to talk about marriage. Because this year, my wife and I will be married. At least according to me, happily, for now 40 years. Alhamdulillah. We got married in 1985. On the 21st of March. So we married 40 years. And so this friend of mine said, she said to me, you talk about your parents in the different podcasts. And, you know, you talk about parenting itself, coming from that background of your parents. You have said many times that your wife has been a great support for you. But you didn't say much or anything about marriage itself. So can you do that? That's what I'm planning to do today. Talk about marriage. But before I go into the topic of marriage, I must talk about ambition. Because ambition is a very important thing. And it's important in terms of careers. Because in my view, and of course, I was going to say, I'm sure I will get pushed back on this. But there's no need for pushback because this is my view. And you're most welcome to have your own. My view comes not from reading a book or some intellectual exercise, but from, from, from the actual experience of 40 years of marriage and 70 years of life. And my opinion, a marriage is a career. So if you say marriage and career, at least for most people, I would say that's an oxymoron because a marriage is a career. And the secret of a successful marriage is if it's treated like a career. When you give it that importance, when you give it that prominence in your life, when it becomes the, the criterion for decision making, marriage is a career. Marriages come usually with the actual biological reasons, which are the reason for marriage, which is procreation of the species, meaning having children. And that makes it even more of a career. So I would say if you are thinking of marriage or career, first get that thing right in your mind and say that, and remind yourself, that marriage means career. Second very important thing is to, therefore ask yourself, what is my ambition? One of my very good friends says, my ambition is to get married. It's okay, Alhamdulillah. If that is your ambition, may you succeed. But if that is the ambition, that's my ambition is to get married, then, um, the chances are that that ambition is, I don't know what to say to that. I mean, I don't want to criticize somebody saying my ambition is to get married. But, if that is the ambition, then obviously you're not going to achieve anything much other than hopefully the marriage. But since marriages require, at least materially, marriages are not necessarily a marriage. But materially, marriages are a resource sink in terms of, uh, non-material, meaning emotional, um, emotional, uh, and other dancing awards. And I want to say spiritual, but certainly emotional, emotional, and other, uh, uh, aims. Marriages are, they are not sinks. Uh, they also give you some benefit, but materially in terms of money, time, energy, they are a sink. So you, and I'm speaking here now, both parties, both the spouses, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, the men and the women, and those are all the un Graduate classes and start when you're older and uh, but you're not going to be a Koh Kesar and be taken into a farewell one. You have to consider that you are going to be a Simen and never you have been epitomized for example a continuative romantic sticky artist Hardy or So you are going to you're looking at spending a lot and putting it into that relationship material stuff, which is time, mostly time money energy, um, and getting some emotional, So, ask yourself, what is your ambition? If your ambition, for example, is to build a dynasty and an empire, if your ambition is to build a great organization, to be an entrepreneur, if your ambition is to, you know, people say retire at 40, if your ambition is material in any of these ways, and all of these are very good material ways, if your ambition is to invent a cure for poverty, for example, which is, I think, people talk about inventing a cure for cancer, I think inventing a cure for poverty is even more important than inventing a cure for cancer. So inventing something. If you're... If your ambition is to solve some of the big problems of the world, believe me, all of those things are going to take a hit if you're married. Now I have some of the... If your ambition, for example, is to do some deep research, whether it's into religion, whether it's into science, technology, art, whatever, write books, create teaching and learning methodologies. You know, all of that sort of things. If your ambition is to do all these things, then your marriage is going to be a liability for you. Once again, I mean, this is... Sounds like, tayyabhoili piyarka dushban hai hai kind of thing, which is not what I intend to be. I don't think I am. But I think I'm trying to be as pragmatic as possible. I'm trying to be as pragmatic as possible. I'm trying to be as pragmatic as possible. Without being defensive, which I think I'm beginning to sound a bit defensive, so let me not get into that. So now, so all of these things are going to take a hit, because for the simple reason that your ambition and your marriage both require the same things from you. They require your time, they require your energy, they require your emotional involvement, they require dedication. They require your love. They require your love. They require also resources. So you can't say, I will give to both, because nobody has enough to give to both. One will get precedence over the other. One has to get precedence over the other. That's the reason why, for example, people like Jack Welch, for example, if you look at him, he's a great man. He's a great man. He's a great man. He's a great man. He's a great man. If you look at him, one of the greatest CEOs that ever existed. I think he had in the wake of his tremendous and amazing career progress were three broken marriages. You have, I can give you lots of examples of people like this who had career wise, amazing careers. They're not married. They're not married. They're not married. They're not married. They're not married. They're not married. They're not married. They're not married. They don't seem to go together. But, you know, marriages, they don't seem to go together. You will also have people who are very happily married, lots of children and grandchildren, and so on and so forth. But career wise, you know, so what did this person really achieve in terms of career? Whether it's money, whether it's jobs, whatever, whatever. Fulfilling the needs of the person you are looking for. And I know that it's not just about the career. It's about the family. It's about the business. authority whether it is creating you know thought processes methodologies of living and so on and so forth you will find almost nothing so you say well you know so it gives the message gives the message pretty clearly so I would say the first thing to do is to decide which one is more important for me a good marriage or a great career which one as I said more than likely the two will not happen if you are one of those exceptional individuals who manage to make these two happen together then all power to you now you might say well if I push the question back in my face and say what about you what about me because as I just said I began by saying that I have been married happily for 40 years and I think as far as my career is concerned in the field of business management in the field of you know leadership development I started off my career journey consciously I started working in体육 even before that but I started my career journey consciously two years before I got married in 1983 and I started out by saying to myself that and actually writing it down I wrote a you know large big letters with a marker and stuck it on the wall of my study and I said I will be going to be in the an internationally recognized leadership consultant and trainer. And I wrote that in 1983. I got married in 1985. So, and I started working actually in 1979. So it's five years before I wrote my aim in life. So I did all this. Now my point is, you might say, well, you know, you did all of this and you're telling me that marriage and career don't go together and that marriage is a career. And if you choose to be married, then you are choosing not to have a career. How do these two, how does it work? And I say to you that it doesn't work. In my case, the reason I was able to do that is, all thanks to God, all thanks to my wife. My wife was and is and continues to be the most undemanding person that you could possibly have hope for as a wife. She is a person who allowed me, literally, I'm saying this with the greatest humility and the greatest love that I can possibly bear for her. She allowed me, to follow my dreams. She allowed me to give precedence to my career over the time that our marriage would have required. Now, the way she did that was because, and, you know, early enough, I think, without attending any training classes and marriage counseling classes and whatnot, early enough, I think, I was able to do that. After three years ofraising, I started to think there were more than enough skills to take which I had lost of the kind, and I became very comfortable in my life with my own race, and then I had four and a half wives, and about a year and a half in life, my wife,