Assalaamu alaikum Nadine,
Thanks you for your questions. I did my best to answer a similar question here.
https://productivemuslim.com/productive-thinking-series-part-1/#comment-10713
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You’re right, we take 100% responsibility and strive to do our best but the result is from Allah. He SWT wants to see your effort and the trust that you put in Him to strive for whatever it is that you’re striving for. You’re rewarded for your intention and action, not the result. I trust that helps.
And Allah knows best.

Thanks, Ats. Really appreciate your comment. Alhamdulillah. Would love to know what insight you gained and was most useful for you? Thanks.

Oops its jazakaAllah

Thank you for sharing your insight, Khurram. You’re exactly right, it is only when we have a clear vision of our purpose that we can rise up after every fall. Otherwise, it’s very challenging because we’ll be very short-sighted and stuck in details.
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Finding and defining the vision/goal/higher purpose is a process and a journey and needs patience. The key is to start making decisions and setting standards of what’s acceptable for you and the level that you want to play at. And constantly keep taking action, going out of your comfort zone, exploring, expanding, defining and refining who you really want to become and what you really what to contribute to the world; in your own capacity and for your community.
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I really love the way you put it in a framework; working from the inside out with the examples you gave. Awesome!
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Another model we can overlay on this child, adolescent, adult model is Stephen Covey’s framework of private victory & public victory. Going from dependent to independent and ultimately, interdependent; taking it out to the macro scale.
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Only in the interdependent stage that we can work and effectively make changes on a community and the global scale. Doesn’t matter how effective you are individually, to be effective on the ummah level, you’re gonna have to work with other change makers; because we’re all in this together. Being ‘independent’ can only take you so far. But every stage builds on the one below it. That’s the power of ummah with unified vision and common goals. But it has to start with individuals the individual level. I think that’s why God stresses so much on family units and communities. There’s a hadith that says ‘The believers are like a structure, parts of which support other parts’. So, we have to be individually strong, so that we are a strong structure when we come together. Hope that makes sense.
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And it’s also a process and a journey getting to level 1 and staying at level 1. The key to aim to spend most of your time in 1. Understanding the we’ll not be perfect and be forgiving our ourselves when we fall.
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A distinction that I would like to make here is the difference between an adult being childish and being childlike. An adult can be child like and still be mature and responsible. Being childlike is just a state of being open, present, creative, curious, judgement free, wanting to have fun and very playful; which is a very important state for adults to be able to access to be creative and live in the present. Being childish, however, is just not cool! Most of us, unfortunately, are stuck at a 6 year old level, emotionally. That’s why learning and becoming more emotionally intelligent is very important. It’s just a skill like any other skills.
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I trust that make sense. Thanks again for your comment. Jazakallahu khairan.