Self-development is a process or a journey of constant personal growth, improvement, empowerment, evolution, and renewal.  The aim of such process is for the person to fully cultivate and realize his or her God-given potential and to maximize his or her impact.  People who embark on a serious process of self-development usually live a better and more meaningful life and they understand and engage this world better, starting with their immediate environment.  Those who don’t develop themselves and don’t cultivate their potential, usually live a shallow and routine self-centered life with limited goals and insignificant impact, hence the connection between self-development and relevance.  Even if they seem to be busy and working hard, they are usually spinning their wheels and putting out fires.  Their lives usually stagnate and freeze early and their world and sphere of influence remain small and limited.  If they ‘succeed’, their success is usually unbalanced, unilateral or unsustainable.  Plus, it hardly impacts anybody beyond themselves.

Meaningful self-development is driven and prompted by a passion that comes either from a commitment to a mission or from high aspirations.  Indeed, a person does not usually engage in any meaningful self-development if he or she is not committed to a mission or does not have high aspirations.  On the other hand, effective self-development shall be geared towards increasing and enhancing one’s ability to fulfill his or her mission.

Because our mission is to be fulfilled in society, a mission-driven self-development process automatically necessitates and results in a process of civic engagement, thus sealing a synergetic cycle that consists of (1) a commitment to the divine mission and to America, (2) self-development, and (3) civic engagement.  Indeed, self-development and civic engagement feed into one another and together they help in our embodiment of the divine guidance, our fulfillment of the divine mission and purpose, the discharge of our role as God’s vicegerents and witnesses, and our increased and enhanced contribution to the common good.  The reason why our approach focuses on committing people to the divine mission and to America (not on activities and bureaucracy) is because that is what sets off and sustains the cycle, and results in a meaningful and purposeful personal development and civic engagement.

The process of self-development should be as much as possible a continuous, comprehensive and balanced process that covers all aspects of life and the personality including the spiritual, the intellectual, the physical, the emotional, the financial, the professional, and the social dimensions.  In all these aspects, we should be constantly expanding and sharpening our knowledge and skills and seeking to excel in and perfect everything we do, which amounts to striving to meet the divine expectations.

As the name indicates, self-development is essentially the responsibility of individuals and families, not organizations.  One of the biggest flaws in the prevailing Islamic work is to get individuals and families to rely on Islamic Centers and schools, and on the educational programs offered by Muslim organizations for their own self-development and the development of their children.  Some parents went as far as delegating such critical role to TV, video games, and other gadgets.  It is no wonder that very few members of our community are engaged in any meaningful personal development process either for themselves or for others including their children.  And an essential part of the change that our movement aspires to affect is to reverse this trend of neglecting or delegating self-development (or confusing it with shallow educational activities and programs), and to inspire and empower individuals and families to take charge of their self-development and the development of their children.  This - we hope - shall result from committing our people to the divine mission and to America, raising the bar of aspirations for themselves and for their children, and getting them to live a life that is bigger than their own.  Indeed, our people shall embark on a meaningful self-development and civic engagement if we succeed to fuse the Islamic and American components of their identity, and the religious and civic dimensions of their mission.

Finally, personal responsibility for self-development does not negate the importance of mentorship.  Unfortunately, mentorship is largely lacking in our community and for some reasons our people are not keen to mentor or to be mentored.  And one of our goals is to instill in our community a strong culture of self-development and mentorship so that as many members of our community are engaged in a meaningful process of self-development while being mentored and at the same time mentoring others.