What the Quran meant and what it matters - reading notes

What the Quran meant and why it matters

By Garry Willis

This book provides an entrance into understanding what it is really inside the Quran.

The first part of the book deals with how the western world has misinterpreted the message of Islam to promote an agenda.

Many people talk about Islam without having read the quran

The Quran has many parallels with the Torah and the Gospel

The Quran came after Mohammad, that is after the year 632.

The Quran is a more inclusive book than the Torah and the gospel. 

All believers, this includes Christians and Jews are the sons of god. By believers it is understood, those who believe in one good.

The Quran mentions many prophets: Adam, Jesus, Moses, Mary, Abraham, and of course Muhammad. All have equal importance.

Jihad = Zeal = strive for excellence. It some cases it is confused with fanatic.

The book draw some parallels with the crusades and other extrem interpretations of the law of god under the Christian church.

Shari'ah 

It is only mentioned one in the Quran and it means to travel the Right Path.

The Quran down not call for any laws or gives detail of what this mean.

The book critiques how the USA government tries to prohibit "Shar'iah law" without knowing what really means or is.

The Quran also did not indicate anything about the hijab.

The book does indicate that proper attire has to be worn any mean and women. 

Also westerners misinterpreted a verse about attacking infidels. First, infidels are the ones who do not believe I god, these are not the Christians or Jews, but the ones believing in more than one god. There is no mention of Holy war in the Quran.

The Japanese Lover By Isabel Allende

By Isabel Allende

Excellent love story of a Jewish woman, who lived her entire life in love with her Japanese lover, who she met when both were kids.

A love kept in secret by her fear of facing the class differences between both of them.

Alma dedicated her life to her lover, but in doing so, she had to marry her best friend, Ethanael, who is a very successful lawyer, gay, who loved her unconditionally and who dies of Aids. An illness he got as a result of his homosexuality.

The story also has another character, Irina, an immigrant from Romania, who helps at a nursing house, where she met Alma. Irina became excellent friends with Alma and worked as her secretary. By doing so, she learned about Almas's history and passion for his lover Ichimei. Irina has her demons from the past: she was abused when she arrived to The USA by her father in law (child pornography). Irina falls in love with Seth, Almas's grandson.

The story narrates the difficulties   American families of Japanese origin faces during the Second World War. They were discriminated, label as enemies of the state and sent to concentration camps.

Isabel Allende's writting is engaging and this is a good read for anybody 

Summary of Good to Great by James Collins

Eleven companies who had been average enterprises for many years, and renewed themselves using these principles and then consistently beat the general stock market by three times over fifteen years.

The Seven Key Principles

1. Level Five Leadership

Personal humility & professional will.
Are ambitious for their company's success first and foremost, themselves second. Set up successors for even greater success.
Modest, self-effacing, understated.
Fanatically driven to produce sustained, long term results. Workmanlike diligence vs. show horse.
Often attribute success to things other than themselves.

2. First Who... Then what

Get the right people on the bus, and the wrong people off.
"Who" questions come before "what" questions - rigorously applied. Get everyone on the team to lead the organization to success.
Rigorous leaders, not ruthless. Did not use mass layoffs or restructuring. When in doubt - don't hire..., keep looking.
Don't seek growth without the right people on board.
When you know you need to make a people change - act.
Put the best people on the biggest opportunities - not on problems. Teams debate and dialogue vigorously to find best solutions.
Compensation is meant to attract and keep the best - not motivate them.
The right people are your most important assets.
The right people has more to do with character traits and innate capabilities than with specific knowledge, background or skills.

3. Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lose Faith)

Confront the brutal truth of current reality, yet never waiver that you'll win in the end.(Stockdale Paradox)
Create a culture wherein telling the truth is more important than good performance.

• Lead with questions, not answers.
• Dialogue and debate, not coercion.
• Conduct debriefs and autopsies, without blame.
• Use red-flag mechanisms that insures they are seen.

Respond to adversity, by hitting realities head on - stay focused on vision.
Don't worry about motivating people. Get the right people and they are motivated.

4. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity Within the Three Circles)

What You Can Be The Best In The World AT.
What You Are Deeply Passionate About.
What Drives Your Economic Engine.

The entire organization must understand deeply the above three.
Reaching this understanding is an iterative process - may take years.
You must have a passionate council constantly searching for the three answers -Relentlessly dialoguing & debating the truth.
The company's strategies and goals are set to achieve the three circles.

5. A Culture of Discipline

A culture of self-disciplined people, disciplined thought and disciplined action fanatically consistent with the three circles.
Getting the right self-disciplined people on the bus eliminates the need for bureaucracy.
Paradox: Must operate consistently within the system, but also be enormously creative and innovative within it.
This is not about tyrants - it is about a culture of discipline. Everyone leads. Most important discipline is adherence to the three circles. This creates the greatest opportunities for growth.
"Once-in-a-lifetime" opportunities are irrelevant unless they fit within the three circles.
Budgeting is more about what gets fully funded and what doesn't get funded, vs. spreading the money around.
"Stop doing" lists are more important than "to do" lists.

6. Technology Accelerators

Become pioneers in using carefully selected technologies.
Does the technology help us achieve our three circles? Avoid fads.
Technology is the accelerator of the momentum, not the cause of it. See the three circles.
All the comparison companies had access to the some technologies, but not the some environments in which to apply them.
Good to great companies "stay the course". Comparison companies react.
80% of Good to Great company executives didn't include technology as one of the top five keys to their success.
Crawl, walk, run is a good strategy even with technology.

7. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop

The good-to-great transformations look like dramatic, revolutionary events to outsiders, but they feel like organic, long term, cumulative processes to people on the inside.
Sustainable transformations follow a predictable pattern of buildup and breakthrough. Like moving the flywheel, it takes a lot of sustained effort in the beginning, but with consistency the effect is cumulative.
Comparison companies lacked the long-term consistency. Too often they would try to jump to breakthrough, without the organizational strength to sustain it. Acquisitions rarely worked.

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

This is an incredible habit. I personally see people every day finding excuses for not doing things or for delaying projects. This habits helps provide those people with an anser for such things and Covey explains this with a wonderful metaphor:

"in and old yarn, a man is sawing a log, The work is going slowly and the man is exhausted. The more he saws, the less he cuts. A passerby watches for a while an suggests that the man should take a break to sharpen the saw. But the man says he can't stop to sharpen the saw because he is to busy sawing" . A dull saw makes the work tiresome, tedious and unproductive. Highly effective people take the time to sharpen their on tools, their skills, bodies, souls, minds and hearts.

Allocate time to sharpen your saw in all these aspects of your life, leave time for exercising, for your family, for improving your mental skills, business skills, and your spirit.

Work towards developing your emotions, which depend greatly on other, Work to develop your heart, your emotional connections and your engagement with other people. Communicate, listen and be undemanding. In everything you do, try to make others better off and put them first. By doing this, you will transform your own person into why Covey call a highly effective person

Habit 6: Synergize

Covey explains that this habit is all about multiplying what different individuals could do.
He calls this creative cooperation and the way he puts it is that the creative cooperation could create a force greater that the sum of the parts.

Effective synergy relies on communication, many people make synergy impossible by reacting from scripts, they do not listen, reflect and respond, instead they react reflexively.

Cooperation and communication are the two legs of a synergistic relationship. If sincere cooperation and communication are lacking the power of synergy will be lost. 2+2 = 5.

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood

This habit is all about listening

Always try to understand what the other people want and need before you begin to outline your own objectives.

Listen carefully before you engage in objecting, arguing or opposing what others are telling you, listen carefully and think about it.

Exercise this habit by putting yourself in the other party's shoes.

This habit, as well as all the others applies to any type of relationship, personal or business.

Remember to always understand what the others want and why the want it, then you will be in a better position to outline your own objectives, since you could start thinking in terms of win/win.

By first listening you are also creating empathy with the other person or persons.

Habit 4: Think Win - Win

In every type of relationship looking for Win/Win solutions is the way to go. When the parties of a relationship Win, everybody is better off. When somebody Wins and the other loses, the loser will be injured one way or the other.

Covey explained in his book that highly effective people always strive for win/win transactions, which make it profitable for everybody to cooperate because all the parties are better off at the end.

A different result always will yield to: bad feelings, animosity, new enemies, hostility or defeat.

What makes you a highly effective people is the fact that you can multiply your allies not your enemies.

Habit 3: Put First Things First

By changing the way we act on a daily basis, we can change who we are.

Spending the time fighting fires or reacting to urgent circumstances and emergencies will not allow us to spend or invest the necessary effort to develop the ability to prevent emergencies.

When we act in such a way, we are confusing the important with the urgent.

To avoid this we need to focus on planning, avoiding pitfalls, developing relationships, cultivating opportunities and getting adequate recreation.

Make sure to spend time in the important things rather than the urgent. The way to identify what is important to you, is through your mission statement and your goals.

Remember that we have different roles in life, (spouse, parent, manager, etc). We need to give each role appropriate allotment of time on our schedules.

Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind

In my opinion the most powerful statement that Covey uses to describe this habit is by asking you to imagine yourself sitting in the back of the room at your funeral. Imagine what people could honestly say about you based on the way you are now. Do you like what you hear? Is that how you want to be remembered? If not, change it. Take hold of your life. Implement
“personal leadership.”

Personal leadership means to create your personal mission statement indicating what are your goal. These goals will describe what type of person you are. In other words, are you self centered, money oriented or addict to work.

Based on these goals you can reflect in what you see yourself being and can modify certain things in order to allow you to become what you want to be.

Next: Habit 3. Put First Things First

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Habit #1 Be Proactive

Taking the initiative is a characteristic of highly effective people. Being proactive means that you can decide how the things around you influence you, in other words you can control if the circumstances around you abuse you or if you control them.

Covey explain this by referring to Viktor Frankl, who was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. His entire family, except for one sister, was murdered in the camps. As horrific as his circumstances were, Frankl recognized that he was free, because he could decide how he would think and act in the midst of the horror. Even when he was a starving prisoner, he visualized himself lecturing in a classroom, telling students about the horror and what he learned from it. His mental discipline made him stronger than the camp guards. He inspired fellow prisoners and even some of the guards themselves. Frankl was pro-active. He took the initiative and accepted
responsibility for his fate. He recognized that fate was his to decide. He did not have the
power to walk away from the camp, but he had the power to master it.

You are what you do and say and an important element to start being proactive is that you start using the appropriate language, meaning using positive sentences instead of negative ones.

Instead of:
- Not he drives me up the wall, I can choose how he will affect me.
- Not, I can't or I have to, I will decide and I will choose.
- Not, that is just me, I can change the way I am.

Being proactive has a lot to do with starting the change within you instead of waiting for other to change.

Next: Habit #2 Begin with the end in mind

Summary of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

This book written by Stephen R. Covey is an excellent read for everybody. It does not matter if your are looking for way to improve the way you lead people, or if you are trying to improve your relationships with others, this book is a must read for everybody. The style and applicability of all the habits described in the book put this book very high in the ranking of "must read" books.

This book premise is to choose a solid base of Values that will make your habits.

Values like integrity, dignity, quality, service, patience, perseverance, caring, courage should guide our lives.

The importance of developing your character is a key message of this book. You can develop your character by continuously and consistently conduct yourself by the set of values previously mentioned.

Humans are what we habitually do, therefore we need to adopt productive habits. Covey defines Excellence as a habit not as an aptitude.

In previous post we have talk about the importance of setting up goals, Covey goes a step forward by clarifying the importance of writing a mission statement for your life. This mission statement will help clarify your principles and the set of goals that you are going to set for yourself.

Successfull relations are built upon trust.

Covey also gives great examples and explanations about balancing all the aspects of your life, spirit, mind and body as well as a balance among all your relationships.


The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People are:

1- Be Proactive: This means taking always the initiative.

2- Begin with the end in mind: This refers to focusing on your goals .(you can refer to this post in order to learn more about how to manage your time to accomplish your goals).

3- Put First things first: This refers to setting up priorities.

4- Think Win/Win: We only win when others win.

5- Seek first to understand then to be understood: Probably one of the most important habits (at least in my opinion). In order to have effective communication we need to learn to listen first.

6- Synergize: Cooperation is stronger than individualism.

7- Sharpen the saw: Always keep improving. If you do not have time to sharpen your saw, because you are to busy sawing trees, you will never be able to do a good job.


Next Post I will summarize the first habit. Be proactive