"My success and my guidance depend on Allah. Whenever we change something to good, whenever we do good, it is coming from Allah. The tawfeeq comes from Allah. The concept of tawfeeq is a little similar to the concept of barakah. I’l give you an example. You have a student who has exams in the month of Ramadan, two students that have exams in the month of Ramadan. One of them says 'I have to study day and night for this exam so I’m going to leave taraweeh, I’m going to leave the masjid – I just cant do it. I mean this study of mine is ibaadah and I have to forget about everything else. I don’t have time for dhikr of Allah.'
So this person goes and studies day and night and these two students are engineering students for example. The other student wants to study, he wants to study very hard. But because he has so much love of Allah subhana wa ta`ala in his heart he wants to go to the masjid, he wants to attend the salah, he wants to pray taraweeh, he wants to be with the muslims, he wants to make dhikr. So his heart is leading him to that direction, so he’s going in that direction and he’s studying much much less than the other student. He’s squeezing in a few hours of the day but the rest of his time is going for ibaadah of Allah because it’s the blessed month of Ramadan. Both of them are studying a certain problem on materials on physics or anything on engineering, a subject that has problems. They're both studying this problem in the same time. So this student who is keeping the orders of Allah and Allah wants to give him tawfeeq, he’s solving that problem and it takes him half an hour to solve. Then he’s done with the problem and he goes to the next one. The other student starts solving that problem and he gets stuck somewhere in the problem. Sometimes in a problem, in the middle of a problem there's something you don’t turn your attention to and you get stuck and you spend hours not being able to get out of that loop. So that student got stuck in the problem and he’s going round in circles for hours and hours and the other one finishes the problem and he’s praying taraweeh in the masjid and he’s making dhikr of Allah and itikaaf that night.
Why? One of them had tawfeeq and the other one didn’t.
Tawfeeq is from Allah. It’s not on how much you study or how much you work. It’s true, in general the more you work the more you get. That’s a general rule and it’s a sunnah of Allah subhana wa Ta`ala. But there is also something else and that is another rule which is the rule of tawfeeq. We need to understand that Allah has established laws in this world. The harder you work the more fruits you will get. There's also another law you will get, that says if you have the tawfeeq of Allah subhana wa ta`ala then Allah will make things easy on you and these laws work together. But we have to understand both laws exist."
Adapted from the Stories of the Prophet (`alayhumusalam) by Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaki.