We all have things we want to do, and things that we want to change. We decide to get to sleep earlier, or to work on some project, but we keep procrastinating or never feel like taking action. Or we try and try, and make some progress, but it doesn’t seem to last.

There can be many causes, but a major obstacle is your beliefs about yourself and the world - beliefs such as “but I can’t go to sleep early because there is too much to handle” or “that project is just SO much work!” “But I have never done that before!”

These beliefs are a huge obstacle between you and what your goals. Usually, they are exaggerations or blatantly false! Some beliefs may not be false, but are unhelpful - not having done something before doesn’t mean you can’t do it now!

To achieve your goal, drop these beliefs. Often they are below your conscious awareness- you may never have actually spoken them before. Once you recognize a belief, you can let it go or install an opposite empowering belief. Don’t believe every negative thing you tell yourself - argue on them!

So how do you find these beliefs? Find a quiet place. Just say softly (or even with some doubt) - “I intend to go to sleep earlier”. Now listen. What comes to mind? What are you telling yourself? Usually, an inevitable “but…” comes to mind. Listen for it - invite it! We aren’t looking for discouragement - we are looking for what has been holding us back! Keep saying what you are trying to change or do. There may be many beliefs that come to mind, some rather minor. When a real reason comes, you will know. Evaluate the beliefs. Do they help you? Are they true? If you try to drop the belief, but feel you can’t - ask yourself why. You may find a whole chain of unhelpful beliefs. Drop those too!

Our limits are largely self-imposed. Your brain doesn’t know you can’t do something until you tell it. Find the unhelpful beliefs. Drop them!

What goals have you been struggling to accomplish? Say your goal. Just listen for why it hasn’t worked, and decide to let it go.Similar Posts:

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Most people just react or do what they have to do, like a robot. It is just monotony. However, helping a client because that is your job, and helping a client because you care for them are worlds apart!

We strive to keep the whole Torah, but going out of our way to focus on a few aspects - especially ones that have deep meaning to us - causes us to put in much more effort. Many core middos and mitzvos pervade our lives. We can align every action we do to a mitzvah such as loving others. We passively live all these values, but to ACTIVELY live a few - to constantly check that our actions match, to ask how we can do better - that yields tremendous growth.

What do you value most? What middos are you working on, or hope to embody? How are you trying to be a better eved Hashem? It could be being more grateful to Hashem (brachos) and other peorle, sensitivity to other’s feelings, love for your family, discipline in your actions, helping people as much as possible - there are 238 positive mitzvos and many positive character traits. Which ones resonate with you most?

You should get excited to find some clarity about how to align your actions and what matters most to you, but that is where the work starts. R’ Tatz says in Living Inspired that we get inspired by something new, as a gift from Hashem to help us in the right direction, but it soon fizzles out. I notice this pattern constantly. Hashem gives us booster rockets, they get you far with a large energy burst. However, to reach the destination - for the growth to be lasting - you have to put in the effort to constantly think and live those values. Take time out each day - in the morning before you get caught up in the day, and also before you go to sleep, to connect with what matters most to you. See how you can follow the values better.

Step back, constantly. What matters most to you? What are you doing that doesn’t fit - how can you fix it? What could you be doing to follow it better?Similar Posts:

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The phrase “but we have always done it that way!” truly maddens me. It basically means “I’m too lazy to think about it.” I ask “why?” very often. The answer to “why?” always makes a difference. Here are some possibilities that the answer leads you to:

• You don’t need to do this action at all (news)
• Different or additional actions produce better results (learning)
• You can do the same action better once you understand the reason (davening, working)

Taking action without knowing why is poor planning. It can be a waste of energy (news), it could be done much better (learning), or you can be going in the wrong direction (work).

Why do you read the news? If it’s to be “informed”, you may want to question if that is worth your time and the probability of inappropriate material. If something meaningful happens, you will hear about it. If you feel you must, you can look at just major headlines and get 80% of the real news. The media business exists to sell itself, so there is no surprise that there is little or no meaningful substance.

If you want to relax and be entertained, then perhaps there are less violent - and more relaxing ways - than hearing about murder, explosion, and anti-Semitism.

Why are you learning a sefer - what are you trying to accomplish? For a mussar sefer, you may want to know how to improve your emunah, or how to combat the yetzer harah. Write down your questions. Focus on them as you learn. When you actually focus on what you are trying to learn, it has a much deeper impact. It makes you curious. It makes the learning personal and relevant.

Why do you daven? If it’s to increase your relationship with Hashem, then recognize you are having a conversation and talking to Hashem. If it’s “to judge oneself / to clarify for oneself” then pay particular attention to the hashkafic implications of the words in davening. You don’t need to go very far - it’s quite explicit.

Why do you work? As Jews, we understand that we don’t MAKE money. Hashem determined how much we will earn at the beginning of the year, and if Hashem doesn’t want us to make more money - we won’t.

• One approach is that it’s a test - an opportunity to test your character. Rambam says that teshuvah isn’t complete until you are put into the same situation again and act correctly. The thoughts aren’t enough, it has to be actualized. You may think you are honest, but it isn’t “real” until you are put in a tempting situation and overcome it. With this firmly in mind (not easy), you will be unfailingly honest in business. Trying to cheat or be dishonest to make more money won’t accomplish anything. In Garden of Emunah, there is a story of a poor person who hoped that he would get some money in the mail for Yom Tov. When he saw the mailman, he eyed an envelope that looked like it had money and grabbed it from him. The mailman called for the police, who arrested the poor person. It turned out that the letter was actually addressed to him! If he would have just waited patiently, he would have gotten what was rightfully his without the struggle of dealing with the police. Work is continuous test of emunah - to do your work in a Torah-approved fashion and avoid any temptation for dishonesty.

• Another approach is that work is an outlet for chesed. When the Chofetz Chaim visited an inn, he was served very kindly and nicely by the owner. When they left, the Chofetz Chaim told his travelling companion “the owner was a real baal chesed - look at how well we were treated!”

His companion said - “But he got paid for it! Why are you calling him a baal chesed?”

The Chofetz Chaim replied, “You can see by the way he acted that he wasn’t doing it for the money. The money is only so that he can keep running the inn.” (To help keep this website running, please consider donating.)

In this approach, focus on how you can help people when you work. Your boss, co-workers, employees, customers, clients - be kind, be helpful, be cheerful - don’t merely do your job with a blank face. Chesed is even better than tzedaka - you can even do it for rich people, and you can even do it while being paid!

•  A third approach is that work is to prevent people from using their time to sin. If you would use your time appropriately - learning, chesed, working on your middos - then you wouldn’t need to work at all.

Ask “Why?“! Generally, people do everything just because that’s the way everyone else does it or the way it has always been done. Question everything you do. Should I be doing this at all? Should I be doing something else? Can I be doing it better? Don’t just blindly act, think!Similar Posts:

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Often, your views are self-fulfilling, especially if they refer to something under your control - “whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you are probably right.”

If you think pessimistically, you won’t fully commit yourself. For example, if you have a job interview, your doubt will impact the way you stand, sit, and talk - however slightly. If you think that you won’t be able to learn this piece of gemara, you will stop short and just give up. Why would you commit yourself if you don’t expect it to help? This often causes the pessimistic view to be self-fulfilling. If you expect something bad to happen, you can always find something to be annoyed about.

On the other hand, thinking optimistically motivates you to put in more effort to get the result you are aiming for. If you are working on anger, but are having a difficult time, then optimism will get you to keep trying. A pessimist will say “this will never work!” and just give up. Optimism also makes you happier - there are no future horrors to dwell on. Your immune system works better, so you are healthier. You will be nicer to others, so they are nicer to you. The gemara tells us: ”I toiled, but didn’t find - don’t believe him” - in learning, if someone claims to have put in the work but didn’t understand what he learned, we don’t believe that he actually did the work. You only stop doing the work when you give up hope.

The clear downside of pessimism is demotivation - you don’t feel that taking action will help. You also get to feel depressed about it now, rather than if something bad happens.

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
– Mark Twain

However, optimism also has a danger. You may be so hopeful that you ignore reality. Last Wednesday, the keyboard on my laptop started acting oddly - putting in extra weird characters, most of the time. I don’t have any other computer. Sunday morning  the keyboard wouldn’t type normally at all. Even with a regular keyboard plugged in, it wouldn’t work. I was feeling rather distraught - I use my laptop for gemara shiur every morning, for running this website, as well as most other things I do. To not have a working computer is tremendously frustrating to me. I could see my emails, but I couldn’t write back. I noticed that I was becoming depressed. I realized that I could tell myself that it will be fixed quickly, or the next time I try the problem will go away - I could choose to be unfailingly optimistic. But I just couldn’t believe that would be true- I would be lying to myself.
 

That sparked my new (partial) understanding of optimism: optimism isn’t out there - it’s inside you. 

“Whenever you think the problem is out there, that thought is the problem.” Life isn’t about what goes on out there. Life is about how you view it, and what you do about it. The 4th perek of Pirkei Avos defines a rich, wise, strong, honored person - they are all rooted in yourself, not in comparison to someone else (e.g. a rich person is someone that rejoices with his lot, not “the richest man in town”). So instead of expecting the good “out there”, focus on the good in yourself. Don’t think “It will work out” but rather “I can handle it. This won’t overwhelm me. I can do something about it.” Instead of saying “Great things will happen to me today” say “I will do great things today!” While great things MAY happen to you, you have direct control over yourself - you can cause it to happen. Instead of ignoring reality, you are choosing how you will act.

Extreme pessimism has an attitude of “it’s horrible, there’s nothing I can do about it. No matter what I do or how hard I try, it just won’t work.”

Optimism is about empowerment. It says “I can deal with it. I can change it, or learn to live with it. If I need help, I can contiune davening for it. Hashem doesn’t send me challenges I can’t handle!” (R’ Tauber says that a need indicates that you need to daven. As long as you have that need, you must continue to daven.)

Instead of focusing on how much time I may not be able to use my computer, I decided to focus on what I could do instead, such as reading more. Instead of focusing on the annoyance and possible frustration about getting the keyboard fixed, I focused on my ability to remain calm and make the most of my time. I know at least one good thing came from it - I have a better understanding of optimism!

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This constant starvation/gorge cycle is hardly the way you are supposed to live. Studies show that this sort of yo-yo dieting is bad for your heart.

This diet paradigm is flawed. Like many personal development gimmicks, it tries to force change from the outside in. The results are superficial and don’t last. It relies on discipline for the entire time, without modifying any of the underlying beliefs around eating. Deeply rooted, meaningful, lasting change doesn’t happen from something as superficial as “having discipline” to not eat that piece of cake - for a few months. Instead of looking at how to diet, let us look at the relationship with food. Interestingly, I started eating a whole foods-vegan diet to increase my energy, not to lose weight, which is the source of this line of thinking. I drastically increased my energy level - and also lost 35lbs! It is pretty straightforward, actually.

So why do you eat - are you living to eat, or are you eating to live?

The general world view is that you live to eat. You buy delicious foods and you want to eat as much as you can enjoy. But as Jews, that answer is very lacking - we eat to maintain our bodies, to that we can better serve Hashem by following the Torah. That doesn’t mean we should be ascetic, only eat enough dry bread to survive on. We make brachos in appreciation of the food that Hashem gives us. We are told to enjoy food on Shabbos and Yom Tov. Enjoy your meals and dessert on Shabbos - I have 72% cocoa chocolate bars (this is significantly healthier than the normal 20% cocoa chocolate bars). During the week, I enjoy delicious fruit for breakfast each morning, and I flavor all my food so that I enjoy it. For people that enjoy spicy-hot food, they have even more options. You can enjoy food - but keep in mind its ultimate purpose. Form follows function: if food is to keep you alive and energetic, then take healthy food and make it tasty. If nutrition is only an afterthought, then you take tasty food and consider nutrition as an afterthought.

I think that most discipline issues regarding food really come from a doubt. Is this cup of soda REALLY bad for me? Is it REALLY terrible to have a piece of cake? (Take a look at: You Only Need Discipline When You Have A Choice)

Let’s look at weight: if you are 20 lbs over weight, go to the kosher gym or store, pick up 20 lbs, and walk around with it. Feel how heavy it is. Would you like to walk around with that for the entire day? Does it make living life easier? That is what you are currently doing!

If you eat until you are stuffed, and then feel that you just want to go to sleep, or eat something sugary and have an energy crash, your food has just interfered with your life, instead of helping it. Do you even notice when you crash? I don’t think most people are conscious enough of their physical energy to really notice it, especially in knowledge work. Maybe you don’t even see the connection between your body and your mind. But your body - and diet - make a huge difference on your motivation and energy your brain has available. If your body is slow and sluggish, then YOU feel slow and sluggish.

What does eating healthier actually mean? The news tells you about which supplement or fruit or vegetable is really great for you. All the fad diets… the low fat or low carb foods. It is really easy to be confused!

Simply, eating healthy means eating things that nourishes your body. Any food that has been altered to reduce the nourishment is for people that “live to eat”. The mainstream concept of diet largely ignores WHAT you are eating, instead focusing on how much. Eating less non-nutritious may help you lose weight, but won’t make you healthy! All healthy food is good for you, contributing many vitamins and minerals, not just “not bad”.

Nourishing for the body means it must be natural and unprocessed - leaving the nutrition, hydration, and fiber intact. Fruits, vegetables, greens, whole grains (whole wheat, brown rice, kasha, millet, quinoa, etc), legumes, raw nuts and seeds all meet these criteria.

•          If it isn’t natural, such as chemicals, then your body can’t handle them well.
•          Processing generally extracts parts such as sugar or corn syrup - leaving you with a concentrate of calories lacking nutrients. Or, processing removes the bran on wheat, rice, or sesame seeds (for techina) - taking away most of the fiber, protein, vitamins, or calcium.
•          Your body is about 70% water, so your food should help maintain that water. Fruits and veggies are 85%+ water.
•          Fiber helps the body flush out waste from the food and body maintenance. If your bowel movements are painful or hard, you need more fiber.

Natural sweeteners include honey, real maple syrup, stevia extract, agave nectar, date honey…

The typical unhealthy foods are processed or unnatural, most notably white flour, white sugar, oils, and chemicals. Those basic ingredients make up nearly all of the standard american diet - with the appropriate acronym of SAD. That includes white bread, every cereal, soft-drink, splenda (they add three chlorine atoms to a sugar molecule), and even soy.

You can ignore the nutrition facts and just look at the ingredients list: are they whole, natural foods? Avocados may have more calories than an energy bar, but the body knows how to handle an avocado.

Wait - you haven’t mentioned milk, cheese, eggs, fish, chicken, and meat! Unfortunately, no animal products have fiber in them, most are fatty, - and they are HEAVILY filled with chemicals. The animals are fed antibiotics and growth hormone - and then fed to you. A diet heavy in animal products is linked to heart problems and other diseases.

But don’t I need calcium? Yes - but not from milk! Milk is known to cause allergies & ear infections (the body generally stops producing lactase at age 2, but is never suited to process casein, a heavy molecule that contains the calcium in milk.)
Calcium is one of the major food myths in America. Looking at the facts: American women consume tremendous amounts of calcium, but their rates of osteoporosis are among the highest in the world. Chinese people consume half as much calcium (mostly from plant sources) and don’t even have a word for osteoporosis. A Harvard Nurses’ Study of over 77,000 women found that two or more glasses of milk per day gave you a higher risk of broken hips and arms than drinking one glass or less per day.
Greens, sesame, and nuts are all good sources of calcium. Whole sesame techina has more calcium per volume than milk does.

What about protein? Another American food myth - Americans get too MUCH protein - which also leads to osteoporosis. The Journal of Nutrition reported that doubling how much protein you eat causes your calcium loss to double. You don’t even need animal products for protein - the old food pyramid actually listed legumes as “poor man’s meat”. Most whole grains (about 10% protein by volume), greens, and nuts also have abundant protein.

So why is this kind of junk food so prevalent? Convenience and taste. It’s just easier, cheaper, and better tasting. Chemicals, taking off the bran, adding lots of salt, and hydrogenating fats increase shelf life. Frying in oil and carcinogenic microwaving is faster. Salad dressings contain sugar or corn syrup rather than a healthier sweetener, and canola oils rather than olive oil because it is cheaper. Sugar and fats just make things taste better.

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Great, so you are choosing to be happy now. But how? Well, I could tell you to access a positive state - recall a time that you were very happy, and fully experience that moment. Or many other techniques perfected in the NLP toolkit. And it would work. You would be happy.

But that’s cheap. It’s temporary and only skin deep.

Instead, let’s look at the present moment and see what we can truly be happy about. Thinking appreciatively or gratefully for what you have is true happiness - it’s Rabbi Pliskin’s first “Happiness Principle” in his great book, Conversations With Yourself. 

When you get something new, or someone gives you something unexpected, it isn’t that hard to be grateful - for a few moments. If getting a new gizmo or clothes would make you happy, you can also be happy with the gizmo or clothes that you have now! You can keep appreciating something long after you get it. In the morning brachos, we bless Hashem for being able to walk. That is something that is so expected, it falls off our radar screen and we don’t appreciate it at all. From being able to walk and talk, to having a home, many things become so normal to us that we don’t appreciate them anymore. It is time to sensitize yourself to the myriad of things to be grateful for.

Take a moment and STOP. What can you appreciate? Being able to walk and talk? Having clothes and a place to sleep? An amazing spouse? Adorable children? Great friends? A nice house? A rewarding job? Warm, comfortable, clothes? Food that you like? Some cool electronics? The computer or printer that is enabling you to read this article?

Pirke Avos says: “Who is a rich person? The person that rejoices with his lot.” When you can rejoice with what you have, you will truly be rich. If you can appreciate what you have, you will escape the trap of constantly waiting for something to make you (temporarily) happy.

• When you say brachos before or after food, don’t just mumble the words. Say them clearly. Think about them. Appreciate the food that you are about to eat or just had!
• After you visit the bathroom, realize that the body is amazingly complicated, and thank Hashem that it’s in good working order!
• When paying your bills, think about all the great benefit that you have received.

Don’t plan to do this tomorrow. Tomorrow is just a figment of your imagination. Do it right now. Really stop and look around. It may take (at least) a few moments to really recognize the great things in your life. 

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The 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto principle helps us greatly. The 80/20 rule says that 80% of the results come from 20% of the time or effort you put in. Things aren’t linear - each hour of work doesn’t produce the same amount of results - just compare answering email to having a sales meeting with a potential client. There are 193,071 books about productivity on Amazon, but read more than a few and they would all start to say basically the same thing. In corporations, 80% of the revenue often comes from 20% of the clients and 20% of the products. If you focus on that 20%, you can achieve tremendous results in much less time.

I am not proposing leaving the job half done, but to make the qualitative leap for a new trait or middah. Reading and applying merely three books on productivity (.00001% of all productivity books on Amazon) would make a tremendous improvement. While being joyous can be the work of a lifetime, the first 20% of the time and effort will help you reach a threshold that makes a tremendous difference in your life.  An “extreme” sense of joy is to remain joyous even when nothing is going your way. It will take you a lot of time and effort. However, consider if you would be joyous when nothing is wrong (most of the time) or when things are only a little wrong (the relatively minor stresses that come up). That would make a major impact on your life, but isn’t nearly as hard to reach. That smaller amount of effort gives you the majority of the benefits.

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When something is 100% clear that you must do it now, then you do it. The same for the opposite - if it is 100% clear that the loss is greater than the gain, you won’t do it.

If you are in a rush to cross the street, you won’t jump in front of a truck that you know will hit you. It isn’t discipline to hold yourself back - you don’t have a reasonable choice - it is just so blindingly obvious.

When you have to turn in an essay the next day, and it is 10pm at night, I expect you would have at least started. If you think you can do it the next day - e.g. you may have time the next morning, you are expecting a snow day, the teacher has been out sick, then you may procrastinate a bit more. If it isn’t clear that you must do it now, then you have given yourself an excuse.

If you ever considered speaking lashon harah or onaas devarim (damaging with words, e.g. making fun of or insulting another person. Both are unfortunately quite common.) then perhaps you aren’t 100% convinced that this is actually asur, or perhaps the overall concept of an aveirah doesn’t have proper significance to you. How real is punishment to you? If you viewed speaking lashon harah like jumping in front of a moving truck, then you wouldn’t need any discipline.

While you should use discipline to stop yourself, realize that there is a deeper issue - why did you even consider this action in the first place? Instead of trying to merely overcome the obstacle, look for the root cause. Generally, there is a doubt: is this really worth the effort? Can’t I do it later? Is it really asur? Is the concept of punishment for aveiros something I have integrated, or do I just pay lip service to it?

Yes, using discipline should overcome the issue - eventually, and perhaps with many setbacks. Over time, the correct way of acting will become your self-image and a habit. But that may take quite a long time and remain superficial. Attack the root. Find what the deeper problem is.

When you find and fix the deeper issue, you will probably see this was just one symptom. When you delve deeper, your positive changes can have a much broader impact. Get more bang for your buck when you are working on yourself. Why treat the symptom, when you can treat the cause? 

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In yesterday’s post I mentioned that most people can figure out what they want to do with their life, right now, without any more information or experience. I think deep inside you know, but most people haven’t given themselves permission to let it out. You may think it is just a fantasy, not believing that it is possible for a number of reasons: you don’t think you can do it, it’s not possible at all, or it’s not financially feasible.

However, I think it is rather silly to kill the idea of what you really want to do with your life before you even speak it out. You can at least do something towards what you want, on a smaller scale. Also, once you speak it out, your idea may not be so daunting. Even if it is, nearly anything is possible if you are willing to put in the time and effort. In short, don’t kill the idea before it even sees the light of day!

These questions should help you express what exactly you are interested in, by getting you around those limiting criteria. Use these questions to help you brainstorm and dream a little!

•          What would you do if you were guaranteed that you couldn’t fail?
•          If you had 100 million dollars, how would you like to spend your time?

Answering these questions aloud or by writing - it forces clarity. When brainstormings, keep producing ideas without pausing, and don’t judge ideas until you finish. Don’t kill the idea about what really interests you before it even comes out of your mouth!

You may have lots of societal norms and expectations floating in your head that may cause you to answer that you want to become a ceo, be rich, live in a huge mansion, or travel around the world. Yey, yey, but then what? Or, why? What do you want to do as a CEO, a doctor, or a roshei yeshivah? When you find the core reason, you can approach it in a much more flexible way. If you want to save people as a doctor, you may question if that means only physically, or spiritually and mentally also, and may expand or find something that actually better suites your goal.

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