Modeling Greatness

So many people today are living lives that are devoid of inspiration and passion. Who, today, is really excited to get out of bed and live another day? So many of us cringe when the alarm goes off, and we hit the snooze button, desperate for a few more minutes of duvet time. But when people aren’t passionate about being alive, when they aren’t excited to greet another day, in many ways, they aren’t really “alive” at all. So how can we get that inspired life, where every day we are getting closer to achieving the goals that are important to us? Perhaps even more fundamentally, how do we even know what’s really important to us?

If you could get exactly the life you want, exactly what you want to achieve, right now, what would it look like? Could you describe it?

The first thing we need to be living with passion is to have a vision, and then we can try to make that vision real. We can do that by following the guidance of the best spiritual guide available in the world, Rabbi Shalom Arush, whose teachings are the foundation of The Garden of Emuna.

The first thing we need to know is that we are all being controlled by our beliefs. Whatever it is we believe about the world, that is how we are going to feel, think, react and behave. If we believe the world is a good place, we are going to have a certain set of emotions, and we’re going to react to the world with goodness, hope, and joy. If we believe the world is a war zone, then our blueprint is going to get us involved in a fight every single minute. Even if we’re not fighting right now, we’re convinced that sooner or later, the fight is going to be coming our way. If we believe that G-d is punishing us, that’s one way of thinking. If, instead, we believe that G-d is not punishing us, but is only challenging us, then that changes everything. Simply changing that one word has enormous consequences for how we perceive the world, and what our mental state will be, as a result.

Our perceptions, models and beliefs affect our decisions, because they limit us. If I don’t believe I’m ever really going to amount to much, there are a lot of ideas and goals that I’m never even going to bother thinking about. What, me be a world-class kosher gourmet chef? What, me start a local soup kitchen to feed the destitute people in my neighborhood? What, I could have a loving, caring, mutually supportive, and blissfully happy relationship with my wife? What a ridiculous idea…

But if we really believe that anything is possible, and that our “blueprint” of the world is that G-d can do anything, and that He wants to empower us, and to help us achieve our goals, then that blueprint, that way of looking at things is going to enable us to get going, to advance, and to get to a much higher level than we’re currently at.

It doesn’t matter what the goal is, whether it’s spiritual or physical, whether it’s an aspiration to lose weight, or to make more money, or to feel fitter, or to sit and learn for longer – whatever it is, we’re about to learn the methodology that will help us break out from the constricting and limiting beliefs that are currently controlling us. We’re going to throw away that “closed” way of thinking and believing that the Evil Inclination is constantly pumping our heads full of, and we’re going to start making decisions that are based on beliefs that are closer to G-d’s truth, the Torah’s truth, and our great leaders’ truth about what we are really capable of achieving.

If we want to see what’s really possible, what tremendous changes and improvements we can really make in our own lives, we have to find good role models, and we have to copy what they do and how they act.

“The way of the Torah is pleasantness and all of its ways are peaceful”. G-d is telling us that everything we need to really be happy and fulfilled can be found in our Judaism, in our Torah, in our traditions, but we need to be able to connect to all that pleasure and goodness, and so many of us today simply don’t know how to do that. We don’t know how to be happy! We don’t have a strategy to show us how that can be done. When we were younger, we probably still had an idea of how to laugh and enjoy life, but now that we’re adults, and we’ve learned to be so mature and serious? We can forget about being happy!

Here’s a modeling exercise that you can try right now: 

1. Pick a model who has mastered the behavior or trait you wish to learn.
2. Picture and hear the model behaving in the exact way that you, yourself, want to behave.
3. Substitute your image and voice for that of the model. Observe yourself speaking and acting just like the model does.
4. Step into the scene and feel yourself in the actual situation with mastery of the desired trait and behavior.

Even if we aren’t accomplishing amazing things, there are other things we can do to pull us into a happy state. Rabbi Arush says that we can’t reach true happiness unless we’re sometimes willing to act silly. He tells us to forget about being a grown up for five minutes, and act like a child. If we listen to what he’s telling us, we’re going to live longer, and we’re going to feel so much happier and more vibrant!