A Personal Spiritual Assignment for the Jewish New Year

A Tool to Help You Change

How do we change? Sometimes it’s a health scare.

We all know people who change their diet started going to the gym after a particular diagnosis.

Change may happen after a job loss and the need to learn a new skill. Pain is often the strongest impetus to change.

But what about when we WANT to change? How can we do the good things we desire?

Sometimes we need inspiration. We need a role model or a friend who has made a similar change.

The Power of Other People

Sometimes we need community.

Human beings are social animals, and being around other people doing what we hope to do can exert an invisible push.

That's one of the reasons most religions engage in communal worship.

But there is also another factor: self-knowledge and awareness. We need to look closely at ourselves and assess what brought us to our current state.

How did we get here? What did we do? Why did we do it? Why do we want to change?

We often overlook this part of making change.

We Lose Our Way When We Lose Our Why

If we don’t have this awareness… if we don't have a clear WHY for change, we often give up at the first sign of difficulty.

How do we gain that self-knowledge? We can ask our friends, our priest or rabbi, a teacher or counselor or friend.

We can also use tools and insight developed from wise and empathetic guides.

An Extraordinary Tool

I've discovered one of those tools. It is based on the work of one of the world's leading scholars and researchers, Dr. John Gottman.

He is known for observing couples for five minutes and predicting, with 94% accuracy, if they will still be married in five years!

He runs the Love Lab in Seattle and has helped thousands of families stay together.

Several years ago, he developed a guide for self-assessment around the themes of the Jewish holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. These holy days begin next week.

I've adapted his work to help each of us, regardless of faith. This tool will help you forgive yourself, repair relationships, and live with fewer regrets.

You can download it below if you are a supporting subscriber. If you cannot afford to subscribe, let me know and I will gladly send it to you.

If you can swing $7/month, though, I would be grateful.

It lets me write, host this website, and do the work to make these tools of Jewish wisdom and healing available to people of all faiths.