Tag: growing each day.

Climb the mountain to attain the goal

Do we really want to attain the goal we have said we wish we could do? How much are we willing to do to make it happen?

In addition to a couple of other ideas I have shared about setting and working towards our goals, see for example here and here, I wanted to share something about achieving our goals that I was reading this morning. Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski, in Growing Each Day, offers a perspective on our attitude towards goal attainment:

While humans do not have an instinctual goal, we do have the capacity to discover our goals by use of our intellect. We must often overcome many hurdles and obstacles to reach out goals, and we must not allow ourselves to be discouraged by the struggles we encounter. Those who do not have the courage to overcome the challenge are likely to rationalize their retreat by saying that the goal is not worth the sacrifice. Instead of admitting their reluctance, they devalue the goal.

Moses knew that the land which was promised by Gd to Israel was the spiritual goal of the Jewish people, but he knew that when confronted with the difficulties of acquiring the land, some people might retreat and rationalize their reluctance by disparaging the land.

“Only if you are ready to climb mountains,” said Moses, “will you be able to truly see what the land is like.” The truth can be appreciated only by those who are ready to sacrifice for it.

P. 129

The question we must be asking ourselves when we start a task is whether we truly want to accomplish the goal. Are we willing to climb the mountain, working hard at times to achieve our wishes and dreams? What is our motivation? This can be a challenge in itself because motivations change. How many times do we start something with excitement and eventually lose momentum, forgetting the initial motivation?

As you set a new goal for yourself, I would encourage you to ask yourself the following kinds of questions and set demarcation points to review and reflect on the questions to see what continues to drive you and what has changed:

  1. What is my goal?
  2. What do I hope to accomplish?
  3. How do I achieve my goal?
  4. What is my motivation?

And when reviewing these questions during the process, some other questions to ask are:

  1. Am I still motivated and why?
  2. What has changed and how do I adapt those changes to my goal?
  3. Is my original goal still the same goal or do I need to readjust?

May each of you find your goal and motivation to achieve your goal. May you find the resolve to climb the mountain and see.

If you are struggling to establish and pursue your goals and dreams and need help working through the underlying motivations? Or if you know someone who is working on goal setting and needs support in the process, Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com

Self compassion as a door to compassion for others

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is a meaningful holiday for me. It is one of a series of opportunities in the year to take stock and to start anew. Unlike other times, such as my birthday and my wedding anniversary, part of the power of Rosh Hashanah is how together, communally, we are all together in this process of establishing a New Beginning, a new hope for the upcoming year. Through the sound of the Shofar, we are called to wake up and listen to the sounds and to the silences around us so as to better figure out what it is we hope for in the coming year.

I had the fortune to do a lot of reading and reflecting on the past two days (the beauty of being shut off from the constant barrage that comes from our connected world). And yes, while Shabbat and the holidays are about so much more than unplugging, the unplugging is a powerful byproduct.

In my reading over the holiday, I came across a piece that relates back to a book I read through this summer, Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, by Dr. Kristin Neff. In a piece from Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski’s Growing Each Day, he suggests the following spiritual approach to understanding judgment during this period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur which I would extend to how we should see self-reflection in our daily lives:

God knows that personal interest makes us oblivious to the significance of our own misdeeds, so He contrives to make us observes in others actions and behavior similar to our own. How we react to our own acts as we see them in others determines how God will judge us. If we are considerate and lenient in our judgment, and give others the benefit of the doubt, allowing them the broadest latitude of circumstances that might have caused them to behave improperly, then God will judge us with equal leniency. But if we are self-righteous and quick to condemn others, we will be judged with equal severity.

p. 3

When we consider the work of self-compassion, one of the premises is that we tend to be quicker to forgive others mistakes than our own when the same mistake is made. We tend to be our own harshest critic. And lest you think that our self-criticism doesn’t ultimately harm our compassion for others, the more we lack in self-compassion, the harder it will be to continue to be compassionate and forgiving of others for their foibles. If we consider the above quote, we can see how our sense of personal, self-acceptance and compassion for our imperfections will open us up to increase our ability to be compassionate to others. If we are reacting to what we are witnessing, we would do well to spend a moment or two reflecting on what we see and what is being mirrored to us so we can react better to them and to ourselves.

As we continue on this journey together exploring how to foster new beginnings for ourselves, may we find ways to bring more compassion into the world for ourselves and for all those around us.

If you are looking to deepen your ability to recognize within yourself areas of desired spiritual growth: Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com.

Living and Growing from a place of not knowing

Too often we fashion ourselves as experts in things we are quite unfamiliar with. This is a mechanism to protect the more vulnerable parts of our personality because we are afraid our not knowing is a sign of lacking when in reality no one knows everything. We feel scared when we are thrust into something we feel unprepared for and sometimes to protect ourselves we act like we know.

Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski, in Growing Each Day, expounded on the following Talmudic passage from Berachot 4a:

דְּאָמַר מָר: לַמֵּד לְשׁוֹנְךָ לוֹמַר ״אֵינִי יוֹדֵעַ״, שֶׁמָּא תִּתְבַּדֶּה וְתֵאָחֵז.

articulated by the Master: Accustom your tongue to say: I do not know, lest you become entangled in a web of deceit.

Rabbi Dr. Twerski suggested:

“While no human being can know everything, some people cannot admit any ignorance about anything. For them, any admission of lack of knowledge threatens their fragile egos… Furthermore, the only way we can acquire knowledge is by accepting that we do not have it. People who claim to know everything cannot learn. Therefore, many opportunities to learn pass them by, and their denying their ignorance actually increases their ignorance… (p.216)”

Saying I don’t know is not strictly an admission of not knowing. Rather it is an opening and invitation to explore. It is through this exploration that we can know, and remove the desire to “fool” ourselves or others. Unfortunately, it is common that our fears of being “seen” actually further hinder our growth and ability to make forward strides. It is that fear that keeps us stagnant and yet leaves us feeling antsy, anxious, unsettled. We are unsettled because we close ourselves off from the value of listening to others and truly listening to ourselves.

One of the core elements of my chaplaincy and now my coaching is to foster the dual listening in the space of care. By my listening to others and hopefully the individuals listening to the words they are saying, it allows us to cultivate the gaining of knowledge through exploration, questions and reflections. Together we open the gates to find new vistas to confront challenging and difficult situations.

May we be blessed to be comfortable in the uncomfortable space of not knowing.

If you are looking to explore and discover new approaches to the difficulties in your life, Contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com.