Play the Yetzer Hara’s game and Win!

A sports themed approach developed for a high school by Danny Gilbert. This approach may be able to provide guys with a “Bigger reason why!”  and give them the strength and grit to advance.   

Message to boys

NEWSFLASH: Congrats! You were picked up by the NBA, on a multi-billion dollar contract. The draft occurred the day you were born, but your game begins now.  You can totally be MVP, with fame and glory, yet you must TRAIN, building your playbook with both a defense & offense. Your team owner watches you playing live each day, on a massive 4D flatscreen while sitting on the Kisei HaKovod. To protect His investment –YOU- which is priceless to Him. Plus, to protect his investment in you, you were drafted with a partner, your own personal Defensive trainer, a.k.a. the yetzer Hara. I call him Hannibal. You should come up with your own nickname. Understand that his workout plan is your daily training. Your strategy: Learn his silent but steady, pattern-like method of communication with you, and know that he is purposefully driving you toward scenarios and each action builds your (character) muscle. Ignore him?? You waste precious/expensive “gym time”, plus you make your owner question his draft-pick.  Hannibal is the toughest trainer, custom designed for just you. Trust me you’ll hate him at first, and give him a terrible nickname. You might!!  Once you start pick up on his style, you’ll feel he’s trying to overcome you, daily, with small action by small action, trying to get you into habits and overtake you, ultimately practically own you. Ever hear of death by a thousand paper cuts? Feels like he’s trying to crush your soul spirit? In truth he’s working for your owner and as your personal trainer he’s tasked with making you stronger, to compete and to WIN!  Once you get momentum in your Defense training, you can get Hannibal to cut you slack by bringing out your own personal Offensive training into your daily workout.  Difficult and even silly or awkward as this sounds - It’s powerful.  Your battle can be won with focus, determination, daily grit and it must be from your own initiative and creativity. Teammates can help you and may even become friends for life, if you’re brave enough to involve them in your training.  Success on this “NBA” court earns you an energy spark in your heart that resonates with the Shechina itself. You will feel closer to HKBH, your day will be purposeful and you can achieve a degree of RUACH HAKODESH in your daily decisions, and get insights to learn even more plays to advance. That spark you earn will make you successful, give you courage and clarity to know the correct move in uncertain circumstances; You will act and speak with confidence and decisiveness. You will feel like a man, and earn your league status as MVP.

Now you know how the Game works. Wait? How do I IMPROVE MY GAME?  Like every Pro-Athlete does– by Viewing Tape!! Everyone needs to have a “Personal Performance Playbook” (PPP), a page to chart progress and mark daily success and track struggles toward achievement of goals. This could be a hand-made chart like a month to month grid, but without showing actual calendar days (this is important! Because you want to establish a track record) and so we do NOT mark down failures. Of course they will occur – Don’t mark it down, MOVE ON! Check the box if you carried through on some of your goals and circle the check too inside the box if it was a success through a noteworthy challenge or struggle.  This is how you identify your patterns so you can strategize.  Remember: if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it!  Hannibal will give you the SAME DRILL over and over again until you are successful at it, and can then advance ahead to practice the next play.  Guys, this is why you are here on Earth!  Turn your gloom into joy.  Be proud of the process and get energized. This is the reason we are alive.  Take the chart with you on trips, and end every day with your PPP chart. Gain momentum and developing a track record of achievement which will be a base for strength through all struggles (which of course do come!).

Critical Game Rule

A player not in control of his Bris will end up benched and becoming poor, since his Mazal channel will be covered and rendered useless. Maza”l is roshei teivot, Motzi Zrah Levatalah. If you defend and protect the Bris you are defending your Mazal to have AmazonPrime Next Day Shefa and blessings direct from HKBH. The reception of your signal is critical here.   You can see gobs of wealth are being concentrated among fewer and fewer people today. So many people that used to receive money are suffering and many are out of control of the Bris and are losing this shefa. Massive amounts of shefa, aka blessing and wealth, are coming down daily. Some are not receiving because the timing is not right for their unique circumstances, or they may be missing trust in HKBH, or that they are simply not Shomer HaBris consistently. HKBH insists on guarding his Bris with us. He asks, how will I know that you’ll stay committed to the game after you get a big pay-day?  Only with consistent diligent, daily dedication shown by my struggles to win.  Many sources indicate how “turned off” HKBH is from this specific aveirah and that it literally clouds a person’s clarity, to the point they cannot make simple decisions because they lose their Reception, or get a “weak data connection” to the shechina. They have “too few bars” to download the answer meanwhile some people seem to have regular Hot Spots of clarity?! This is why.  The Gemara says Zerah (the source of all life, and most powerful creative element on the planet) originates in your Brain (the makor of Da’as) and a person literally loses his Da’as from this Averiah to the point he can devolve (opposite of evolve) into a spiritual Domeim (mute, like a stone). He will struggle in Tefilah and have trouble understanding mefarshim like Tosfos. Eventually HKBH’s spark of essence within your soul can Chas VShalom conclude that you don’t want a relationship with Hashem and start to leave you bit by bit. We need to cry to Hashem many many times to beg HKBH to return it back to you for a 2^nd chance at this relationship.  Aside from this Timtum HaLev impact that we just described, this averiah massively dulls a person’s creativity resulting in weakened ability to communicate effectively with others, and makes for difficultly connecting with others and with HKBH.  It will impair your ability to develop close relationships, to know what direction to take in life and to detect whether timing is right to act, whether the person you might be dating is the right one for marriage IY”H. Even honest secular experts have written much research on the physiological affects this averiah can bring to a person. Of course articles are written by “experts” who have the opposite opinion, but most likely they are also succumbed to this aveiroh and their judgment clarity is too cloudy to see any other perspective on it.

Last comment before Game Time…

Get used to ups and downs.  Hold on tight your highs, and “hold on” through the lows. They will pass.  It takes 18 minutes to let matzah get Chametz, and in 18 minutes we can allow a negative feeling to pass through us.  Frankly, if you instead decide to distract yourself and avoid this process altogether it will lead to depression. Fact!! Depression is the act of “pushing down” the desire to develop soul muscle, which your spirit will be quietly expressing. Most people cannot even hear or feel it at first. But the longer and more you press it down, the fiercer it will come back, and chas v’Shalom this can lead to deeper depression, abuse of alcohol, or drugs, obsessions with other unhealthy behaviors, Rachmona Lit’zlon!

Nearly everyone wakes up tired, groggy, disinterested & sluggish.  Religiously-speaking, you just came back from the dead! Coffee helps, but take a lesson from Chazal who say to start your day with Modeh Ani (THANK YOU! i.e. Gratitude for a new challenge!) and flood your mind with these thoughts. Say your TY Prayer with feelings for Hakoras Tov and start to see ALL THINGS in your life open up for the good!

That’s it!  So, play on player. GAME ON!

Message to Parents

Your teenage son is growing up and to achieve his personal potential there’s a message that I believe needs to be carried across both the High School administration and parent body, so that a consistent message is being not only conveyed verbally, but communicated through our collective actions.  The boys are going to be encouraged to participate in a “Kidushas Einayim” - Holy eyes. A program to guard what they see to protect them from negative and spiritually damaging influences. This effort however is really just one part of what I would call “Kidushas HaChaim” –Holy Life. Fact is that parents need to be onboard with this effort to set the example. We adults may have matured and evolved on the Defense side of living a Torah Life B”H over our years of growth, however in order to inspire the next generation (in their own personal NEW ERA of accessibility, exposure, stimulation and negative influences) we must focus and strengthen the Offensive side of a Torah Life too, and be on a similar Kidushas HaChaim program ourselves to achieve these goals. Having success with this effort is not likely if most of our “free” moments are devoted to distracted web surfing… Spiritual growth much like success in any business takes pro-active and thoughtful effort. Checking financial performance where expenses/liabilities exceeded income/sales you would immediately seek change, find opportunities to restructure or sell out of that business!  Treating our souls/life purpose any differently demonstrates a severe lack of Emunah and Da’as.

Fathers need to get comfortable speaking with their sons about struggles with character development. Not to be ashamed, this is Ga’avah and Ego!  They need to hear that we know we are not perfect. HKBH knows and that’s the reason we are here of course.  This generation spends more time hiding behind a screen, liking things anonymously or feeling like we express emotions without using words to adequately describe the feeling and connect with the true emotion. If this generation had a UPS label on it, it would read “Fragile – Handle with Care”. HKBH knows our imperfections and loves us precisely for them. We need to accept the process of growth and improvement as our purpose rather than download an app to synthetically Photoshop out imperfections so that everyone likes what they see.

Mothers and Fathers need to teach by example to using our PRECIOUS time wisely, to develop empathy for others, creativity in Avodas hashem which takes focus and like Avraham Avinu to seek out Offense training in Chesed – which are EVERYWHERE if we start looking outward instead of downward..

You may not know that in the early years of Smartphone development, people were expected to be scared to introduce “Robot-like” devices into their lives. The executives at Tech companies decided to call devices a Blackberry, and an Apple in order to make it comfortable to bring them into your life (the Yad Hashem always at work to let HIS plan develop). Of course everyone is OK with fruit in the house! (HKBH puts a bite in the Apple icon just to make sure we make the connection to Parshas Breishis and cheit haKadmon). Pirkei Avos:Gimmel,Chaf “Hakol Nasun BAiravon, uMetzuda Prusah Al Kol Chaim.  Metzuda is a strange word to use in this statement, what is the message here?  (A fisherman’s net catches fish that are swimming along, totally unsuspecting, like surfing along the internet and totally unsuspecting). heChanus Pesucha (a store always open, like Amazon?) and HaChenvani Makif (HKBH extends time to us to surf, creating a neis to enable this via invisible data transfer, WiFi. The Microsoft and Apple executives didn’t even know what a trap they were creating via the PC, but HKBH put more clues there for us with them using the “Enter (at your own risk)” Key and the Esc(ape) key, which was the way out of a screen!  Now, why not call this the opposite of Enter, ie; the “Exit” key??  Because HKBH hints that eventually you won’t be able to Escape (R”L).  Bechol Yom Nifrain Min Adam Mida’ato V’Shelo Mida’ato! (We wont even realize, or will not care, that the hours have gone by and disappeared). People used to say Time is Money, or Time Value of Money. If that’s the case, the ‘net’ is robbing the world of its precious wealth without even trying. Each new device more swiftly and efficiently transfers our wealth (time) out of our accounts, and potentially infects us with damaging feelings, addictions, and even depression from powerful social comparison.

Note

Many, many articles describe how silicon valley executives limit or do not allow their children to use devices !!! Steve Jobs was a “low-tech” parent! Executives at Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo send their kids to the Waldorf School which is SCREEN FREE! (Technology is not allowed!) Even Bill Gates limits his children’s use of technology!

Now, let’s not be extreme and insist that these creative genius, multi-billionaire, revolutionary figures know how to win-at-life better than we do.. BUT let us AT LEAST be aware, conscious and start talking about this, begin taking steps to adjust our behavior to improve OUR LIVES and progress towards our stated goals and purpose in life. We owe this much to ourselves, to the HKBH who GAVE US this challenge, to the Torah HaKdosha which is desperately hoping for SOME of our attention, to our children (for their future success with life’s challenges!). Thank you for reading, and I wish you the best!

Further reading

• Your Best Friend Rabbi Ben Tzion Shafier reveals that your worst enemy may really be your best friend. (The Yetzer Hara is like a personal trainer).
• References in the thank you method