Back By Popular Demand

At the end of Morning Service on Yom Kippur a number of people asked either for a copy of my sermon or else a list of the 8 changes I am trying to make in order to reclaim my original soul. The “making a list – checking it twice” approach to Teshuvah, Repentance, is doomed to failure. If anything, it proves to us that we cannot truly change. Every year that we attempt to make the same changes, we fail.

What we truly need instead is to return to what we originally were.

So, that said, my eight chains that need to be undone, in no particular order, are as follows:
#1 – I must stop needing to be right.
#2 – I must stop treating life as though it were a race.
#3 – I must stop worrying about those things that do not really matter.
#4 – I must stop interrupting others with my own thoughts and agenda.
#5 – I must give up the desire for certainty.
#6 – I must stop taking things so personally.
#7 – I must stop avoiding pain and suffering.
#8 – I must stop kidding myself by thinking that I am in control.

Now, please excuse me. I need to go check to see how much progress I have made in getting rid of each of these shackles.

B’Shalom,
Rabbi Stanley Halpern