The What & How of Sustainable Change: Dynamic Cheshbon Hanefesh - Rabbi Efraim Stauber

[Music] I want to talk to you today is the crux the essence the core of the sewer system how to do teshuva in a way that's sustainable and intuitive and actually works in our subconscious what if we had a tool that will help us want to do mitzvahs and not want to do a virus it works instantly the works by itself subconsciously intuitively well we do and it's called our pleasure seeking part of ourselves and it works every time you open the fridge you ever open a fridge look for something and you're like hmm why are you doing that why don't you just grab something because you're looking for something yummy you ever go to ice cream parlor I don't know here we've got Z select right you go to Carvel in America you're like hmm you want the thing that's good and when you're looking at a lot of things that are good you're like oh no I'm going to choose carefully I'm still a baby like that I like I can't decide which one they're all so yummy ah put them all together just just stick all of the flavors just stick them into one thing and mix it up make it a razzle I think things that Razzles are about people who just can't decide I want to flavor just stick it all in one thing we chase pleasure and we avoid pain and that can make chewer very easy for us because here's how it works and I want you to do something called dynamic Fleshman henna fish the idea of a catchment net fish is well known you wanted to Chuba first thing you have to do is take a look at your life these are the things that I do these things that I don't - and you start making a freshman start making at least some keeping score now usually the way that's done is okay so I keep score I did these things bad things is good and I have to try harder I call it a dead scorecard a dynamic scorecard I dynamic raspberry nefesh is where it's not just a scorecard but through the process of evaluating my day I will change and here's how it works let's say you have some predetermined thing you're working on and that's gonna be the subject of a second clip how to choose what you're doing Chu Vaughn so we'll talk about that separately but right now I just imagine you have something predetermined this is what I'm paying attention to today this week this month so at the end of the day you do your cashmere nefesh and there's going to be two boxes there's gonna be your regret box the pain of regret box and there's gonna be your pleasure of satisfaction box and chances are if you're a human being I hope you're a human being not some kind of space yell yeah okay whatever you're gonna have some failures and some successes because we're not perfect thing is that's fine write them both down the end of the day so like okay let me give you an example of someone that I'm working with actually in this club Laura this is a person who said oh I want to work on my bra cause I I spaced out when I say Bracco's and an ask the person for this what does that mean to you you know what why do you care if you don't say bra so don't say brockless you know okay fancy bra cos it means that I'm not conscious it means that I'm not grateful touch them and I'm just taking stuff Oh what you're really looking for is a relationship for that xem oh that's your spiritual girl we'll talk more about how that works but this symptom of the illness is the brockless are not with qivana but the real goal of this person had was to live with more awareness live with more mindfulness and a connection Tasha okay so that was this person's focus brought this mindfulness connection Tasha so at the end of the day you do your clarinet fashion you're like oh well I told the person to choose a specific Bravo cuz you got to be very specific so the person shows actually you out sorry so it's like make a calculation I said I'll show us your X amount of times three of them were not good three of them were great so you write them down the you know this time but this day I 1 2 3 I didn't have qivana I was in a hurry running for a boss you know etc these three I stopped and I said them and had such Kevon okay fantastic so first to write them down that's your scorecard but here's the kicker after you write it down spend some time and I call this having a mindful moment look at those three things those three are charged you know where you didn't connect them and you were just living your life on autopilot losing the depth that you're looking for this person is looking for a depth of life where they're connected to God and they're living life in a meaningful way and they're feeling appreciation and you know what these three times you had the opportunity you blew it now I want to talk about what regret means and the distinction between regret and guilt and this is very very important because we're very good at go are you Jewish and you're probably very good at guilt and if you're not good at guilty probably feel guilty that you don't feel good at guilt but that's not necessarily useful things sometimes guilt could be useful but more often than not when a person says I am guilty what are they're saying is I am a bad person I'm a guilty person oh man well what happens when you believe that you're a bad person how motivational is that for change I'm a bad person so whatever what can I expect for myself I'll try I'll try but that it's not such a good motivation for change much better is regret regret means I had such an amazing opportunity and I just lost it I mean imagine if yeah opportunity just make a million dollars but you overslept you know you had an appointment you know 10 o'clock in the morning to meet with someone who wanted to offer you a job and you overslept and you wake up at 10:13 you're like oh my gosh the only reason why I don't have an amazing job right now because I overslept it's just slip opportunity slip through my fingers that's regret that's motivational I don't want that to happen again so guilty is I'm a bad person I am guilty and regret is I lost out an opportunity and it's very important to focus on regret here so you're looking at those three our guards are as you like oh man those are opportunities those were golden opportunities Hashem gave me to thank him for the amazing miracle of my body of the functioning of the organs in like and of course my thinking of Shem of course that's gonna increase that connection yeah awesome opportunity I lost it okay when you're done with that move to the other side of the chart and start thinking about the beautiful brockless email they say wow you're a wealthy human being right now because what you did is connect to the infinite realm you spoke to God you were conscious of God you appreciated the life that I Shem gave you and enjoy the fact that you did that what happens is when you have pain from missing art sir and you have pleasure from gaining it what he's gonna happen tomorrow well the next time either as a pleasure seeking being the next time you have an opportunity to make this Brava you're just gonna automatically lean toward doing more of it in the way that gives you pleasure and not in the way that gives you pain and this is not it like so yelling at you you have them come on your person you don't first end where's your sense of gratitude to the Lord come on that's true but much more powerful than that is our own desire to have fun have pleasure and not to have pain and if I know that tonight I'm gonna have to sit and make a scorecard and I'm not gonna enjoy myself or I will injure myself well if I wanna enjoy my life I'll learn them doing more of that what I'm recommending is 30 seconds each now 30 seconds is actually a lot of time to feel stuff so if you do 15 seconds it also works but 15 or 30 seconds of actually experiencing sitting inside your regret and sitting inside the pleasure of your satisfaction and we do this every day as you make attachment nefesh but there's another step that goes even beyond this and that's Shabbos we're gonna talk more about Shabbos later and how it relates to chuhwa but very very quickly what Shabbos was designed to do is be a day of owning a day of pleasure and it's the Oneg of mean Olam haba very quickly what does that even mean Olam haba is when we enjoy spirituality think about it another measure we work to achieve spirituality and to whatever extent we were successful we enjoy spirituality in Olam haba Shabbos is me aim it's a little taste of our home but what that means is whatever extent we achieve spirituality during the week what a sham wants us to do is take a break from the effort and just enjoy the spirituality that we've already achieved so Friday is when we prepare for Shabbos and we look over the entire week the mission Brewer says he's supposed to chew on Shabbos this is you clean your house they do Chuba you clean your physical and you know outside environment and you clean up inside that's called to Vancouver so what you do on Friday is you look over the whole week of regret and you feel the pain of your last opportunity because whatever you lost you're not bringing into Shabbos you're not coming to tell them how about with your verus they don't make it in and this pain in that of course the trick is a few chuva then they become itches and they do come in but we're not telling you about that right now first what you have to do is just feel the regret and do cheer on Friday for all the missed opportunities and then on Shabbos you go to the other side of the chart look over all of your spiritual successes this week and that is on a Chaves so every day you have this dynamic reg Barry nefesh where you feel the pain and the pleasure of your mistakes and your successes but then you do that in a big way every weekend every Friday and every Shabbos and that is the way we train our subconscious mind change our brains we restructure our brains as psychology has discovered and as I have that we learned earlier that the Cabal is from teachers that says we learn to heighten our pleasure we're gonna want that more so send your email to the Terry Center Jim Mullikin and join our AHA bhura where we are working on this every day and I want to take we have a Google Group and someone posted this amazing post in the beginning of this week and the title was results I've been doing these charts without going to speak too soon how these charts work you know for a full week and I want to take about my result my heart started apparently like oh I hope he's gonna say something good but he said something amazing he said that well more or less without remembering a verbatim that there are areas in his life that were hopelessly they were in like the hopeless pile like whatever I can't succeed at those things but subconsciously without any effort he's finding that is just they're easy for him he's just starting to get better and fly in areas that he never even realized possible and the amazing part about it is with no effort because we simply are attracted to pleasure so let's utilize this harness the power of our own pleasure seeking and pain avoiding instinct to do chuhwa come and join us [Music] you [Applause]