40 Can Change Us Forever - Rabbi Yisrael Feld

we have a unique 40 day period right now of teshuva from rosh hodish aloe until through yom kippur is 40 days exactly and the question is how do we actually make a change this year how is this year going to be different than every other year where i sat up here and i dab in the rush of sonium caper and i said today's gonna be different and i think we need to change our mindset just a little bit we get so focused on all the negative things and reflecting on the things that we didn't do well this year and of course that is such a vital part of teshuva of returning to who we're supposed to be but we also have to work an active sense of working on who we're going to be how am i practically going to change things you know in the secular world is this concept of a new year's resolution if you look at the stats there's so few people who actually keep their new year's resolution what are they missing 25 percent of people keep it for one month eight percent of people who take a new year resolution actually keep it for the whole year so 92 percent of people go in thinking i'm gonna change something and this year they actually don't so what are we gonna do how are we going to make this possible i think the step one is so simple and easy but it needs to be something that is truly internalized and that is to believe that you could change the positive says that the matter is close to us not just close to us it's very close to us hashem's words are perfect we use adjectives to describe something i want to tell you that something is over there it's not just over there it's very close to me and it's over there so i use extra words to explain hashem's words are perfect but here he uses an extra word seemingly odin adjective to teach us that it's right next to us because step one is we need to understand that it's something that we can obtain as we mentioned there's 40 days right now from from kippur the number 40 in judaism is is found all over the place 40 nights and days of of the mobile 40 days and nights of receiving the torah 40 years in the desert 40 saw in the mikvah and now 40 days of teshuva what do all these 40s have in common is that when the person or the nation or the world started the process they came out totally different 40 days and 40 nights of the mobile the world was was destroyed and never to be the same jewish people got the torah for for why not moshe went out for 40 days and 40 nights the jewish people comment as a totally different people they go through the desert for 40 years you're a different nation someone goes into the midfield tell me to come back out tell her they're a different person step one of this 40-day process is understanding that we can go in one way and come out totally different now we need to start thinking how we're practically going to do that of course it's important to reflect on the past we all make mistakes [Music] sitting there silently and he says that's us when we make a mistake we make a mistake of course it's an accident but the alef hashem is sitting there next to us suddenly he's never giving up on us even in the past and of course it's important to grow from it we still need to understand that hashem is there we can change the future so during this 40-day period every single person individually should start thinking about what am i practically going to do how am i going to make sure i fall into the 92 percent of the world not eight percent sorry and not the 92 percent who actually makes a change and doesn't just see something and fall to the wayside everybody should have a tremendous tremendous hat in improving themselves in a meaningful and powerful elo rosh hashanah you know kippur process have a great day [Music]