Rabbi Akiva Rutenberg - Is lasting Change Really Possible?!

[Music] everyone i hope you're well tonight is the night before yom kippur and i'd like to share with you a message that i think you will find meaningful as you go into the holiday of yom kippur during this time of rosh hashanah and yom kippur we are in a time of introspection a time of growth a time of reflection of looking back at the past year and thinking about where we stand as a person as a parent as a child as a spouse and ultimately in our relationship with hashem our true purpose in life what was last year about who are we and where are we going in this coming year and the years to come one of the most beautiful things about yom kippur is that hashem gives us this ultimate second chance we know yom kippur was the is the holiday of second chances because that's the day that moshe came down with the second the second tablets after he had broken the first ones and on this day of atonement hashem says to us god says if you just are inspired to be a better person in the coming year and regret the mistakes of the past i will judge you for how you feel at that moment and at that in this day when we're separated from the physical world we're not eating we're not drinking we're almost acting like an angel and at this moment in the middle of our prayers if we are inspired to be a better person god says to us that's how i'll judge you but ultimately we don't just want to be judged favorably we want to live that life that we aspire to be and the question is how do we do that how do we take those goals those dreams those visions that we have for ourselves and turn them into reality very often we have new year's resolutions we have goals we have dreams but it's very hard to implement them we are creatures of habit and we very often go back to what we were used to and i'd like to suggest two ideas of how we can take these dreams these goals these visions that we have for ourselves and actually make them a reality the first one is sometimes in life what we need to do is have very realistic small practical goals and just shoot for those goals with a vision of where we're trying to get to i saw a very interesting example of this the legendary sports player and coach pat riley who is the coach of the los angeles lakers and they were considered the best team maybe one of the best teams ever and pat riley in 1986 his team the los angeles lakers came so close to winning the nba finals and they lost to the celtics and the lakers were considered to actually be the better team but they lost pat riley looks at his team in 1987 and is trying to figure out how can i inspire them and he came up with the following approach and he told the team he said each of you 12 people i want you to take your game and divide it into five parts the five main things that you do in your basketball game for one of them it might be the shooting it might be the defense whatever each one what what their game was and he said all i want you to do for this coming season is become one percent better at that part of your game become a one percent better file shooter become a one percent better in in each part of your game one percent oh we could do one percent and by each one of them just striving to be one percent better the team went on to do amazing that year and i think the message is something we can all incorporate inside of ourselves whether it's in business where we know some of the best businesses our businesses that constantly strive to be a little bit better but even more importantly in our relationships when we're in a relationship and our spouse or significant other tries to show shows us just a little bit more effort it feels amazing to us and it propels our relationships forward and most importantly with our relationship with hashem god tells us if you show me even just a tiny bit of effort make an effort the size of an of a needle head i will open up like a great out like a big elephant or a great ballroom all you have to do is just make a little bit of effort towards your goal but i'd like to share with you another idea and something that's a little bit personal to me and something that that i've come to myself in the last few months one of my challenges was my relationship with technology and specifically with my smartphone in my job at emmett i had the opportunity to be in touch with so many people between the emma team them with staff and students and and community members and all of that can happen through my smartphone but i had sort of a love-hate relationship with the smartphone because it accomplished so much for me and helped me do so much good but it also was extremely distracting at times and took me away from family at times and even just my own productivity and focus because of the smartphone and i know many of us are struggling with this as well i had the opportunity early in the summer to go on a trip with our family with my family to the west coast and we spent about nine days in yellowstone national park one of the most beautiful places in the world and i highly recommend everyone try to go there and after about nine days over there we we were at a mountain range called the grand teton mountains unbelievably beautiful place and i accidentally my phone slipped down from my car and i drove my car over the phone and i looked down at my phone when i realized what happened and it was shattered my iphone 8 plus was totally shattered and i said hashem are you giving me a message and i took it as a message that maybe i should try to see if i can live without the smartphone in the last three months i've been living without a smartphone i have an ipad which has imessage but i don't have whatsapp and i i rarely see news art news articles the way i used to be seeing them and i'm much much less connected to technology than i was before an interesting thing that i found is that this change that i made has caused so many other changes to happen as well and what i'd like to share with you is that i think that in life sometimes we have to think about macro changes even though we try and we shoot for the little changes but also sometimes in life we have to think about a macro change what is a macro change to me this was a macro change and bizarre to show we'll see how long i can i can keep this going for but once i made that decision to try to see if i can live without the smartphone and not be as connected to technology all my other decisions became so much easier whereas before when i tried to set limits it was extremely extremely hard to do so but once i made this macro decision of saying okay you know what i'm going to try to live without the phone then my other decisions of going to shul without a phone okay i don't have a phone so i'm gonna go to show without a phone in the past i tried to go to school try to go to synagogue without my phone but it was very very hard to not take it with me and when you take it with you you're not as connected a study just came out recently where they showed couples sitting across from each other in a restaurant with their phone in front of them and how little they communicated and that's not a surprise to anyone but then they actually had the couples put their phone in a bag and they weren't allowed to look at the phone the entire time they're in the restaurant and even with the phone in the bag just the fact that they know that there's messages there that they haven't seen their communication was not very optimal at all only when they shut off their phones entirely and took it away from them was there actual good communication between them the technology is so powerful in connecting us but also so dangerous in so many ways and can become a massive distraction which i found it was for me in many ways but i don't believe i had the the self-control or the discipline to be able to limit it in a really practical way but by taking this macro some would say extreme position of trying to see if i could live without it what i was able to do was was make better choices because that bigger decision affected all those other decisions and for me personally i find myself being more focused i find myself going to sleep earlier waking up earlier being more connected spiritually more connected with my family and even with my with my job at emmett i find that what i'm doing when i'm doing my work i'm much much more connected and focused on each person that i'm talking to instead of the multitasking that has become so common in our society today and i knew that multitasking was bad i have a great book anyone who would like to read this book it's an amazing book called the one thing by gary keller about the problems with multitasking i gave out maybe 20 copies of that book but i wasn't really able to incorporate it and make it part of myself because i was so used to this habit of using the phone not just to have it but also all the the the the the connections that that it gives us and the um you know the stimulus that we get from the phone but once i made that macro decision to try to live without the phone it affected so many other decisions and i think that each and every one of our lives we can find something that's a macro decision that we can do this year that will affect so many other decisions it might be in the realm of technology like getting rid of whatsapp or taking facebook off your phone only using facebook on your computer um it might be even a in a way a bigger decision there's many ms students who have made decisions over the years to go abroad to go to israel to go to yeshiva and learn for six months or learn for three months that's a macro decision once you make that decision and you go to learn now so many other decisions become so much easier yes you still have to get up in the morning and go to learn but you're already in the yeshiva you're already in the seminary you're already in that place and i think that in each and every one of our lives we should try to think about what's a macro decision we can make is it in the realm of technology which i think almost all of us have to make the some decisions in that area maybe it's having something on our on our phones that shut them off by 10 pm and and just don't allow us to surf the web after after that point or maybe it's for some for someone taking their television you know if they have a tv taking it out of their bedroom or not taking their cell phones into their bedroom each person has to know what that point is but the macro decisions can impact all the micro decisions and we know that free will is such an important part of who we are as as a jew and what judaism is about is about free will but i believe that sometimes the free will decisions is not in the micro but is in the macro it's in the position we put ourselves in is in the environment that we put ourselves in that allows us to now make so much so many better choices and decisions and i'll give another example let's say you have someone who's really wants to start keeping shabbat maybe they weren't they didn't grow up with shabbat and they they've learned about shabbat and they want to start keeping shabbat but there's so many different aspects of keeping shabbos that's that's challenging and and and how do i deal with this and how do i deal with that and maybe i'm not ready and and these are the decisions that someone has to make but very often when a person makes that macro decision and says okay i'm going to keep shabbos once they commit to it 100 the other decisions that go along with it become so much easier and it affects changes in so many different areas that if they have to think about each one of those individually they may not be able to do that's the message i'd like to share with you um may we all have a very meaningful yom kippur and get connected reconnected to ourselves to our families to our true essence and purpose and may hashem hear our prayers and bazat hashem next year in your shalom