Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily. Rav Wolbe discusses why it is that when people are working on themselves and trying to become better people, a lot of times it leads to sadness, despair, and depression. Quite often, when we're working on ourselves, we start finding our lackings. We start finding our weaknesses. It's quite natural that most people, deep down, are more aware of their weaknesses and their lackings than their good qualities.
So what do we do if we're good people who are trying to become better, but we keep stumbling on our weaknesses? We have a temper, we're cynical, we're sarcastic, we lack patience, we have limited self-control and so on and so forth.
Then you start getting down on yourself because of all these weaknesses that you find.
Before we get onto how to solve the problem, he makes an interesting point. “Why is it that when you find something bad within yourself, you get a little down? It’s because, deep down, your arrogance was dented.”
‘I considered myself to be the perfect person and now I'm forced to realize that I'm not as good as I thought I was. I actually have some pretty bad, dark sides to me.’
That can get a person down. So how do we overcome this problem?
He says that when the person finds out his problem, he often has an emotional reaction. “Oh no, I can't believe I have this terrible trait. My spouse brought up something and they're right. I am self-centered!”
And once he's caught up in an emotional turmoil, it’s a very short trip from there to getting down and depressed and even despair.
What should happen when a person gains that new awareness, is that he should go into intellectual mode and say, “Okay, I have a problem here.
That's okay.”
He gives an example of a master surgeon. What shows that he's a professional? When he gets into a challenging situation. He's in the middle of a seemingly standard surgery, and there's a surprise turn that he wasn't ready for. He doesn't start bemoaning the situation. He's a professional. He weighs the options, makes a decision and he moves on it.
A professional educator, a teacher doesn't suddenly get into a tizzy when he sees that something went wrong in his class. He doesn't explode in anger. He doesn't get nervous. He's a professional. He has the right, balanced reaction in the situation. So too with ourselves, we have to know we were not born perfect. I didn't do anything wrong. Yes, I'm self-centered. Well, I have news for you. I was born that way. I didn't make myself self-centered. I was brought to this world to fix it. So, calm down. Don't start overreacting. Unless you work to perfect something, it's not going to be perfect. If anything, you should be happy, Rav Wolbe says, that you found the problem. You diagnosed the problem. And let's go a step further. He says, there’s a rule that we have to know, “There is no evil that can't be fixed.”
He says that just like when God brings a decree, it says, God always brings the antidote before the disease, God gave us the way out of evil before he even brought it in. God created teshuva before he created the world. And therefore, if you reveal even the most horrific side within yourself, you should know there is a way to fix it. You can fix it. So calm down. You're not beyond hope. Put yourself into a little bit more of an intellectual, professional mode and say, I can deal with it. I can handle it. It's doable.
Don't get sucked into the emotion- Go into problem solving mode.
There is a solution to every internal problem.
Have a wonderful day.