Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a project of SIMHA, the Sephardic Initiative for Mental Health Awareness. Yesterday we gave a science class on Myelination, describing how practice makes perfect. By repeating things again and again, they will enter our minds, create new neural pathways, cause the neurons to fire together and rewire themselves.
This is related to another term, called neuroplasticity, which is made of two words. Neuro as in the brain, neurology and plasticity-plastic. Contrary to old beliefs that the brain is set in its ways, your brain is actually malleable. You can play with it, you can change it. And the way to change it is by repetition. This is not something new to our religion. Many of our lessons bring this point out, that things that are new to science (with their updated and more precise MRIs and different type of imagery), we know from the Source, from God Who created man and created the brain.
Pirkei Avot starts off with, ‘Moshe kebel Torah M’Sinai/Moshe got the Torah from Sinai,’ to tell us that all of these psychological ideas that might show up in Pirkei Avot, about relationships, are not things that the rabbis created on their own, but rather they came from Sinai. And something it says there is Everything depends on the amount of action. As Rambam’s famous concept says, if a person has the choice when giving charity, either to give a thousand dollars at one time or to give $1 a thousand times, he should choose the $1 a thousand times, because by repeating the act a thousand times, he will become a generous person. On the other hand, one surge of generosity won’t change a person. That's the same point here. We must repeat the actions in order to mold our brain. The hiddush here is that this concept of practice makes perfect in creating new neural pathways doesn’t only apply to jumping rope or playing tennis. It's works for creating a character trait such as generosity. Just like repetition causes your brain to take a certain pathway, if I'm playing tennis, for example, I will return with my backhand naturally, automatically, so too, my reactions of bitachon will come automatically. Rabbenu Yonah writes that the way to work on our bitachon is through repetition of having God in your life on a constant basis, in small activities. Like looking for God in the parking place, and looking for God in every little detail. And by constantly repeating that, it will eventually become part of your natural reaction.
How do I react in a situation- do I react with anger or do I react with a soft voice? Those reactions can be trained through repetition. That's an important hiddush in our growth, because our job here is not to heal mentally ill people. That is a job for a therapist and a licensed professional. Our job here is to take people that are healthy and give them tools to live a better life.
And when we say better life, we mean a spiritually better life. Because that really is your better life. If you don't get angry, that's a better life. If you are calm and serene, that's a better life. And the way to get there is by repeating these reactions and repeating these ideas.
Many people are familiar with a letter called Igeret HaRamban, a letter that Ramban wrote to his son all about humility and speaking softly. It’s a beautiful letter. Artscroll has a commentary on it. It’s a beautiful book to read. At the end, he says to his son, “You should read this letter every single week.” That means son reading it 52 times a year, 520 times a decade.
Why do I have to keep on repeating it? Because in order for ideas to penetrate, they must be repeated. This is the hiddush. Just like, in order to jump rope, you have to keep on repeating and repeating and repeating, the same is true with your mindsets and your outlook on life, which we call your hashkafa. You have to hear it again and again and again. And that's why these many daily lessons that people listen to for a few minutes a day are so beneficial.
You might say, “Why am I getting these lessons? I know a lot of these things already! They're not adding anything.”
But it’s not about new knowledge, it's about repetition. You know how to jump rope. It's not about knowledge. It's about repetition. It's about the experience. Experiential learning means you're not just learning it intellectually. You're experiencing it. That's the way you change.
To be continued.
Having a wonderful day.