There is a mitzvah (commandment) that they say David HaMelech instituted, but it really originates before him. The mitzvah is that every day a Jew is supposed to make a hundred berachot (blessings). It’s debated whether women have the same obligation. A hundred berachot. Why does a Jew have to make a hundred berachot? The commentary says it’s because of our parasha, Atem Nitzavim Hayom (You are standing today).
What’s Atem Nitzavim Hayom? It says that the Jewish people just went through last week’s parasha, parashat Ki Tavo. In parashat Ki Tavo, a hundred curses were literally listed for the Jewish people. It’s in the pesukim (verses): 98, but, says the Chida, another two are hinted at in the pesukim—a hundred curses. Hashem says: after all those hundred curses, you’re still standing. You’re still standing, you’re still here.
So you know what we’re supposed to do? We’re supposed to make, every day, a hundred beracha to correspond to the hundred things that are bad, that we think are bad, to sort of save us from them. But based on what we’re saying this morning, it’s not just to save us from them. It’s that Hashem gave us a hundred blessings to make us see the parts of our life that we don’t like, to see them right, to see that those things that we think are curses are so often really blessings. What looks like a hundred bad things in so many cases could be a hundred incredible things. A hundred blessings.
So if you want to know how to give yourself a sweet new year, you need to know how to look at the hardest part of your life and figure out how to turn that into honey.