Unlocking the Power of Small Spiritual Commitments: 5 Kabbalos To Consider Making for the Holy Month of Elul

0:01 The following topic and call to action is backed by hundreds of years of tradition, if not thousands. It is a topic that the literature on it seems to be never ending, and some of the greatest men of our generation have called the following item following entity the go to and fool proof method for maximizing the potent power that is latent in the holy month of Elul. It is the topic of cabalos, spiritual commitments, a small little commitment that we can make to take on an extra action in our days to help gain a victory and to prove triumphant on the upcoming and impending day of judgment.

0:54 There are two halachos to keep in mind from two great rabbis about the topic of making cabalos. Number one comes from the great Rehav Matessio Solomon, the Lakewood Mashiach, who told us that don't make a cabalos that is too large. That will immediately fall apart, although it's exciting at the beginning, for it will not remain enduring and successful. But cut it in half, whatever it is that you had in mind and start there. Furthermore, the great Rehav Mairstern, the Rosh Hashiva and the Muayra Da'astra, the great leader of the town of Pseic, new Jersey, clifton, new Jersey and few towns are Mashiach, their great Torah leader like Pseic.

1:34 Well, rehav Mairstern told us that in this great way, if you are trying to overcome your certain addictiveness, your stuckness to sin of maybe eating non-kosher, so don't make a commitment not to just give it up all of a sudden If there is that certain restaurant, make a commitment that you are not going to walk on that street. He said, tipish, don't walk down the street but take a different route, and perhaps that will be your successful cabala. With that in mind, here is five different cabalos that you can perhaps endeavor to take and add to your schedule. I tried gathering these from smarter people than I, and they have some rabbinic backing and there is some depth through it.

2:18 Perhaps they will be helpful. Here we go. Let's jump in number one. It isn't by coincidence that we are told that the Jewish day begins at night time. My Rasheeva always begins the beginning of Elosvah with the same talk. If you want to wake up in the right mindset and have a good day, well then have a good night. Make yourself a bedtime, change into your pajamas, pjs or jammies and grab yourself a nice book, a Torah book, your kriyashima alamita. Think good thoughts, go to sleep on time, with a certain orderliness, and then, hopefully, you will wake up refreshed and ready to roll.

2:58 So a cabala for a good bedtime is our first one. A second one Well, revitzchak Berkowitz said one of the first things we don't know about technology is just how much time we actually spend on it. Set up a screen time on your phone so you won't get distracted and just scrolling through your phone. Great, more time by making a screen time on your phone, a schedule, and perhaps this will be our second practical cabala. Lastly, sorry. Thirdly, another cabala. The altar of Kalim said that it is imperative that we have mind control to be able to stay focused on a topic for more than five minutes to be successful in our Torah study. So, in order to master the art of mind control, see how many times you can think about something and then you become distracted and then you can come back to that item, that little workout, that concentration gym of coming back to the thought at hand.

3:49 That builds up your mind control muscle. So a cabala for this and your commute in the morning try to get through kriyashima, the first paragraph. Shema ishama, ishama kina, masama khadbiya, hafta ishama l'kecha. See how many times probably more than 40 or 50 times happens to me that I get distracted and then you can keep coming back to thinking and just translating and meditating on the words of kriyashima. Fourth, take a healthy walk for 15 minutes a day and put your headphones in and listen to us here. When you join together the healthy walk, it has a certain relaxness about it, a certain opening up of the senses of the mind, a socialness, a certain calmness, and when you put some Torah in it can be really rejuvenating.

4:29 That's our fourth cabala. Fifth, lastly, have some intention when you say aleinu at the end of davanin. It's packed with so many famous ideas, seems to summarize a lot of tefila. And when you make a cabala commitment to say aleinu with intention, with concentration, it helps you also to stay the whole davanin until the end, to really close the deal. So here it is, five cabalos you can make today to improve your connection to Hashem and take full advantage of the holy month of elul.