The Roadblocks We Build Ourselves

A Puzzling Question It is a simple question, but it cuts deep. Picture a young married man with pure intentions. He wants to succeed in his Torah study, in earning a living and in serving Hashem. So why does he find himself “stuck” again and again? “I’ll start on Monday.” “After the holidays.” “When I have a little more time.” Everything is there. He has the desire. He knows what he needs to do. He has even made a “start” once already. And still the chance slips by. The goal gets pushed off. He is left with a heavy feeling: “I just have no luck,” or “I don’t have the strength.” The simple explanation blames laziness or a weak character. But sometimes this same person can work with surprising energy and drive. He just doesn’t use it for that one goal. So perhaps the failure is not weakness at all. Perhaps it is something much more precise and carefully built. The Animal Soul’s Job In the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, its author, explains the nature of the animal soul. This is the part of us that comes from the levels of reality connected to the body and to survival. Its first “job” is to protect a person from harm and discomfort. It is not “wicked” by its very nature. It is a system of protection. Think of a bodyguard, an emissary whose whole job is to push away anything that looks like danger. The animal soul works the same way: as a deep, steady defense system. Now, this soul has “ears.” It takes notes, and it learns. So we have to ask: how does it learn what counts as “dangerous”? The Training We Give It Ourselves Here is a great and touching new insight. Our Sages say: “A covenant is made with the lips.” This has been explained to mean that speech has creative power. What a person says does not vanish into the air. It does something real. The Sefer HaChinukh, a classic book on the commandments, says the same thing clearly: “The heart follows what we do.” It is not only our outward actions. Our words and our thoughts are also tools that build the inner reality of a person. Now ask yourself: how many times have you heard it among friends, or said it yourself? “Rich people? They’re all thieves.” “Whoever succeeds in business doesn’t keep his awe of Hashem.” “A person who wants ‘great things’ must be arrogant.” The animal soul writes it down: success = danger. It does not analyze. It does not weigh things. It follows orders. And you, through your words and your thoughts, gave it those orders yourself. The Failure That Is Really a Success This is the sharpest point of all. You put off starting “until Monday.” The chance slips by, and you “explain to yourself” why now is not the right time. That is not your soul failing. That is the animal soul succeeding. It is carrying out, faithfully and skillfully, the task you gave it: to keep you away from the “danger” you defined for it. There is no “bad luck” here. There is no “lack of strength” here. There is only the precise carrying out of orders. Those orders were written in your everyday words and in the thoughts you got used to thinking. Here we touch a deep and familiar sin: the sin of the spies Moses sent to the Land. The spies did not lie. They reported what they saw. But they added their own reading of it: “We looked like grasshoppers in our own eyes.” That reading, said out loud and with full conviction, became the real life of an entire generation. One statement that it was “impossible,” and entering the Land was put off for forty years. We do the same with our own personal goals. We “spy them out.” We look at them and say, “We too are like grasshoppers.” And that is how we block our own path. A Covenant Made with the Lips As King Solomon wrote: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” This is not just a figure of speech. It is a real description of the power of speech. The Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement, taught that in a Jew’s world there is no such thing as a “meaningless” word or thought. Every word does its work, and first of all in the person’s own inner world. So when a person gets used to speaking badly about wealth, about ambition, about success, he is not just “sharing an opinion.” He is forging the chains of his own soul. He is the architect of the very machine that will block him. The Way Out The way out of being “stuck” is not a war against the animal soul. That war will not succeed. The soul has been trained, and you will not defeat what you yourself have built. The way out is retraining. Begin to speak about success, both material and spiritual, as what it truly is. As the Torah says, it is “the strength to achieve success.” It is a vessel for serving Hashem. It is a means to live a devoted Hasidic life, to support Torah study, and to provide for your family with calm. Say this out loud. Not once, but again and again, until the soul writes down the new order. Then the defense system will start working for you, not against you.