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My Rabbi always said that as soon as you give up on one thing you’ll give up on another until it’s all gone. Once your barrier is weakened it will keep on getting weaker. It reminds me of something Chazal tell us, that a repeated sin becomes permissible to that person. You do something once and you think it’s bad (I feel so bad!). You do it again and you justify yourself (I shouldn’t have done that BUT…). Once more and you actually deem it permissible, “well, actually…” A modern day example is removing one’s kippa to go into the secular world, whether in university or work. This is, in a lot of cases, followed by a complete rejection of mitzvot. There are of course many more subtle examples which on the outside wouldn’t appear detrimental to our spiritual health, such as a minor laxity in kashrut, but they do indeed gradually persuade us to be even more lenient.

I think this concept is integral for us to internalise as we go into the New Year. The above is nothing more than a tactic of the yetzer horah, the evil inclination inside us. Our yetzer horah is constantly aware of any laxity and rationalisations we make and as such makes it easier for us to justify to ourselves that we don’t have to perform a mitzvah. If only we could all have an awareness of this process happening we would be able to stop it instantly! How do we attain this awareness though?

My personal suggestion is to look at your motivation behind each and every mitzvah and action you do. Why are you doing this? What do you want to achieve? Would you do it if nobody was watching? If we’re critical enough we’ll get to the root of our mitzvah performance, allowing us to correct our shortcomings in that particular mitzvah and making it easier for us to identify any rationalisations. So if we go back to the kippa example, you could ask yourself “why do I wear my kippa?” Possible answers might end up being “everyone else does,” “to show other Jews I’m Jewish,” etc. Further investigation would result in a discovery that you were too afraid to acknowledge before “well I only wear it around Jews because they’re in my community and know me. Around non-Jews, I don’t wear it. My mitzvah performance here isn’t genuine; I have the wrong intentions and I need to get back on track.” Even if you find you are genuine in most things, this process per se slows down your brain from taking shortcuts in the future.

Don’t be afraid to be critical. The more critical you are of yourself the less critical G-d has to be on you, because you’re well on your way to successful teshuva. May you all be inscribed for the book of Life, meriting a happy, healthy and successful year.

*I would like to just mention that none of the above ideas are my own chidushim but are merely my thoughts and experiences from what I’ve learnt by various rabbonim and sefarim.