Becoming a Better Person

Jewish tradition teaches that after you have done new things consistently for a while, you can feel yourself to have become a different person.  One example that probably everyone has experienced is contrasting how you feel at the beginning of an exercise regimen with how your feel once you have been at it for a few months.  What was an almost unendurable daily burden gradually stopped being painful and finally became an essential part of having a good day.  The strenuous daily program started to give you a high of good feeling.  You didn't just start feeling differently about an exercise workout, your very muscles, tendons, and tissues, your heart and your lungs changed.  One way of looking at it, and a fairly accurate way at that, is that you became a different person.

How does one become a better negotiator?  In much the same three-phase method that one becomes better at judo, better at omelet cooking, and better at writing poetry:  (1) learn, (2) understand, (3) practice.  Phase one is learning the techniques.  Phase two is understanding how those techniques work provides assurance that they will work.  Gaining confidence in the ultimate effectiveness of those techniques is important because it helps to provide the motivation to keep going with phase three.  Phase three is doggedly and determinedly practicing, not only to become proficient in the technique, but also to become a different person. 

- Rabbi Daniel Lapin

Thou Shall Prosper

(Photo from Microsoft Free Images)