Excerpts from the popular shiur by Harav Beirish Shneebalg shlit”a from Lakewood
The Key to Fixing One’s Middos
A person’s avodah in this world is to perfect his middos – to refine and improve his character. This is the purpose of our existence. Especially as we’re drawing closer to Rosh Hashanah, when we will declare “Hamelech” and beseech of Hashem that He rule over the entire world, we need to first make Him King over ourselves.
Making Hashem King over ourselves begins when we purify and refine our middos.
The first step in working on middos is vatranus – not responding in kind when someone hurts or annoys us, keeping quiet even if someone insults us. There are many people who have already mastered control of themselves. They hold themselves back from reacting when someone embarrasses them or when people think they’ve done wrong. But inside it still bothers them. This is a great achievement. However, to achieve true purity of middos one must move beyond that. Sometimes the self-control is only temporary, and then an outburst is liable to come later.
Keeping silent is a sign of wisdom, but wisdom itself is when one is not bothered at all, even internally. How do we reach this level?
The answer is simple: Anyone who lives with emunah and cleaves to Hashem, with the knowledge that everything comes from Him and He is the One managing the world, will not be bothered by anything. He will be one of those who are “insulted and do not insult.” The external circumstances will have less relevance to his internal state. For him it’s not a matter of having self-control; it just becomes his nature that things really don’t bother him.
Through emunah in Hashem we can achieve inner serenity and refinement of our middos in the best possible way.
