Do you want to succeed in life? To see shefa? To do away with stress and anger?
This is the big secret:
Don’t think about yourself, think of others.
The idea is very simple: Do chessed – but not regular chessed; real chessed: Give over yourself, your whole self, for the sake of others.
If we think about it, we’ll find that a person’s emotional difficulties – his anger, stress, feeling of missing out ... most of these feelings come from one point, which is that a person thinks that everything belongs to him and that everything is coming to him. When he lives with the feeling that “I didn’t get what I deserve,” then he always feels that he is lacking; he feels that something was taken from him, and he is always hurt and angry.
But the moment a person grows accustomed to thinking differently, to understanding that not everything belongs to him, that he is not the boss, but rather that his whole purpose is to give of himself to others; the more he understands this and grows accustomed to it, the calmer and more serene his life will become.
When Avraham Avinu sent his servant Eliezer to find a wife for his son Yitzchak, he warned him, “Do not take a wife ... from the daughter of Canaan among whom I (anochi) dwell” (Bereishis 24:3). Avraham Avinu emphasized the “self” (anochi) because the daughters of Canaan – selfishness (anochius) dwells among them. They see only themselves and not others. And this is exactly the test that Eliezer set up for Rivka, to determine whether she was a true baalas chessed, prepared to give of herself for others.
When a person lives this way, nullifying his “self” for the sake of Hashem and for others, the gates of blessing, bounty, parnassah, and everything good open up for him.
Excerpts from the popular shiur by Harav Hatzaddik R’ Beirish Shneebalg shlit”a
