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On My Mind

Mrs. Aliza Feder's Newsletter

Happy Wednesday!

A line that I  repeat to my students often is (say it with me if you’re one of my girls:)): If it’s a priority, it’s in your planner. What I mean by this is that often we speak a good game about how our highest, most important priorities are Torah and mitzvos, our relationship with Hashem and Avodas Hamiddos, etc….but when we look at our daily lives, our calendars and our brains are overflowing with much more mundane stuff like errands and cooking, shopping and appointments. 

Now, no one I know actually thinks that finding a top to match the skirt she bought 3 months ago but never wore is more important than the fact that she keeps getting sarcastic with a close family member, and she really does need to come up with a way to work on it. (Life tip: Never buy a single piece of clothing with the thought that you will find a coordinating top or bottom at a later date. You won’t.)  And I think everyone will agree that looking into getting a new shaitel, or finding out about those hair extensions, takes a firm back seat to working on tefillah. And yet for some reason, so often, outside of Elul, in our day to day lives, there is just so much urgent, non important stuff going on and being dealt with, and so little important, but not-feeling urgent stuff being pushed aside. So when we hear a nice idea, or think of something that can upgrade our spiritual performance in a real way, before the thought drifts away with the wind, we need to make a note of it in our planner, concretizing a specific time to actually put it into practice, or at least give ourselves a reminder to give it some more thought as how to institute it. 

I’m a huge fan of the practical. Hand me a short-cut-life-hack- 3-ingredient-15 minute- dinner and I’m in. That’s not to say that real growth doesn’t take hard work. I’m very aware that Avodas Hashem is a long game, but sometimes there can be massive, outsized benefit to pretty small investments of effort- all it takes is actually doing something. 

Wow. That was a very long introduction to a very simple product recommendation. Here it is: you know how we are always hearing or saying things like ‘if I just made 10 brochos out loud a day’, or ‘if just five times a day I stopped and acknowledged Hashem’s chessed in my life’ or ‘eight sincere compliments or thank you’s a day to other Yidden would  change my Ahavas Yisroel’…..but then we don’t actually do it, because….life.

So this nifty accessory is something called a score counter bracelet. It’s actually designed for golf players to track….something (I have no idea how to play golf). But from the reviews, people use it to keep track of all sorts of things like making sure they drink enough water, or anything else they find important. So I saw this, and for 10 dollars, I now wear something that does an absolutely fabulous job of making sure that I am able to stay mindful of making at least ten brochos out loud, with kavannah, a day. And it works!! It’s been a few weeks now and it really works!

Will it work forever? No. At some point, I’m going to get used to it and it won’t be effective anymore. So then I’ll put int in my drawer for a few weeks and pull it out again when it feels new. Or I’ll buy a different color because it comes in colors, people!! BUT, for the next few weeks, for the price of a Starbucks specialty drink, I just bought myself a chunk of Olam Habah. And all it took was me thinking about a problem, reminding myself through my planner to check Amazon for this type of product, and pressing ‘buy now’. 

My favorite part of this whole thing may be that the seller of this bracelet is going to one day go up to shamayim, and (please, please let them be Jewish) is going to get a chunk of unexpected s’char for improving people’s Avodas Hashem. Who knew?!

So now I pass this on to you: it’s easy, practical, and makes a real difference. Let me know if you get it, and what types of things you use it for so I can pass good ideas on to the community!

All the best,

Mrs. Aliza Feder

PS- No, I do not get affiliate kickbacks. I do this out of the goodness of my heart. But if you know how I can get affiliate kickbacks, by all means, do share.