How to Improve Your Life Now

Rabbi Moshe Ben-Chaim 

Become convinced that you are created. Your designer has a plan, which is why He created you. He knows how to help you too and He has all the power to do so. He has no difficulty providing health, wealth and happiness. Reason, and history prove this. Throughout time, God saved those who followed Him. He saved Abraham and gave him and others great wealth and long years; this is a rule applicable to every person. But there is a condition: one must follow God’s ways—which actually secure the greatest happiness—then God intervenes in our lives to help us. These promises and examples permeate Torah. 

On Rosh Hashanna, God inscribes each human for the year: who will live, who will die, who will become poor or rich, who will become sick or healthy, and who will find happiness or become troubled. But repentance, prayer and charity can change that decree.

Because you never experienced or identified God’s hand in your life yet, this should not deter you. By praying on Rosh Hashanah, we learn truths about God that raise our level of perfected thought, which in turn earns us a better year. 

We recognize God’s complete and exclusive power over the world and over us. He is our creator and provider. He also knows all our thoughts and actions. God remembers man. We owe God for our very lives and continued existence. We should go as far as Abraham who was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac, and we should be willing to sacrifice ourselves too as Isaac did. If we value Abraham and Isaac, and blow the ram’s horn reminiscent of the ram Abraham offered in place of Isaac, God views us as if we offered ourselves. It is vital that each of us pray the special prayers on Rosh Hashanna, and far better in a temple with others. Doing so, God recognizes us and can change our fate. These brief few days can impact our entire year. Then use the following 8 days to repent for violating God’s Torah and gain forgiveness from those whom we wronged. Improving ourselves improves our fate. The process culminates on Yom Kippur when we fast and pray all day to be cleansed of all our sins. What a gift: we draw closer to God and He draws closer to us. We can benefit from Him in our lives.

If you truly want good for yourself, God created a system through which you can achieve it. This is God’s world. He designed it to help man when we help ourselves through following Torah. 

The Creator of the universe created mankind for a purpose. And those men and women who follow God’s plan are assisted. Those who don’t, are left to chance. This is as much a design of the universe as 2+2 always equaling 4, and never 5. Math and scientific laws exist and are real to your mind. God’s laws of His providence must become that clear and true to you. Otherwise, you will continue to believe more in natural law than in God’s ability to override those laws to help you—laws which He created and controls. Giving charity doesn’t make you poor: God responds with wealth. Following Torah earns us His greater involvement. This is God’s reality, and it must be ours. We must be convinced that God knows all and has unlimited capacity to help each of us. One day we can be poor, and the next, a door opens up and we have income. The same applies to heath and happiness. Nothing is beyond God’s ability to help you, to send His messengers precisely when you need Him. 

Use these two days of Rosh Hashanah to earn God’s goodness this year. He watches each of us. He responds. And in following this Torah law, keep to this path and follow Torah daily through time spent learning Torah, performing kindness, charity, and justice and all else God outlined for our benefit. God gains nothing through our actions; His Torah laws are intended to make man happy and fulfilled. If you strive to understand the great wisdom in each command, you will be enlightened and you will find real happiness in a manner you didn’t assume could provide it. You will soon begin to live a life content with wisdom as your focus, where temporary physical pleasures quickly fade and matter less to you. You will also earn eternal life.

May God inscribe and seal each of you for happiness, health and sufficient wealth.