You Manage What You Monitor

I took a workshop with Sara Yoheved Rigler and learned about the importance of charting progress when you’re working on changing a behavior. She taught a two-fold method: 1) chart what you’re doing in black and white, not just in your head 2) reward the body with something the body likes.

 

She said, we come down here as a body-soul combination. The soul always wants to do what’s right, like a flame always reaches upward. The body is like the earth; it doesn’t do anything unless it’s moved. We have to get the body to move.

 

When you are working on changing something, make it specific and make a chart for it so you can check off how you are doing every single day. Somehow that’s all it takes to make the behavior much more easily a part of your routine. This is something I recently implemented to help me daven every day. I wanted to be davening a complete tefillah three times a day but it really wasn’t happening. There were plenty of days when I stayed in bed too late to daven a full shacharis, and times I was busy running around and didn’t daven mincha. And I had only davened a handful of maarivs in the time since this. But I just kept feeling that tefillah was really, really missing from my life and it had to become a part of it again. I mean, tefillah.

 

Honestly, don’t know why I didn’t do this earlier, but I made a calendar for 40 days (always a good number 🙂 ) with a checkbox for shacharis, mincha, and maariv for each day. I also decorated the chart with pictures of a bridal bouquet and an engagement ring, because didn’t we mention something about working for a reward? (This was all a super-basic Word doc, btw).

 

Bli ayin hara – who knew the power of a simple chart? I find that somehow I have the time to daven every day like I should, for the first time in too long.

 

Just wanted to share my success story and the encouragement to monitor whatever you’re working on.