Changing Your Luck

When I was trying to prepare this week's lesson, I got to a point where I realized that I was stuck, and that the creative juices just weren't there anymore. It has taken me years to figure out the signs that G-d sends me from my own body, but I knew that I was feeling that certain tension and tightness in my chest, that was G-d telling me, 'Zev, go and do something else for a while – anything else!'
 
It's well known that the creative process sometimes requires breaks. Psychologists call this phenomenon, 'the inoculation period'. It could be a short rest, a day off, even five minutes in the kitchen, making a cup of tea – but it's highly productive for people who are trying to come up with inventions or trying to figure things out. So I got up and did something else. I turned off the laptop and went into another room, and while I was sitting there, trying to talk to G-d, I got another message that I should take the laptop into my daughter's room, and try to work from there. She wasn't home at the time, but I have so many pleasant experiences of talking to my daughter in her room, or saying the bedtime Shema prayer with her, for example, that I get a lift just from being there. The message was right – within a few minutes of relocating to there, I got the creative boost I needed to resume my work.
 
Change place, change luck
 
Our Sages teach us: 'change your place, and you'll change your luck.' Sometimes, we have to change our posture, or physical 'place' – that's enough to get us unstuck and out of our unproductive state of mind. Again, these don't always have to be dramatic changes. Sometimes, it's enough just to move 10 inches back from the computer screen. Other times, we need more, like a drive in the woods, or a walk along a deserted path. Sometimes, or bodies can stay exactly where they are, and we just need to make a mental change, and send our thoughts to a different place, even to the other end of the world. All I need to do is close my eyes and bam! I can go anywhere in the whole universe – and so can you. All of a sudden, our creative juices are flowing again, and we're raring to get on with whatever project or thought or idea we were in the middle of.
 
Our souls transcend time and space; they aren't limited in the same way that our bodies and our intellects are. Each soul is a tiny microchip of G-d, and they are the creative source of all art, literature, music, scientific discovery or religious thought – it all comes down to us through that little, creative dot of Hashem, called the neshama. The Rishonim, who were a group of early commentators on the Talmud, wrote that a person's thoughts are more powerful than physicality. One of our early sages, Rabbenu Nissim (the RAN), says that if you can think of yourself in a certain place, then that's where you'll really be.
 
Coping with difficult situations
 
Going beyond our physical limitations in this way is a crucial component of kick-starting the creative process, and coming up with new ideas. But it's not just a strategy for Nobel prize winner- wannabes. It can also help each and every one of us to cope with the difficult or stressful situations that are part and parcel of everyone's life. For one person, it could help them to ace the important job interview that they have scheduled tomorrow; for someone else, it's going to help them deal with their fear of public speaking; yet another person could use this technique to cope with houseful of bored kids, or a driving test.
 
In each of these situations, we need to know how to maintain our emuna, confidence, and patience. The answer is very simple: imagine yourself in another place! At home, you might be hanging up the coats, and pouring the juice and serving the sandwiches, while the kids are rough-housing with each other and going crazy – but really, you are on a beautiful tropical island from your honeymoon; or you're recalling the time you were given an award, or mastered something difficult. In you're head, where it really counts, you're not at home with the Crazy Gang – you're in a situation of calm, collected, content confidence, a place where you felt secure and relaxed.
 
Dual-process thinking (accessing G-d)
 
All we have to do is to make the effort, and to be willing to go outside of ourselves and to ask for help, and then G-d leads us to the exact memory we need to regain and re-experience the exact emotional state we need to be successful in our current (hard…) situation. We can by here, and anywhere else, at exactly the same time. Psychologists call this 'dual process thinking' where we simultaneously think or do one thing, while thinking about something else. If I'm a basketball player, for example, and I'm playing for the championship, at the same time that I'm dribbling the ball down the court, or gearing up to shoot, I can be thinking about G-d. And if I have G-d in mind when I'm trying to slam-dunk, my thoughts are going to work together to enable me to be far more successful than otherwise. 
 
And this works for absolutely anything. Baking a cake, passing an exam, keeping your patience with your children or spouse, landing a big contract at work, undergoing a difficult ordeal – any time we access G-d at the same time that we're trying to achieve something else we're going to be much more successful, and we're going to solve our problems much faster and more efficiently.