Today is the yahrtzeit of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Here's what I want to share with you. Years ago I was going through a stretch where I was anxious about nearly everything. Work, family, finances, whether I was doing enough, whether I was enough. It wasn't dramatic from the outside. I was functioning fine. But inside I was running a constant loop of worry that never actually solved anything. During that time I came across a letter the Rebbe had written to someone in a very similar place. And instead of giving this person a long theological explanation, the Rebbe said something startlingly simple. He told them that worry itself was the problem. Not the situation. The worry. Because worry drains the exact energy you need to actually do something about the situation. It sounds almost too obvious. But when I sat with it, I realized I had never separated the two things. I thought worrying about a problem was the same as working on it. It isn't. Worrying is just suffering about something without moving. Action is what moves you forward. The Rebbe's approach was always the same. Don't sit in the heaviness. Do one thing. Give charity. Learn something. Help someone. Take a practical step. He clarified that action could reach places that thinking and worrying never could. That principle is baked into everything we do in this community. When you're stuck in your head, the answer is almost never to think harder. It's to do something. If this resonates, check out "How to Dispel Anxiety and Worry" in our classroom, where I teach one of the Rebbe's actual letters on this topic: https://www.skool.com/calmer/classroom/deace024?md=f78a8411f6b1453fa9cc6abdf947fde4 May the Rebbe's teachings continue to be a source of guidance and strength for all of us.

One more thought connected to the Rebbe's yahrtzeit before Shabbos. There's a teaching the Rebbe returned to again and again that I think is one of the most counterintuitive ideas in Jewish wisdom. He called it "tracht gut vet zain gut," which translates loosely to "think good and it will be good." When I first heard it, honestly, it sounded like positive thinking in a nice Yiddish wrapper. But the more I studied it, the more I realized it was something much deeper. The Rebbe wasn't saying to ignore reality or pretend everything is fine. He was saying that how you hold a situation in your mind actually affects what you're able to do with it. When you approach a challenge convinced it's going to crush you, you show up differently than when you approach it believing there's a way through. Not because the situation changed, but because you changed. Your clarity changes. Your courage changes. Your willingness to take the next step changes. I've watched this play out in my own life more times than I can count. The moments where I showed up with genuine confidence that things could work out, I made better decisions, I was calmer with the people around me, and I had more energy to actually do what needed to be done. The moments where I was convinced it was all falling apart, I usually made things worse. This isn't about faking optimism. It's about understanding that your inner posture shapes your outer reality more than most of us realize. If you want to go deeper on this one, I did a full class on it in the classroom: "Think Good, Celebrate Before the Miracle": https://www.skool.com/calmer/classroom/deace024?md=a54726cac5864781ad6aba7cc0718550 Have a beautiful Shabbos, everyone.

Tomorrow marks the yahrtzeit of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. I want to share something about why his teachings are so central to everything we're building in this community. I grew up around the Rebbe's influence. His letters, his talks, his way of guiding people. But it took me years to realize what made his approach so different from anything else I'd encountered. Most teachers I learned from gave me ideas to think about. The Rebbe gave people something to do. Not eventually. Not when you feel ready. Now. Today. Something small, something specific, something real. He didn't wait for people to figure themselves out before asking them to act. He understood that the acting itself is what changes you. There's a line that kept showing up in his letters that I've never been able to shake. He would tell people not to be overwhelmed by the size of the problem. Not because the problem wasn't real, but because the overwhelm itself was the thing stopping them from doing the one next thing they could do. I think about that constantly. How often do I let the size of what needs to change paralyze me from doing the one thing I could do right now? Tomorrow I'll share more about what this day means. But for today, I want to leave you with this: If you've never explored the Rebbe's writings, we have a full course of his letters right here in the classroom. A good place to start is "Conquering Self Before Conquering the World": https://www.skool.com/calmer/classroom/deace024?md=9b9061ebcf9943e1b8867d9a712b67eb What's one thing you've been putting off because the bigger picture feels too overwhelming?

If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing, it would be this: You don't need more knowledge. You need a way to practice what you already know. I spent years collecting insights. Books, classes, podcasts, conversations with people much wiser than me. And all of it was valuable. But none of it changed my daily life until I found a way to take what I already believed and actually make it part of how I showed up every day. The difference between people who grow and people who stay stuck isn't intelligence or willpower or access to the right teachings. It's consistency. It's having a simple practice and doing it even when you don't feel like it. That's what we're building here. Not another library of ideas. Something you can actually live. There are lots of very valuable truths that we all know. If we only integrated just a few of them into our lives, we would shift things significantly. What's one thing you've "known" for years but still haven't figured out how to consistently live?

A few years ago I was sitting at my desk after a full day of teaching and meetings, and a thought hit me that I couldn't shake. I had just given a class about patience. A really good one. People thanked me afterward. And then I got home and snapped at my kids within twenty minutes. It made me wonder, how is it possible that I genuinely believe something and still don't live it? What made it worse was that I started questioning my right to speak about such ideas when I felt like I was not authentic to them. Was I being a hypocrite? That question wouldn't leave me alone. It followed me for months. And eventually it became the foundation of everything we're building here. I don't think I'm the only one walking around with that question. I think most thoughtful people feel it and just don't talk about it. So let me ask you: Have you ever had a moment where you realized you weren't living something you deeply believe in? What was that like?