I want to share something with you honestly, the way I'd share it if we were sitting together. When I started this community a few weeks ago, I had a vision for where it was heading. I still believe in that vision deeply. The ideas we've been exploring together, the Gap between what we know and how we live, the shift from survival mode to spirit mode, the Rebbe's insistence that the main thing is the deed... all of that is as true and as urgent to me today as it was when I posted the first word here. But I've come to realize that right now is not the right time for me to give this the full attention it deserves. Between everything on my plate, I don't have the bandwidth to run this program the way I'd want to run it, and I'm not willing to do it halfway. You deserve better than that. So I'm going to be pausing this community for now. That doesn't mean the ideas go away. It doesn't mean I won't come back to this. It means I'm being honest about where I actually am rather than where I wish I was. I want to thank every one of you for being here. Some of you reached out privately. Some of you engaged with the posts in ways that genuinely moved me. That kind of quiet sincerity is rare, and I noticed it. If anything from our time here made even a small dent in how you see yourself or how you move through your day, then it was worth every minute. I'll be closing the group in the next few days. If you'd like to stay in touch, you can always reach me at [email protected]. I mean that. Thank you for trusting me with your attention. It's not something I take lightly. Warmly, Rabbi Aryeh Weinstein

One thing I've noticed in almost every community I've been part of is that people talk about what they're learning, what they're reading, what ideas inspire them. And that's great. But almost nobody talks about the inner struggle. The stuff that happens between the moment something triggers you and the moment you respond. The patterns you keep falling into even though you know better. The quiet frustration of feeling like you're stuck in the same loops year after year. I think the reason nobody talks about it is because we assume we're the only ones. Everyone else seems to have it together. To be honest, this itself is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. We actually do know that no one else has it fully together. Yet we live as if other people do and only we don't. Again, that gap. So we keep it to ourselves and try harder, which usually just means white knuckling the same patterns until we burn out. One of the things I want this community to be is a place where that changes. Not group therapy. Not a venting session. A place where we can applaud each other when we have victories in these areas. I was about to lose it but I didn't. I wanted to say something but I bit my tongue. Those moments matter, and they deserve to be shared and celebrated. What's something you've struggled with internally that you suspect other people deal with too but rarely talk about?

Here's something I had to learn the hard way. I used to spend a lot of energy thinking about what the people around me needed to change. My spouse could be more this. My colleague should stop doing that. If only this situation were different, everything would be better. And then at some point it hit me: I was an expert on everyone else's growth and a complete amateur when it came to my own. It's one of the easiest traps to fall into because it feels productive. It feels like you're being thoughtful and caring. But really it's just a way of avoiding the harder question, which is: How am I showing up? Not how is everyone else showing up. How am I? That shift changed more in my life than any piece of advice I ever gave anyone else. Be honest: do you spend more time thinking about what the people around you should change, or what you should change?

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?

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.