Would you like to change but don’t know how? Lose weight, become more spiritual, exercise regularly, eat healthier, be more patient — but you feel stuck?
We sometimes look at our lives, our habits, our struggles, and we wonder: Maybe this is just who I am. Maybe this is my lane, my limit, my lot. And I better get comfortable with it. We scroll through headlines of war, division, and disruption, and it reinforces the feeling that so much is out of our control.
Is everything bashert, preordained, already written, or can I still blaze my own trail? Am I living a script — or writing one? Maybe this is just how my life is meant to be? I’ve caught myself thinking that exact thought about my own exercise regimen — or lack thereof. That maybe this is just who I am. That maybe change is for other people, not for me.
It is not just a theological question. It is deeply personal. It is the question of whether we are fixed or flexible, stuck or still becoming.
Into that tension walks the unlikely Rabbi Akiva, one of the biggest surprises our People have encountered, 2,000 years ago. At 40 years old, he could not read a single word. He was a shepherd with no education, no pedigree, and no promise.
In fact, he once admitted that he resented Torah scholars so deeply that he wanted to bite them like a donkey. And yet, this same man becomes the sage whose teachings shape Jewish law, the one whom Moses himself is said to have marveled at. From ignoramus to icon. From shepherd to shaper of destiny.
So what changed?
Pirkei Avos, Ethics of the Fathers (3:15), records Rabbi Akiva’s famous words: “Everything is foreseen, yet permission is given … and everything depends on the majority of one’s actions.” In simple language: Yes, life has a script, but you still hold the pen. You are given a starting point, but you are not sentenced to an ending.
The real question is not can you change. The real question is how.
Rabbi Akiva discovered a truth that modern science is only now catching up to. Mountains are not moved by explosions. They are shaped by drops of water that never give up. What inspired him was not a miracle, but a moment. He saw water dripping onto stone, slowly carving a hole. No drama, just drip after drip. And he realized, if water can penetrate stone, Torah can penetrate my heart.
Greatness is not a lightning strike. It is a sunrise. Slow, steady, and unstoppable.
Today, psychologists call it habit formation. Neuroscientists explain that repetition builds neural pathways. What you do repeatedly becomes who you are automatically. You don’t force change, you become it. The popular 60-second fix movement echoes this idea. Start ridiculously small. One pushup instead of a full workout. One minute of learning instead of an hour. One act of kindness instead of changing your entire personality. The goal is to remove resistance.
Because your future is not waiting for one big moment. It is being built in the small choices you repeat when no one is watching.
James Clear, in Atomic Habits, gives a striking example. A plane leaving Los Angeles, if shifted just 3.5 degrees, will land not in New York but in Washington, DC. A tiny adjustment, barely noticeable at takeoff, leads to a completely different destination. Change your habits by inches and you will change your destiny by miles.
You don’t need a new life. You need a new pattern.
This is why Judaism emphasizes consistency over intensity. Better to put on tefillin, the daily prayer ritual, every single day for a few minutes, than to show up once a year on the High Holy Days and disappear. Better to give a small coin to charity every day than to make one grand donation and call it a year. Every small step you take is a vote for the person you are becoming.
I once heard a powerful story about a young man named Nochum Markowitz who came to the Rebbe feeling completely uninspired. He had no passion for learning Torah, no direction, no drive. The Rebbe gave him surprising advice.
Learn Torah for five minutes a day, no more. Not an hour, not a program, just five minutes. And slowly increase. The Rebbe explained that a Jew draws blessing from G-d through the Torah he studies. The more consistent the connection, the more abundant the flow.
Those five minutes became sacred. They became his anchor, his identity, his turning point. Because the strongest steel is not made in one blast of fire. It is forged through repeated heat, pressure, and patience.
Even in the secular world we see this pattern. Elon Musk faced failure after failure before building companies that changed industries. Sergey Brin came to America as a refugee, escaping antisemitism, and built Google from scratch as he obsessively refined search algorithms over time. These are not stories of overnight success. They are stories of obsessive persistence, of showing up again and again, of small steps stacking into massive shifts.
The river does not break the rock because it is powerful. It breaks it because it is persistent.
There is a beautiful image in Jewish prayer. When we stand in the silent Amidah prayer, we keep our feet together. Why? Because angels are described as having one straight leg, symbolizing that they are fixed, unchanging, programmed. Humans, however, have two legs. We can walk, we can move, we can grow.
When we pray, we bring our feet together to resemble angels, but only temporarily. Because the truth is, our greatness is not in being fixed. It is in being able to move. Angels don’t struggle. They don’t grow. They don’t fall and get back up. But you do. That’s your power.
G-d did not design you for overnight transformation. He designed you for daily becoming.
So is everything bashert? Yes. Your starting point is. Your circumstances are. Your challenges are. But who you become? That is built. Step by step. Choice by choice. Day by day. Not in one leap. Not in one decision. But in one small step… and then another… and then another.
You are not stuck. You are simply unfinished. And every small step you take is proof that your story isn’t over yet. And now — I’d better do that pushup!
Rabbi Dovid Vigler is the spiritual leader at Chabad of Palm Beach Gardens, with over 85,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel, youtube.com/jewishgardens. Email him at [email protected].
