Taking responsibility is the beginning of success.

Shlomo Hamelech teaches us in Mishlei (3,12) that Hashem rebuked those who He loves as a means to motivate them to improve themselves .

Hashem created the world in a manner that when we do the mitzvos and we follow the Torah’s instructions for how to live a moral and ethical life, we will be doing the right thing, we will be developing ourselves into being the best people, and we will receive the greatest rewards in This World and in the Next World as well. However, Hashem also gave us many temptations that pull us away from doing the right thing. We are constantly tempted to pursue pleasure, comfort, and fame and to prioritize these matters even at the expense of our morality and our mitzva observance.

Hashem gives us a sechel and He gave us the Torah to teach us to recognize the necessity to prioritize our responsibilities over our passions. When we don’t pay enough attention to our sechel and to the Torah, Hashem sends us a different form of a reminder. He brings about different hardships in our life with the intention of causing us to pay attention to the fact that Hashem wants us to change our ways and to return to Him. It is in our best interest to recognize that Hashem, in His love is sending us a message that we are responsible to change our and that it is in our best interest to change.

In Parshas Bechukosai, Hashem tells us (26,16) that when we follow the Torah and we act properly, we will receive the greatest blessings, but when we don’t follow the Torah and act properly, then Hashem will hold us accountable. We are warned that we will face many types of hardship such as poverty and sickness, and Hashem will give our enemies the upper hand against us in war. The expectation (26,21) is that we will recognize that the hardships that we face were brought about by Hashem to encourage us to improve our ways. Hashem is telling us that we have not been acting appropriately and we need to change. When we recognize this, we will realize that it is in our best interest to prioritize our mitzva observance over our pursuit of pleasure. When we will improve our mitzva observance we will be doing the right thing and Hashem will remove our hardships.

However, the Torah tells us (26,14) that there will be many times when we will not take responsibility for our sins, and we will attribute our hardships to other causes. We won’t admit that Hashem is bringing these hardships upon us as a result of our sins, and we will be stubborn and continue in our sinful ways. The Torah tells us that this process will continue; Hashem will actually increase the severity of the hardship upon us to give us more of a motivation to change. Sometimes the extra hardship will help us recognize the importance of changing our ways. However, unfortunately there are times when we will remain stubborn and despite the increased pressure, we will retain our sinful ways.

It is important for us to recognize that Hashem loves us and Hashem would ideally be happy for all of us to only experience blessings throughout our lives. Therefore any time that we are experiencing hardship, we need to ask ourselves why Hashem is giving us this hardship. He must be teaching us an important message.

When we listen to Hashem’s message, and we recognize that it is in our best interest to change, we will begin to make the necessary changes.

There are generally 3 different reasons why we don’t change despite the fact that Hashem is telling us that we need to:

1)We often don’t even know that there is a message that is being sent. Many people are not taught to understand that all hardship that Hashem brings to our lives is a message from Hashem. We need to recognize that Hashem controls everything in this world and our hardship is brought by Hashem. We shouldn’t blame it on nature or on the evils of other people. They are merely the messengers of Hashem.

2)We don’t want to hear the message because we don’t want to hear that we have been doing something wrong. As a result, we interpret our difficulties to be based on other reasons.

3)We don’t want to change. We don’t want to give up on the conveniences, pleasures, and comforts that we enjoy. We don’t want to hear that we may need to give up on what we are used to.

However, just as when someone is sick or if someone’s business has a structural flaw to it, if they ignore the sickness or the flaw it just gets worse. So too, if we ignore our spiritual flaws, they don’t go away on their own. They generally get worse over time. Only through taking responsibility for our behavior will we be able to make the improvements that we need to make in our spiritual growth.

David Hamelech teaches us in Tehillim (126,5) that “Those who plant with tears will reap with song”. When we invest in our spiritual growth we will sing with joy when we see the benefits.