Cognitive Dissonance: My Own OTD story

I’ve had experience, as I’m sure everyone has on some level, with being very into things that are not good for you. I felt like this was me, I’m just into this and that’s that. I can work on other things, but THIS – whatever I guess I’m just weird and I’m going to have to live with it because it’s so a part of who I am that I don’t even know how to start getting rid of it.

So, I worked on other things. And it’s really weird, because as I was growing in other areas, though they were completely unrelated, this thing that I was into started not to grab me so much anymore. Once in a while it still does, but it’s nothing like before. I’m not getting into details because I feel this applies to the smallest things as well as the biggest things. It’s crazy how much kedusha has the power to ward off tumma. From the smallest tumma to I’m sure the biggest as well. It’s all the same in the end. Again, I am not saying that my yetzer hara for what I was into doesn’t enegergetically come back to me sometimes – maybe at some point it’ll even go away completely, but maybe it won’t.

Either way, it doesn’t make sense to me how working on other things in turn helped me with that. It doesn’t. But what I’ve learned from this is that harmful things that seem so a part of you and your personality can really go away or at least greatly lessen in strength. Really, don’t be afraid and don’t look at it as hopeless. Every flaw you have MUST be manageable, there has to be a way around it, a way to get rid of it for the most part. My advice to you is really try filling yourself with good, slowly with tiny bits of spirituality, with small mitzvos that your yetzer hara won’t be fighting you to the death for. Do a million small things, and that’s a million small steps to helping yourself get to where you want to be. That sounds so corny it hurts, but there it is, it’s true. Good luck.