Your Secret Best Friend

You have a best friend – and it’s not who you think.

In fact, you would never guess that THIS is your best friend.

You see, we have two wills – and they are at WAR with one another. They are battling to rule the kingdom of YOU.

The good urge, or the Yetzer Tov, comes from the G-dly soul. The purpose of the Yetzer Tov is to bring more good into the world.

The Not-Good urge, or Yetzer Hara comes from the animal soul, and its purpose is to test you and bring out your inner powers by trying to stop the good from actualizing.

The yetzer hara is very smart, in fact, just as smart as the very smartest part of you. It knows you inside-out and upside-down; knows all of your strengths and weaknesses, all of your dreams and desires.

You might think the yetzer hara is your worst enemy.

That’s partly true. It is definitely trying to stop you from achieving success.

But it’s also your best friend.

Your yetzer hara is your personal servant to help you master the worst parts of yourself and strengthen and develop the best parts of you.

The Yetzer Hara comes in many disguises. Sometimes the Yetzer Hara comes all dressed up as your best self. The Yetzer Hara says, "Oh, you are such a high and spiritual person, you will never be able to be as good as you ought to be. Why don't you just stay in bed today and stay out of trouble.”

The yetzer tov (the good will) and the yetzer hara (the not-good will) are always in a battle. The yetzer tov is much stronger than the yetzer hara. So why does the Good Urge ever lose?

Because it loses hope.

It loses trust and faith in G-d’s goodness.

It loses enthusiasm.

It gets depressed and finally, becomes inactive. When that happens, the Yetzer Hara can tie up the yetzer tov in a hundred knots. What are some of those knots?

"I'm not good enough."

"It’s too hard, I’m going to fail."

“I don’t want to, I'll do it tomorrow.”

“There’s too much to do.”

In our full course, "Create Your Joyfully Jewish Life," we examine 10 disguises of the Yetzer Hara. We learn how to recognize them and how to overcome the obstacles they create.

In this course, we'll dive deep into one of the most common disguises, The Overwhemster.

But first, in our next adventure, we'll take a quick look at all 10 disguises, so we can at least recognize them when they pop up.

Check out the video below to understand the Yetzer Hara even more.