On the way to my office yesterday, I inadvertently saw an indecent picture. The image lodged in my mind and I struggled with the effects all day. After lunch, I even had trouble concentrating on Birkat Hamazon.
I realized that for all my good intentions, I hadn't planned well enough to offset that particular risk. So I took a few minutes after I made my nightly 'spiritual accounting' to think about how I could have avoided it. I like to keep improving the strategies. It's like a chess game - the more I think about my next move, the better it will be.
Trying to come up with an effective strategy for avoiding pictures, I reviewed several pages of my spiritual log. I discovered that pictures are relatively rare challenges for me, but that I have a far more frequent pattern of failure right in my office building. That crowded elevator is still a problem.
So I came up with a plan. In the elevator tomorrow, I'll try to position myself behind a man and keep my eyes downward until I get to my floor, or maybe take the stairs.
When I think of this strategizing in the same light as a business plan, I'm more alert to the daily changes. A few weeks ago, my company hired a new receptionist who doesn't dress professionally. I need to come up with a plan for coping with that new circumstance.
These e-mails are excerpts taken from the book "Windows of the Soul" by Rabbi Zvi Miller of the Salant Foundation.