Shmuley Boteach - 10 Conversations You Need to Have with Yourself: A Powerful Plan for Spiritual Growth and Self-Improvement

Contents

Also by Shmuley Boteach

10 Conversations You Need to Have with Your Children

Copyright 2011 by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. All rights reserved

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Boteach, Shmuley.

10 conversations you need to have with yourself : a powerful plan for spiritual growth and self-improvement / Shmuley Boteach.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-00386-2 (hardback); ISBN 978-1-118-09516-4 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-09517-1 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-09518-8 (ebk)

1. Self-talk. 2. Self-perception. 3. Conduct of life. 4. Communication in families. I. Title. II. Title: Ten conversations you need to have with yourself.

BF697.5.S47B675 2011

158.1dc23 2011021416

To two great men who have walked with me through a long and challenging path:

Michael Steinhardt, mega-philanthropist of Judaism and worthy causes globally, devoted friend, guide, and counselor, who serves as my wise inner voice, inspiring me to be a better, more devoted Jew and human being.

David Slager, student, disciple, teacher, supporter, and friend, whose humility, dedication, and ber-generosity to Jewish causes worldwide and to the teachings and work of our great Rebbe in particular, as well as to my own modest efforts, never cease to inspire or amaze.

Acknowledgments

I want to first thank my former publisher and dear friend Judith Regan for helping me craft the original idea for a 10 Conversations series. The first book was 10 Conversations You Need to Have with Your Children , which was launched on The Oprah Winfrey Show and continues to have a devoted following. This is probably because most of the book consists of wisdom I garnered from my wife and kids as Ive tried to accomplish lifes hardest and most meaningful task, raising good and decent children. True, my hair, even my beard, has begun to turn white in the process, but, boy, has it offered wisdom.

I came up with the idea for this book shortly thereafter. I have always tried to hearor is it quash?the murmurings of my own inner voice of conscience. Yet the book would never have been published had not Tom Miller of John Wiley & Sons endorsed the idea and helped me beat it into shape before I started writing. Tom is that unique editor with a luminous spirit whose rays you perceive on first meeting him. Unassuming, professional, authentic, and possessed of great depth, he looks for books with soulfulness that genuinely help the reader. In the process, he has made me a more focused author and a better man.

Brandon Proia did an outstanding job in helping me edit the overall book, organize my thoughts, and order them into chapters. The way I write is to first throw everything down on paperstream-of-consciousness stylein one huge amorphous blob. Having someone like Brandon who could then take it and break it into coherent chapters so that I could then rewrite the manuscript was invaluable to an ADD guy like me. Brandon is a fine young scholar and a gentleman with a huge future ahead of him. And please dont blame me for the ADD. I wasnt like this before I had nine kids. They are the guilty parties.

Jason Kitchen has been my assistant and colleague for many years now. And his reward? His hair has now fallen out along with his teeth, and he regrets the day he was born. But for all that, he has never abandoned me, and I am grateful to him for being such a true and loyal friend and a highly developed human being.

Speaking of my kids, Mushki, Chana, Shterny, Mendy, Shaina, Rochel Leah, Yosef, Dovid Chaim, and Cheftzibawhew, let me catch my breaththank you for interrupting me on every occasion when I tried to get some peace and quiet in order to write. Because of you, I have become a vampire, writing through most of the night and waking up with bags under my eyes like Ted Koppel. But you are all the light of my life and my greatest blessing. And you have also provided outstanding material for all of my books. So you end up helping me support you, in a weird kind of way, which I greatly appreciate.

My parents, Yoav Botach and Eleanor Paul, have given me and my brothers and sisters life and love. I witnessed my parents always try to do the righteous and moral thing, and they helped me discern the earliest sound of my own moral conscience. I am forever grateful. (I am, however, wondering where that sound has since gone.)

My siblings, Sara, Bar Kochva and his wife, Iris, Chaim, and Ateret are my best friends and are also those who gave me wedgies and beat me to a pulp when I was a child. Being the youngest can really suck. But thank you for allowing me, as a child, to discover my inner voice of self-pity.

My long-suffering wife, Debbie, is a woman of extraordinary selflessness, wisdom, beauty, and grace. She is the voice of my better self. She wants me to lead a calmer, more tranquil life in which I find contentment and satisfaction. Fair enoughbut it probably aint gonna happen. You married a man with a cavernous hole at his center. Due to your inspiration, however, I always try to fill it with good things, while consciously acknowledging that I will never be as good a person as you. Hows that for an excuse? Every book I write is as much yours as it is mine. And if the book sinks like lead in the marketplace, then its much more yours than mine.

Finally, to the Creator of heaven and earth, God Almighty, what can I say? Do I deserve all of the blessings Youve given me, Lord? A wife who loves me? Nine healthy children, thank God? Enough food for all to eat? A meaningful calling that I can pursue that endows my life with purpose? Im not sure, but probably not. Which makes it a free gift due to Your grace, Lord, for which I am forever grateful. I hope to always use Your blessings to spread Your glory and truth here on earth. May I always be worthy of Your comforting, guiding presence.