A Lesson From the Torah: How to Make Meaningful Change in Your Life

James Clear, author of the global bestseller Atomic Habits, had an unusual pathway to his expertise in turning tiny daily actions into who you are. It began with a shocking accident while playing baseball in high school. A friend’s bat slipped out of his hands and landed in Clear’s face, breaking his nose, shattering his eye sockets, and crushing the bones in his face. The blow was so severe that it drove his brain against the inside of his skull, landing him in a medically induced coma.

When he eventually woke up, nothing was automatic anymore — not walking, not talking, not even the basic movements most of us take for granted. His recovery was a nightmare: months of painstaking repetition. The smallest actions had to be done over and over until he could manage them again. 

Clear learned the hard way that life changes in tiny increments: take one step, then another, until you can do it without thinking. Over time, those small, repeated actions restored his motor skills — and rewired his brain. Modern science calls it neuroplasticity. It became the foundation of Clear’s philosophy: extraordinary results are built, brick by tiny brick, on ordinary habits.

The science is fascinating. Somewhere deep in your brain, there’s a grumpy little troll whose job it is to resist change. Neuroscientists have given him a fancier name — the basal ganglia — but “grumpy little troll” feels more accurate. That grumpy troll likes routine. He likes patterns. And once you’ve been doing something long enough, he cements it in so tightly that changing it feels like trying to un-bake a cake. 

The good news is that if you repeat a good habit often enough, the troll eventually goes along with it and says, “Fine, I guess this is who we are now.” That’s why habit stacking works, and why things you do sporadically never take hold.

The thing about habits is that they’re not glamorous. They don’t announce themselves with fireworks or a brass band. They sneak in quietly, one small action at a time, until they’ve completely rewired your identity. 

Neuroscientists have the MRI scans to prove it: every time you repeat a behavior, you’re strengthening the neural pathway for it, turning what was once a shaky dirt track into a smooth, well-paved highway your brain can travel without effort. 

That’s why going for a run every morning eventually feels natural — and why eating ice cream straight from the tub at 11 p.m. can, unfortunately, also feel natural if you do it every night. The neural process doesn’t judge — it just reinforces whatever you practice most.

History is full of proof that collective habits can either build nations up or quietly steer them toward disaster. Take the British love affair with tea. What began in the 1600s as a pricey, exotic import became so entrenched in the national character that it shaped global trade routes, fueled colonial ambitions, and even had a role in the American Revolution. And all because the English love to drink a “cuppa” tea.

Consider Japan’s obsession with detail and perfection. Post–World War II, out of the ashes of defeat, Japan turned this national characteristic to its advantage, using it as the basis for meticulous quality control in manufacturing. Within a few decades, “Made in Japan” was all you needed to know about a product to trust that it was made with a gold standard of excellence.

Or think about America’s ingrained focus on individualism — a trait that wasn’t the natural state of being for the immigrants who built the nation, and certainly not the defining feature of the countries they came from. And yet, over time, that relentless belief in personal responsibility and self-reliance became a cornerstone of the American story, fueling its transformation into one of history’s greatest success stories.

Which brings me back to James Clear. Whether it’s tea in Britain, precision in Japan, or self-reliance in America, national habits are just the collective version of what happens to individuals. We all become what we repeatedly do. 

Clear’s own journey — from a no-hoper invalid to relearning how to walk to becoming a leading voice on self-improvement — proves that our identity is shaped one small, deliberate action at a time. Change the habit, and over time you change the person. The trick is starting small, repeating often, and letting those tiny wins quietly but determinedly redefine who you are.

And this is precisely the point Moses makes at the beginning of Parshat Eikev (Deut. 7:12): וְהָיָה עֵקֶב תִּשְׁמְעוּן אֵת הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים הָאֵלֶּה וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם וַעֲשִׂיתֶם אֹתָם – “And it shall be, if you surely listen to these laws, and keep them and do them, God will keep for you the covenant and the kindness that He swore to your forefathers.”

The word eikev is unusual — it literally means “heel.” Rashi explains that Moses used it deliberately, as a reference to the kind of mitzvot people might metaphorically “tread underfoot” — the ones they consider unimportant. 

Moses was saying: don’t ever make that mistake, because it’s exactly those seemingly small, everyday acts — the ones you’re tempted to skip because they don’t feel monumental — that are the most powerful in shaping who you are. Over time, they become the habits that define you, your values, and ultimately, your destiny.

Moses was giving the Jewish nation what might be history’s first recorded behavioral-science pep talk. He wasn’t just telling them to keep the commandments — he was telling them to keep keeping them. Over and over. Every day. Without fail. 

And not just the obvious, headline-grabbing commandments — the ones you want people to notice when you do them — but also the “minor” ones, the mitzvot nobody thinks are important. Moses understood something that modern psychologists and neurologists now confirm: greatness — whether personal, national, or spiritual — only comes from the accumulation of consistent, repeated actions.

Spiritual life — and a life of real faith — isn’t built on occasional bursts of inspiration. It’s built on habits. Daily prayer, honest business dealings, acts of kindness and charity, Shabbat observance — none of these are one-off acts of virtue. They’re patterns, repeated again and again, until they become part of who you are. 

And once they’re habits, they transform you from someone who sometimes does good things into someone who naturally, instinctively, always does the right thing. Because the road to greatness is never a sprint — it’s a long, steady, repetitive walk that will get you there in the end.

The author is a rabbi based in Beverly Hills, California.