I’m temporarily leaving my job on Tuesday to serve reserve duty (“miluim” in Hebrew) in the Israeli army for a few days. It’s always an honor to serve in the Israeli army, even in my limited role, and doing so usually reminds me of an important happiness lesson…

I made Aliyah at the age of 24, so I went through abbreviated basic training with older immigrants. A small group of us were tasked with learning how to drive tractors and bulldozers for rescue purposes (lifting up big pieces of a collapsed building to free civilians trapped underneath, etc.).

As part of this training under the auspices of The Home Front Command, we were required to get a special driver’s license to operate the heavy machinery. This meant passing a driving test and then a written theory test. Because I suffer from low self-esteem, I immediately started to panic.

I kept repeating, “I’m going to fail!” over and over. There was one particularly difficult test – we had to drive a tractor with a wagon attached to it in reverse, parking the wagon between some trash cans. After hitting the cans for what seemed like the millionth time, I called my girlfriend (now my wife) in tears. I felt like such an idiot and a failure.

It didn’t help matters that my Hebrew wasn’t great and theory lessons mostly went over my head. My lack of success confirmed my deeply entrenched beliefs about my worthlessness.

I kept obsessing about my impending failure, driving the other soldiers crazy. Finally my Brazilian friend, Eduardo, couldn’t take it anymore. “What will happen if you DO fail?” he asked.

“Will they throw you out of the army? As you know, there is mandatory service here in Israel. So they won’t throw you out. Worst case scenario: if you can’t pass, they’ll just find something else for you to do. Not the end of the world.”

I immediately knew he was correct. All that worrying for nothing. But my spiritual lesson wasn’t finished. Once I stopped stressing, I learned that it’s really difficult to permanently “fail” in the Israeli army.

I took the theory test in Hebrew and failed. I assumed I’d be thrown out of our course. Nope. It turned out that a lot of soldiers failed it (due to our shaky grasp of Hebrew). Those of us who failed were subsequently given a much easier oral test. I managed to pass that one and then the driving test, too. I later realized the Israeli army really wanted me to succeed, because it had already invested so much training time in me.

When you think about it, there’s not much point in obsessing about future failure.

1. Doing so only increases your stress and does nothing to help you succeed
2. Constantly repeating “I’m going to fail” takes up valuable time that could be used to succeed and creates a negative mindset that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy
3. Failing isn’t the end of the world. Everyone – including world leaders, inventors, Rabbis, etc. – fails on occasion. Believing in HaShem means doing one’s best and then trusting that things will work out the way they are supposed to.

It’s OK to fail. Ironically, that’s a lesson I learned in one of the world’s best armies.

Please pray for Uri Orbach (Uri Shraga ben Penina) a Knesset member who is very ill. He is a member of my shul and a real mensch who is liked and respected by everyone across the political spectrum.