Chapter Four — Choice and Change — Forty Days of Awareness

In the previous chapter we spoke about the shells of darkness that enter our emotional world, and about the way hurts and experiences from the past may influence our behavior even years later.

But what happens when we manage to identify this influence?

Is the understanding itself enough to change our behavior?

I think awareness is only the beginning.

We can understand why we are angry, why we are hurt, or why we respond impatiently, and still go on behaving in exactly the same way.

Because over the years our responses become habits.

We no longer always stop to think before we respond. Someone says something, and we are immediately angry. Someone behaves in a way we do not like, and we immediately lose patience.

Sometimes only after the event ends do we think about what we said, about the way we responded, and about what we would have liked to do differently.

In my theory, I imagine these behaviors as waves that return again and again inside our inner sea.

And in order to change their movement, we must begin to create a different movement.

That is why I propose to ourselves a practice of forty days.

For forty days we will choose one behavior that we want to change, and try to respond consciously in the opposite way to the one we have grown used to.

If we are used to insulting others when we are angry, we will try to stop, and instead of insulting, say something good.

If we are impatient, we will practice patience.

If we are used to responding with shouts, we will try to speak quietly.

And if we have grown used to seeing the negative side in everything, we will try to look each day for something that gladdens us as well.

I call this a change of one hundred and eighty degrees.

Not because we need to become a different person, but because we want to stop acting automatically out of a habit that does not benefit us.

I want you to imagine the inner sea again.

For years the waves moved in a certain direction. Every time an event occurred that recalled an old hurt, they returned to move in that same direction.

Now we begin to create a new movement.

At first it may feel unnatural.

A person who grew used to anger will not necessarily succeed in staying calm already on the first day.

A person who grew used to being hurt by every remark will not stop being hurt just because he decided to do so.

But every time we manage to stop and choose a different response, we practice a new way of behaving.

I want you to think of a person who says to himself again and again: "I am simply a nervous person. That's how I was born."

Perhaps he no longer tries to change, because he believes the anger is an inseparable part of him.

But what will happen if for forty days he begins to pay attention to every moment in which anger arises?

Instead of responding immediately, he will stop.

Breathe.

And ask himself if he truly wants to respond as he has always responded.

Sometimes he will succeed, and sometimes not.

But the very attempt allows him to distinguish between the emotion he feels and the behavior he chooses.

The same is true for a person who is easily hurt.

He hears a remark and immediately feels that someone is treating him with contempt.

Instead of assuming that the person facing him intended to hurt him, he can stop and check whether that really was the intention.

And if indeed hurtful words were said to him, he can still choose how to respond.

He does not have to return hurt for hurt.

He also does not have to agree with the things, or allow them to keep hurting him.

He can set a boundary, move away, or say quietly that the things are not acceptable to him.

This way he protects himself without allowing the hurt to change his behavior.

In my theory, I imagine that every time we choose a new response, we slightly reduce the influence of the old shells of darkness.

Not because the past is erased, but because we stop letting it determine how we behave today.

And why forty days, of all numbers?

I choose this period as a framework for daily practice. Not as a promise that at the end of forty days every habit will disappear, but as a time in which we can observe ourselves and try to create change.

It is possible to start with only one behavior.

There is no need to try to change everything at once.

Every morning we will remind ourselves what we chose to practice, and during the day we will try to pay attention to the moments in which the old habit returns.

At the end of the day we can ask ourselves:

Did I succeed today in stopping before I responded?

Was there an opportunity in which I chose to behave differently?

And what would I like to do differently tomorrow?

Even if we did not succeed, we can continue the next day.

The goal is not to be perfect.

The goal is to be aware.

I believe that the more we learn to know our responses, the better we can choose which of them we want to keep and which we want to change.

We do not have to go on carrying the behaviors that developed following hurts we experienced.

We can learn to be more patient, calmer, and truer to ourselves.

And now I want you to return once more to your inner sea.

Imagine the waves that grew used to moving in a storm.

Every time you choose not to respond out of anger, not to return an insult, and not to allow an old hurt to direct you, imagine how the movement in the water changes slightly.

Not all at once.

Not in one day.

But gradually.

Because change begins at the moment we understand that not every response we have grown used to must go on being part of us.

And in the next chapter we will move from the emotional influences to the physical body, and examine the shells of darkness that may reach us through the food, the air and the substances we bring into our body.

© 2026 Nurit Rozenblat. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed without the author's prior written permission.