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o day on the Jewish calendar possesses the power of Yom Kippur to dramatically change our lives. As the Rambam describes in Hilchos Teshuvah yesterday we were cut off and alienated from Hashem and unworthy in His sight. Yet today after the spiritual cleansing of Yom Kippur we feel ourselves to be once again beloved in His eyes.

The power of the day is from our perspective nothing short of miraculous — something beyond human understanding in our four-dimensional world of time and space. Chazal tell us that the power of teshuvah is such that even our past sins can be transformed retroactively into mitzvos if they are used to propel us toward a closer relationship with Hashem.

Yet before the transformative power of the day can be fully realized we must believe in our capacity to change and grow. The biggest challenge that many of us experience while reciting our individual vidui is the knowledge that our confessions of past aveiros and our promises not to repeat them are rarely being uttered for the first time. And that causes us to doubt our ability to change.

HOPE OR OPTIMISM is a major subject of Angela Lee Duckworth’s Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Duckworth brings a great deal of scientific evidence for the proposition that sustained hard work hasmadah is often as important or more so than innate talent to success in any given endeavor. She identifies fours factors that encourage grit — the willingness to keep working at a task or toward a goal even when attainment is neither easy nor guaranteed.

The four crucial components of devoting oneself to attaining a goal are: Interest in the task at hand; the willingness to practice to develop skills in a disciplined fashion; belief in the purpose of what one is doing; and finally hope or optimism about one’s ability to get better at what one is doing.

In at least one of these chapter-headings Torah Jews have an immense advantage — i.e. purpose. It is fundamental to us that Hashem not only created the world with a purpose and to reach a certain goal but that each and every one of us was also brought into existence for a specific mission. While not everything we do is a fulfillment of that mission we do not doubt that we have such a mission. Indeed contemplation of what that mission is forms a major part of our preparation for Rosh Hashanah when we pray for the renewal of our mission for another year.

Hope defined as confidence in our ability to affect our future by our own efforts is another component of grit I will argue where being a Torah Jew helps. One of the best ways to measure hope or optimism is how one reacts to setbacks and failures. Duckworth begins her chapter on Hope with an old Japanese adage — Fall seven rise eight — a variant of the verse “Ki sheva yipol tzaddik v’kam — the tzaddik falls seven times and gets up” (Mishlei 24:16).

The optimistic person tends to view setbacks as the result of specific and temporary causes; the pessimist as the result of permanent and pervasive causes. When confronted with setbacks the first question that the optimist asks is: What can I learn from this?

Optimism breeds an activist approach to life; its opposite a certain fatalism. The common theme running through author Theodore Dalrymple’s descriptions of the underclass from his vantage point as a prison psychiatrist is the ubiquitous view among the prisoners that life is something that just happens to one and over which one has no control.

Optimists not surprisingly get better grades do better at work and express higher levels of marital satisfaction. As Henry Ford put it “Whether you think you can or think you can’t — you’re right.” Many years ago when my rosh yeshivah had successfully collected the large sums needed for a new building I remarked to him that his rebbetzin had been very pessimistic about his ability to do so. His reply echoed Ford: “She tends to be pessimistic; I tend to be optimistic. And over the years I’ve found the optimistic view is more often correct.”

BUT WHAT CAN WE DO TO FOSTER OPTIMISM and hope in our children? Duckworth identifies beliefs about the malleability of traits as one key. Does one think of intelligence as pretty much fixed at birth – a static mindset – or does one have a growth mindset that one can become more intelligent through hard work? (In fact IQ scores can often change significantly over a lifetime.)

The Torah tends toward a growth mindset. One of the reasons that all forms of foretelling are forbidden is not that they are never accurate but rather that they are all based on extrapolating from the present to the future. And a Jew should never assume that he will remain the same tomorrow as he is today. The Ramban writes in the introduction to his Milchemes Hashem that there are no perfect proofs in Talmudic learning. Rav Yitzchok Hutner (Pachad Yitzchok Chanukah 9) explains that it is because learning itself changes the world; it is the study of a world in a state of flux. In geometry there can be perfect proofs because it deals with a world in stasis. The world of the Jew is one of constant potential for expansion and growth.

For nearly 40 years psychologist Carol Dweck has been studying how the messages conveyed to children promote either a growth or a static mindset. If children are consistently praised for their natural abilities or talents they will come to think of intelligence as something fixed. And when they don’t succeed their automatic reaction will be that they were not really as bright as advertised. As a consequence they are reluctant to test their limits or face challenges.

Those however who are praised for their effort will not be as easily flustered by setbacks. Having been told that the brain is a muscle that gets stronger with use they are more likely to keep trying.

Dweck’s findings fly in the face of the “self-esteem” movement of the past five decades which posited that building self-esteem holds the key to success. In one experiment Dweck divided a number of children into two groups. Children in the first group were praised for doing well at the end of every set of math problems. The second group occasionally received less affirming messages such as “You should have solved more problems ” or “You should have tried harder.”

Then she gave each group a set of both difficult and easy math problems. The group that received only praise gave up as easily as before on difficult problems. Those in the second group however tried harder when encountering difficult problems. From these results Dweck derived that it was not past failures that took away kids’ determination and motivation. Rather it was the way they interpreted those failures. Those who concluded that failure derived from just not being smart despite all the subsequent praise heaped upon them showed little grit; those who received the message that failure was often the result of a lack of effort tried harder.

Of course verbal messages are not enough. Even more crucial are early experiences of control. Over 40 years ago Martin Seligman generally viewed as the “father” of positive psychology and Steve Maier did a series of experiments on dogs. One group was administered five-second electric shocks on their back paws at random intervals. By pushing their muzzles against a panel at the front of their cages however they could bring the shocks to an end before the five-second mark. The second group of dogs could not stop the shocks.

The next day both groups were put in a cage in which they received shocks but there was a barrier that they could climb over to get out of the cage and away from the shocks. Those dogs that had been able to exercise control over the length of their shocks the previous day almost all climbed out of the cage. But two-thirds of those who had not been able to control the electrical charges the previous day did not find the solution. Rather they just whimpered helplessly in response to the shocks.

Over 40 years later Maier ran a similar experiment with five-week-old rats. Even when retested as mature adults and subjected to shocks those rats that had experienced control at a young age were apparently inoculated against “learned helplessness” as adults.

Perhaps that is why Outward Bound programs that force teenagers to test themselves alone in isolated outdoors environments have had such a life-changing impact on many teens including dramatic increases in confidence independence assertiveness and most crucially the belief in their control of their destiny. And why modern helicopter parenting has created such helpless and frightened teens.

THE TORAH OFFERS ONE ADDITIONAL MESSAGE of immense importance for how we interpret negative events or setbacks. That message is: G-d loves us. Everything that happens to us is a message from Him to help us realize our personal mission in Creation. He does not seek to afflict us but rather to extract our full potential and to help us grow into the role for which we were created.

In the context of Hashem’s love we can be sure that our setbacks or failures are not a reflection of our status as lacking the “right stuff.” Rather they are occasions to learn from our mistakes and for obstacles to be overcome so that we can reach our full potential. We were born with the resources to realize our specific mission if we just make the requisite effort.

When we adopt that growth mindset and the confidence in our ability to change we are fully prepared for the transformative powers of Yom Kippur.