Digging Your Own Well: Lessons from Parshat Toldot
Parshat Toldot, has an interesting story that often gets overlooked.
There is a famine and so Yitzchak packs up his family and heads to Gerar.
He’s trying to survive, settle, and figure out where he can build a life.
And here’s the part people forget.
Avraham had already dug wells in this area.
Good ones.
Functional ones.
Wells that made life possible.
But after Avraham died, the Plishtim stopped them up.
They literally filled them with dirt.
So Yitzchak gets to Gerar and does the obvious thing. He reopens his father’s wells.
He even calls them by the same names.
He’s trying to restore what was already working.
Make things simple.
Return to something familiar.
But it doesn’t hold.
So he moves onto a different spot.
His servants dig the first new well.
Avimelech’s shepherds fight with them so they move on to dig a second well.
Same story.
Same arguments.
Same headaches.
So they move, again.
You can picture it:
Everyone is tired.
Everyone is annoyed.
They’re thinking, “Here we go again.”
Then something important happens.
The pronouns change.
Up until now the Torah says: “they dug.” Suddenly it switches to “he dug.”
Yitzchak digs the third well himself.
No delegation.
No distance.
He picks up the shovel.
This time there’s no fight.
He names the well Rehovot, meaning wide open space.
Room to breathe.
Room to grow.
He says, “Gd has given us space and we’ll be fruitful in the land.”
The Haamek Davar explains that this well succeeds because Yitzchak did the work with his own hands.
And honestly, I saw the exact same pattern this week.
A woman came to a Tidy Together trial.
She did great even though she had to leave early.
Afterward she said, “I need to see if this format works for me. I prefer when someone works with me.”
Here’s what I told her:
When I used to go into people’s homes, we’d finish a room, move to the next, finish that one, and keep going over the course of a few sessions. By the way, those sessions were 4 hours long and cost $700 each time.
A few weeks later I’d come back and we’d have to take a second pass on every space.
People couldn’t keep the progress because I had done the hard part. The systems weren’t theirs.
Tidy Together works because I support you while you do the work.
I hold the time.
I guide you.
I keep you accountable.
You’re not alone.
But the sorting and the deciding are yours, and the investment is a fraction of what in-home work costs, both financially and time wise.
That’s where the shift happens.
When you fold your own shirts, you stop trying to force fifty shirts into a drawer.
You realize you only wear ten, and ten are easy to keep neat.
Doing it yourself rewires your brain.
It builds capability.
It builds confidence.
It creates the space and expansion you want.
Yitzchak only achieved success once he picked up the shovel himself.
He couldn’t build a life off the back of Avraham’s work or his team’s work.
The blessing showed up when he stepped in and owned the process.
You’ll reach yours the same way.
If you want support while you dig your own well, try Tidy Together for $1 or join Journey to Organization and jump right in.
And if your problem isn’t with the physical things in your life, but maybe you just don’t know how to reach your goals – hit reply to this email and let me know – I’ll save you a space in the accelerator and when registration opens up, I’ll send you a discount code.
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