Inner strength is needed to succeed in everything in life.

But how do we build the strength we need?

Avot gives us high-impact tactics for this. And more than that, it offers a profound understanding of the nature of life itself that can give us the strength we need to overcome all the obstacles in our path.

Courage is usually defined against fear. In the parsha of Vayelech it is defined against weakness, which makes courage a matter of strength. And that turns an abstract virtue into a practical problem. Where does a person actually get strength?

The parsha sits at a moment of handover. The forty years in the desert are ending, and Moshe is giving way to Yehoshua. A people who have had everything provided for them are about to enter a land they will have to fight for and then run themselves. Two words carry the whole transition, stated three times here and repeated another four more at the opening of the book of Joshua. Chazak ve'ematz.

In our lives, the stakes are more ordinary rather than epic. We set out to build families, earn a living, become the people we want to be, and we meet resistance we did not expect. Resistance from other people, from circumstances, and from our own character.

Drawing on Pirkei Avot, the Malbim, Rashi and the Maharal, Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein works through the practical answers to dealing with fear and anxiety, and then deeper to what the Mishnah says about the nature of this world.

• If courage is the opposite of weakness rather than the opposite of fear, what have we been calling courage all this time?

• We are told to be strong. What use is that instruction to someone who does not feel strong?

• Which is harder to stand against, the people in your way or the parts of yourself that are?

• The soul, before it enters this world, meets no obstacles and no friction at all. Why is that not the better arrangement?

• What would change if the resistance in your life turned out to be the point of it?