And the second is merely an aspect of the first.
The first is as Rav Avigdor Miller emphasized in his Rosh Hashanah shuirim:
Rosh Hashanah is the time to focus on & internalized EIN OD MILVADO — THERE IS NOTHING IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE EXCEPT HASHEM.
Internalizing this all-important emuna is the intrinsic focus of Rosh Hashanah.
If you do nothing else Rosh Hashanah, you must at least do that.
Rebbetzin Batsheva Kanievsky used to recommend that people say "Ein od milvado" with all the heartfelt kavanah they could muster as a segula for being saved from whatever troubles they suffered.
From Rav Chaim Volozhin's book, Nefesh Hachaim:
When a person determines in his heart to say that Hashem surely is the True God, and there is none other than Him Yitbarach, no power in the world and in any of the worlds at all, and all is filled only with His Simple Oneness Yitbarach Shemo, and nullifies within his heart complete nullification that he [the person] doesn't supervise at all any power and will in the world, and subserviates and cleaves the purity of his thought only to the Unique Master Blessed be He — then He Yitbarach will satisfy his hand and will automatically nullify from upon him [the person] all the powers and wills that exist in the world, so they cannot do anything at all to him.
And everything that he [the person] decrees will be fulfilled for him, to activate matters and wondrous miracles in contradiction to the natural order...
(This siddur is also from where I copied the above passage from Nefesh Hachaim. Any mistakes in translation are mine.)
This brings us to Vital Ideal #2...
Stay Sweet When Things Have Soured! A True Story
The rav wore pure white garments in honor of the special day.
A candelabra lit in honor of the chag stood on the table.
Everything was set up according to his profound knowledge of holy standards.
The rabbanit was just bringing out a whole tray of fish to start the main meal when someone bumped the table in a way that overturned the lights, plunging the entire room into darkness.
(In our times, it's hard for us to imagine the depth of darkness without electric lights in the home and without electric streetlights along the road outside.)
The rabbanit could not see where she was going or where to put the heavy unwieldy tray, plus the sudden turn of events startled her, and the tray slipped from her hands, plunging all the specially prepared fish to the ground.
The rav rose to assist and fix the problem, but he slipped in the all the fish jelly and sauces, falling smack to the ground, which soiled his special white garments.
You can imagine what this all meant, and how hard it is to get the fish smell out of things and how bad fish smells when it hangs around for too long.
Furthermore, I don't know whether the Petiyahs had indoor plumbing.
And were they still in Baghdad or had they already arrived in Eretz Yisrael?
It doesn't say, but the clean-up of both the floor and the rav using pump-water must have been difficult, particularly in the dark (though they likely had some light from the stove).
Rosh Hashanah is 2 days and that meant that the rav likely had no more special white garments for the rest of the chag. Not to mention the loss of the fish...
Yet Rav Yehudah Petiyah did not get angry.
He experienced success with everything he attempted. He found increased success in his Torah, producing new & wonderful chiddushim.
And he traced back all that success to not getting angry over the disaster of that first night of Rosh Hashanah.
The REAL Segula for a Sweet Year — And It's Not the Apples Dipped in Honey...It's YOU.
He emphasizes that the most powerful segulah on Rosh Hashanah for having a sweet year is...BE A YEHUDI MATOK — BE A SWEET JEW.
If we turn around Rav Petiyah's situation, we see that in Heaven, he already had a sweet year decreed for him...he just needed to earn it.
And the way he was meant to earn it was by having someone knock over his Rosh Hashanah lights, ruin his fish, fall down (which must have hurt at least a little), and get soaked in a big fishy mess that ruined his special white garments -- all without getting angry.
And that could be the dynamic for any of us.
I've noticed that Hashem gives us our final chances to get things right during Sukkot, before the din is decided in its finality. Lots of challenges still pop up throughout this time.
The main thing is to resist getting angry about them. (And here, I'm writing this for myself as much as for anyone else.)
They're from Hashem & possibly the key to giving you a wonderfully sweet year.
So to sum it all up:
- Do everything you can to internalize the idea that there is nothing other than Hashem.
- Don't get angry no matter what.
May we all be sweet Jews who merit a very sweet year!