A small detail in the creation story is easy to read right past. After each stage of creation, the text pauses. God looks at what was just made and evaluates it. “It was good.” On the third day, the work is checked twice. By the sixth day, after humanity enters the picture, the verdict is upgraded: “It was very good.”

I’ve always found that pause as fascinating as the creating itself. Creation, in this telling, isn’t one long unbroken act followed by a victory lap. It’s a series of stages, each one stopped, looked at honestly, and only then built upon. Even in the biblical imagination, making something worthwhile seems to require regularly putting down the tools and asking, “How is this actually going?”

That question lands a little differently as we move into Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur. On the Days of Awe we are asked to do something remarkably similar: Stop, look honestly at the year we’ve just lived, and evaluate it. Not to punish ourselves, but to move into the next year with our eyes open. This same instinct—structured, honest self-evaluation—is also one of the most useful tools I have used in career coaching. It’s called a personal SWOT analysis, and once you’ve seen it, you start noticing how naturally it fits this time of year.

A Business Tool That Happens to Suit the Season SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Companies use it to plan strategically, but it works just as well when pointed at a single life. The idea is simple: Strengths and weaknesses live inside you—these are your traits, habits, and skills. Opportunities and threats live outside you, in the environment you operate in.

Strengths are the things you do well, often without noticing: You make friends easily, you keep your cool when others don’t, you can explain complicated things in simple terms. If people keep........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)