Whether a person succeeds or not depends on his perception of the way things are, the way people see him, the way he sees himself. And that perception is far stronger than reality. In my case I perceived myself as a failure in the United States and I perceived myself as being a success in Israel. Granted, if I would go through my entire life I had ups and downs, as anybody does, and I had ups and downs in both countries. However, I was not able to accept the downs in the United States and I glossed over the downs in Israel and considered the ups rather than the downs. As a result I saw myself as being a success in Israel. Objectively speaking, I had more failures than successes in the States and more successes than failures in Israel. However, that's just a quantitative difference and that does not necessarily change reality, but I was determined to be a success in Israel and to make sure that everything seemed as a success.

Another important issue is the fact that success in the United States is measured in terms of money and I had the potential for earning more money in the United States than in Israel. In Israel I was able to be a success using other factors as guidelines or benchmarks. I therefore did not have to lean on what other people would feel was a success which would mean the amount of money that I would earn, but rather I was able to be a success based on other objective criteria such as the success of the Jewish Internet project, which could be evaluated, benchmarked, and considered independently of other factors and which was unquestionably a tremendous success.

In the United States I would not have been able to develop that project as I did in Israel because I would have had to have a drive for financial success just as everyone else does. In Israel I did not have to push for financial success so I was able to allow myself to develop the Jewish Internet project.

I was also blessed with an ability to be able to see myself and to do an introspection so that I could understand my status both objectively and subjectively. When I was a failure in the United States I realized that it was caused by a partial apathy and lack of desire to become a success according to American standards but that I did have the potential for success on other standards if I was willing to achieve the American dream on the American terms. In Israel I saw myself as being a success but I could also look at myself objectively and see how the success was not measured by the same benchmarks as the failure in the United States and that my own way of measuring success and failure was biased and that I was determined to make sure that I would be a success in Israel and I was the cause of a certain amount of the failure in the United States. I was also the cause of my perception of the failure in the United States.

Does this mean that I could just work on myself, change my perceptions since I understood my position and then I could achieve greater success? Yes, perhaps theoretically that would be the situation. However, I was already developing in my early twenties I had already developed a certain world view and it would mean changing not only my understanding and my determination of what constituted success in my own life but it would mean changing where I wanted to go and the way I wanted success to be. A person could change this. He could be brainwashed. He could change his direction, but then that means he would become a different person and it means that it would be affecting other issues in his psyche and in his persona as well as in his personality. In other words, it would make a major change in the person himself.

Not a very good idea.

The right idea would be as I did which is to follow my own dreams, my own direction, in which I seemed to be pulled.

And based on the Internet project it looks like this was the hand of Destiny pulling me in the direction in which I was meant to do the most good for humanity.