For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the LORD, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.
Notice the order in this description of Ezra: he set his heart to study the Law, and to do it, and then to teach it. Study first, then practice, then teaching. Not the reverse. He didn't start by explaining things to others — he started by becoming the kind of person who actually lived by what he was reading.
That order matters more than it might seem. It's easy to skip straight to having opinions about something you've barely studied, or to teach principles you haven't tested in your own life first. Ezra's whole reputation rests on doing it in the harder sequence: understand it deeply, live it out personally, and only then start passing it on.
You don't need to be religious to respect that discipline. Whatever you're curious about — faith included — there's something worth borrowing from a man whose defining trait wasn't cleverness or charisma, but simply that he set his heart to actually get it right before he opened his mouth about it.
If you've ever formed an opinion before really studying something, Ezra's order — study, live it, then speak — is worth trying in reverse of the usual habit.
A short video on this is coming soon — for now, read on.