The Trust Factor
A daily lesson that focuses on achieving unparalleled success in life using ancient wisdom in modern times.
We will be discussing critical concepts as they are laid out in the book Sha'ar Habitachon - The Gate of Trust. Written 1000 years ago, the author reminds us of the values and wisdom that have allowed humanity to thrive throughout history.
The concept of trusting in a higher power that exists purely for our benefit, puts us in the drivers seat with absolute confidence to achieve greatness.
Eliminate: Fear, Hatred, Anxiety, Depression, Jealousy, Greed...forever!
* Note that some terminology will be in the original Hebrew or Aramaic which I will always follow with the English translation.
The Trust Factor
Episode 24 - The Muscle of Faith: Building Spiritual Strength One Challenge at a Time
Have you ever noticed how life's challenges seem to multiply while moments of victory feel precious and rare? Today's exploration of the Gate of Trust reveals a profound spiritual principle: though our challenges may outnumber our joys, our victories must outweigh our difficulties 100 to 1 through proper perspective.
Drawing from personal experience with shipments from China, we discover how micromanagement and anxiety often work against us, while surrender to the Creator produces unexpected positive outcomes. When a time-sensitive order was tracked obsessively at every step, it arrived at the last possible moment. Yet another shipment, given no special attention, arrived early without issue. These aren't coincidences but spiritual lessons about where we place our trust.
Trust in the Creator functions as a spiritual muscle requiring lifelong development. Unlike riding a bike or learning mathematics, this trust must be continuously strengthened through increasingly complex challenges. Judaism offers a uniquely personalized approach to this journey, acknowledging that while standards exist, each soul travels its own path based on previous incarnations and unique spiritual needs.
The ultimate exchange offered by the Creator is both simple and profound: "Make His will your will, and He'll make His will your will." When we focus on the commandments and spiritual opportunities that enhance our lives and communities, the Creator handles our burdens. This relationship—where we enjoy the benefits while God manages the difficulties—creates a Garden of Eden in our daily experience. Ready to try this divine partnership? Begin with Shabbat, observed with intention and preparation, and discover firsthand why spiritual surrender leads to unparalleled joy.
Good morning everybody. It is Thursday morning. We're continuing on with the Gate of Trust. I want to focus a little bit today on what we talked about yesterday a little bit more, extrapolate and learn from it. It's a gorgeous, beautiful day. I hope you appreciate how amazing it is that you're alive, that your eyes were open this morning and that you're able to go out and make change positive change for yourself and for your community and your family and loved ones. That should be a tremendous victory for absolutely everybody.
Speaker 1:We've said in the past and it bears repeating that life's challenges are plentiful. We get up and we deal with mostly putting out fires and solving people's problems and taking care of all the things that we need to take care of, and as you age and as you have a spouse and then a family and real estate and business and bosses and whatever it may be, things just get more and more difficult. And that's really what we're dealing with all day long, from the moment we wake up to the minute we go to bed, we're dealing with people's problems. People can't go to bed because they're often just dealing with problems from their day. They're thinking about them and it consumes them. The victories that we have in our lives, though we have many. They're peppered throughout, they're not nearly as plentiful as the challenges, the joys and the happiness and the events that are blissful and that make our lives amazing. They happen Sure, they happen, but they happen less frequently than the challenges do, and so we have to rewire ourselves and remember that it not necessarily is quantity, but it's quality. Though we may not have nearly as many victories and happy, joyous occasions as we have challenges on a daily basis, our victories have to outweigh our challenges 100 to 1. And how do you do that? You do that by recognizing that you didn't have to be awoken this morning. You could have easily had yesterday be your final day, but no, the Creator decided that today you're going to wake up and you're going to make a change for yourself and for everybody around you, but that change starts and stops with you. You have to make that effort. So be grateful, wake up and see a beautiful, blue, cloudless sky and an amazing, bright, warm sun, and recognize that this is a day to accomplish and to achieve and to grow and to make your life and the lives of those around you much better.
Speaker 1:I shared a story yesterday that was a personal story, an example for everybody, including myself, that I'm giving over this program to you guys more for myself than it is for you guys, or at least equally so. Because although I've been dedicating 20 years of my life to personal and spiritual growth, learning about my creator, understanding what it takes to have a relationship with him, putting my faith in him and then eventually building trust in him, that takes a lifetime Nobody ever gets to a point in their life where they say good, I'm happy, I've gotten to where I need to be in terms of my relationship with my creator, how much I trust and have faith in him, and I'm going to hold it over here, I'm going to put a pin in it and now I'm just going to go on vacation for the rest of my life and forget about it. That's not how it works. It's a muscle, but it's a muscle that needs to be developed your entire life. It's not like a subject you learn in school. Trust and faith in your creator is not a math course. It's not content that you learn and suddenly it gets put into the back of your mind. Or like riding a bike you do it once and you know how to do it going forward. No, because we're constantly tested and our tests become more complex and they become more difficult, and what you applied yesterday as a mechanism of dealing with your challenges, putting it in God's hands, suddenly isn't so easy today. It isn't so easy when it comes to this challenge. I could have done it yesterday with that challenge, but this challenge is difficult. Yeah, just to reiterate for everybody who didn't listen or doesn't know, yesterday I shared a quick story about the fact that I imported a couple of orders from China.
Speaker 1:One of them was critical in terms of getting here on time so that we wouldn't lose a lot of money, and a new customer, and, of course, everything came late. And the reason it came late was because I had my finger on the pulse the whole time. I was so busy and consumed with making sure that everybody who touches this knows that it needs to get here on time, that it's a time sensitive shipment, and it came at probably the latest possible time, even down to the when the truck delivered when it finally arrived here and they said delivery was tomorrow between nine and four I asked for nine. It came at three. Yeah, so it came the latest possible. Following that, I had a shipment that arrived just yesterday and had a phone call from the driver at 9 am waiting at my door. That shipment, no problem, there was no pressure on it. I never notified anybody, didn't tell my vendor, didn't tell any of the carriers, didn't tell the trucking company that there was any urgency to that shipment. But yet it came on time and early in the morning, first delivery of the day.
Speaker 1:Now I could have easily disregarded that, but I didn't. I reviewed it and I understood it as a message, because there's no such thing as coincidence in this world. I recognize that Hashem is saying look, had you instead dealt with me, had you, instead of making all these phone calls and driving yourself crazy with it, had you instead put it in my lap, I would have dealt with it. You make his will, your will, and he'll make his will, your will. That's exactly what he's talking about. He's saying you do what I want you to do, you focus on things I want you to do and I'll take care of the things that are on your mind. So it's the same exact thing. Had I recognized that, had I taken the time to understand that I'm not dealing with it properly, the right way to have dealt with it is to say to Hashem look, this is a time-sensitive matter. You know that. I know that I could either spend the next few weeks obsessing about it and making sure everybody knows about it in my attempt my futile attempt to get here on time, or, hashem, I could just give it to you. And you know what? Here I'm giving it to you.
Speaker 1:I've got other things to worry about. I'm going to make sure that I've got a class that I can give tomorrow morning to inspire your children to be able to become amazing people. I've got a family that I need to take care of. I've got Torah that I need to learn. I've got people that rely on me. I've got a community that relies on me. I've got a holiday to observe. I've got all these wonderful things going on that you want me to deal with, that are amazing for me and that bring me joy. If I can focus on those. While you take care of my problems, have at it. You take care of it, because there is nobody better on planet earth to be able to get results than he who controls everything that happens in this world, and so that would have been the right approach. Now, that would have been the right approach for me, that doesn't mean that would have been the right approach for you.
Speaker 1:The beautiful thing about our religion, about Judaism, is that it is not a cookie cutter religion. It's not a pigeonhole that you need to fit into, and if you don't fit into it, then you're not doing it right. That's not how it works. It might seem like that to people on the outside and because humanity is so judgmental, that's how we're programmed. It might seem that we're always being judged to see if we're doing what everybody else is doing. That's not how he created this. He created this because he wants to have a relationship with you and the person that you are, and you are a culmination of all of your previous lives.
Speaker 1:We've all been here before. Reincarnation is a cornerstone tenet of Judaism. This is not our first rodeo If you're here. You've been here many times before and every time we come it's so that we can build ourselves more and more. People don't get to 100 on one go. They have to come back to be able to do it over a series of visits. So we don't know what that accounting is. We have no idea what we've done in previous lives. We have no idea what bill we're paying for or how we're benefiting in this life from what we've done before. Only he knows. That's why he has a special relationship with you. That's why there's a lot that's left to interpretation.
Speaker 1:But you have to be careful and understand that there is a standard. There is a very well-known and agreed-upon and accepted standard in Judaism. We all need to strive to achieve that standard, but we're all going to vary from it. We're all going to go left a little bit in certain scenarios or we're going to go right in other scenarios. But as long as we're aware and we're constantly trying to get back to the standard, we're not expected to be perfect, but we have to strive for it. We said before, it's not your responsibility to finish the job. The only thing you're responsible for is starting it. So that's the reality. You have to make an effort and the outcome is outside of your hands.
Speaker 1:So, in summary, for today, the whole concept of having trust in God is a muscle and it takes a lifetime of work. You have to go through different scenarios, you have to be challenged in many different ways and then you have to recognize how you dealt with it. That's what I did. That's what I did. I recognized how I dealt with it. Now, god willing, I know there are going to be scenarios in the future. Every day there are scenarios that challenge me, and it's incumbent upon me to learn from my experiences and to change my approach the next go around.
Speaker 1:If you just repeat the same behavior that you did before, that got you into trouble in the first place, especially after you've done the analysis and recognize that you didn't handle it properly, and then you go and repeat the same action or the same words or the same process and expect a different outcome. I think somebody defined that as the definition of insanity doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome. So once you've analyzed the scenario, once you recognize that maybe you didn't respond properly, like I didn't, I should have handled it differently I am now going to make a special effort in my life, the next time I'm faced with that or any similar scenario, to say God, I don't want this, I don't want this and I don't need to have it because you told me you'll take care of it. All I need to do is go and enjoy this life and do the amazing commandments and mitzvahs that you told me to do that make my life and my family's lives exponentially better and you'll take care of all the hardships. Deal, deal. I don't have to think about it. Here they are, you take care of the tough stuff and I'm going to go and enjoy my life. That's exactly what's going on over here Now.
Speaker 1:If you're not involved in this, you don't know, and everything I'm telling you right now is theory and you're thinking, yeah right, what's so enjoyable about Shabbat? Figure it out, keep Shabbat, and I guarantee you, if you do it a few times and you prepare for it, you do it properly, with meaning and intent. You will never stop keeping Shabbat. Why? Not because he told you to do it, but because you recognize that it is priceless, that you can never replace it with anything else, and the same goes for every other mitzvah. It is for your benefit. Once you recognize that and you start keeping Hashem's commandments that he put in place for your benefit, that are only here to serve you and he takes care of all your difficulties, is there anything better, my friends? It's called Gan Eden, the Garden of Eden. That's what it is. It's him taking care of all your challenges and you going out and reaping all the benefits. That relationship exists. It's there for the taking. I suggest you take it. I hope you enjoyed today's class. We'll pick up tomorrow.
