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 56 - The Divine Wisdom of Balance: Maimonides' Guide to Character Transformation
Extreme character traits, even positive ones, can become toxic when left unchecked. Today's deep dive explores how our strengths—whether generosity, confidence, or ambition—transform into weaknesses when pushed too far, and presents a revolutionary solution from Maimonides' ancient wisdom.
The 850-year-old teachings of Maimonides (Rambam) on character development offer a counterintuitive yet profoundly effective approach to personal transformation. His concept of "Deot" (character traits) reveals that balance is the secret ingredient to success in nearly every aspect of life. For those who struggle with extremes—like the excessive giver who neglects their own needs, or the person whose ego dominates every interaction—Maimonides prescribes a surprising remedy: temporarily adopt the opposite extreme.
This pendulum approach works brilliantly but demands courage. If you give compulsively at your own expense, stop giving entirely for a period. If your pride prevents you from admitting fault, practice deferring to others even when you know you're right. Like a pendulum pulled to one side that swings to the opposite before settling in the center, this method creates natural equilibrium without artificial timelines. I've implemented this wisdom personally and can attest to its transformative power—it literally saved my life.
Ready to overcome the character traits that have defined and limited you for decades? Try this ancient approach that defies logic but delivers results. Identify your extreme position, embrace its opposite without reservation, and trust the process. It won't be easy—nothing worthwhile ever is—but I guarantee you'll eventually find that perfect balance where you become the best version of yourself. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Good morning, my friends, and welcome to the Trust Factor, the podcast that guarantees success through divine age-old wisdom. We're continuing with where we left off yesterday. I encouraged you to be able to change the traits that are holding you back, the character traits that are so extreme in you that you've identified that you know are specifically holding you back from achieving greatness. Now it's one thing for me to tell you how to do that or to tell you that you need to do that, but how do you do that? Obviously, we've said yesterday, if you've been around for 30, 40, 50, 60 years and you haven't been able to do it, it's not only have you not fixed it, but it is more deeply ingrained in who you are. It's actually defined you and people know you as being X or Y, y, and that bothers you because you know it's not healthy. You know that you need to operate in a healthier realm. You know that you need to balance out your life when it comes to x or y. How do you do it? Clearly, you haven't been able to do it, so you need help with it, and that's okay. We all need help throughout our lives at different points of time. So again, we referred back to maimonides rambam.
Speaker 1:He wrote an entire chapter on this concept, called in hebrew it's dealt. In english. It's loosely translated as character. It's character refining, character understanding. It's a way to be able to wrap our heads around why we connect with certain people, why we don't connect with other people, why why we are the way that we are and, most importantly, how to improve our character flaws. We all have them, guys. I don't care how well-liked you are, I don't care how well put together you are, you're going to have character flaws. And even if you've worked on all of your characters and even if you don't have extremism inside of you, certainly there are parts of your character in your life that you could take to a whole other level.
Speaker 1:So the question is really that we're going to address today. If you've identified that character trait or traits that you do not like, that do not sit well with you, that you know are not healthy and that you want to improve, how do you do that? And we're going to use the very same divine age old wisdom that we have been sharing. We're going to take it from the rambam maimonides, an age old figure who's been around, who lived about 850 years ago and whose life has impacted all of humanity for generations and continues to impact humanity. How? What does the Rambam say in Deot about the right way to live? He says in almost every single situation in life, if you want to be successful, the secret ingredient is balance. That is an alien word to a lot of people these days. People don't understand the concept of balance. Everybody's operating in the extremes and it is unbelievably unhealthy to operate in the extremes.
Speaker 1:Again, I said yesterday, and it bears repeating it doesn't matter what character trait you have. If you're a giver and all you do is give to other people, that's what gives you happiness, and all you do is give and give and give at your own expense or at the expense of certain people in your family. Because you're so busy giving to everybody else, your giving that could be interpreted as generous and good and kind and godly actually becomes toxic, because you are an important individual and you need to take care of yourself. If you don't take care of yourself, if you don't take care of yourself, then you can't take care of other people. If all of your giving is at the expense of yourself or your family, then I don't care how wonderful the other people think you are because you're busy giving to their causes. You are actually quite toxic because you're not taking care of yourself and you're not taking care of those who are immediately surrounding you. So I don't care how wonderful the trade is on its own, when it's taken to an extreme it becomes very unhealthy. That doesn't mean, by the way, that you can't veer right a little bit or you can't veer left a little bit. You know you can give. Certain times you can give a lot more, and certain times you don't have to give at all because you've done your analysis, you've done your due diligence and you've understood. Or maybe you're sitting at a time in your life where you can't afford to give. Those are all fine, but we're talking about what? That's a balanced approach. But when you take it to the extreme, when you're giving to a point where you can't give enough and you've gone beyond the limitations of what you should give, and it becomes unhealthy, it's toxic.
Speaker 1:My friends, even the Torah prescribes a maximum. There is a minimum that we have to give and there is a maximum that they give. Why? Because Hashem says in His wisdom I know that there are going to be people out there that are so caring and so giving and they're so detached from the material world that they'll make a dollar and they'll give away two. Right, they'll go into debt in order to repair the world and to help other people and to do good things. And God has to come in and stop them and say wait, stop. You can't do that. You have an obligation to take care of yourself and your family first. So I don't care which character trait we're talking about here, my friends, if you're operating in the extreme, it's time to fix it.
Speaker 1:Now we said yesterday how do you fix if you're already coming with the extreme? So let's use that as an example. Okay, if you're that individual, if you're the individual who makes a dollar and gives away two, if you're the type of person who is consumed all day long with where you can give your money to next and which organization you can help or which individual you can help, and it comes at the expense of your quality of life, where you have a difficult time meeting your basic needs, then, my friends, you are coming from an extreme position. How do we change that? The Rambam Maimonides addresses it and here's how it goes that individual has to stop giving money altogether. You hear, you're not supposed to give a dollar If all you've been doing for decades is giving away all your money, stop. Don't give one more dollar to one more individual and one more organization. You let everybody else take over. You let everybody else continue to contribute while you come to a grinding halt.
Speaker 1:You go from one extreme to another extreme and that, my friends, applies on every single character trait. If you have a big ego, then you become so modest that you almost don't exist. You hear this? It's not easy to do, my friends. It's not even easy to do, even for somebody who's operating in the balance, never mind somebody who's operating in the extreme, somebody who lives and thinks and breathes only for themselves. Their ego is so big that their head is so heavy that individual to now tell them you're not allowed to even consider yourself for a second. You have to be subservient to every single individual around you. Even when you're right, you're wrong. Even when you're right, you're going to take a back seat to somebody who you know with absolute certainty is wrong. You're going to allow them to seat to somebody who you know with absolute certainty is wrong. You're going to allow them to be right. It's going to tear you up inside. It's going to eat you up. You're not going to be able to function. You're going to want to pull your hair out of your head, but the reality is it's exactly what you need to do.
Speaker 1:Maimonides says very clearly, with every single character trait when you find yourself operating in an unhealthy extreme, the only way to deal with that situation, to get yourself back to a healthy point, is to operate for a period of time in the opposite extreme. How do you know what that period of time is? I can tell you. I've implemented this in my life personally. I can vouch for it personally. I can tell you in my experience. You will know there will not come a deadline. You will not say okay, I did it for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. Now I can relax and start to revert back.
Speaker 1:It doesn't work that way. You will naturally gravitate back towards perfect balance. What's it like? It's like a pendulum. You take a pendulum, you bring it all the way up to the opposite, to one extreme, and you release it. What happens? It swings all the way to the other extreme, which is good. It's exactly what you're doing. It swings all the way to the other extreme and then it goes back and forth and back and forth until eventually it lands in smack center. Perfect balance, right? That is the approach here. That's what Maimonides is talking about.
Speaker 1:If all you're busy doing is trying to win arguments and get one up on somebody and never admit fault or never admit guilt, or never admit that you were wrong, whatever it is, take yourself out of every single equation. You become a yes man to everybody else, even when you know that they are wrong. Think about this. It defies logic, but if you do this Maimonides guarantees it, and I guarantee it because I've done it myself and it saved my life my friends, I am telling you that if you do this, you will defeat every single extreme character trait that has been holding you back. You will overcome your negative nature. You will show God and yourself that you are capable of doing this and that you're going to grow and that you're going to get better and that nothing is going to hold you back. You are going to seek to be the best version of who you are in this world, using the tools that he has given us through people like Maimonides, and you will come out ahead.
Speaker 1:My friends, I guarantee it. Nothing is stomping you. Figure it out. Figure out, whatever it is. It's not going to be easy, because anything worth doing is not easy. Figure out what your challenge is that you're coming with an extreme position. Take the extreme opposite position. Don't put a time limit on it, just run with it. It's going to be hard, but run with it and I promise you it may take six months, it may take a year, it may take five years. However long it takes, you operate in that opposite extreme and your nature, who you are, will naturally want to push through and what will happen is, because you've operated so long in the opposite extreme, eventually you will find that perfect balance. Try it. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Have a spectacular day, my friends. Have a balanced day, have a great day and we'll speak tomorrow.
