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 59 - Learn from Children: How to Regain Appreciation in a Disposable World
Becoming desensitized to our surroundings, our work, and the people in our lives is a modern pitfall that affects us all. Drawing from the example of a funeral director who lost sight of his crucial role during families' vulnerable moments, we explore how this same pattern plays out across every industry and relationship.
Our throwaway culture has transformed us into a "disposable generation" where the joy of acquisition is fleeting, repairs are rare, and appreciation vanishes quickly. Remember when people took shoes to a shoemaker instead of discarding them at the first sign of wear? That same mentality now affects how we view our jobs, our possessions, and sadly, our relationships with others. The longer we're around someone, the easier it becomes to take them for granted.
The antidote? Visit a park and observe children at play. Watch their faces light up with wonder when mastering the monkey bars for the first time or making a new friend within minutes. Their capacity for joy comes from experiencing things as new, fresh, and exciting. While adult responsibilities may prevent us from maintaining childlike enthusiasm indefinitely, we can cultivate appreciation by learning new things or relearning forgotten ones. Take time to truly see the trees around you, understand their purpose, and contemplate the incredible systems that sustain our world. When you fall in love with creation, you naturally develop a deeper connection with the creator, preventing the desensitization that robs us of joy and meaning.
Ready to regain your sense of wonder? Stop for a moment today to truly appreciate something you normally take for granted. Share your experience with us and discover how rekindling appreciation transforms everything.
Good morning everybody and welcome to the Trust Factor. This is the only place where we take divine age-old wisdom and we apply it to your life in a way that allows you to succeed in everything that you do. Yesterday, I felt a little bit like we left a subject hanging and we need to spend more time on it, like I often do, because some of these pieces of information all of them are life-changing. They're really things that can alter the way that you live your life, and to give you a cursory 10-minute introduction to these ideas and move on to the next is oftentimes unfair to you, and so we spend two, three podcasts talking about the exact same thing in different contexts. It's all for your benefit.
Speaker 1:Yesterday, we talked about a situation about a funeral director who lost sight of his job and the role in his job and, as a result of that, he ultimately became desensitized to it and started treating people in a way that they shouldn't be treated at their time of weakness, and hopefully, that individual learns and grows and gets back to understanding the importance of conducting himself in a certain way. But the reality is that that individual is not alone. He's not. We are all guilty of the very same thing, and it doesn't matter which industry you're in. There are some industries where, when you become desensitized to it, the results, the implications are vast and they can affect other people. And there are others where, certainly, the only person who lacks or loses out is either yourself or the industry. The business that you're working for loses out because you've lost your enthusiasm or your motivation for the business or for your job.
Speaker 1:Now I want to talk about how do we avoid that, how do we get away from that pitfall of falling into the trap, especially when you consider the fact that we are in a generation that is a disposable generation. Not only are we disposable, but we are also an entitled generation, which means that maybe once upon a time we used to appreciate something. When we got it for the first time, or when we learned how to do something for the first time, we had a vast appreciation for it in different generations. Certainly when I grew up that was the case. But today, I think people just they don't even appreciate what they have when they get it. The joy that comes with acquiring material wealth is just so fleeting that they don't even have time to appreciate it at all. It used to be in previous generations. In my parents' and grandparents' generation, nothing was disposable. You didn't throw anything out right? You fixed and you repaired and you made something work for as long as you possibly could, because you appreciated the hard work and the dedication that went into acquiring it.
Speaker 1:We're not in that generation anymore, my friends. We're in a generation that's throwaway, one-time use, right. If something breaks, throw it out, get a new one. Dishwasher's broken throw it out, get a new one. Refrigerator broke down get a new one. Your shoes got holes in them throw them out. Who takes shoes to the shoemaker anymore these days? Aside from my mother, I don't know anybody else who takes shoes to the shoemaker.
Speaker 1:But the reality of it is that's the generation. We've fallen so far away from appreciating the things that we have that you can now understand why it is that even a funeral director would lose sight of the importance of being sensitive in his job. He's taken it for granted, as we all do. So now the question becomes how do we fix this? How do we stop this negative pattern? Because I don't care who you are, but if you think that it's not negative, that there's nothing wrong with not appreciating the things that you have, that you've worked for that you've been given, then your head is on wrong. You have to get your head on straight. Because you work hard for things. You have to understand number one, the value of money, and number two, the value of hard work. That takes away time from all the other things that you could be doing, and so when you take the fruits of your labor and you acquire something with it, then you should be able to attribute the right sense of value to that item or that individual. This doesn't just apply to items or circumstances. It applies also to individuals, because the longer we're around somebody, the longer we're in a relationship, the more we tend to take that person for granted, we take advantage of a situation, and so it's important for us to stop and learn. How do we stop this from happening? Are we going to stop it entirely? Maybe in certain scenarios we can, but this is the way that the world was programmed, so don't feel too bad about it, because this is the way the world was created. That material, especially when it comes to material things, we lose the appreciation for them relatively quickly. How do we fix this? And so I'm going to give you an exercise. I'm going to give you a little bit of homework and I think that you will benefit from it, and the thing that you should do is as follows On the weekend, on a Saturday or on a Sunday, go to your local park, take a walk and go to the park where there are lots of kids playing.
Speaker 1:Sit on a bench and watch these kids interact with each other, or even playing by themselves, and analyze them, and what you will see if you're looking for it is you will see people, little children, who are discovering their abilities for the very first time. Look at the pride on the face of a child who just realized that they can now span across all of the monkey bars. Recognize that a child who just did the flip that their friend did is now so proud of herself that she's going to sit there all day long doing the same flip, to the point that you have to pull her away from those bars, because they are enamored with the fact that they are capable of doing what somebody else did and that they weren't capable of doing five minutes ago. There is nothing but pure joy and wonderment in a child's face at a playground in a park. Why, why, why so much joy? Does an adult get that much joy when they jump on the monkey bars and swing from one to another? Absolutely not. You can pay them enough to do it right. They're just tired from work and they want to sit on the bench and relax. The child can't get enough of the park, why? And the answer is because it's new and it's fresh and it's exciting. Because they're doing things they've never done before, because they're interacting with people they've never interacted before.
Speaker 1:Think about that child as you're sitting on the bench, watch them make new friends, watch how quickly they drop their guard and they start talking to complete strangers and before long they're coming over to you and telling you Mom, you know what I just found out? I made a new friend. Her name is Sheila and she has three brothers and she lives really close and she has two dogs, a cat, and she wants to come over for a play date and I want to go over to her house. What are we talking about over here? You just met this individual. You have no idea who they are, yet they are in la-la land. They are elated. Why and how? How come we can't behave like that?
Speaker 1:Life takes its toll on us, my friends. Life shifts. At a certain stage we start to get bored of it. Even that child, at a certain age, will get sick and tired of the monkey bars. At one point it will be harder for them to make friends, and the answer to why that is is because life is that way. When we get distracted with the desire to acquire more, to learn more, to do better, to achieve greater heights than the heights that we've achieved in the past, they dwindle the shine, the luster fades. How do we hang on to it? Maybe we can't hang on to monkey bars, but what we can do is we can learn things that are brand new to us, or we can relearn things that we've forgotten about or that we learned once and we took for granted and moved on.
Speaker 1:When you're at that park and you're sitting on the bench, look at the trees, look around you and you'll see hundreds of trees, or dozens of trees, with thousands and thousands or hundreds of thousands of leaves on them, and contemplate. Maybe you learned about photosynthesis when you were a child, but maybe you forgot about how it works and what its purpose is. Relearn it and then contemplate the beauty of these trees and the job that they have and that they were put there for you to benefit from, from a loving creator who thought about everything, even the clean air that you need to breathe. He thought about it and he surrounds you with free filters, air purification systems to make sure that the air that you breathe is clean and healthy. Appreciate that. Think about the work that goes into each and every single leaf and the job that they do, and they do it perfectly every single time.
Speaker 1:Think about that and then think about what it takes to create that tree. Just a small little seedling, that's all. It is tiny seed. You can barely see it with the human eye. You throw it into the ground and you've got this wonderment of an air purification system that continues to create more of itself on its own. It doesn't need you, it doesn't need me. It continues to sustain the world and provide it with free air.
Speaker 1:Then look at the grass and look at the clouds and look at the sky and stop and assess and think about these things on a deep level and understand their purpose in creation. And what will happen, my friends, is the inevitable. You will love the creation, you will fall in love with what he created, and when you fall in love with the world that's around you, you will fall in love with the creator. That's how it works, that's how you develop, that's how you harness, that's how you grow. Your relationship with your creator is by loving and appreciating his creation. That will bring you to love and appreciate him and all the myriad of things that he does for us on a second by second basis in this world, and hopefully that will allow us to not become desensitized to the world around us. Have an amazing, amazing day.
