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 94 - Your Soul Needs Nourishment Just Like Your Body Does
Time moves differently as we age. What once crawled now flies – you blink on Sunday and suddenly it's Friday again. This acceleration directly correlates with our increasing responsibilities and commitments, creating a paradoxical challenge: the busier we become, the more we need spiritual anchoring, yet the less time we seem to have for it.
The Sabbath serves as this spiritual anchor, providing sustenance that powers the entire week. But waiting exclusively for this day of rest misses a profound truth – our souls require daily nourishment just as our bodies do. However, while our stomachs growl and our heads ache when physically hungry, our souls deteriorate silently when spiritually malnourished. Using the metaphor of chickens versus hens, we explore how the body loudly demands attention while the soul quietly suffers, eventually manifesting symptoms like anxiety, depression, and negative character traits that we rarely connect to spiritual hunger.
More concerning still is the development of "klipot" – spiritual shells or barriers that form around souls long-deprived of Torah and godliness. These shells make reconnection progressively more difficult, causing discomfort when exposed to spiritual teachings and driving us back to familiar but spiritually empty comforts. Daily spiritual practice prevents these barriers from forming, keeping our connection to wisdom open and accessible.
We also delve into finding the right livelihood by examining our natural inclinations and abilities. Just as animals are perfectly adapted for their ecological roles – the heron with its specialized fishing beak, the cat with its mouse-catching instinct – humans function best when aligned with their innate strengths. Yet turning passion into profession carries an unexpected risk: obligation can diminish joy when what we love becomes what we must do according to others' standards. Finding balance between alignment with natural talents and maintaining proper expectations about work's primary purpose – sustenance rather than enjoyment – creates the foundation for both material and spiritual flourishing.
How are you nourishing your soul today? Take a moment to reflect on your daily spiritual practice and consider whether your work aligns with your natural strengths and abilities.
TGIF. Thank God, it's Friday, my friends. This is the trust factor, the podcast that guarantees your success when you implement its divine teachings. Tgif, in other words, you blinked on Sunday and it is Friday. That's how it works. The older you get, the more occupied you are with your time. The more endeavors you are involved in, the faster time flies. The only time in your life when time barely moves is when you're young and you've got no responsibilities, no commitments. Time does not move. You spend all day doing nothing. You look at your clock and the clock barely moves. Or you're sitting in school and you're watching the clock on the wall and it's barely moving. When you're in grade school, the older you get, more responsibilities you take on, the faster that hand on the clock moves, my friends, to the point where you don't even have time to look at it during the day and, before you know it, you've blinked on sunday and it's friday.
Speaker 0:But that's a good thing. It's a good thing because the ikara, the important thing that we should be focusing on, my friends, is the Sabbath. That is the purpose for being, that is what gives you and energizes and provides sustenance for the entire rest of the week. That's what keeps you going? You know, when we say in our prayers every morning, we say a prayer that's allocated to each and every single day, we say Hayom, yom Sheni, beshabbat. This is the second day of the Sabbath, this is the third day within the Sabbath, the fourth day within the Sabbath. It all revolves around the Sabbath, because that is what sustains every other single day of the week. My friends, what's the message? Every other single day of the week, my friends, what's the message? The message is that the older you get, the more you need to try to counter that effect, because it's important for you also to maximize your time in a balanced fashion. You don't just wait for the Sabbath to start doing things that are spiritually inclined, or learning Torah, or doing the mitzvahs, the commandments. You should be doing those every single day of the week. You have an obligation to learn every single day. We all do. You have an obligation to learn. The same way, you have an obligation to work. Same way you have an obligation to eat. Everybody has an obligation to set time aside every single day, ideally at the same time, for learning Torah. It's critically important to our lives. It's our oxygen that we breathe, so obviously we want to do it every day.
Speaker 0:The difference between the water and the food that we drink, that sustains our body, that gives us life, and the Torah that sustains our soul is the following the analogy is made between the body and a hen and the soul and a chicken. What's the difference? The chicken, according to what I've been told, farmers, people who raise chickens, they will tell you that when the hens are hungry, when they want their food, the whole building will shake with the noise that they will make and they will actually get aggressive with their handlers. They will actually get aggressive with the farmer. Until they get fed. They'll attack the farmer if they're hungry and they're not being fed. At the same time, the chickens, the men, the males they will do nothing, they will sit quiet and they will eventually keel over and die if they're not being fed.
Speaker 0:What's the connection? The connection is that the body, the animalistic side of us, has hunger pangs. When you're hungry, your body reminds you, your stomach does somersaults and reminds you that needs to be fed. You start to get angry, or what we call hangry. You're hungry and you're angry because you're hungry and you haven't eaten. You start to get a headache. You start to get very frustrated. That is the body, the animalistic side of us that constantly is reminding us that we need to feed it.
Speaker 0:Our neshama, our souls, are akin to a chicken, which does not say anything, it stays quiet, it does not give you reminders that it needs to be nourished. And so if you don't take a proactive approach to nourishing your soul with what it needs, which is spirituality and Judaism and Torah, then your soul will eventually start to wither and die and you won't even know it. What are the symptoms? How do you know when that's happening, when, god forbid, you're dealing with all of the emotional illnesses in the world? Why? Because we know the Torah tells us that the soul resides in the brain. That's where your soul resides, in your head. And so when you're dealing with issues like anxiety and depression and OCD and all kinds of emotional issues and even just character traits like anger and hatred and jealousy and all these negative things, those are the symptoms that come along with not feeding your neshama, your soul.
Speaker 0:The problem is when you get to that point oftentimes it's too late or the work to get back and repair it is that much more difficult and a lot of people simply cannot sustain it. Also, what ends up happening is because we haven't fed it for so long. We end up getting and this is a little bit Kabbalistic in nature we end up getting what's called klipot, which are peels, shells that build up on top of ourselves. The further we stay away from Torah, the longer we stay away from spirituality and godliness, the more our soul has shells built around it, and what those shells do is they make it more and more difficult for you to sit and listen to things like the ones that I'm telling you. Oftentimes, people can't deal with it. They'll listen for a certain period of time, it'll start to get on their nerves, they won't understand why. They won't be able to connect to it. It'll frustrate them and, before you know it, they pull the plug and they move back into what they know and what is familiar to them, and they will run away from spirituality, godliness and self-improvement through the use of Torah and age-old wisdom, because of those very same shells. The longer you go, the thicker those shells become, my friend. So stop, take an accounting every day, learn Torah every day. Try to improve who you are on a daily basis, your character. Try to improve and become the best version of you every single day.
Speaker 0:Having said that, let's jump back in real quick to this discussion around finding a living. We said that, generally speaking, you need to look for work that is suited for you. If you have a natural tendency to do things better than other people, then you should go and find work in that realm. If you are physically suited to a certain type of work that makes it easier for you, then you should look for a livelihood in that realm. If you are an intellect, if you have a tendency towards finance, towards numbers, math, whatever it is, you should run in that direction.
Speaker 0:That's generally what he's saying, and what he does to kind of nail this and bring this home is he draws a parallel between us and the animal kingdom and he says we can find examples by looking at other living things. For example, god imbued a cat with the instinct to catch mice right, and he imbued the hawk with the instinct to hunt the type of birds that are suitable for it to eat, and the deer with the instinct to catch snakes. There are also some types of birds that only catch fish right. And these animals you see a lot of these species. They're built for it, like you see, for example, here in Canada, the blue heron. It's got this long, pointy beak and that beak is designed so that it can see right through the water and it can use that long pointed beak to spear the fish in the water and that becomes its meal. It is uniquely suited for that and what's amazing is that they know it. These animals know what I'm telling you.
Speaker 0:People walk around this world and they can't even make that connection in their own livelihood. You've got young, scrawny, weak guys trying to do construction and you've got guys who have very little understanding of math and finance trying to invest people's money. You understand, we've got to figure out what we're better suited for. It gives them more examples, lots of examples about the teeth and claws of a lion that allow it to catch and kill its prey right. These are things that the animal kingdom have figured out. It's time for us to figure that out as well.
Speaker 0:He says you find that different people's talents and physiques are designed for certain business endeavors and occupations over others. Some people have talent and physical strength necessary to succeed in one type of work, while others have different talents and strengths suited for a different type of work. Someone who finds within his character and nature a desire for a particular occupation over others, and his body is fit for that occupation and he is capable of bearing the strain that it entails should seek out that occupation and make it the means for obtaining his sustenance. Now I want to just give a quick caveat and we'll finish with this. I've been asked in the past. Obviously I've spent a lot of time mentoring younger students and I've been asked a very interesting question, which is if I'm an artist, if I like to draw and paint or whatever it is, or sculpt, if I'm prone to helping people, should I make that my livelihood?
Speaker 0:And there's always a risk, and the risk is the following that no matter what you enjoy doing because you are prone to it, because you are better suited to it, because you are naturally gravitating to that industry or that type of work and you enjoy it, you enjoy creating art, you enjoy helping people, you enjoy doing these things and you get into the industry. So you make what your passion is, you make it your livelihood. The risk is nine times out of 10, that you will ultimately come to not enjoy your passion as much anymore, because as soon as you start to earn a living, as soon as somebody starts to pay you for it, then what ends up happening is it becomes obligatory. It becomes something that you have to do, based on a set of principles or standards that may not agree with what the way you were doing it before, the way you want to do it. You now have to follow policies and procedures. If you're an artist and suddenly you're getting paid for your work, you are being commissioned to do a work based on somebody else's insights or their creativity, and you may not align with their creativity. Your juices, your creative juices, may only flow when you're doing it your way. Suddenly you have to do it their way. That comes at a cost. The enjoyment is now sacrificed.
Speaker 0:If you're a healer, a person who likes to help, and you get into the medical industry and you start getting paid and people start becoming clients not just patients. Becoming clients, not just patients things change. You have to operate within a set of principles and practices and rules and regulation and everything changes. That's the risk. Nine times out of 10, there's always the exception, but nine times out of 10, the risk is that you will stop enjoying it as much.
Speaker 0:But it's okay. You're not getting in to earning a living so that you could enjoy it. That's not the primary reason. The primary reason in to earning a living so that you could enjoy it, that's not the primary reason. The primary reason is to earn a living to take care of yourself and your family. That's number one. And sometimes things go smoothly and sometimes they don't. That's in every industry. You've just got to suck it up and live with it and know that God is running this world and that everything is perfect. But if you can do something that brings you joy and that you're attached to and you're connected with, that naturally will make every day at work that much easier. Have an amazing day, my friends. Have an amazing Shabbat. We'll pick up on Sunday.
