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 164 - Who should shape your life—those freed from desire or those fed by it
What if joy isn’t a feeling you chase but a habit you practise with people you trust? Coming out of Sukkot, we reflect on days spent in simple spaces, sharing meals and songs, and talking bluntly about happiness—how to name it, grow it, and protect it when the world gets loud. The conversation starts with language: just as northern cultures hold many words for snow, our tradition holds many words for joy, and those nuances become tools for building an inner life that doesn’t collapse at the first gust of stress.
From there we zoom out to time and priorities. Blink and the toddler is a teenager; blink again and you’re wondering how decades vanished. That speed forces a choice: let urgency set your aims or define success around what actually compounds—character, presence, and service. We also wade into the hot-button word abstinence, not as rejection of beauty or comfort, but as restraint with a job. When some voices profit from our endless wanting, it’s wise to learn from people who can want less and see more. We explore how desire doubles—why having more often breeds wanting more—and how to place money, pleasure, and status under a larger purpose so they enrich rather than erode our lives.
This is a practical, grounded path: small boundaries that restore attention, rhythms that melt stress, councils that aren’t for sale, and measures of progress that feel like peace. If you’ve ever felt trapped between consumer hustle and spiritual cliché, this conversation offers a third way—joy as a disciplined, generous posture toward time, work, and each other. If it resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a reset, and leave a quick review so others can find these ideas too.
Until next time, have a spectacular day!
Good morning everybody and welcome to the Trust Factor, the podcast that guarantees your success when you implement its divine age old teachings. I hope you had an amazing sukkot. We had a phenomenal time. We were invited. We had people at our house in our sukkah. We went to other people's sukkot. And do you know what we did for those days inside the sukkha? We discussed the very thing that we need to do during this holiday, and that is to be happy. Can you imagine? Meal after meal, time after time, whether it was in our sukha or our friends' sukhas, we were talking about happiness, talking about joy, how important it is, how we need to be happy all the time. Can you just think about that for a second? When you surround yourself with people who are discussing these concepts, how many different ways can you discuss the concept of being happy? Just as an aside, one of my friends, a good friend in the community, was discussing a concept of Eskimos, saying that Eskimos have over 30 different words to describe snow. Snow is critical in the life of an Eskimo. They're surrounded by it. It encompasses their entire existence, snow and ice, and they have over 30 different words to define the concept of snow. Jews have 10 different words to describe joy. When we go to a wedding, you read it. They read it in the seven blessings that they say under the chuppah. And there's different ways to explain the concept of joy because there's so many different types of joy that we can have in this world. But the concept is that it is so important for us to be happy all the time, that we have so many different ways of expressing our joy. That's who we are. And if you missed out on that, my friends, boy, did you miss out. I mean, think about it. Being with friends and family and community members, eating delicious foods, singing amazing songs, and discussing concepts like how to be really happy, how to be permanently happy, it doesn't get any better than that. You know, the rest of the world was busy doing the exact same thing they do every other day of the year. Working like slaves, putting out fires, dealing with problems, standing in lines, dealing with stress and anxiety and depression and all kinds of issues that affect so many people these days. And what were we doing? Sitting and enjoying from this world so much, and at the same time discussing between ourselves how to be happy. Not to say we didn't have stress, of course we did, but you know what happened? It melted away. Our stresses went away because we weren't able to deal with them. Our hands were forced to shut down and distract ourselves from the mundane and focus on this amazing concept of these beautiful holidays that God has given us. Guys, if you're not doing this, you're missing out. It's time to jump on the bandwagon. My friends, time is ticking. It's going. You're not going to get it back, and it's going fast. If you just look back at your life and recognize how history was a blink of an eye, look at the different times in your life. If you're a parent, you've had kids and you've seen them grow, look back at the different stages of their lives. There's such distant memories, and yet it happened so quickly, it feels like another lifetime, another existence. You don't even remember it. And now for some reason you're 40, you're 50, you're 60, and you're wondering to yourself, how? How did it go so quickly? Guys, catch up. Don't wait to do the right thing. Step up and do it now. Don't worry about what everybody else tells you. Don't worry about the stresses and the pressure that this society puts on you, that governments and media put on you, these expectations of performance. You worry about number one. Always worry about you first. You come before anybody else. Your wealth, your health, your mental health, and your physical health, your spiritual health, they come first. Only when you've worried about yourself and you've built yourself up, only then can you go and help other people. Now, having said that, let's get back into this book because we're talking about what can be a very contentious discussion, right? The fact that we've said that somebody who is living a proper life over here, a proper spiritual life that engages in really high-level spirituality, is somebody who practices abstinence. Can you imagine? Can you imagine how many people in this generation where we have nothing but material wealth surrounding us, dripping everywhere, right? Partake of this and take of that, and how much do you have and how much do you owe? And how much do you need, and how much have you earned, and what's your value, and what's your net worth? All these that's all about money and material, and yet we're bringing up a concept over here that seems archaic almost. Abstinence? Who talks about abstinence in the year 2025? Who despises unnecessary pleasures in this world? Can you imagine? That's enough to get so many people to just shut it down and say, nope, not for me. Sorry, I'm not gonna live a life where I'm gonna be struggling or I'm not gonna be happier and I'm not gonna be involved in the material world, and I have news for you, my friends. That's not what we're talking about. Yes, there are people who live today and practice abstinence when it comes to the material world. They only take the absolute amount necessary to survive. That's it. They're not interested in the pleasures that this world has to offer. Yes, there are people like that. There aren't many, relatively speaking, they are very, very few, but they exist, and you know what? They live very content lives, and reality is that they are the people that we often rely upon to be able to make decisions spiritual of spiritual matters, of godly matters, to make those decisions on the behalf of the entire population, because they are the furthest removed from materialism. And now it just popped into my head as I'm telling you this. Think about this for a second. If the people who are charged with making decisions for our spiritual well-being, for emotional and spiritual well-being, our success in this world on a level that reaches the upper realms, these people are in very, very modest apartments sitting on sometimes milk crates or old rickety furniture that was donated to them because they have no interest in material wealth and material possessions. They're not engaged in this world. And those are the people making decisions on spiritual ideologies. Who are the ones who are making decisions with regards to our physicalities? Do you know who they are? They are the exact opposite. The massively wealthy, the political and entertainment elites of the world, the people who are in Hollywood and in politics and in government. They've built the system. They've taken so much money out of this system. Trillions and trillions of dollars have gone missing from governments all over the world. I don't know if you know this. This isn't a conspiracy theory. Go online and you will see. There is ample, ample news reports from government officials coming out with news releases saying we can't account for millions here and billions there and trillions here. And then we go on with the next day's news, as if there was nothing to really talk about. Oh, yeah, by the way, we can't account for one and a half trillion dollars that occurred around uh the year 2000. Oh, well, that's interesting. Okay. And in other news, my friends, they have taken so much out of the system and lined their pockets and the pockets of their close ones and built these unbelievable connections to be able to rely on this network of corruption. And they're the ones who are determining what's hot and what's not? They're the ones determining what's cool and what's not cool. They're the ones determining what we should be striving for to achieve in terms of success in this world in the material world? Think about it. Think about it. Who do you think is of the best moral fiber? Who do you think has the best character that you would want to emulate? Would it be somebody who is so disciplined and so careful in their approach to life that they recognize the difference between good and bad, right and wrong, and they are not drawn and they are not addicted to the material world where they cannot get enough? They cannot get enough materialism to satiate them? That's what happens, my friends. It says in the Torah, this is how we're programmed. Yeshlome, Rotzema time. Somebody who has a hundred wants two hundred. And there's a reason why it's double. It continues along that line. You have a hundred, you want two hundred. You want you have two hundred, you want four hundred. You have a thousand, you want two thousand. You have a million, you want two million. You have a hundred million, you want two hundred million. We are programmed to never be satiated when it comes to the things that we want, specifically the two biggest inclinations, evil inclinations, money and relations. So it should come as no surprise to you that the more people accumulate in terms of wealth and materialism, the more they want. They're never happy. It says a person dies in this world having achieved only half of what he set out to achieve. Why? Because of the very same reason. There's still another half, or double, depending on how you look at it, that they really would like to achieve, and it does not end. Would you want to be aligned with somebody like that who is not happy, never grateful, never satisfied, always trying to get double at the expense of everything and everyone? Or the individual who is very much content separating himself from the material world. Not to say that they're living in squalor, not to say that they don't have what to eat, of course not. These people are very well taken care of. They don't miss any meals, although their meals don't drive them. They have all the furniture they need, but it's not the highest end furniture in the world that you don't want to sit on it because you don't want to get it dirty. These are people who have their heads on straight. I, for one, am more than happy to align myself with people who have their heads on straight when it comes to the world of spirituality, and I will listen to them when they explain to me how to benefit in a world or how to interact with a world of materialism. We're going to talk about this tomorrow because there's so much more to unpack over here. We're living in such a material world. I'm not telling you to separate from materialism. It'd be a very, very big ask. And frankly, today in the world we live in, it's just simply unreasonable. The question is, how do we interact with the material world? How do we view material possessions and money and acquisitions? And when we have it, what do we do with it? What's its purpose? That and so much more, my friends, to come. Hopefully, tomorrow and the next day. Have an amazing day, my friends. The weekend's coming before you know it.
