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 170 - This World, The Next World, Or Both?
What if the most important work of your life never gets a spotlight? Today we explore how hidden mitzvahs, quiet generosity, and real trust in God become the architecture of your next world—and why that choice also improves the quality of this one. We open with updates on upcoming interviews with community leaders, rabbis, and business voices, plus a hint at a life-changing book for season two. Then we dive into the heart of chapter four: build the unseen by acting in the unseen, and let your intention, not your image, do the heavy lifting.
We unpack two pillars that anchor a lasting spiritual life. First, do the private work that only you and God can see—anonymous giving, honest thought, and steady commitment that needs no audience. Second, care for others in a way that lifts them, not your status. That means reaching out to those off the path, modelling integrity without hypocrisy, and becoming someone God favours because your actions match your words. Along the way, we tackle a hard truth: good intentions require good instructions. You wouldn’t fly a plane by feel; don’t run your soul life that way. Find a rabbi, learn the protocols, and avoid the pain of doing the right thing the wrong way.
We also challenge spiritual shortcuts. Before blaming a mezuzah, take inventory: business ethics, relationships, media, food, places, and speech. Check the scrolls too, because details matter—but start with yourself. Finally, we reframe life’s tests through bitachon: challenges are not glitches but guidance. Hindsight shows a pattern of perfect outcomes; trust brings that clarity into the present, displacing anxiety with purpose. If you’re ready to trade applause for alignment and tension for trust, this conversation maps the path.
If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs calm and clarity, and leave a review so more people can find it. Your next world starts with what you choose to do today.
Until next time, have a spectacular day!
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Trust Factor, the podcast that guarantees your success when you implement its divine age old teachings. Context, we are right now on chapter four. We're finishing it. It's a long chapter. It's probably half the book. The following, the next three are short, really short, which means we're going to be getting through this pretty quickly. What promises to come on the horizon are interviews, potentially as soon as this week. Interviews with community leaders and rabbis and influential business people on the concept of Bitachon, on trust in God, and how that affects their lives and how they utilize that to be able to succeed in this life. I'm looking forward to that in a big way. I hope you guys are also. New books. I'm thinking about a spectacular one that changed my life. It's almost a no-brainer. I'll announce that when I'm certain of it. Bottom line, this is just season one. We're getting warmed up. Okay, season two is going to be that much more impactful. That I can guarantee. When it's gonna happen, based on what I see right now, not that far away, my friends. But for now, we are into the book and we're finishing up chapter four. And just to clarify, we're talking about getting to the next world, building the next world, and confirming for us what it is that we should be doing in this world to build our next. We know that we're in this world, right? So in this world, we can do mitzvahs in this world, we can do the commandments that apply to this world, and what that does is it builds this world. It builds your day-to-day. It makes this life for you that much better and your children and your grandchildren and future generations. That's when we take our time and our energy and our resources, our money, our wisdom, and we give it over to the world in a positive, uplifting way to help make it a better place by taking God's Torah and actualizing it in this world. But what about the next world? Because we hear about that all the time. Our rabbis talk about it, it's always a conversation. This is a temporary world, it's a hallway to get us to the next world. What's waiting for us in the next world? How many of us have stopped and learned about the next world? What goes on over there? Why do we want the next world? What is it, right? And why should we be so worried about building it in this world? And once we've established that we need to build it, what do we need to do to build it? So one of the things we said was, just to reiterate, you have to do the hidden mitzvahs, not the outwardly obvious ones where everybody sees, because for those, you get outwardly rewards, measure for measure, cause and effect. You're doing things that are outwardly showing the world that you're doing these wonderful things, you have to get rewarded for those wonderful actions in this world. So the same people see that there is cause and effect. If you want to build the hidden world, which is the next world, then you have to focus on the mitzvahs that are in your heart, which is, for example, I know that there is only one God, that there is not more than one God. I know that he has no image, no likeness of a human being, certainly not of a human being, no other image at all. When I'm giving charity, I can do it by putting my name up on the side of the building and negotiating that and making sure that it is the right font and the right height so that people can see it from across the city. Or I can do it completely anonymously and give in a way where nobody knows that it was me. Those are the actions that build your next world. When you do things in the hidden world, here it builds your next world. Okay? And then we've said two things that have to happen even when all of that is met. And that is number one, that you need to worry about everybody else. If you're living this life for you, you've got it wrong. You've got to be focusing on your neighbors, on your brothers, on your sisters, on your community members, of the of the people living in Israel, of anybody who espouses a life of Torah and goodness and mitzvahs. That's what you need to do. Doesn't mean that you just focus on the people who are doing good. On the contrary, you try and reach out to the people who are off the derek, as they say. They're not on the right path. They've made a lot of bad choices and they're living a life that you can clearly see is wrong. There, you need to get involved and you need to do it in a way where you uplift people, you build them up and you show them the beauty of living a Torah life. When you're that individual, now you've checked off a very big box where God says, ah, that's an individual I want up here with me. When the time is right, that person is going to be right here beside me in the next world, in a spectacular next world. And that is number two, the second box. The second box is you have to find favor in his eyes. In other words, he has to look at you living that lifestyle and putting these teachings into action for you as well, so that you're not being a hypocrite telling everybody what to do when you're yourself, you're not doing it. So worry about number one, doing these things yourself, living a positive, uplifting life based on mitzvahs and Torah. Then worry about everybody else to make sure that they are inspired and they are uplifted and doing their best to live the best life they can using Torah and mitzvahs. If you've done those things and you've checked off those boxes, you have the next world. Now, he just finishes it off by giving us a couple of examples. And we mentioned those the other day. We said that these are people who have reached an exceptional level of a relationship with their creator, that they teach those who wish to serve Hashem how to properly perform, because it's not enough to just want to do it. You have to know how to do it. You know, a lot of people are misguided. They want to connect back to the creator, they want to have a relationship, they want to improve their lives, but they don't take the time to find a rabbi. They don't take the time to sit and learn. They just go with what feels good inside of them, which is a really it's the wrong way to do it. You can't be good in your own heart without knowing what being good means. You just can't. You might think that society has already taught it to you, and in many cases, perhaps they have, but there are details, there are specific protocols. You know, if you want to be able to achieve greatness in certain industries that are very much regulated, whether it's the aviation industry or the financial banking institutions, you don't just walk in a willy-nilly and say, you know what, this is how I feel these organizations or these industries should be run in my heart. And therefore I'm gonna run them that way. You don't become a pilot for a commercial airline and suddenly change protocol when you're sitting in the cockpit to say, you know what, it just doesn't feel good for me that I should do A, B, or C, that I should fly at X amount of power, or that I should, you know, I should lift my landing gear where I'm when I'm when I'm X amount of feet off the ground. I think I should go a little bit higher, or I think I should bring them up a little bit sooner. Everything is specific and exacting. They have procedures and protocols because you are dealing with things that are of spectacular importance, human lives, or massive amounts of money and financial security in the financial institution world. You cannot go willy-nilly. You can't just say it feels good to me, and therefore that's how I'm gonna do it. You have to learn. And here we're talking about a world of eternity that you're building. Learn. Take a few minutes like you're doing now. Listen to a podcast, find a rabbi, ask specific questions, make sure you're doing it right because there's almost nothing as bad as knowing that you've spent so much time and energy trying to do something the right way, and you end up doing it the wrong way and you don't get the credit for it that you should get. After all the time and energy and sacrifices that you made, you want to make sure that you're doing it correctly. You know, the idea that you put a mazuza on your door, right? But nobody checks their mazuzas. They just put them up once when they buy the house. Twenty years later, they're not checked it, not even once. You're supposed to check it every number of years. I think the accepted practice is every seven years. But if you want to check it earlier, it's not a big deal. Take them down, take the insert out, give it to somebody who's capable of doing it. I think they charge peanuts for it. It's probably a few dollars, or some people will even do it for free. I look at them often. People send me them to look and make sure they're kosher. Make sure your mezzus are kosher because if the writing in them are wrong, if you're missing a letter, if letters are touching each other, they are not valid. They're not kosher, they're not doing the job they're intending to do. How many stories have we heard of people who've put up mazuzas and they said, but but I did it right. I put mezuzas not just on my front door, I put one on every single door of my house. Why are we dealing with these challenges? And then eventually they go and they check their mazuzas and they find problems. That's not always your answer, my friends. That's sometimes used as a scapegoat to say, let me find the easy way out. Maybe two letters are touching. Maybe my mezuzas not kosher. Maybe it's not me. I'm kosher. My mezuzas must be the problem. The real way to address problems in your life is to first take your own inventory. Figure out, are you conducting yourself properly? Are you doing the right things that you're supposed to be doing? Are you looking at the right things? Are you going to the right places? Are you eating the right things? Are you managing the relationships properly? Do your assessment. Are you conducting yourself in business properly? Are you above board, right? Do your analysis, do your homework. Once you've established that you've done and you're operating in a way that you haven't degraded or that you know that you're giving 100%, then yeah, then you can look at your mezzo's. The point being that there are there's a right way and there is a wrong way to do things. And if you're trying to do things the right way, but you haven't learned properly, then you're gonna end up doing them the wrong way. So it says a Salah Harav, find your find yourself a rabbi. Get yourself a qualified rabbi who knows you and who can advise you, and who you can connect to, and who you can identify with. That's it, my friends. It summer summarizes this by saying that the people who live this type of lifestyle are primarily the people who are taking these tests that we're all given, and life is one big series of tests. It's how you approach the tests. Are you approaching it in a way where you recognize that it comes from God and it's all loving and it's all perfect and it's all designed for your own benefit? Or do you get frustrated and flustered and upset and anxious every time a new challenge comes up because you don't like it? I don't like the way that it worked out. I don't like that they chose this, I don't like that this ended up that way. I would prefer it this way, that way, and the other way. I don't want it this way. What you're effectively saying is that you could do a better job at running the world than the creator of the world. That's what you're saying. When you're upset, when you're anxious, when you're depressed, that is the message you're sending. I could do better. I know better than he. And my friends, look around and you'll recognize that there is only one who runs this world and has been doing so since its inception, absolutely perfectly. And just look at your life, look in hindsight, and you will, if you're honest with yourself, intellectually honest, you will agree that in hindsight, in your own life, everything works out perfectly in the end. It might be difficult when we're going through it. We might think that it is terrible and it shouldn't be happening. But with time, we get hindsight and clarity, and we recognize that nothing could have been more perfect. Let that be the way that we all walk around throughout this lifetime of ours, acknowledging all of the things that happened, the good and the seemingly bad, as all being perfect. Have an amazing day. We'll continue tomorrow.
