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 173 - From Chaos To Calm: Building A Life Of Trust And Service
The news cycle shouts chaos; we answer with trust, purpose, and a plan to grow. Today we raise the stakes for our show and for our lives, sharing why we’re bringing our first interview to the feed and how choosing to serve, even when it costs time and money, creates meaning that comfort can’t. From family and work to learning and community, we name the tension honestly: you can coast, or you can build something that lasts.
We wrap chapter four with a clear lens on Olam Haba, the world to come, and the kind of person who earns a share—someone who loosens their grip on shallow pleasure and commits to divine service. Then we open chapter five with a sharp contrast: one who trusts accepts judgment and thanks God for both sweet and bitter; one who doesn’t takes credit for wins and collapses under losses. Through the twin‑in‑the‑womb image and the missed‑bus story, we reframe setbacks as hidden gifts and loss as passage, not annihilation. This is not denial; it’s perspective built through practice.
That practice is repetition. We talk about learning that finally clicked at repetition one‑hundred‑and‑one and why going back over core ideas is how inspiration becomes character. If traffic, bills, illness, or conflict spike your anxiety, this conversation offers a grounded alternative: daily accounting, small acts of service, and gratitude when it’s hardest. We’re also previewing Friday’s interview with voices who live these principles at a high level and can help us turn ideals into habits.
If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs calm in the noise, and leave a review so more people can find it. Then tell us what one small practice you’ll add today—what’s your one‑hundred‑and‑first repetition?
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. We are counting down till Friday. That is gonna be our first interview. I'm excited. I'm actually quite excited because it's the beginning of hopefully a new element of this podcast that's just gonna elevate it. Which, by the way, guys, is exactly what we need to be doing in our day-to-day lives. I want you to take point from what I'm trying to do over here. Just as an aside, as a reminder, this is not my livelihood. I don't make money from this podcast. On the contrary, it costs me time and money, which I do lovingly. I have a job, I have a business, I have a family, I've got older children, younger children. Thank God I'm a very busy guy. But I committed to this podcast because I want to improve the world. I want to worry, just like we've been learning about over here. I want to do for my brothers and sisters, I want to do for humanity, I want to build communities, I want to remind people of the goodness that this life has to offer, and to contrast all of the negativity and the chaos and the mayhem and the corruption that's out there for us all to see. It's in our face 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can't get away from the craziness. You literally can't. And it gets amped up and amped up every day that passes. It's like the rules and the regulations don't exist anymore. The wheels have fallen off of this train. It used to be when we were growing up that we had morals and values when it came to broadcasting and media and what they put out there and they didn't share their opinions and it wasn't reality TV, it was just the facts. And they allowed us to make up our own minds today. It's anything but that. So this podcast was designed to do battle with those concepts. But more than that, I want you to take point from recognizing that I could have just not even done the podcast and continued on with my own personal life and worried about me and my own Torah and my own mitzvahs and my own family. But I decided to reach out and to help. And now that I've done that, and it's a commitment, a daily commitment, which is not easy. It takes a lot of time every day. Not complaining, I'm just pointing it out so that you understand I'm not happy with it. I want to amp it up, I want to take it to the next level, even though it is burdensome in that I don't gain from it, I give from it, which is great, and I do it with love. I'm still not content. I want to do more and I want to grow it, and I'm doing it for your benefit. So, God willing, this coming Friday, you will see the fruits of that labor. And I want you to do the same thing in your life. I want you to assess your life on a daily basis. Are you doing enough? Have you done enough? What are you doing differently today that you didn't do yesterday? What else are you taking on today to grow your life, to become a better, stronger person than you were yesterday and before that? Do that accounting and then take something on. Don't just coast through this life. This life is not a picnic. We weren't brought here to just do nothing, to just rest and do absolutely nothing. It gets boring after a while. And if you don't have purpose, then God forbid you will live a very, very insecure and unfulfilled life. So pick up something and run with it. Right now, we are finishing chapter four into chapter five. Let's finish the last summary for chapter four. It says that the difference between the individual that God bestows the next world on and those who he does not is that the individual is one who tries to follow in the ways of the pious ones, who detach themselves from worldly pleasures and lovingly devote themselves to God's service. Then he may be confident that God will lovingly bestow upon him immeasurable goodness in Olam Haba, eternal goodness in an eternal realm in the eternal world. Those, my friends, were the seven variables that determine whether or not you are of the caliber where you know and can sleep restfully knowing that you have a share, a big share in the world to come. Now we're into chapter five, and I want to remind you that in this book and in life, the best way to be able to learn something, to ingrain it into your soul, is to repeat it. Repetition is critically important in life because we learn things and then we forget them almost immediately, especially if they're not impactful. But even if they are impactful, you get inspired, and that inspiration lasts minutes or hours or a day or two and it's gone. So we have to constantly be reminding ourselves of these ideas, of these principles. And so that's exactly what Khovot Halevavot is doing. You'll notice, and you'll continue to notice, that we're going to be talking about a lot of the same concepts, maybe in a little bit of a different context. But oftentimes, like he's about to do now, we're gonna go back and we're gonna pick the top three of those differences that we just mentioned, that we just summarized, of somebody who gets the next world and those who don't, and he's gonna compare them. He's gonna tell you that there are seven differences within those three that he wants to explore. And so this is all for our benefit. Don't get frustrated with repetition. Yes, you've heard this before, but our sages have told us, and Torah tells us over and over again about repetition, relearning your learning. Always relearn it. My friends, Gemara for me was always difficult. To learn the Gemara Tamut is very difficult, as it is for many people, for many reasons. And I always had a difficult, challenging time learning it. The only time I had massive levels of success was when I learned in a program called Kenyan Lashta, which means that the entire premise of their learning was repetition. We wouldn't learn a lot, but we would repeat the same thing over and over and over again in Hebrew, in Aramaic, which is the language of the text, and in English we would interpret it so that we would make sure that we each understood what we were learning, and then each one of us that were learning together would repeat it for the sake of the other people and for themselves to make sure that it is ingrained in them. Repetition is critical, my friends. In fact, our sages have told us that there is a massive difference between learning your your content a hundred times and a hundred and one. It is an entirely different world, not even comparable. Learning it a hundred and one versus a hundred. And you ask, what's the difference? It's only one. How could it be such the difference? And the answer is it is infinitely different because that hundred and one is a continuation. It is not limited by a number. It is to show that we will continue to learn eternally. We never stop repeating our learning. Chapter five. It says that one who has trust in God is different from one who does not have trust in him in seven different areas. What are they? The first difference is that one who trusts in God accepts his judgment willingly in all matters and thanks him for the good as well as the bad. I mean, guys, to say this is so simple. For me to say, yeah, you know what, you have to thank God for the things that are seemingly bad in your eyes, the same way and to the same extent that you would thank him for the good that happens in your life. What does that mean? To take this to an extreme? You have to be just as grateful as you were when you brought a life into this world as you are when a life leaves this world. Imagine that. Just imagine the level that we need to be holding on to understand the inner workings of the next world, this world and the next world, to know really what we're here for, to understand that this is a temporary world, to understand that this world is just purpose-driven, to be able to build the real world, a world of eternity. Remember, I gave that analogy, actually, my rabbi gave it, of the twins in the womb, right? And the one twin times come for labor, for birth. One twin goes out first. The first one thinks he's dead, he's gone, it's over for him. He's left the real world in the womb of the mother, where everything is perfect and taken care of for them and provided for them, and they don't have to slave and work and do all the difficult things and deal with stress and anxiety. He thinks that his brother or sister just left the world and now he's terribly sad for that brother or sister. But in reality, where did they go? They went into the real world. They came into our world. Their life just began. It's the same thing. When we depart this world, our life just begins. Those who learn about it know this. And therefore, when a life leaves this world, they aren't sad. There, if they are sad, they're sad because this person now no longer has the potential to continue to build the quality of their next world. But in terms of where that person is at right now, there's no reason to be sad. The contrary. You're supposed to be thrilled for that individual, happy, just like you are when a baby comes into this world. Think about that. Whole other level. How far away are we from that level? And to contrast it, what does he say? One who does not trust in Hashem takes credit for the good that he obtains. So the one who trusts says thank you to God when it's good and when it's seemingly bad, when you get a bill, when you lose money, when you're sick, when you have issues with certain relationships, when you're challenged in life, when you're stuck in traffic, when you all these different things that we deal with that get us frustrated and upset and make us anxious and depressed. When you accept them with love and you recognize that it's perfect, and he's actually helping you because we don't have foresight. We don't know what's waiting for us. The classic example is the person who misses the bus on his first day of work where he knows he can't be late and he misses the bus and he thinks it's the worst day of his life, and that bus turns the corner, and God forbid there's an explosion on the bus or an accident, right? And he would have died in that accident. He doesn't have that clarity. He doesn't know what happened as that bus turned the corner. Had he known, he would be thrilled that he never made that bus. He would be thrilled because he gets to never live another day. But we don't know that, and therefore we think it is seemingly bad. But when we know that it is perfect, nothing builds us up more than that. And the contrast is that somebody who thinks that it is them, they give themselves a big pat on the back when things work out well. They give themselves a big congratulations. That's not the problem. Do you know where the problem comes in? When they've failed, when they've lost, when things haven't worked out, when they're stuck in traffic, when they get the bill, when all these things come and blindside them, that's when they lose their minds. That's when they beat themselves down, that's when they kick themselves, that's when they hate the system, that's when they pummel themselves into a very dark place. Why? Because it's them. It's got nothing to do with God. It can't be good, it can't be perfect. They failed and they will forever beat themselves up for it. That is the worst part, my friends. Living a life where you attribute everything to yourself and don't recognize that there was a loving God who is perfectly conducting your life. That wraps it up for today. Getting pumped for Friday, my friends. Share the post. I've sent around a post regarding the interview coming up on Friday. Share it around. It promises to be a great one. We're tapping into great, great minds of individuals who live this stuff on a very high level every single day. Have an amazing, spectacular day, my friends.
