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 185 - The Unknown Is No Longer Scary Once You Learn It
What if your deepest losses hurt differently when seen through the lens of purpose? We unpack a seventh distinction of trust: the ability to stay steady when life withholds what we want or takes what we love. Rather than glossing over pain, we frame grief with meaning—this life as a brief, purposeful corridor and the next as the destination—so sorrow is real, but never rootless.
We dive into a Jewish spiritual framework of reincarnation, where souls return to repair, improve, and complete their work across lifetimes. Within that view, relationships become purposeful partnerships that help us meet our mission. When someone passes, love remains and the connection continues at the soul level. This understanding won’t erase tears, but it transforms despair into honour, gratitude, and hope. We challenge the cultural silence around mortality and argue that learning about the afterlife lowers anxiety by turning the unknown into the understood.
We also rethink withheld blessings, from unanswered prayers to lottery fantasies. Sudden abundance can fracture relationships and distort priorities; sometimes a divine “no” is a profound mercy that protects our mission. Through a vivid story about a child changing schools, we show how familiarity dissolves fear: walk the hallways, meet the teachers, and the panic fades. The same applies to death, purpose, and eternity—study, ask wise guides, and build clarity. You’ll grieve with love, trust with strength, and navigate life’s hardest turns with a steadier heart.
If this perspective helped you breathe a little easier, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs it today, and leave a review telling us what part shifted your outlook.
Until next time, have a spectacular day!
Good morning everyone. Welcome to the Trust Factor, the podcast that guarantees success when you implement its divine age old teachings. We are getting close to wrapping up chapter five. We're finishing off with the seventh distinction between a somebody who has trust in God and somebody who does not. This is a bit of a long one and it could get quite heavy, but it is a very, very powerful distinction, and hopefully we'll spend a little bit of time on this to drive the point home. He says that the seventh difference between a person with trust and one who does not have trust is that the one who trusts in God does not grieve when something that he wants is withheld from him, nor when he loses that which is beloved to him. You hear this? The classic example, my friends, is God forbid when somebody passes. It's a tragedy. It is a tragedy not because we've lost something that is beloved to us. Yes, it's sad, we get that. But what's really tragic about it is that the individual lost their opportunity to build their next world. That's what one should focus on. That's the real challenge. The challenge is not that we've lost somebody because we know that that person came into this world just like us on a temporary basis, that they were here to achieve a certain outcome. They had a task to fulfill, and that our relationship with them was strictly to be able to enable them and for them to enable us to be able to achieve our goal. So that when we depart from this world, which we are all going to do, then we understand that we have done the most that we could have done in this short time here, and that what our souls are going to be reunited just as they were in this world. This concept of reincarnation is a cornerstone of Judaism. We know that our souls have been here many times before. And every time we come, we come to repair, we come to improve, we come to achieve greatness, so that we don't have to come back eventually. We're done. We've done all that we need to do and we've succeeded over a series of visits. That's the big picture. So we know that our souls are reunited because every time we come back in another go-around, in another gilgul, like it's referred to in Hebrew, our souls are still connected. We don't detach from the old souls in our previous existences. Many times they come with us because it's those very same souls that affected us in previous existences. And so oftentimes, sparks of those souls come back into this existence to continue to enable us to do what we need to do. So when somebody passes, if you've studied and if you've understood what your purpose is in this world and what their purpose was in this world, you understand, okay, we need to grieve, but the grieving needs to be a reasonable amount of grief based on the knowledge of why they were here in the first place and where they are going to. Yes, there are sad elements, but do we lose our minds? Do we suffer the rest of our existence? We have 80, 90, 100 years on this planet, and God forbid you lose somebody close to you at the age of 40, and then you spend 60 years in grief, and your entire life is destroyed? Do you know how many people live like that, unfortunately? I understand it's a powerful thing, grief. But if you don't understand that this world is a temporary existence in the first place, if you don't get that you're here for a short time, you know who doesn't talk about this? Mainstream media. They don't talk about this. Government, they don't talk about this. The powers that be that influence us on a daily basis, they don't do podcasts on death and dying. They don't remind you on a daily basis that your days are numbered over here. They try to avoid the subject matter entirely so that you can continue the delusion to think that I'm here forever. You're not. None of us are. None of us are guaranteed today or tomorrow. So when you've come to understand that and accept it with love, to know that this is just a temporary existence. This isn't the meat and potatoes, this isn't the big show. That is waiting for us. This is a preparation for that world. When you've come to understand that, okay, we understand, we're not going to see that person, we're going to miss them. But really, really, our souls are going to be united and it's going to be in a world of eternity. It's going to be in the real world, not in this temporary world of lies. When you've understood that, it makes life so much easier when you've had that loss. That is the big picture of what he's talking about over here. That when something is withheld from you, okay, we understand that. I prayed God, I want the millions, I want the lottery. The Powerball in the US last week, I drove in$715 billion last week. I mean, it's ridiculous. Okay, Hashem, I'm buying these tickets and I want to win the lottery. And if it doesn't come, then I'm going to be upset. You know, somebody who has an ounce of learning understands that God is withholding it from you. It's the best thing that he could do for you because had he given it to you, your life would have been over, your life would have been ruined. So many of us are delusional to think that we can handle that kind of money overnight. You haven't earned anywhere close to anything similar. You're living a life full of debt. You've never made any reasonable money, and suddenly you're going to get dumped$700 plus billion dollars in your pocket, and you think that you're going to live a normal life. You think you're going to maintain healthy relationships? Good luck, my friends. Even those who've worked hard for it and have amassed fortunes, most of the time, their entire surroundings have fallen apart around them. All of their friends and all of their relationships and all their community have fallen apart because that money's gotten to their head. And that's somebody who worked for it hard and earned it. You want it to be dropped into your lap? You understand that God knows who you are better than you do. And if he's not giving it to you, it's because you're not supposed to have it, because it's going to ruin your life and it's not going to enable you to achieve the goal that you set out to achieve in this world. He knows that. We don't, but he does. The second part, which is when we lose something that it was beloved to us, obviously, an individual who is a family member or a beloved individual that we've spent a lifetime knowing is lost. That can be very, very difficult. Makes sense. The way to temper that anguish, the way to deal with that suffering, is to learn why we're here in the first place and where we're going when we depart this world. Study your creator. Figure out which worlds he created and what their purpose is. When you get that knowledge, things change. Let me explain this a little bit in a different way. My son, hopefully he doesn't mind me sharing this story with you. My son, when he was very young, we switched schools. We took him from one school to another. I think it was probably grade five or six. And I remember, no, I don't think it was that was probably grade four or five. And I remember taking him to his new school and showing him around, and you could see that he was nervous. He left all of his friends behind at his old school. He didn't know anybody, he was unfamiliar with the school, and he put on a bold face. But when the time came for me to leave him at school that very first day, he came out running after the car because he was terrified of being in this new environment. And it makes sense. We are scared of the things that we don't know. We are terrified of the unknown, the unfamiliar. That's who we all are. We're all in that same boat. Some of us can manage our fear a little bit better than others, but all of us, when we're put in an unfamiliar environment, it becomes very difficult. The same thing applies, by the way, if you get a job, right? Somebody's working, making$100,000 a year as an administrator, and somebody offers them a job across the city and will pay them$200,000 for the exact same job. That doesn't mean it's easy. A lot of people would walk away from that job because they've spent untold years at their current job. They've been there for five, ten, twenty years. They know everyone. They know everything. Everything is at their fingertips. They know the building inside and out, they have their commute to work, they have their parking spot, they have their desk set up as they like it. Everything falls into place and they're comfortable in their work. They are now contemplating should I even go take this job that's going to pay me double? And I'm going to do the exact same work that I'm doing here, but now I have a different commute, it's farther away, I have to get familiar, I don't know anybody over there, they may not like me, I may not like them, it may not last long, so on and so forth. Right? The unfamiliar is terrifying, even when it comes with a big benefit, like double the salary. A lot of people have to contemplate that, and a lot of people have said, no, thank you. I'm perfectly content where I am. Yeah, I can probably make more money somewhere else, but there is a lot of pain and suffering in the unknown that comes with that. Same idea here, my friends. If you're a person today who suffers from anxiety, most of the time you should know that the reason we suffer from anxiety is a lack of control, a lack of controlling the outcome that we desire or knowledge of what that outcome is ahead of time. And there is no bigger example of that than death and dying. We don't know what awaits us if we don't study it. We don't know when we're gonna go and we don't know how we're gonna go. Now you may not obsess about it on a daily basis, but you better believe that it's somewhere in the back of your mind, knowing that you know nothing about your end. Nothing. And so for pe for a lot of people, that becomes a very big source of contention and anxiety. The best way to defeat it is to do what my son did. Spend some time there, learn, walk around, figure it out. Where are the washrooms? Where's the office? Who are my teachers? Who are my friends gonna be? Start to figure it out because by the time my son was done with that school, it was the best years of his life. He'll tell you that himself. He went in terrified and he came out elated with the best years of his life. My friends, the lesson is if you want to be at ease with what happens when we're done in this world, learn about it. Figure it out, pick up a book, ask a rabbi, investigate. And when you do that, then the fear of the unknown will melt away. Why? Because you will know what is waiting for you and you will come to terms with it, and you will be excited and anticipate, God willing, after you've put in the hard work in this world, the reward that awaits you in the next. That wraps it up for today, my friends, but just for today, because there is a lot more to talk on the end of this chapter. We'll continue tomorrow. Have an amazing day.
