Episode 34 - Your Boss Isn’t Your Villain, He’s The Messenger

Ever feel like you’re doing emotional gymnastics to win over a boss, partner, or client, only to end up more exhausted and less yourself? We take a hard look at why trying to control people keeps us stuck, and how a simple reset—putting trust in the Creator before our clever theories—can turn friction into real growth.

We start by reframing conflict: people aren’t the final cause of our pain, they’re instruments that highlight what we need to repair. Instead of chasing symptoms—crafting angles, stroking egos, rewriting emails at 1 a.m.—we ask the deeper question: what is the lesson I’m being pushed to see? That pivot opens space for honest prayer, practical learning, and a calmer, more grounded use of intellect. You still advocate for yourself and pursue excellence, but you stop gambling your peace on other people’s moods.

Across stories of sore feet, bad investments, and unfair promotions, we trace a pattern: the simple explanation (pshat) rarely tells the whole truth. Recurring conflicts often point to roots like control, impatience, or fear. When you work the root, the same world feels lighter. We unpack the idea that the antidote arrives before the disease, and how wisdom and Torah offer tools that heal both mindset and habit. This isn’t passive surrender; it’s targeted action: apologise faster, listen deeper, set boundaries kindly, and focus on the few levers you actually control.

By the end, you’ll have a clean framework: notice friction, pause the blame loop, turn upward, look inward, then take one honest step. Relationships soften when you stop managing impressions and start refining character. Work gets clearer when you focus on value instead of politics. And anxiety loosens its grip when you measure effort rather than outcome. If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who’s navigating a tough relationship or workplace, and leave a review with one insight you’re taking into your week. Your next right step might be simpler than you think.

Transcript

Setting The Theme: Emuna First

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome to the Trust Factor Podcast, the only podcast that guarantees your success when you implement its divine age old teachings. Good morning, everybody. I hope you're doing well. Thank you very much for joining us today. We are into chapter four. We just started off chapter four of the Garden of Amuna.

Faith Before Intellect Explained

SPEAKER_00 0:30

We're talking about the fact that there's this process called Emuna before intellect, taking your faith in your relationship with your Creator and putting that before everything else, including your own ideologies about why you think things are happening and how you think the world is run. He says that only after a person believes with full and complete faith, that there is no one but the Creator and blames no one for whatever grief they seem to be causing, does he begin to realize that his tribulations all come from the Creator for his own ultimate benefit? Once a person knows this, he can now use his intellect to try and discern what the creator wants from him and what he must rectify. By putting your emuna before your intellect, by using that process and putting into practice, a person becomes better acquainted with his creator, obviously, because until that point, you've been too busy trying to figure out why your neighbor hates you. You've been too busy trying to figure out why the bank doesn't let you get ahead. You've been too busy trying to figure out why your boss won't give you the raise or the promotion. You're too busy trying to assess the rest of the world. You're trying to understand everybody else's actions and behaviors and explain them away, or even worse, we find ourselves trying to understand the way that other people are interacting with us so that we can then try to manipulate them to behave in a way that we want them to behave, to earn favor in their eyes, to find an individual that isn't giving you a raise.

Escaping The Blame Loop

SPEAKER_00 2:06

And now let me figure out a way to get what I want out of that individual. Maybe I need to stroke their ego. Maybe I need to put some cash in their pocket. Maybe I need to send some business their way. There's always an angle. When it comes to humanity, how can I serve that individual who is beating me so that that individual stops beating me? In other words, I watch this individual who's always trying to figure out a way to get at me. They're always trying to put roadblocks in front of me and stumbling blocks so that I fail. And they're my superior at work. And I can't get it. I don't understand why. I need to get in their good books. And so all you do is try to understand that individual and try and do things that are out of your own character. You put yourself in an uncomfortable situation and do things that you wouldn't otherwise do in order to find favor in that boss's eyes. Meanwhile, who sent that boss? Who's the one that determines how much you make and where you work for a living and all these different things? It all comes from your creator. It's all a test.

People As Instruments, Not Causes

SPEAKER_00 3:07

When you understand that this individual is just a stick in God's hand, that's all they are. God is using that individual, whether it's your boss, whether it's your child, your spouse, your co-worker, your employee, whatever it is, God is utilizing that individual to say, how are you going to react in this situation? Are you going to try and solve the problem yourself? Are you going to blame humanity? Are you going to appeal to the human process and the human psyche and the individual and their selfishness and the desire for power in order to get what you want? Or are you going to turn to your creator and say, God, I'm putting all that on hold? I don't know what's going on behind the scenes. There's no reason for my boss to want to get at me any more than he should want to get at anybody else. I've done nothing to the individual. It flies in this in the face of logic. So clearly there's something at play here. Clearly I've got to take note and have a conversation with your creator. Turn to the one who controls everything in the world and have that conversation with him.

Turning From Manipulation To Prayer

SPEAKER_00 4:10

He gives an example. A person who has pain in his feet. If he doesn't live with a Muna, he blames his shoes or some other natural cause. When he loses money, he blames himself for being stupid. I should have never bought that stock. I should have never listened to my coworker. I should have never done what that person told me to do. I should have never invested in A, B, or C. When he fails to win a promotion at work, he blames his superiors. He's trying to get me. He's guided out for me. I don't know why. It must be. Can't be my fault. It can't be something else. It can't be my creator trying to get into my head to make me understand there's something I need to notice. It must be that individual. He hates me for some reason. What can I

Pain, Money, And Promotions Reframed

SPEAKER_00 4:50

do to make him not hate me? This is all the result of an intellect before immuna thought process. This is you trying to understand what's going on in a world that is upside down. It makes no sense. It's not for you to figure out. What's going to happen is you're going to make yourself sick trying to figure out something that is not understandable. It's not. And even if you think it is, even if you think you got the answer, you don't have the answer. You have what's called pshat. Pshat is the simple understanding. I have the basic level understanding. It's clear that what's happening and why my boss hates me is because of this incident that happened. And you keep pinning it back to that. That might be the immediate symptom, but you don't understand the cause. The cause is much deeper than that. And that is designed to bring you to contemplate. Why? What's the cause? Never mind the symptoms. Don't pay attention to the symptoms. That's the corrupt nature of humanity that we deal with on a daily basis. That doctors in the medical system don't treat the causes, they treat the symptoms. It's a band-aid approach to life. And you could learn a lot from that. You can take the medical system's approach to life and apply it to your day-to-day. When you're trying to understand what it was that caused your boss to be upset with you, and you're trying to tie it back to a certain incident, and then you want to try and make reparation somehow by undoing that, you're trying

From Symptoms To Root Causes

SPEAKER_00 6:12

to understand a process that requires a band-aid. When in reality, you need to look inwards and say, okay, what caused that original event to happen in the first place? Why did I have that fallout with my boss in X, Y, or Z scenario? And you know what? It's no coincidence that I have similar type issues with other relationships in my life. Whether it's my spouse or my children or my friends, I find myself having a similar conflict across the board. But this takes serious introspection. Once you've done that, you've gotten the message. It's no longer Pshat, it's no longer this simple understanding. It's now the depth. It's now trying to understand what character flaw inside of me caused that to happen in the first place? What do I need to repair? How do I need to improve to make the situation better? Usually what we find is the opposite. We're trying to get other people to improve. If only my wife understood me better, if only my children listened more, if only my parents were less intrusive, if only and if only, most of the time we're sitting around waiting for everybody else to change. We want the world to cater to us. Everybody needs to be more like me. When people are more like me, then the world would be a better place. Or when then our relationship will be at a better place. In fact, the opposite is true. You need to learn to work on you. You have to always view yourself as being part of the problem, if not the entire problem. If it's always everybody else, then good luck getting past them, because you're going to wait for other people to repair their character. And we've seen so few people are actually invested in that process that you're going to wait a lifetime and you're going to come up empty-handed. What do you control? You control your ability to fix you. So you fix you, and by doing that, you'll repair other relationships. You've heard the saying, be the change that you want to see. You have to do it. It all hinges on you. When the world lives that way, we're operating on a much, much higher level. In actuality, it's likely that his shoes caused him pain. Going back to our story, the guy has foot pain. And he's saying in actuality, yes, the shoes did cause you pain. And maybe he really did make a stupid investment that caused him to lose money. Furthermore, it could be that his boss treats him unfairly. Yet, these are all effects triggered by the creator that are designed to stimulate the individual and bring him to rectify something or to spiritually arouse him. It's exactly what I just said. It's a symptom that God is giving you. He's giving you symptoms. This is why you're conflicted with ex-individual. You just don't know it. So start to do some real introspection. Start to pray to me, start to have a discussion with me. Put some of your challenges on my plate. I can handle it. And let me guide you. And once you start to learn, once you sit to open up and crack the book and start to learn what somebody who is capable of teaching you, you will then immediately, in a material

Introspection Over Fixing Others

SPEAKER_00 9:12

way and in a spiritual way, you will immediately start to gain from the Torah. The Torah is designed to be a cure for all of our ailments. It says that very clearly. God says, I created the disease, but I also created the antidote. The key is that he created the antidote before he created the disease. It already exists. Your solution is already there. In other words, he doesn't want you to suffer. He doesn't want you in pain, not physical and not emotional anguish. He doesn't want that. So that's why he says, I created the antidote first. I created the cure to your illness first, and then I gave you the illness. Why? Because now I want to see how quickly you turn to the antidote. You're in a problem, you want to figure out where the problem is coming from. Learn your Torah. Speak to your creator, figure out where you're lacking, improve yourself, and everything around you improves.

Closing And Calls To Action

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Have an amazing day, my friends. Thank you for spending time with us on the Trust Factor Podcast. If you've heard something today that moved you, save this episode and share it with someone who might need to hear it. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss upcoming conversations that challenge, empower, and uplift. And if you're on social media, connect with us. Leave your thoughts. Drop a quote that resonated with you. Hashtag the TrustFactor Podcast. Until next time, keep growing in your trust and keep living with purpose. I'm Jesse Revivo, and this has been the Trust Factor Podcast. Thanks for listening.