Episode 35 - Why Disconnecting On Shabbat Can Save Your Life And Your Money

What if the day that looks most profitable is quietly draining your blessing? We press pause on the noise and make a case for guarding Shabbat as a radical act of trust—one that rebuilds family bonds, restores inner calm, and reframes what real success looks like. The conversation moves from the lure of weekend earnings to the deeper cost of constant availability, arguing that unblessed income can become the most expensive money you ever make.

We share how to reorder life by putting emunah first and intellect second. That doesn’t mean ignoring strategy; it means starting with alignment before action. When we begin with trust, our analysis becomes clearer, our choices cleaner, and our ambition less frantic. We also explore how life leaves hints when we drift—financial stress that mirrors dishonest habits, stubborn pain that spotlights pride, and stalled promotions that invite patience over resentment. Instead of blaming bosses or markets, we turn setbacks into ethical audits: What needs repair? What fear or habit blocks blessing? What would change if I honoured sacred time?

You’ll hear a practical prayer that holds both drive and surrender: ask for the promotion if it’s right, ask for contentment if it’s not, and ask for insight to improve either way. We refuse the false choice between faith and excellence by doing both—protecting twenty-five hours for presence and pushing for better character, better work, and better stewardship the rest of the week. The result is a life where money serves meaning, not the other way around.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with someone who’s grinding through their weekends, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway. Your support helps more people choose trust over noise and build a rhythm that actually restores.

Transcript

Welcoming Shabbat And Switching Off

The Cost Of Working On Saturday

Free Choice And The Test Of Success

Money Without Blessing Lacks Value

Intellect Versus Emunah

Reading Life’s Hints And Corrections

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. Okay, my dear friends, good news. We've made it. It's Friday. We cranked out another week. We succeeded. And the reward is that tonight we get to block out all of the world. All of the noise gets to be blocked out. Nobody can access us for the mundane. We're not accessible. We don't exist to the mundane. We shut down our businesses. We shut the world out. We have no interest in allowing them access to our time and our energy for the next twenty five hours starting tonight. The only people who are allowed in are your family, your children, your parents, your spouse, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, all the people that mean something to you, bring them over. Invite them for meals. Even if they're not aware of Shabbat, just do your best to make sure that they don't desecrate the Shabbat. But bring them over and incorporate them into your routine. Incorporate them into your life so that it doesn't become routine. So that you have new guests coming over every Shabbat. And important, meaningful, deep conversations, not the ridiculousness that's out there. And if you're not doing this, if you're not blocking out the world on Shabbat, you're losing. You're simply losing. Life is passing you by. You are trading in gold for iron. You're trading in precious metals for junk. It doesn't make any sense. And for what? For an extra few hundred dollars? For an extra little bit of money. You worked six days. You can work on Sunday all you want. You worked six days. Take the one day. Disconnect from the ridiculousness to connect to what's important, to your creator, to your spirituality. Feed your soul. By the way, whatever you generate in terms of income on Saturday is not going to help you. You might say to yourself, you know what? If God didn't want me to work on Saturday, then why didn't He just make it so that every time I go to work on Shabbat, my car breaks down? Or the business fails. Or the customer pulls a fast one on me and doesn't pay. Or a million different things that can happen to be able to make you lose money. Not just that you didn't make money, but you actually lost money. So that eventually you resign. You throw your hands up in the air and say, you know what, I'm done with this. I'm not keeping Shabbat anymore. And you know already that's not how it works. We have this beautiful thing called free choice. Again, it's not free, so it's really not the right description of it, because your decisions have consequences. So they're not free, but you still have the freedom to make that choice. So God wants you to make a choice. It's a test. He doesn't want robots. He doesn't want to program you. And if every time you went out, you got a flat tire. If every time you worked on Saturday, you lost money, you would stop working on Saturday because it wasn't beneficial for you. You would be very clear at the fact that every time you go out, you lose money, and every time you stay home, you benefit, or at least you don't lose any money. So you would stay home. So that's not the way it's designed. In fact, what happens is the exact opposite. You go out to work on Saturday and it becomes your best day of the week. It became that's where I was, by the way. Twenty years ago I was in retail. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, that's where you made bank. That's where the money came in. Because I was in retail. It was in the malls. I had stores set up across the malls. And on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, that was your bread and butter. Monday through Thursday, you could drive a bus through the hallways in these shopping malls. Nobody was there. You barely made anything. So eventually I made the change. But that's the idea. God puts you in a position where you're tested. I'm going to give you the most income. You're going to see how your money only comes on Shabbat, and the rest of the week you're struggling. And then let me see you make the choice. You understand? Because it says very clearly that the money that you make on Shabbat, as much as you make, and it could be good through a test, that money has no bracha. It has no blessing associated with it. That money is cursed. It's not going to do any good for you. In fact, it could only do bad for you. God is not interested in money that you generated on Shabbat. In the desecration of Shabbat, the money that you earned, he has absolutely no interest in. Don't donate it. He doesn't want your donations. If you come to Shul and say, I'm giving donations, but that donations came from money that you earned on Shabbat, he's not interested. It's dirty money. He doesn't want it. He doesn't want you to give him your blood, sweat, and tears that were generated on the Shabbat when you weren't allowed to give up your blood, sweat, and tears. Shabbat is reserved for joy and blessing and Torah growth, spiritual growth. So if you're not doing that, you're going out and doing the exact opposite. He doesn't want any part of that. That money will not give you any blessing. Guaranteed. Now, we finished off yesterday, and this week we were talking about this idea of having intellect and having a Muna. When do you use your intellect and when do you use your amuna? And I want to be clear. There is a time and place for everything. I'm not saying, nor does the Torah ever tell you. On the contrary, it doesn't tell you not to use your intellect. You have to use your intellect. It's a requirement, it's a prerequisite. Because the Torah says throughout, from beginning to end, that you should know your God, that you should know your creator. You should know as many times as you can, it says you should know. As many times as possible, it says you should know. Not that you should believe. That is a very clear point to the fact that you need to use your faculties. You need to use your brain power and discern for yourself with absolute certainty to the point where you know with confidence everything there is to know about God that he allows us to learn in his Torah. You have an obligation to know, which means use your brain. But what we've been talking about this week is when to use your brain. When does your brain step up? The problem with the vast majority of humanity that doesn't follow God's Torah is that, first of all, they never even have him when they have no relationship with their creator. But even if they did, it's a secondary relationship. The instinct is to use your intellect. Let me explain away my problems using my intellect. And then and only then, after I'm done with that and I've explained it away, maybe I'll connect it back to a higher power to a creator. Or if my intellect doesn't suffice, if I can't come up with a good enough answer that satisfies my intellect, only then will I lean on my amuna, on my relationship with my creator. Wrong. That's the wrong way to exist, the wrong way to operate. The right way every time is to say there's a problem here or there's no problem. There's a situation. I need to assess the situation. The first way to assess it is using my amuna. Connect back to my creator. What's the message here? I know he's on my shoulder. I know he's watching every single move. I know he loves me, and I know he wants to make sure that everything I do works out well for me. So here's a situation. What's the message in the situation? What do I need to gain from this? What understanding is there? And then after I'm done with that, when I've assessed it from God's perspective, Shivity Yashemna Nagdithamid, I contemplate Hashem before every move that I make every day. When I've done that, then employ your intellect. Bring on your brain all you want. Start to assess and analyze different ways to get out of it. The difference is critical. Because once you've approached it from a position of intellect, then that becomes the primary. And you run with 98% of your energy towards solving your problems using intellect, and maybe 2% of it using your creator. When you start with the foot of Amuna, when you start assessing with your creator, what does he want? Then 98% of your energy goes in that direction. You start to try to understand it from that perspective. Only when you're done with that, you attribute a small percentage to your intellect. That's the way it's supposed to be. Now, there are hints, and we're about to get into it. Very, very cool. He says that there are subtle messages that we get all the time. Again, when you're in a relationship with your creator, that's the caveat because the hints come when you're paying attention. If you're not paying attention, they go right over your head. So if you're into a relationship with your creator, you'll start to get hints. And those hints allude to what the problem is. So that you're not in the dark. You're not faced with a situation where you're pulling at straws. Let me assess the situation. Based on what I'm seeing over here, this might be a problem. And he talks about monetary loss, he talks about learning losses, he talks about all kinds of different things. So just to give you some examples, monetary loss, he says, often alludes to money that was acquired dishonestly or in violation of Torah. Maybe a person failed to repay a loan or to pay an employee on time. Or maybe he used company property in an unauthorized manner. If you're dealing with financial problems, it's because you're bringing them on. You're not engaging with your finances in a way that is honorable, that aligns with Torah precepts. If you are a cheater, if you are a liar, if you are a thief, if you are a guy who operates in a crooked way in business or anytime it comes to money, or if you're holding on to it for dear life because you believe that that is your oxygen, then you better believe you're going to be challenged in the Department of Finances. It's simple, that's how it works. It's called measure for measure. Mida can neged mi-da. That's how it works. Foot pain is often an indication of arrogance when a person attributes his success to himself or is prideful about something that he or she didn't attain with their own efforts, such as beauty or any other divine granted attribute. Your feet take you places. Your feet make you who you are. If you can't get up and out of your house and go to work and do the things and have the meetings and do all these wonderful things, then you feel like you're useless. You feel like you're stuck and you're not capable and you're unable to be a productive member of society. And the more mobile you are, the more agile you are on your toes, the more you can be places and close deals and meet with people. So God says, if you are arrogant, you think it's all about you, it's because you think your feet are taking you places. If a person is not getting ahead at work, he must believe that the creator is in charge of all the world's appointments and hierarchy. From the most insignificant, from a ditch digger to the head of state, if he was passed over at promotion time, it's the creator who's decided against his promotion. The disappointed person's test of faith is to believe that everything is divine providence. The boss or the board of directors decide nothing. He should therefore bear no malice towards his superiors. Just strengthen himself in Amuna and prayer. What should he say? He should say, Master of the universe, if it's befitting to you that I get a promotion, then please arrange it for me and help me succeed. But if it's not your will, then help me to be content and satisfied with my current position. My current position, the position that I'm finding myself in today, dealing with financial problems, that doesn't mean I have to be content with financial problems for the rest of my life. That means my current position, okay, I get it. I'm here because of something I've done. I need to improve certain areas of my life. Help me, Hashem, to figure that out so that I can be successful in the finance department. But that doesn't mean that tomorrow is going to be the same. On the contrary, because I'm not content with it, I want to work towards improving my financial situation. But it's not good today, so I need to be okay with it today. Not tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm not okay with it. So tell me how do I fix it, Hashem. Again, I'm referring to my amuna, not to my intellect. If I was referring to my intellect, then I'd be banging my head against the wall. I'd be beating a dead horse. I wouldn't get anywhere with it. But the fact that I turn to Hashem first and say, God, I need your help. Only after that do I start to do some real quality introspection to come up with a real good answer, a Torah answer on how to improve my character so that the money starts to flow. May it flow like that for all of us every day. Have an amazing, meaningful Shabbat. We chat again, my friends, on Sunday. 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.