Episode 42 - Think You’re In Control? That’s Cute

What if your next big win is hiding inside your latest setback? We dive into a counterintuitive path to resilience: give everything you’ve got—time, energy, focus—and then let go of the result with trust. That shift replaces anxious control with grounded confidence and turns failure into feedback. You’ll hear why passive “it’ll work out” thinking isn’t faith, how to know when to help and when to step back, and what it looks like to move boldly without making outcomes your identity.

We unpack the everyday test that abundance brings. Having plenty can quietly train us to believe we’re the source, not the steward, and that mindset blocks connection to the Giver. Scarcity, while painful, often sharpens perspective and awakens prayer. We explore practical ways to keep humility alive in seasons of success—crediting help, staying teachable, and giving generously—so that prosperity becomes a tool for service rather than a trap for the ego.

Across the conversation, we return to a simple practice that changes everything: thank the Source for both gain and loss. Gratitude in loss isn’t denial; it’s alignment. Picture the bow and arrow. The pullback is tension, delay, and disappointment. Held with trust, that stored energy launches you farther on the next try. We share how to review setbacks without self-blame, make smarter second attempts, and build the kind of inner steadiness that feels “bulletproof” without turning hard. If this resonates, tap follow, share this with someone who needs courage today, and leave a quick review to help more listeners find us. Your support helps spread messages that challenge, empower, and uplift.

Transcript

Greetings And Shabbat Reflections

Book Giveaway And Community Sharing

Effort First, Then Divine Help

Accepting Outcomes Without Self-Blame

Wealth Vs Poverty As Spiritual Tests

Arrogance, Humility, And True Trust

Setbacks As Launchpads To Growth

Closing Encouragement And Calls To Share

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, my dear friends. Shavuotov wishing you an amazing week. We had a meaningful Shabbat. I don't know if you did anything to try and amp up your Shabbat like we were talking about on Friday or on Thursday. Very important. But if you did, wonderful. Send me some feedback. I'd love to know what you did. It would be amazing to be able to take tips and tricks that you guys have done, things that you've put into place, like I've shared with you guys on Friday about some of the exercises that we used to do in our family, especially when the kids are growing up. You don't have to just do them when the kids are growing up. You can do it as adults. You can do it on your own. There are many ways to amp up your Shabbat. If you've got ideas, if you've done things in the past that have worked out for you at different stages of life, send them my way. Send me a private message, and I'll share it on the podcast. Let's help each other to take our Shabbats to a whole other level. Today there's going to be a draw for the Garden of Imuna books. I picked up 10 copies when I was just in Israel, right from the head office of Brezlev, where they have a complete library with just so many volumes of different books, which are all incredible. I picked up 10 fresh copies, two different versions, the traditional version, and then the universal, which is a little bit more of an entry-level type approach, where just some of the verbiages changed, but really it's an identical book for all intents and purposes. So all you need to do is comment on the podcast, click share, do something, get engaged. Ideally, you're sharing it because, like we said many times, we want to help people. And right now there's a lot of people who are in need of that help. So I'll make a draw today, I'll notify the winner tomorrow, and we'll do it every week for the next 10 weeks. Don't lose heart from setbacks, my friends. What does that mean? We have to have two mindsets, he tells us. Before we do something, before we set out on a mission, we must try our best to make the best decision and invest our best effort. What is the message here? The message is you're not allowed to sit back. You're not allowed to be lazy and just say, God will take care of it. Everything will happen for me. Whatever's supposed to be will be. Everything happens for the best. While some of those things are correct, there's always a caveat. And the caveat is that we need to step up and act. And we have to not just act, but we have to give our best effort. And it can't just be an act. It needs to be our best effort. And when God sees that you're giving your best effort, then he steps up to help you. If you're not doing it, if you're sitting on the sidelines, if you're waiting for somebody else to do the heavy lifting and for you to get paid, good luck. It's not gonna happen. You can dream about it, but it simply will not happen. And the Torah gives an example in the Gemara of an individual that you've come across on the road and his cart, his horse and cart have fallen over, and he needs help lifting it up. And you come over to help him. But while you're trying to help him, he's fully capable. He's just sitting on the sideline. Or he's taking a cell call, you know, like today, let's make it modern. You pull over because somebody's got a flat tire on the side of the street, and you want to give them a hand because you're a good person. And this person is on a business call and doesn't acknowledge you, is doing their own thing. They're actually letting you do all the work, you're not allowed to help them. That's the message. The lesson is you're not allowed to help this person unless they get up and help themselves. If they're actively engaged in trying to make their situation better, to the extent that they are physically and emotionally capable, then you have the ability to help them out. It's the same thing, my friends. God will not help you if you're not willing to help yourself. That was just the first sentence. After we've done something, we took an action, we must realize that the outcome is in the Creator's hands and not in our hands. Okay. The inspiration was felt. We took an action, we made a decision, the rest is out of our hands, but we roll forward with it. It doesn't mean I've decided to build a business. Okay, I'm making that commitment. Now I'm going to sit on my couch and wait for something to happen wrong. You have to give your best effort and your best investment of time and energy and resources. Therefore, when you operate from this perspective, friends, you never persecute or blame yourself for setbacks because you know it's out of your hands. He should learn from these setbacks, assess himself, correct whatever needs correcting, and move forward. Now, you're not always going to know what needs correcting because there are a billion transactions that have led up to the quote-unquote success or failure of that new venture that you've set out to accomplish. You don't know what's happened in those transactions, or you don't know how they've positively or negatively impacted your success in this venture. But do you know who does know? Your creator. So we can only hope that things turn out the way we think are correct, but we have to be prepared to accept with absolute love that they may not, and when they don't work out the way that we wanted them to, like they say, man plans and God laughs, then we say thank you, God, for getting involved in making sure that it didn't work out. Because I know that had it worked out in my eyes, it would have been the worst thing for me. When we don't succeed, it's because the creator, for a good reason, didn't want us to succeed. Our job is to accept our setback lovingly and with amuna and learn from our mistakes. That way we turn our setbacks into a victory, for they bring us closer to the creator and trigger a much better second effort. Why do you think the answer to the question of whether the test is greater to be wealthy beyond compare or to be destitute and poor, which is more difficult of a challenge? I've asked this, I think, in season one. You take two different scenarios. One is you've got more money than you know what to do with, and the other is you don't have food in the fridge. Which is a bigger test? And the answer to that is to be wealthy. You might think to yourself, what are you talking about? I can buy any amount of food I desire. I can buy any material asset I will lack for nothing. Now, if you remember not long ago we talked about the snake in Adam and Eve, but that's not what I'm bringing. I'm bringing what he says over here. Why is it better to be destitute? Because the person who has nothing is constantly trying to gain something. They're looking for a meal, they're looking for an opportunity, for a job, for something to be able to get them what they need to survive. So what do they find themselves often doing? Screaming out to their creator. I need help. God, please help me. I'm going to try and do A, B, or C. Please, God, I can't do it without you. And the longer they go not having anything, the louder those prayers become, the more consistent, the more frequent, and the louder they become. The person ends up screaming out to his creator for help because he's starving. Now, while that may not sound like a good situation, and it clearly isn't, what it is doing is it's giving that individual perspective. It's allowing him the opportunity to connect back to his creator. Whereas the opposite individual is not dealing with that. He's got the opposite problem. He thinks he can control everything in the world. He thinks everything starts and stops with him. He's never missed a meal. And he's probably never going to miss a meal. So you know what the last thing in the world is that he needs? Is a relationship with his creator. What do I need my creator for? I don't need anything from him that I can't get from myself. So that individual never finds themselves crying out to their creator. Now, these are just generalities, my friends. I will show you many very, very wealthy people who have everything that they could ever need and all the things they could ever want, and yet they're connected to their creator because they have their heads on straight. And I could show you people who are broken, destitute, who still refuse to call out to their creator. Obviously, there are exceptions to the rule, but they are just that exceptions. The vast majority of people who have too much material wealth do not look for a relationship with a creator whose intention is to provide. That's the relationship. You can provide. Well, what do I need him for? I can buy the best doctors on planet Earth. I can do whatever I want. Nobody will stop me. The word no doesn't exist in my lexicon. So why would they have a relationship with their creator? That's the biggest downside, my friends. That's with the upside to dealing with setbacks. If you're somebody who doesn't have what you think you want or the things that you need, you will find yourself working on your relationship with your creator. One who doesn't accept failure with Amuna exhibits arrogance. For he thinks that he's responsible for his lack of success. I can tell you personally, of the thousands and thousands of people that I've had the opportunity to meet, whether it was when I was bringing in my rabbi for lectures or giving lectures and teaching myself, I could tell you that the vast majority of the time when you have a very challenging time getting through to somebody to explain to them or to demonstrate clearly in simple terms that there is a creator and that he wants the very best for them and that they can have him in his life, the number one reason that you get pushback from people is because of arrogance. The more arrogant an individual is, the more they think it's me, it's all me, the harder it is for them to come closer to their creator. The people who have less of an ego, who are willing to accept that they don't know everything, who are willing to accept that they are human and that they will make mistakes and that they are willing to accept assistance from an outside force without having it be a shot to their ego, those are the people that are much easier to bring online. So much easier because they're open-minded and they're willing to accept that they don't know everything. Clearly, the arrogant person attributes his success to himself. The words he might say, you hear this from people. Thank God. With God's help. You hear people saying this all the time, but their actions speak a lot louder than their words do. You know that it's only lip service, it's all superficial. The true test of Amuna, my friends, is how a person reacts when he doesn't succeed. Is he still happy? Does he still say thank you? Does he accept it with love? Does he persecute himself and blame other people? You have to look at these things because the actions will tell a story. A person with Amuna, that everything comes with the creator, will even thank the creator for his setbacks and shortcomings, and he'll try his best to understand what the creator is trying to teach him. His setbacks will be springboards to success. It's like a bow and arrow, my friends. I think I gave you the analogy. When we say here that your setbacks will be your springboard to success, what's it like? It's like you take a bow and arrow and you put that arrow in your bow and you pull back. Or a slingshot. You put that rock in that slingshot and you pull back. The further you pull back on that slingshot or that bow, the farther that projectile is going to fly when you decide to release it. It's the same analogy. It's a beautiful analogy. God pulls you back, He gives you setbacks. Why? Because those setbacks, like we just said, are designed to make you bulletproof. How do you become bulletproof? By connecting back to your creator when you're having a setback, when you're feeling down and out, recognizing that everything is perfect and still being grateful even for the downside. Now you tell me, how can anything negative happen in your life when you're happy for the positive and you're happy for the seemingly negative? You're bulletproof. Nobody can get to you, nobody can move you because you know that it all comes from your creator and that it is all perfect and you accept it equally with love. What does that mean? You made a million dollars, you say thank you, Hashem, and you jump for joy. 10 out of 10. When you've lost a million dollars, it's the same reaction. You jump for joy, it's 10 out of 10 on the joy scale. It sounds crazy, but I can assure you that there are many people who operate just that way. That is a clear indication that that person is walking in this life stuck, glued to his creator. You have no idea the confidence and the resilience that it builds in an individual. You have the tools to take on absolutely every situation and every human being that could ever come your way. It's all just water off a duck's back. Could you imagine? It's right there for the taking, my friends. Make the investment, give it a shot. You will see miracles happen in your life. Have an amazing day, have an amazing week. We chat again, my friends, tomorrow. 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 Trust Factor 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.