Episode 48 - Turns Out The Jackpot Was Your Life All Along

What if happiness isn’t a finish line but the first move that makes every next choice smarter and lighter? That’s the bold shift we explore as we peel back the cultural script that keeps us chasing “more” and reveal a saner path: choose joy first, then decide what to do.

We start by reframing wealth and success through contentment with your current lot—health, family, work, community, the overlooked blessings that already surround you. From this grounded place, clarity returns. You can weigh options without the fog of envy or the rush of urgency. We dig into why tests never stop, yet suffering shrinks when you work on yourself and recognize purpose in what arrives. You’ll hear practical ways to step off the upgrade treadmill and build a daily reset that makes joy a habit rather than a hostage to the latest purchase.

We also tackle the hard parts with empathy. Self-sabotage often strikes when life improves because unfamiliar good feels unsafe. We name that reflex and offer small rituals to expand your tolerance for positive change. Emotions matter, but decisions made at emotional peaks usually miss. We share how to pause, regain reason, and, where depression is present, why compassionate support and routine help restore agency. From there, the two-stage model of choice becomes usable: decide to be happy, then evaluate your options with a clear head.

By the end, you’ll have a simple, repeatable framework to turn everyday life into a jackpot: gratitude first, values-led choices next, and a steadier presence that lifts your home, team, and community. If this conversation moved you, follow the show, share it with someone who needs encouragement today, and leave a review with the line that hit you hardest. Your words might be the spark someone else is waiting for.

Transcript

Welcome And Daily Purpose

Everyone Needs Guidance

Tests, Growth, And Suffering

Joy As The First Choice

Culture’s Trap Of Endless More

Wealth As Being Content

Fleeting Vs Lasting Happiness

Two Stages Of Choice

Self Sabotage And Fear Of Change

Closing And Listener Actions

Emotion, Clarity, And Decision

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 to the lovely people of the world, the listeners of our podcast, the Trust Factor Podcast, your home, your safe place, the place where you can get away from the craziness of the world and come find goodness, truth, reality, meaning, purpose, all the good things that the world is not going to feed you. Step into my office. Come in every morning, ten, fifteen minutes. We'll change the way you view life. We'll change the way you view the world, this world, and the next. We'll give you your sense of purpose. And if you have it already, we'll help you cement it because we all need to be reminded from time to time of the things that we need to do. Even if we've been doing all the right things, even if we've been on a growth path, even if we've been learning his Torah and teaching his Torah. It's just like therapists who are human beings. Therapists need to have therapists. Rabbis need to have rabbis. There isn't a hierarchy where it stops. Yes, there's even a Gdolador, the leader of the generation, but even he has to have people, a counsel of people that he can rely on, that he could bounce ideas off of, that he can confirm his ideas with. That's how it works. We're constantly learning. In the secular world, the students learn only from the teacher. In the Jewish world, in the world of religion, the student learns from the teacher, but oftentimes the teacher learns even more from the student. Case in point, this podcast, I can't tell you how much I benefit from giving over the ideas in this podcast to you guys. It's not just that you're benefiting from it. I'm also benefiting equally, if not more. It is critically important to check in once in a while, no matter where you're holding, and remind yourself why am I doing the things that I'm doing? Am I doing enough of the things that I should be doing? Or have I diluted myself? Which we all do because we become complacent. Inevitably, we all reach a point where we rest on our laurels. Whatever we've accomplished to date is enough to carry us. It's not true. It's not true because life becomes more and more challenging and the tests don't end. They don't. So we have to constantly step up. And the more you do that, the more you work on yourself, the easier the tests become. That doesn't mean they go away. It just means that the suffering that comes from the test becomes less and less and less. Just like we said last week, we said that God will give you the prescription for suffering, but you determine how much suffering. The more you work on yourself, the more you have the eyes to see God's hand and everything and understand that it's all perfect and for your good, the less you suffer. The test finishes much faster, and you can get back to doing the things that you want to do. And you can get back to enjoying life. You don't have to suffer, my friends. It's a choice to suffer, just like it's a choice to be happy. Which takes us right into the next part of the book. The topic is joy, the beginning of choice. We're faced with choices every moment of our lives. Most people think that choices begin by weighing the relative advantages of the options at their disposal. Let me see what's good, what's bad. Let me make a list, the pros and the cons. This will work out easier for me and better for me because I'm strong in this category, and therefore I should go in this direction. Let me do the math to figure out what is at my advantage to be able to be successful. In actuality, choice begins with something much more basic. What is it? Choosing whether or not we'll be happy with our lot in life. The last part of that sentence is the most critical, that we need to be happy with our lot in life. Most people have been taught, all of us have been taught, if you have eyes and you look at billboards, if you have ears and you listen to the radio, if you're watching ads on television or on your computer or on your phone, which are everywhere today, then you have been conditioned to think that happiness is outside of you, that you should not be happy with your lot in life. They teach you the exact opposite. How many times have I told you this, my friends? How many times in season one and even in season two have I told you that 98% of the teachings of secularism, government, Hollywood, all of that nonsense flies in the face of reality. It counteracts. It literally is the reciprocal of God's Torah, the instruction manual on how to be successful. Whatever they tell you to do, you want to be successful, it's easy. Whatever they tell you to do, do the opposite. Just like here, when you watch TV, when you watch Hollywood, when you watch people who have money, when you watch people who are quote unquote influencers, the message that you are receiving is that what you have now is not sufficient. Do more, get more, work harder, steal, cheat, lie, do whatever it takes. Put your morals on the line and your ethics. Throw it all out the window and put everything online for the whole world to see. Take off every shred of clothing that you have and show it to the world. Get into resque positions so that everybody can see it. You don't have parents, you don't have children, you don't have siblings, you don't care that people are gonna see this stuff. That's how far society has fallen in their quest to get somebody else's lot in life. So what is the choice? The choice is to be happy. How are you happy? By being happy with your lot in life. That means what you have now. It says in the Ethics of the Father. Who is the wealthy person? Mi, who, Ashir? Miz Ashir, Asameach Bekilko, the one who is happy with his lot in life. That's it. That's how you're wealthy. That's how you win the jackpot every day. I have a good friend who's also a client, and oftentimes we have a lot of important conversations that are outside of business. He's much older than I am, he's not Jewish, he has a different perspective, but a very wise man. And we often have conversations about family and personal issues, and we often find ourselves saying the very words to each other. We won the jackpot. We are billionaires. Now I can assure you, neither one of us is anywhere close to being a billionaire. But in our minds, we are billionaires. Why? Because we reflect on our current status in life, we reflect on our spouses, we reflect on our children, we reflect on our businesses, we reflect on our parents, we reflect on our community, on all of the things on our health, all of the basic things that we take for granted every single day when we have conversations and our conversations turn to personal issues. We often find ourselves saying that we are billionaires and we've won the jackpot. That's exactly what we're talking about here. You want to be happy? It's not a slot machine in a casino. It's not getting the nicest house, the biggest house, the newest model of the same car that you're driving, the newest model of iPhone. Whatever it is that you're seeking that is material will give you happiness. But it is fleeting. It's temporary. It'll last 10 seconds, 10 minutes, 10 days, 10 weeks, and it's done. Before you know it, your friend has the better version than you do, a bigger house than you do, a nicer car than you do, a nicer watch than you have. Whatever it is, you will see it on your friend, you will see it on the screen, you will see it in the advertisements, and you will think to yourself, I'm no longer happy. Yeah, I got last year's model, but that was then, and this is now. And in order for me to remain happy, I need to get this year's model, the one that just came out, or the one that hasn't even come out yet. Let me put myself on a waiting list and give a deposit because I need to be one of the first on planet Earth to have X or Y, because then I'll have happiness. That happiness is fleeting, my friends. The real happiness is looking inwards. Look at your house, look at what you own currently. And I can assure you, without a doubt, I don't care where you are in the world listening to this and your status, there are people in much worse situations than you are. I'm not suggesting that you're not supposed to look upwards and aspire for more. Certainly you are, there's a right way to do that. But if you want to be happy with what you have, compare what you have now to what you didn't have 10 years ago, or to what such a massive portion of society, especially today, doesn't have. People don't have basic necessities today. Economies are tanking around the world. If you got a roof over your head and food in your fridge and a job to go to and kids that are healthy, and you're healthy, and parents that are alive, and cars in the driveway, and vacations, and all these wonderful things, you are on top of the world. And if you don't see that because you're so busy being misguided by secular society, boy, are you missing out on life. Choices, he says, consist of two stages. The first stage is choosing between being happy and not being happy, like we just said. I want to make a choice. I need to make that choice. I decide today that I deserve to be happy and I'm going to be happy. That is an active decision that has real consequence. It's not just theory. The first step in being happy is first accepting the decision to be happy. That's number one. You know how many people don't? Do you know how many people self-sabotage? I see it all the time. Good, caring, loving, honest, hardworking people who deserve to be happy, but they don't feel that way. Whether or not they even acknowledge it is a completely different story because oftentimes they don't recognize what I'm telling you now. Self-sabotage is real. It's real for so many people. They make progress, they start to clean up, they start to move forward, they start to get a good perspective on life, they start learning and growing, and suddenly they reach a point where they think to themselves, this isn't right. This is uncomfortable for me. I don't feel good right now. Why? Not because they're succeeding, because they're not used to the feeling of success. The feeling that they're used to is a feeling of bitterness, a feeling of jealousy, a feeling of lacking. That is what's constantly going on in their lives and it has been that way for years. So they've become accustomed to it. And therefore, anything that doesn't feel that way feels strange. And we all know how averse human beings are to real change. It's like the devil. People run away from change with absolute fear, which is ridiculous because growth means change. And these people don't understand that. So they self-sabotage, they get to a point where they say, No, no, this isn't good. It's too much good, and therefore it's bad. By choosing happiness, one progresses to the second stage. What's the second stage? Weighing the relative advantages of the options at one's disposal. What to do, how to do it, and so forth. Surprised? Don't be. If we fail to make the initial choice of being happy with our lot in life, then it's a non-starter. We can't possibly weigh our options with clarity and thought of mind. Why? Because sadness and depression, like we've said so many times, destroys clarity of thought. First of all, just the concept of emotion. I've told you many times, never make a decision from a point of emotion. You will end up making the wrong decision nine or ten times out of ten. Stop, contemplate, come down off the emotional high, think about it, rationalize it, use your head, use logic and reason, then make a decision. That's just regular emotion. Do you know how sadness and depression affect your outlook? Those are emotions that many times are outside of so many people's abilities. That's why they're on medication. Because it is such a powerful mental illness. Depression will tear a person apart. Many people don't have the basic tools to be able to manage that voice in their head. And now you want to make decisions. You want to choose happiness. When you're depressed, it doesn't work. It destroys your clarity of thought. And therefore it robs us of our free choice. You have no free choice when you're depressed or sad. Depressed people are lethargic and ineffective. They perform the simplest tasks arduously. The Creator doesn't bestow his divine providence on depressed and despairing people. Forfeiting divine assistance makes good decision making virtually impossible. What's the lesson, my friends? If you're sad, if you're depressed, if you're despondent, if you're sad and lethargic and lazy and uninspired and ineffective, God is not with you. He's not. Because you can't make the decision to bring him into your life. We've said that many times. It starts with you. The decision to have the Creator at your back starts with you. How can it start with you if you can't think clearly? How can it start with you when bad is good and good is bad? When up is down and down is up because you're so confused by the emotional conflict in your mind. Settle down, my friends. Strive for happiness. Make the choice to be happy. You deserve it. We all deserve it. And he wants us to be happy. Make the decision today. I guarantee you, you have the power to become happy. It's in your hands, nobody else's hands. I've done it myself, and I've seen so many people do the same thing. When you make the choice, not only do you become happy yourself, not only do you walk around with a smile on your face, not only is even the most devastating situation water off of a duck's back in your life, but it's infectious. The people around you, your spouse, your children, your coworkers, everyone around you is going to feed off of your happiness. They're going to feed off of your smile. Trust me, try it. Go out there. You've got nothing to lose and happiness and joy to gain. Have an amazing week, my friends. We'll chat again 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 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.