Episode 69 - From Frustration To Faith: Finding Meaning In Everyday Setbacks

A simple part goes missing, the machines go quiet, and the costs start ticking up. That’s where most stories of workplace chaos begin—and where tempers flare. Ours takes a different turn. We walk you through a real morning of supplier runs, blank stares, and a surprising 30‑second fix that arrived only after hours of delay. The bigger reveal isn’t mechanical. It’s the decision to meet each dead end with gratitude, to ask “Why is this happening for me?” instead of “Why is this happening to me?” and to watch how that choice reshapes outcomes, relationships, and even the speed of solutions.

We open up about reframing setbacks as protection you can’t yet see and how that posture kept frustration from spilling onto the people trying to help. Along the way, we dig into the idea of the middle path—most of us aren’t living at extremes—and how everyday trials can be a nudge toward better habits and cleaner priorities. You’ll hear a clear, practical guide to the four steps of atonement: confess out loud to make it real, feel genuine remorse, apologize to own the consequence, and commit to a different action going forward. We talk about why clean slates are real in the moment of sincerity, even if you stumble later, and how repetition becomes training rather than evidence of failure.

This story is about leadership under pressure, spiritual growth at work, and the small choices that compound: a blessing spoken at the door, a slower breath in the car, a kinder word at the counter. Curiosity replaces panic, and people meet you with creativity when you don’t lead with heat. If you’re navigating change—family shifts, new goals, bigger responsibility—this conversation offers a grounded way to build resilience and trust without losing momentum. Subscribe, share this episode with someone who needs a reframe today, and leave a review with the one line you’ll carry into your next hard moment.

Transcript

A Simple Part, A Big Test

Choosing Gratitude Over Frustration

Creative Fix And Costly Downtime

Reframing To “For Me,” Not “To Me”

Letting Go Of Control And Trusting

Middle Path And Meaning Of Trials

Four Steps Of Atonement

Building Spiritual Muscle For Change

Calm Behaviour, Better Outcomes

Closing Reflections And Community Invite

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Welcome to the Trust Factor Podcast, the only podcast that guarantees your success when you implement its Divine Age old teachings. Good morning, everybody. Happy Wednesday. I can't believe it's hump day already. Wednesday is here. We're halfway through the week. It's almost Friday. It's shocking. Just crazy to think about. But that's the way life goes. And the older you get, my friends, I don't know how old you are, but the older you get, the faster time flies. That's just the reality of life. It's craziness. But we roll with it. I want to share with you guys a little bit about my day yesterday. I had a very, very challenging day at work. And I want to share it with you because I think there is a lesson in the way that I conduct myself. I am far from perfect, far from it. But I make efforts and I've been building on my efforts for 20 years. And I like to think that there are a lot of places in my life where I can represent myself as the exception. And I think this is one of them. And if you can learn from it and you could better your life from it, then I'm going to share it. And here's how it goes. Yesterday, I had a breakdown on a piece of equipment. A very standard, typical breakdown. Now I want you to understand, without getting into too much detail and nitty-gritty, here's what happened. I needed to find a small part. A fitting. A fitting that should be found in any store, any number of stores across the city. It's such a standard part, it's like looking for a screw. And there is no reason that supplier after supplier should not have it. But of course, it's morning, I go out, I could go to my first supplier, just across the street. They have nothing even remotely close to what I need. Frustrated, I leave the store. As I leave the store, I say to myself, Baruch Hashem, blessed is God. Thank God that I didn't find it there. You know what happened to my frustration? It went away. I got in my car, I drove to the next location. I get to the next location, I go in there. This place is ten times the size of the previous place. No inventory. Doesn't exist. They look at me like I fell from the moon. Shocking. I'm beside myself. There's no way a store of this magnitude doesn't have this basic part. Not only they don't have it, they don't even know what I'm talking about. Craziness. Now that frustration is about to creep back up on me. As I'm walking out the door, you know what I do? I say to myself, Baruch Hashem, blessed Hashem, thank God that they didn't have it. I get in my car, I drive to a third location. Another specialty location that is guaranteed to have it. The guy behind the counter types it into the computer, looks back at me and says, Haven't got it. I've got it in plastic. I don't have it in brass. Plastic is no good to me. So what are the odds? You don't have it in brass. Anyway, again, I look up to the heavens and I say, Thank you, Hashem. And he comes up with a solution. The guy behind the counter says to me, Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna rig a few parts together and I'm gonna create for you the accessory that you need. And in a matter of minutes, he has exactly what I need. Now, I take that part and I drive back to my plant. In the meantime, you should understand, while I'm doing all this driving around, hours have passed. Hours have passed since the morning where we had this breakdown. It's now closing in on 11, 11:30. And all I'm thinking to myself is I've got an entire army of employees sitting around ready to work and they're twiddling their thumbs. All the machines are idle, nothing is happening, money is being burnt by the second. Now, historically, 10 years ago, I'd be livid. I'd be beside myself, getting so frustrated and wondering why is this happening to me? Why is this happening to me? What's going on? What did I do to deserve this? Do you know what happened yesterday? I said to myself, why is this happening for me? Not why is this happening to me, but why is this happening for me? And then I said to myself, What did I do to deserve this? Not in the way you might be thinking, but in the opposite way. As I'm driving around, I have a smile on my face. And I'm thinking to myself, thank God that my plant is not operating right now. Because if it were operating, God forbid it were operating, there would be a serious, serious challenge, one that would be insurmountable. And I don't know what that may be. Maybe somebody would have been seriously injured or God forbid killed. I don't know. Maybe there would have been a massive explosion. I have no idea. But what I do know with absolute certainty is that nothing could have been better. That plant should not have been operating at that time for my benefit, not to my detriment. When you drive around dealing with your problems that way, all of your worries fade. I can even stop and grab a coffee. No problem. Because I'm not rushing. I understand that the plant needs to be idle right now, and there's very good reason for it. I don't know why, but I know that God runs this world, and I know that He's orchestrating these events. And so it's water off a duck's back, like I've said many times. That's exactly what my day was like yesterday. Now more than that, I want you to understand. I got back to my plant, I installed the accessory that I needed to install, and it turns out that I didn't even need that part. Do you understand? If you were somebody who didn't have God in their life and didn't understand that everything was perfect, that alone would have set you off. That alone would have made you pull your hair out of your head. I went through all of this, my plants have been down for so long. I've tried so many different things, and even the one thing that was supposed to work didn't work enough to make a lot of people crazy. But you know what? Didn't do anything to me. It just made me further realize that there was no reason, no rhyme reason, and there was no real way to fix it because it had to be down for those few hours, and so it was. The fix, you wouldn't believe how easy it was. I didn't need a part. All I needed to do was take a pipe from one place and connect it somewhere else. 30 seconds, back in business. Instead, it took hours. My friends, stop trying to understand it. Stop trying to figure it out. Stop trying to come ahead every single time. Release control. Understand that there's a God who's running the show over here. Now, even more than that, and let's read because it's going to give us some more insight. Up until now, we've said there's the evil and the wicked people. The evil people, he doesn't even bother testing. He gives them everything they want in this world, right? So he doesn't have to deal with them in the next. Tribulations of love he gives to the righteous people, the people who are holding on a really, really high level. Why? Because really they're not deserving of tribulation. But he wants to elevate them in the next world. So he gives them tribulations in this world to elevate them in the next world, to give them even more reward. But then there's the rest of us. The rest of us are on what's called the middle path. Let's read, and I'm going to connect this back to my story from yesterday. Most people don't belong on evil's easy street, thank God, or on the tribulation trail of the righteous, unfortunately. The vast majority of us are middle of the roaders. And we should remind ourselves that there are no tribulations without transgressions. So for me, yesterday, certainly tribulations, no question. And the reason I had to run around like a madman yesterday, from store to store to store and burn all those hours and waste all that money on a plant that wasn't operating with staff waiting for instruction was because of a tribulation. Do I know what that tribulation is? Absolutely not. But I certainly know that there is one. I'm not doing something right. There's something that I'm doing that is wrong and needs to be addressed. I don't know what that is, but I need to do some soul searching. That's why we need to train ourselves to look for the turn for return in our troubles. Look for the measure for measure. What is this equal to in my life? Where can I repair? So that we know what to correct. Once we realize what we've done wrong, we need to begin the four-stage process of atonement, which are namely, we haven't discussed this up until now. This is the first introduction to it. When you want to correct what you did wrong, you need to do number one, which is to confess. Use your words. Remember, I've told you many times. Make it real by saying it out loud. If it's left in your heart or in your head, it's simply not real. Verbalize it, vocalize it. It needs to be heard. Your ears need to hear what your lips are saying. That's number one, confess. I did X, I shouldn't have done it, it was wrong, I'm gonna fix it. Number two, remorse. You need to feel bad about it. And that's an obvious one. Because if you don't feel bad about it, then what's to fix? Why do I need to fix it? It's perfectly fine. It doesn't move me. So there's no incentive to fix it. So you need to feel genuinely bad about it. That's number two. Number three, I need to apologize just like anything else. You hurt somebody, you do something wrong, you bring a negative into the world, you need to take responsibility. How do you take responsibility? By acknowledging through your apology that you've done something wrong. That cements what you've done, makes it even more real. And number four, the decision to improve from this moment on. I need to take an obligation on myself to say I'm not going to do it again. Now, saying I'm not going to do it again and actually not doing it again are two different things, very different things. And I have news for you: we all fail. We've all repented, we've all atoned, we've all said sorry, we've all felt bad in the past for things that we shouldn't have done. And you know what we do not long after? We repeat the same behavior. I want you to understand something. As far as your creator is concerned, if you've met all of these four where you've verbalized it, you've felt genuinely bad about it, you've apologized, and you've made a commitment to not do it again, at that moment in time, you are given full atonement. You are given 100% a clean slate that no longer exists, you can start again. So between that point and the next point where you fail again at the very same thing, you are 100% clean and perfect in that department. When the test comes along another time and you failed, guess what you need to do? The very same thing. You repeat. And hopefully this time you mean it. And you try again. And that system of repetition of the cycle of failure and atonement. Failure and atonement continues until the day we die. We do not stop. And you do your best to make sure that every time that you do it, you are genuine because it could come at a risk of you not being really remorseful because you've done it a hundred times, you've apologized a hundred times, you've felt bad a hundred times. Feeling bad on the 99th time versus the first time is a very different sensation, right? You're not feeling nearly as bad on the hundredth time when you have to feel bad as you did on the first time. So you have to be very cognizant of that if you want success in this department. But the point is we all need to go through this process in order to get cleansed of our sins. Once we understand the creator's message and we act on it, he doesn't need to speak to us in the language of tribulations anymore. I've told you this back in season one. Once you've passed the test, it's done. That's how it works. Nobody wants trials and tribulations. But when they come, it's a good sign, showing that the creator cares about us. He's thinking about us. He hasn't forgotten about you. Tribulations are a sign that he's calling us to get closer to him. So recognize that. That's what happened to me yesterday. Now, on a big scale, there's a reflection I need to do. I need to look back at what I'm doing wrong. I know what it is. It's a personal issue for me. I understand why I was challenged in the way that I was yesterday. I'm trying to implement big change in my life for my family. I'm trying to do different things to take our lives to the next level. And that's going to come with tribulations. But in order to prepare for it, in order to make sure that I'm able to make that transition in a smooth and effective way, God is putting stumbling blocks in my way, challenges to say, if you can't deal with this now, my friend, you can't deal with it later on when you want to take your life to the next level. That's what's happening in my life. I have eyes to see it. And because I have the eyes to see it, yesterday, my friends, despite the difficulty and the challenge, and 10 years ago, I promise you, I would have been driving around cursing out the whole city, and I would have been speeding, and I would have not stopped for coffees, and I would have been frustrated, and I would have been short-tempered with elder salespeople. I may have even insulted one of them to say, How do you not carry this stuff? It's like the basic supply. Everybody should have this. It's so fundamental. And you call yourself a hardware store, I could have gone there. And once upon a time, I may have. Today, it's a smile. The guy behind the counter doesn't understand why I'm not frustrated because every other customer is, and he knows he should have this. But that's the way it is. And maybe because of that approach, on my third stop, the guy behind the counter took the initiative to come up with a simple solution for me. Because I was perfectly content sipping on my coffee and not coming at the guy. And everything worked out in the end, my friends. It always, always does. We just need to train ourselves to be able to see it. Wishing you guys all a successful day. We'll chat 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.