Episode 71 - You Can Learn To Switch Off Fear When Life Gets Choppy

There’s a moment in a hard season when your brain starts bargaining: “Just give me clarity. Just make it make sense.” We talk about what happens when you stop demanding perfect answers and start building something sturdier: emunah that matures into bitachon, real trust in God, strong enough to hold you steady when life hits. 

We lay out three levels of emunah as we understand them: basic faith, intermediate trust, and the advanced stage where you’ve seen the Creator’s hand often enough that panic loses its grip. That’s the “off switch” we’re aiming for, not denial, not numbness, but a grounded mindset that can move through uncertainty without collapsing into worry, anxiety, or the constant need for control. If you’ve been carrying stress and asking, “Why is this happening to me?”, this conversation reframes the question into, “What strength is being built in me?” 

We also connect this to Torah study and spiritual growth. Nobody builds a lasting Jewish practice with shortcuts. When learning is deep, questions are welcomed, and foundations are solid, doubts stop being a threat. And when something remains beyond us, we do not throw away the 99% we know because the 1% is hard. That same stability is what we want in our relationship with God. 

Finally, we name two obstacles that block emunah: believing you’re not strong enough, and begging for a storm-free life. We talk about growth outside the comfort zone, responsibility, and why reviewing past victories is a powerful tool for resilience. Subscribe to Trust Factor Podcast, share this with someone who needs strength right now, and leave a review with the line that hit you most.

Transcript

Welcome And Week Recap

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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 had an amazing week. We're closing it out, and again, it feels like it went in the blink of an eye. And it did. I don't know, maybe it's because I'm doing these podcasts and we're talking about it, but man are these weeks going fast. I want to recap real quick where we've been for the last couple of weeks, and it's kind of culminated in the last two days, two, three days, where we talked about or we reminded ourselves about the transition from having faith in the creator to having trust in the creator. Two very different things. The first season of the Trust Factor podcast was about trust, was about building your relationship with your creator to the point where you have absolute trust in them. And then we kind of backpedaled in season two. In hindsight, it would have been smarter to start it the other way around, but that's okay. Everything is done for a reason. Season two talks about the faith, the very same foundational principle that we need to build in order to get to trust. What is that right there? What is that that we're talking about? Because you'll remember that the book told us a couple weeks ago that there are three levels of Amuna. There's basic, intermediate, and advanced. Well, in my understanding and my definition and the way I'd like to think about it, is that faith, basic faith is the first level, entry level. And trust, the concept of Bitachon is the intermediate level. What's the advanced level? The advanced level is what we said just yesterday is getting to the point where you've experienced your creator in your life often enough. There have been ample incidents where you've leaned on him, you've implemented your Bitachon based on the emuna that you've built over the years. Emuna is putting your neck out, stretching your neck, putting it on the line because you're doing something that's outside of your comfort zone. You're now believing or subscribing to a principle, a theory, and ideology that you weren't subscribed to the other day. And that takes a huge leap. That's why they call it a leap of faith. So you've done that ample times. And that has brought you to having a level of trust. Now, trust also has different degrees. When you get to the nth degree of trust, that being exactly what we just talked about, the ability to switch off your brain when you don't understand it. Then, my friends, you know that you have reached the pinnacle of your success. In that department, there are many other departments, and we're constantly going to be challenged. But you are going to reach your pinnacle of success. When you've gotten to a point where the tribulation that you got hit with, the challenge that you thought you could not overcome, this is too much for me, this I can't do. And you're able to switch off your brain to stop the panic, to stop the worry and the anxiety and the depression and the constant desire for control because you know with absolute certainty it's no longer a conversation. Does God exist? Is he in my life? Do I see his hand? How intimate is our none of those are questions anymore. You know, you know where that relationship is, and you've built your entire existence upon it. When you get to that point, it's an automatic off switch. Boom, my brain is off. And now I'm rolling with it. Why? Because I know who runs a show. I don't always have to understand it. I don't always need to have answers. I don't always need to have 100% clarity. No, I've had it plenty of times in the past. I've gone through life where things have been challenging, and he's shown me with absolute clarity, maybe not right away, but eventually I gained hindsight. 2020. So it made sense. Today I don't have it. It's fine. I'm good with it. Why? Because I know that God created this world and he's proven to me many times that he is faithful and that I can trust him implicitly. And that's what I referenced the other day: that it's the same with Torah. Somebody who's never learned a stitch of Torah, you expect them to start keeping Shabbat and praying three times a day and giving stakhah, giving charity, and doing all the mitzvahs, the holidays, and building a sukkah in their backyard and shaking a lulavan etch. They don't know what these things are. What do you mean? They have no idea what the basic principle of these things are. And you want them, they just started learning Torah, they haven't learned the stitch, and you want them to just incorporate everything? It doesn't make sense. It could be dangerous because they could be doing things they don't understand why they're doing them, which means there's no basis or foundation to what they're doing, which means it's on shaky ground. It's not going to take more than a small gust of wind to blow it all apart. And so somebody starts to learn Torah, they start to investigate, they start to understand, they ask questions, they start to see the divinity of the Torah, they begin to understand that it could not have been written, not even a letter, not even a part of a letter could have been written by a human being and not even a supercomputer, not even the best AI platform in the world could ever begin to write even a letter in the Torah. And if you don't understand that, it's because you haven't learned enough. But once you've gotten to the point where you've learned enough, that's where the naysayers go away. That's where the people who come with all their questions about Torah, and there aren't a lack of people throughout history, even today, especially today potentially, who come with questions on the Torah. They don't believe it's valid, they think it's hokey, they think it's a storybook, they think it's a history book, they think it's a book of fables, and they explain it away as outdated, ancient history. It was a nice story that worked back then, it doesn't work today. When you've learned enough, when you've immersed yourself in the world of Torah learning and you've seen and you've tasted, and now you understand, you've asked the hard questions and you've gotten the best answers, it's no longer a question. Even the things in Torah that we don't understand, and there are many, and that's a good thing, because if we understood everything, that means that we're on the same level as God, or God forbid, he's on the same level as us. I don't want a God that's on the same level as humanity. He has to be in a realm that is beyond any of our capabilities if he's going to manage every single one of us. And so for me, it's okay that I don't know absolutely everything. I don't have the perfect explanation to the red heifer, the parsha that we let we read a week ago, that I don't know. Even King Solomon in all of his wisdom didn't know. So because of that, I'm gonna abandon everything. What? The other 99% that I know and has been proven, and I asked questions and I read and I learned that, and it was proven to me beyond the shadow of a doubt that it's perfect and divine, that suddenly something I stumble upon doesn't sit well with me, so I'm gonna throw the whole thing away. It simply doesn't make sense. It's an excuse for the people who are not learned. Somebody who's learned would never, ever come to that point. Just like somebody who's built a life of a MUNA that led to Bitachon to trust, that eventually was able to switch off their brain when they get to a challenge that they cannot comprehend. It's the same thing. It's not even a question. Of course I'm gonna go through the challenge. Of course I'm not gonna abandon and jump ship. I know who's running the show. What a way to live. Are you kidding me? What a way to live. You just roll through life conquering. Everything in your way just moves out of the way for you. The waves part as you walk through life. Let's get back into the book. Now we're talking about obstacles. There are two general obstacles that stop us from building this amuna because everybody can do it. And a lot of people do it throughout their lives at different stages and to different extents. But everybody has the ability to go all the way through the basic level of amuna all the way up to advanced. What are those obstacles? Let's start with the first. When somebody says, I'm not strong enough to hold on, I can't do this. This is what's going to break me. That feeling reflects a lack of belief in their own inner strength and capability to withstand stress. In order to overcome this obstacle, we need to internalize the vital spiritual law that, and you've heard this before, because I've told it to you, the creator doesn't give us trials and tribulations that we're incapable of withstanding. He knows you, he created you. He knows everything that you've done in previous existences, and he knows everything that's going to be going forward that you have no idea about. He knows what you can do and what you cannot do. He knows what you can overcome and what you cannot overcome, and he would not give you a test that you could not overcome. Just like a loving parent would not put their child through a test that they could not overcome, so too, but infinitely more. Hashem would never put you into a circumstance where you simply cannot succeed. Why? He's setting you up for failure? You think he wants to set you up for failure after everything we've discussed up until now? Clearly not. He's going to push you to your limits, there's no question, because that's where the real growth happens. The real growth, I think it was Rabbi Torsky who said, I think it's a lobster. I don't know, I heard this a long time ago, that a lobster grows in its shell and eventually it needs to remove itself from that shell because it outgrows it. And there's a transitionary stage during which it's exposed. And in that time, and it may be a different shellfish, I don't know, but it's one of them. I think it's a lobster. That during that transitionary phase, when it's exposed to the elements and its predators, it is completely and 100% at risk of being destroyed. But it has to do it. It's forced out of that comfort of its protective shell in order to grow, in order to become bigger and better and survive. In order to survive, it needs to expose itself to sometimes an extreme amount of risk. It's a similar concept. When you want to get out of your comfort zone and grow and take your life to a whole new level of achievement, then you need to get out of your shell. You need to expose yourself to the challenging times. Remember, though, that when you're going through those times, he didn't abandon you. He didn't drop you in and say, figure it out. He's with you. He's rolling through the test with you. Sometimes he retracts a little bit because he wants you to go on your own, just like a parent with a child who starts to take his first few steps. He lets go with a hand for a minute. He lets you fall. He lets you fall on your bum and your bum hurts and suddenly you're crying. It doesn't feel good. But it's for your benefit. That's why he does it. It's the same idea, the same way a parent lets go of that child's hand, God lets go of your hand. Let me see how you do in this test. I know it's a difficult one. I know it's one you haven't faced before. I know it's one you don't want to face, but I'm going to put you in it. Why? Because I know that you've built yourself enough. I'm in this relationship with you, and I've seen you grow. And so because I'm confident in your level of growth, you may not see it. It's very hard for us to see our growth because we're in it. Just like a child, when you're living with a child, a young child, and you're watching that child grow. You know, friends come over a month later after not having seen them for a month and they're blown away by how much that child's grown. What do you mean? You don't see it. Of course you don't see it. You're in it every day. You see that small growth happening every day. You don't see the big picture. God sees the big picture. He's the outside looking in. So he says, You've grown enough. Now you're ready to take on this challenge. So I'm going to step back a little bit. You have at it. But I'm here. If you fall, I will catch you. Don't worry. Go for it. I've got your back. That's the idea. We need to constantly remind ourselves that if I'm in this test, it's because I'm able to pass it. Doesn't mean it's easy. Not at all. On the contrary, our tests get more difficult as we grow. You're in the gym and you're lifting weights. If it's easy for you to lift 100 pounds, you don't stay in a hundred pounds for the rest of your life. You increase the weight on the bar. There's a reason why you increase the weight because you want to become better and stronger. Same idea. The tests get more difficult, but they are not insurmountable. What's the second thing that stops us from creating or fostering our amuna when we say, Let me live in peace, or I don't feel like dealing with this. This is what? It's a request to go through life with no atonement, no ups, no downs, and no stormy weather. And I said to you just yesterday, the day before, as my rabbi often says, Life is not a picnic. He didn't put us over here to have a picnic. If you wanted to create us, like chimpanzees, my rabbi says, where you swing in the trees all day long, he would have created you a chimpanzee and put you in the zoo. And then you wouldn't have had a problem. Everything is easy. All your food is given to you, all the mating that you want is there for you. You could swing around all day long and enjoy your day. But that's not who we are. We're not monkeys. We're human beings. We are put here with a specific task, and we are at the top of the food chain. We run the world. The world was entirely created to serve us. Think about that for a second. The universe, the mountains, these huge mountain ranges around the world, the sun, the moon, the stars, all created for human beings, not for anything else. The top of the food chain. So this is a world of action. Like I said yesterday, as the top of the food chain, we have responsibilities. With great abilities, come great responsibilities. So we have to get out and do. We have obligations that we need to fulfill. To say, leave me alone. I'm tired, I don't have the energy, I'm not interested. You don't have a choice. You simply don't. You have an obligation to get up and do. Just because you don't feel like doing it, doesn't mean the tests are going to stop coming. They're going to keep coming. You're just going to fail by default. And that's not going to be a good feeling, my friends. You have to get up and face your challenges. Yes, they're going to be difficult, but that's character building. That's what builds you up because when you get through it, and you always have, you know this. When you look back at your life, you've gotten through all of your challenges. And nine times out of ten, it came so much easier than you expected. You went in terrified, and yet you came out unscathed. Oftentimes, if not all the time, you come out thinking, hmm, that was a lot easier than I thought it was. Or worse, you don't even think about it because you were terrified going in. But as soon as you got out of it, you don't even think about it anymore. That's a flaw of ours. Really, what we should do is when we're done with the challenge, when we've conquered it, we need to stop. And we need to look back and say, look at how we handled that. Look at how that worked out for us. And we have to appreciate it because if you don't appreciate it, you're going to be equally terrified, if not more, when you're faced with another challenge. That's not the idea. The idea is learn. I had success. I did well. I conquered. Hashem was with me. I did an amazing thing. I can do anything. That's how you build, that's how you grow, my friends. Let's take that message into Shabbat. Let's mull it over, chew on it for a little bit, share it with your friends and your family at your Shabbat table. Inspire people to grow. I'm not the only one doing it, my friends. You've got the ability and you've got the obligation. So inspire your friends and your family. And let's change this world. Let's turn it right side up because it's been upside down for too long. Have an amazing Shabbat, my friends. We'll speak 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.