Episode 101 - What If Comfort Is The Anchor Holding You Down

Yom Ha'atzmaut is celebrated in the streets, but a lot of people still feel oddly confused about the date. We open by making it simple: Israel’s Independence Day can show up as two different dates because the Gregorian calendar and the Jewish calendar are not the same system. Once you see that, the holiday stops feeling contradictory and starts feeling like a clear marker of Jewish history, identity, and a moment worth understanding, not just observing. 

From that starting point, we move into Pirkei Avot and Jewish ethics with a challenge that cuts through excuses: where there are no leaders, strive to be a leader. I connect that to real life responsibility, the kind that shows up when there’s a void and nobody wants to step in. Then we unpack a series of blunt teachings about excess and consequences, including why more possessions can create more worry, why comfort can quietly grow into a chain, and how jealousy and rivalry can tear relationships apart when boundaries are ignored. 

We also get practical about spiritual growth and personal development. Torah study is framed as life itself, not a side hobby, because it brings wisdom, understanding through counsel, peace through charity, and a reputation that outlives you. The closing section connects faith and health with a holistic lens: natural remedies, modern pharmaceuticals, and the hard truth that no cure works like it should if we refuse to correct the habits and behaviours that keep dragging us down. If something here resonates, subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find these conversations.

Transcript

Welcome And Yom Ha'atzmaut

SPEAKER_01 0:10

The trust factor is a ticket to a better life. The trust factor shows you how to get through the mind.

unknown 0:21

Trust factor.

Why Israel Has Two Dates

Hope For A New Era

Lead When No One Leads

Pirkei Avot On Excess

Torah Study Means Real Life

Healing, Habits, And The Anchor

Celebrate, Reflect, And Share

SPEAKER_00 0:22

The world is louder and more chaotic than ever. That's why clarity and truth have never been more important. Welcome to the Trust Factor Podcast. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Trust Factor Podcast and happy Yomha Utsma'ut, Israel Independence Day. It's often confusing for people who don't learn it. I know from myself, until you get well into it, you are kind of confused. Well, wait a second, why are we celebrating on the 14th of May when we have Yomha Utsma'ut today? It seems contradictory. But if nobody's taking the time to explain it to you, which unfortunately a lot of time that's the case, you won't understand that there are two days because, like in many things, including your birthday, you have two birth dates. One is according to the Gregorian calendar that everybody uses, and one is according to the Jewish calendar. They are two different dates entirely. Today is the 5th of Year, which is Israel's Independence Day, which equates to that day in 1948 on May the 14th. So that's why we're celebrating it today, and we'll celebrate it again for the rest of the world on the 14th of May. Parties are everywhere, people are out in the streets doing all kinds of parades. So go out and enjoy and celebrate because I really believe that this is a paradigm shift of what's happening in the Middle East. It's no longer going to be the same type of Israel that we were used to over the last 30 years, where you had all kinds of intifadas and all kinds of bombings in the streets and all kinds of terrorist attacks and all kinds of threats and rockets and katushas and all this stuff that Israelis have been dealing with for decades. I want to believe that this is the beginning of a new era, that all of that has gone the way of the dinosaur, cleaning up and taking out the trash in the Middle East, getting rid of terrorist states and organizations like Iran and all of their proxies and Hezbollah and in Hamas and Ahoutis and all these criminals, lifetime criminals dedicated to a life of terror, have all been disabled. And hopefully the job gets done completely so that Israel never has to deal with any of these psychotic, death-loving cults, because that's exactly what they are. And if you think they're anything less than that, then go live in Israel for a little while and you'll figure it out very, very quickly. But I really believe that the next 30 to 50 years of Israel are going to be completely different. It's going to be a new awakening, a new revival for the entire state and hopefully the entire region. Let's get back into Pirke Avot. Yesterday I told you about being a man, and it really depends which book you read, because people will interpret it differently so that it makes sense. Another version that I'm reading now says, where there are no leaders, strive to be a leader. It's the same principle. It's not about a man or a woman. It's about being a leader, stepping up and doing the right thing when it's required. When you see an opportunity, a void that needs to be filled, be that person. It will come with tremendous reward, both physical and spiritual. I want to read another paragraph to you, which is packed full of content. So we're not going to be able to explain it all. But let's explain a few of the points and then we'll get back into the book. Huayomer, he was accustomed to saying. The more flesh, the more worms. What does that mean? Again, keeping it simple. I don't want to go down into the depths of the discussion because we simply don't have time. The more flesh, the more worms means that when you go, when you leave this world, when you've departed after 120 years, you go into the ground. And your friends are now the worms. The worms come and they do their job and they clean up shop. Well, the more you've ingested, the more you've taken into your body and just piled on the material, the physicality you've put on that weight, you've become obese. The more you've focused on putting food in your belly, the more food you're giving for the worms. Seems a little bit dark, but it's the reality. Focus less on what you're putting in your belly and more about what you're doing for the rest of the world. That's the message. On a bit of a deeper level, we learn that the nishama, the soul of an individual, remains with them in the grave until they are completely consumed by those very worms. And only then is the soul released to go up to the next world. So the longer it takes because there's too much to consume, the longer your nishama has to stay down here. Marbenchim, this is a popular one. I've said it before. The more possessions, the more worldly interactions you have in things like business, the more worry you have. The guy who's worth billions of dollars is in a state of constant worry, constant anxiety, constant fear, constantly thinking about all of their possessions. Why? Because they have homes all over the world. And each one of those homes has servants, and each one of those homes needs maintenance. It has a swimming pool and it has an elevator and it has multiple furnaces and it has grounds that need to be kept. And there are nothing but problems. These physical things that we attain need to be maintained. That's the whole idea with the physicality. You can't just leave the physicality on its own and expect it to last. Nothing lasts in this world. Everything deteriorates unless you actively maintain it. And so the more that you have, the more it deteriorates and the more you need to maintain it. Whether it's cars, whether it's houses, whether it's uh private planes, all of these things require time and attention. And some of them are much more expensive to maintain than others. But the more you have, the more you worry. Very simple. The more wives you like this one, the more witchcraft. What's the message? Today nobody practices witchcraft. The idea is that we learned from our forefather Jacob, who married two wives, two sisters, Rachel and Leah. What happened there? Those two sisters before they married their husband, the same husband, were tight knit. They had a very powerful bond, a connection that only really close sisters can share. And if two sisters who are very close know what I'm talking about, then you know. It is a relationship that cannot be penetrated. But when it is, when somebody manages to wiggle in and drive a wedge in between sisters, the whole thing falls apart and it gets very nasty. And that's what happened. And from there, we learn, and we know now, that we're not allowed to marry sisters. Even though technically, biblically, we're allowed to marry more than one wife, and it's not our common practice. You certainly cannot marry sisters. The idea is that when you marry more than one woman, it breeds jealousy. And women are very emotional beings, and most of them cannot hack that. And as a result, they're constantly conspiring against one another. The more mate servants, the more lewdness. The more manservants, the more thievery. I mean, you can understand those on their face for what they are. However, the more Torah, the more life. Torah is life, my friends. What we are studying now, what we learn in this podcast throughout both seasons and God willing the seasons that will come, this is life. When you tune in to the other podcasts that just talk about politics all day long, or they talk about business all day long, or they talk about food all day long. It's all they talk about. They are one-dimensional, they have no Torah in them. Then you are learning from the opposite of life. You think it's life because hey, it's food, I need to cook, I need to eat, I need to feed my family. It's important. And it is, for sure, 100%. Business, very important. You need to make money, you need to finance your life. Politics, important because these are the people who make policies that affect us. But Torah, what we discuss in this podcast is life. Period. Without it, there is no point in living. The whole world was created for the Torah by the Torah. And if we're not learning it, then you are simply missing out on life. The more study, the more wisdom. Obviously, very straightforward. The more counsel, the more understanding. The more you speak to people, especially people in the know, like rabbis and rabbits, people who are more learned than you, then the more you start to understand things. You can read things in theory. You can sit and learn from a book and understand that in theory X equals Y. But you don't understand it in practice until you learn it from an individual in the field. The more charity, the more peace. One who has gained a good reputation has gained it for his own benefit to say that it's a good thing. To build a good reputation for yourself is a very important thing. When your children and your grandchildren and your great grandchildren are telling stories about you, those stories need to be one that talk about the positive reputation, the positive impact that you've left on this world. It's the only thing you have when you're gone. One who has gained himself Torah knowledge has gained himself the life of the world to come. You understand? You want access to the world to come, you want access to eternity, you want to make sure, like I said yesterday, that when you get there, you stay there and you don't have to come out because that is one of the most painful things for a soul is to know that there is a place they just came from that is difficult and challenging and full of problems and illness and corruption. And now I have to go back there. After all that, I just spent 80, 90 years there, and now I need to go back because I didn't fix these small things. They were so easy to repair. At the end, everything is clear. But we need to try and get that clarity here, not in the end. Now, while you're young and while you're capable, get the clarity, figure out, do the introspection. What do I need to perfect in my life? Where do I need to invest my time and my energy to become the perfect version of me? What are my challenges? And let me start to fix those things that are challenging me, that are keeping me back. That is how you guarantee that after 120 years, you remain in a world of truth. Let's get into the book. We've said that nature has nothing to do with illness, that your DNA and what the doctors are going to give you, and the prescriptions, and even though those prescriptions, the vast majority of them, are composed of natural remedies that come out of the ground combined with all kinds of other ingredients that may not be natural, the source of many of them, if not all of them, come from the ground. That's where our healing comes from. Hashem gave us the opportunity to heal ourselves. What do you think? Before there were pharmaceutical companies, people just died at the first time they sneezed. No, they had natural remedies that came out of the ground. Pharmaceuticals came along and realized that they can utilize that, put it in a pill so that you don't have to crush it, and you don't have to cook it and you don't have to mix it. We'll do the work for you. We'll put it into pill format. Now you pop the pill, and life is easy. It's the same thing with the rest of our lives. Anybody who comes up with a new method of creature comforts to make our lives easier becomes an overnight success. And that's what happened with pharmaceuticals. Then obviously they strayed from there. Then they started to experiment, then they wanted to save money and they wanted to make it quicker and more efficient and cheaper. And as a result of that, you get a diluted, dumbed-down version or a synthetic version of the real thing that comes with all kinds of side effects. But the principle is that Hashem gave us the cure. It all comes out of the ground, but it's still not going to work. It won't do a thing for you if you are not correcting what you need to correct. It's like going for a swim while you're holding an anchor. If you want to sink to the bottom, you hang on to the anchor. If you want to float to the top, you release the anchor. It's simple. But most people don't see it that way. So they end up swimming around with an anchor, a ball and chain hooked to their ankle, and they wonder why. It's so difficult to get through life. Why can't I swim across the pool? Because you're being pulled down by your actions, by the foolishness. So stop and recognize that you've got a ball and chain. Undo that ball and chain, let it go, and life becomes so much easier. It's the same idea. If you're doing something, an action, whether you're doing an Aveira, a sin, too often, and that eventually catches up to you. Hashem sends you love tap after love tap, and then it becomes a slap, and then it becomes a punch, and then it becomes an illness. If you've gotten that far, then you need to stop and backpedal and do a real assessment and then say, okay, I recognize these things need to change. But I'll give you a tip. The longer you wait, the harder it becomes. That's what I said the other day. Al Tomar, I was in Piquet Old, we were reading it. Don't say that when the time is ripe, I'll come back. No, you won't. And part of the reason why you won't is because it becomes exponentially harder. The longer you wait, the more you are immersed in your current life, where you were oblivious to your actions, the harder it becomes to where it becomes eventually impossible. That's why most people don't become Baalechuva. They don't become God-fearing Jews when they spent their entire 60, 70 years doing the exact opposite, and suddenly you want to find them learning Torah in a yeshiva at the age of 70 for the first time. Good luck. It's simply not going to happen. If you don't start early, then your odds drastically reduce. And if you want the odds of success, then you start early. It's like investing, it's compounding. This is the finance guy in me. The earlier you start putting away money and earning interest on it, and then you earn interest on that interest, the easier it becomes to be wealthy. The longer you stay away from investing your money and you don't have the power of compounding, the longer and the harder it's going to take for you to amass a fortune. Start early. It's the same thing with your habits and your lifestyle. Recognize the things that you're doing wrong and start right away to make those changes. As if you don't, you're never going to get that chance. Ultimately, you'll get to the point where Hashem says, sorry, I've given you too many opportunities and you've neglected every single one of them. There's nothing more we can do for you. God forbid anybody should ever get there. Same principle applies with your health. You want to live a long, healthy life. You want the best odds at living that because there are many contributing factors. Many. It'd be foolish of us just to narrow it down to one mitzvah that you're doing. Although it's important, there are many variables that play into it. But generally speaking, you want to increase your success or your odds at success of living a long, healthy life. Assess the things that you are doing wrong and the things that you should be doing correctly. In other words, stop doing the averas, stop doing the sin, and start doing the mitzvahs. When you start doing that, then your odds will compound at success. Spiritual and physical success. Again, have an amazing day today. Try and celebrate a little bit. Remember, it's Yomadzmaru. This is the day that Hashem decided that formally we are going to concretize the fact that we got back this land of Israel officially, even though it's always remained the Jewish homeland. On that day in history, it became formalized for the nations of the world to understand that these are the times where Mashiach is heading back. And that's a very big sign that the Jews are going to head back to their homelands and rebuild it, and it's going to flourish. And I don't think there's anybody in the world that's going to tell you that Israel has not flourished. Have an amazing day. 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.