Episode 103 - What Changes When You Thank God For The Hard Parts

Jealousy can look small on the surface, but it can quietly rewrite your whole inner world. We start with a teaching from Pirkei Avot that pulls no punches: an evil eye, the evil inclination, and hatred for people can remove a person from the world. We break down what that really means in daily life, how envy grows into negativity, and why it ends up isolating us from community, peace, and purpose. 

From there, we get practical and spiritual about trust. We talk about why money is called “lifeblood” in Jewish thought, and why giving to Torah and community can be one of the clearest expressions of emunah. Then we go deeper on the “evil eye” itself: the three types of jealousy, why the worst version is wanting exclusivity, and how the simplest defence is strengthening faith that Hashem runs the world and that what you have is exactly what you need. 

The heart of the conversation is healing through gratitude. We explore the idea that emunah is deeply conducive to good health, and why a person may need to thank Hashem even for hardship they don’t understand. We also share a powerful story from Rabbi Shalom Arush about a student who practises hitbodedut, a daily hour of personal prayer, and devotes it entirely to gratitude, leading to a dramatic change. We close by connecting this to letting go of control in outcomes, including the way stress and grasping can block the very things we want most. 

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Transcript

Why Trust Matters Now

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.

Junity Sports Sponsor Spotlight

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Trust factor.

Why Money Feels Like Lifeblood

Pirkei Avot On The Evil Eye

Gratitude As A Path To Healing

Hitbodedut And A Healing Story

Letting Go Of Control To Receive

Closing Blessing And How To 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. This episode of the Trust Factor Podcast is sponsored by Junity Sports. Junity Sports is a wonderful organization based in Toronto that unites the entire Jewish community through amazing sports leagues, tournaments, and events. Everything about them is so professional from their jerseys to the social media posts. It's beautiful to see how they unite Jews of all backgrounds, on and off the court, and they spread Jewish pride across the entire city. Registration for Summer Leagues is now live with soccer, basketball, hockey, flag football, and even pickleball options. Amazing sponsorship opportunities are available. I should know, my wife and my son are proud sponsors through Revo Homes, the business that they run. So if you're in business and you're looking for top-tier exposure, leads for your business, and an impact in the community, then check them out today at Junity.ca. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Trust Factor Podcast. That was our first sponsor. We have begun offering official sponsorship of either individual episodes, partial episodes, or multiple episodes and even seasons. That was our first one. We have others lined up and it is available to everybody. If you want a sponsor, please reach out and I'll make sure to get you all the information about sponsoring. There is no better way to show your creator that you put your money where your mouth is when it comes to his Torah and Emuna. You know, money is called dham blood. Why is it called blood? You know, in Hanukkah we give out Khanika guilt. Those little chocolate coins they represent money. You're also supposed to give real money to your children as gifts for Hanukkah. That's called Dame Khanukkah, the blood of Hanukkah. Why is money referred to as dham? And the answer is because it is your lifeblood. You are exchanging the hours that you have in this world for money. When you go to work and you put in eight hours, ten hours, whatever it is, your paycheck is remuneration for your time. And time is your life. You cannot create more of it. When you run out of time, you run out of life. And therefore, money becomes your most prized possession because it's the most meaningful for you. That's why so many people have a hard time parting with it. It makes sense. So when you take that hard-earned money, that prized possession, and you put it right back into Torah, he who gave you time, he who gave you life, and you use that money to be able to support him and his message, there's no greater demonstration or display of imunah than that. Let's get into Pirkeavot, my friends. Rabbi Yhoshua said that an evil eye, the evil inclination, and hatred for mankind removes an individual from this world. There's so much to unpack, guys. It's one sentence. But just like the rest of the Torah, you don't even need a sentence. Sometimes you just need a word, and you could spend hours, if not days, discussing that word. And that's exactly what the Gemara does, by the way, but it's different conversation. Right now we have a wonderful statement that needs to be unpacked. An evil eye. Where does an evil eye come from? It comes from jealousy. There's three types of jealousy we've said in the past. Number one, I'm not happy with what I have. I want what you have. That's jealousy number one that leads to the evil eye. Jealousy type number two, I don't want you to have what you have. I may not have it, and I'm okay that I don't have it, but I don't want you to have it. That's even worse. Number three type of jealousy is I have it and I don't want you to have it. I want to be the only one that has it. I want to be the guy with the biggest house. I want to be the guy with the most beautiful wife. I want to be the guy with the biggest bank account. I want to be the big guy, the big chief that everybody looks to, and I don't want to share that space with anybody. So whatever I have, I want it to be exclusive to me, and I don't want anybody else to have it, even worse than the previous two. Even somebody who has everything can have a form of evil eye. You would normally think that evil eye only comes when I want what somebody else has. No! I don't want you to have what you have. I want to be the only one that has it. Terrible, terrible traits. In fact, Pierre Kevot says it is the most evil trait that somebody can have is evil eye. But the good news is the following. If you think that you're on the receiving end of the evil eye, all you need to do is stop believing in it. Because it only has as much power as you attribute to it. It will only go as far as you allow it to go. If you don't believe that somebody can have an evil eye on you, and that's very easy, because Hashem runs the world. Let's not forget, what you have is perfectly crafted for you. And there is nothing better for you than what you have. So how can some random individual come and impact what you deserve, what you need in order to achieve your purpose in this world? The answer is they can't, unless you allow them to, by believing in this concept of evil eye, by being weak of character, because that's really what it is. It's a weakness in character that you don't have imunah, you don't recognize where everything comes from. And as soon as you get to that point where, God forbid, you don't recognize it, and you think that somebody else can overcome Hashem's decrees, then you open up the opportunity for evil eye, and then be careful because he will allow it to happen. We've said that many times. The evil inclination is the result of the evil eye. Once I've already established that I'm not happy because you have something that I want, or because I don't want you to have something that I have, suddenly my evil inclination comes out and it becomes the controller. It makes me do the things that I do and think the things that I think, which are always going to be the wrong ones, always going to be negative. That's the evil inclination. It is a direct result of the evil eye and hatred from mankind. How does somebody start to hate mankind? Easy. If I am jealous of them, if I feel like I deserve it and I don't get it, why do they get it? Or if I feel like I'm the only one that deserves it, I work hard, nobody else does, they don't deserve it, yet they get it also. Then my evil inclination works over time and I'm busy being miserable. And at the end, I end up hating everybody. And you know what else happens? They hate me because I've brought that negativity into the world. And it all starts with jealousy, with that evil eye. So what ends up happening is it removes you from the world. Nobody interacts with you, and you can't interact in a civilized society because you are upset at the whole world. You don't have to look hard to find this. If you look around, you see that a lot of people, especially later on in life, when things haven't worked out for them, when they've had a difficult, challenging life, making money or dealing with illness or not having children or all these different things that affect so many of us every day. That's life. We're tested every single day. And when things don't work out for us, we have one of two choices. We either look up to Hashem and say, thank you. Thank you, Hashem. I get it. It's not supposed to be. If it was, then I would be in a worse situation. The fact that it's not happening the way that I want is a perfect indication that what I have is great. Or you could say, Why? How come you hate me so much? Or God forbid, there is no God. How can there be a God if I work so hard and I don't have what to show for it? How can there be a God if everybody else is healthy and I'm always sick? How can there be a God if, and then you put whatever you want after that? If somebody lives a life for that long, thinking those thoughts, the negative, the latter, then eventually you see people who are just ready to erupt. People who are always negative, always pessimistic. And the older they get and the longer they go through life having these thoughts, the less they can compute what's actually happening to them and the more upset they become. And then you have a person who's old and miserable. They don't understand how life works. They never listened to the podcast, they never picked up a Torah or had a rabbi or somebody to teach them how the world works. When you know how it works, you say thank you for everything, the good and the seemingly bad. Let's get back into the book, my friends. The most conducive thing in the world for healing is a muna. That's why a sick person needs to thank Hashem that he is sick. Like I just finished saying in Pirkeavot. It's not random, my friends. Everything is perfect. The fact that I just finished telling you that somebody who has a difficult life, including sickness, has to thank Hashem. And now I look into the book, and what's the first thing that we read? Is that a person with real imunna looks up to Hashem and says, thank you, because you made me sick. And who are you? You're my father. You love me more than anything in the world. You want only my success. So if my success means I need to be sick right now and I don't understand it, I just have to be grateful because it's saving me from so much worse. It's atoning for so many things. A person who really expresses their gratitude for the sickness, not only does Hashem recognize that he's on the right track, but the sickness goes away much quicker. Why? Because a lot of the times, the vast majority of the times, the sickness is there not just as a form of protection, but also to test you, to see where are you at? Where is your head at? Do you know where it's coming from? Do you remember who runs the world? And so if the first thing you do when you get sick or you get a diagnosis is you look up to Hashem and say, thank you, then he says, okay, you've passed the test. And if the entire reason that he made you sick in the first place was as a test, then in a second, you've passed it, which means the next day or that day, you can be healed on the very same day. This is what doctors refer to as miracles that you never hear about, but they happen every day, all day long. Oftentimes people don't even get to the hospital. They get ill and they know that it's severe and it's nothing they've ever dealt with before. And their first instinct is to go back to their creator and say thank you. That day, the same pain, the same illness goes away. They never even made it to the hospital. Why? Because the whole purpose of the illness was a test. If the purpose of the illness was for you to atone, then it may last a little bit longer. It may be something that you need to go through for a little while. But again, the ability to stop and say thank you to Hashem, Hashem realizes that you're passing tests all day long. You're flying through life on Emuna, which is exactly what he wants. So it weakens the decree. It can undo a negative decree. That's the power of Amuna. Where a person believes that everything in his life is the product of divine providence and all for the best, that individual is flying on Amuna. You can't get in their way. There's nothing to slow them down. These are people who are overachieving on spiritual and physical life. The rabbi gives a story, Rabbi Arush in the book. He says one of his students, a basic trainee, a guy starting out in his path of Amuna, was learning with Rabbi Arush. And he was sick for many years, suffering immensely, a real serious illness. Nothing he tried helped him, not even atonement and prayer. Then he heard the rabbi's lesson on gratitude, which I've spoken about multiple times about the power of being grateful, which clarified the point that since everything is for the best, one needs to profusely thank the creator for his tribulations and deficiencies, including your illnesses, with a whole heart. The student learned also about the daily hour of personal prayer. It's called Hitbod. In the circles of Brezlev, which we're learning from Rabbi Shalom Arush, they're very big on this concept of Hitbod, which is a personal hour of prayer. Not necessarily formal. In fact, it's the exact opposite. It's finding a field and a quiet place and being in nature and just sitting and meditating and connecting to Hashem with your own words through your heart. That's Hitba Dudut, very important. So the student hears about it. And as a result, he decides to devote his entire daily hour to gratitude. Instead of just talking to Hashem about all kinds of things, the things that he needs, he decided that entire hour is going to be just thanking Hashem. And he thanked him daily for his years of being sick and for all of the suffering. He understood that Hashem was doing all of this for his best, that it was part of his soul's correction. This was a serious illness, and that this was a catalyst. This illness was a catalyst to bring him closer to Hashem. And every day he would stand before Hashem and would thank him, not even asking him for a cure. He accepted it with a whole heart and he said, Thank you, Hashem, for making me sick. I don't understand it, but that's okay. I don't need to understand it. I know where it's coming from and I know it's the best. And what happened? Within two weeks, his sickness disappeared with no medicine, no treatment, no ploys. He had suffered for years, and nothing had helped until he started to say thank you. Gratitude is the height of amuna. Since a lack of amuna is one of the main causes of serious illness to people, the opposite, which is a strong amuna, is strongly conducive to good health. The only suffering a person has in this world is when his amuna is taken away from him. As long as a person believes that everything is from the creator and all is for his best, he doesn't feel any suffering. Therefore, by strengthening oneself in amuna, harsh decrees are nullified and a person has no tribulations. That's why a sick person must ask the creator to give him amuna, that everything is for the best, enabling him to wholeheartedly thank the creator. So the message is, my friends, don't ask for healing. Don't ask for the medicine. Don't ask for the best doctor in the world. Don't ask for the best lawyer in the world. Don't ask that Hashem should send you an intermediary in this world to help you. No. All I need you to send me, Hashem, is emunna. Please give me the ability, open my eyes to see without a doubt that you run the world and that everything that you do for me is perfect. Not just good, but perfect. And that I should be content with everything, the good and the seemingly bad. It's seemingly bad because I don't understand it. But I need to be okay with the fact that I don't understand it. That is the definition of Amunah. And when you can turn to your creator and say thank you with a whole heart and mean it from the bottom of your heart and be grateful for the fact that, God forbid, you're dealing with a very serious illness that might be terminal, then Hashem says, he got the message. I don't need to punish this individual. I don't need to drive it home anymore. It's done. He's passed the test. And he quickly removes it from you, just like the student of the rabbi, suffering his whole life with severe illnesses, always wondering why it happened to me, why not to other people, why can't I be cured from this? Finds out about this concept of Amuna, finds out about the concept of Hitbo Dadut, of an hour of personal discussion with your creator, and attributes the entire hour for two weeks to just saying thank you and making it a part of who he is, and suddenly it all goes away. Why? It's the same reason, by the way, oftentimes you will find that a young couple gets married and they want to have children and it doesn't work. They're trying for months and sometimes years and they can't have children. And do you know what ultimately happens? It happens when they go on vacation, or it happens when they finally resign to the fact that they're not going to have children, or after they've gone for treatment and they had a child using IVF, and suddenly they go from one child to having five in no time all naturally. Why? What changed? I know people, by the way. Same story. Couldn't have children for a long time, went through all kinds of treatment, spent all kinds of money, had one child, and before you know it, they had five children. How? What changed? And the answer is they resigned. They accepted the outcome, number one, or they had a child. So now the stress is gone. They're no longer worried about controlling outcomes. And so once they've already had a child, they're no longer concerned that they're never going to have children. And so therefore, they stop trying to control. And suddenly, guess what happens? Hashem says, I can send them more children now because it's not them. They don't feel like they are the be all end all. They know now that they control nothing. So now I can give them their children. Even though they may not understand that it comes from Hashem, it's caused them to recognize that they don't control anything and that they are at the mercy of a system. And once they've understood that and they relax their guard and they start to understand that they themselves are not in control, then it's a big lesson. And Hashem says, okay, now I can give you children. That's the idea on a physical level, on an emotional level, where you can detach from the desire for control that you think you're going to control outcomes. And therefore, as soon as you do that, as soon as you relax, you start to receive the things that you've been holding out for for so long. That's part of it. But at the end of the day, it all comes down to a shim. Do you believe that he runs the world? Do you know that it's all for your best? And if you do, then the floodgates open and you receive all of the things that you desire. Have an amazing Shabbat, my friends, and we'll speak again 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.