Episode 110 - Turn Off The Soap Opera And Save Your Soul

The habits that ruin momentum rarely look dramatic. Sleeping in “just a bit,” checking out in the middle of the day, or spending hours in pointless chatter can feel harmless, even earned. But when life gets loud and chaotic, those are the exact leaks that drain purpose. We start with a blunt line from Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) and translate it into modern discipline: guard your mornings, protect your focus, and stop feeding distractions that keep you stuck. 

Then we move into a heavier subject: illness, bed rest, and what it means to not waste a moment. When someone receives a serious diagnosis, extra time can appear overnight. That time can become healing fuel through self-evaluation, soul-searching, and prayer, or it can disappear into TV, binge watching, and numbing content that drowns out the soul’s voice. We talk honestly about how caregivers often mean well by “distracting” someone, and why that approach can backfire when the deeper work is what’s needed most. 

Finally, we unpack emunah and why trust in God reshapes fear. When you connect the dots between your life, your choices, and your suffering, anxiety loosens its grip and a person can actually profit from the experience instead of just enduring it. If you care about Jewish wisdom, spiritual growth, faith, productivity, and purpose-driven living, this one will give you a lot to sit with. Subscribe, share the episode with someone who needs it, and leave a review with the line that hit you hardest.

Transcript

Welcome And Weekly Reset

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.

Three Habits That Derail Growth

Illness As A Moment To Reflect

Emunah Over Fear And Anxiety

Final Takeaways And Share Request

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. It's a new week. The sun is shining, even though yesterday morning, I don't know if you noticed, in Toronto, flurries snow on May the second. Can you imagine? In the morning, we had a snowfall. Wasn't a big one, but it was a reminder that winter simply does not want to leave us. But today it's a beautiful day. The sun is shining. Another opportunity to get out and do things, get things going, get ready for summer, get in gear. We're going to talk about that a little bit in Pirke Vot in the Ethics of the Fathers. And then we're getting back into our book. It says the following late morning sleep, midday wine, children's chatter, and sitting at the gatherings of the ignorant remove a man from the world. What are we talking about here? Pay attention, because even though this was written thousands of years ago, it applies today, my friends, more than ever before in history, or at least equally. It just goes to show you that the human function, the human nature has not changed in thousands of years. He's saying that these are three things that you need to be careful of. If you want to be successful, if you want to be somebody who's immersed in fulfilling your purpose and achieving greatness, then you will avoid these three things. What are they? Late morning sleep. What is meant by late morning sleep? Two different things. Number one, the first explanation of it is just as it seems. When you're young, when you're growing, you have a tendency to want to sleep in. Your body demands it of you, as a matter of fact, because active growth, when your body is in that mode where your bones are expanding and your tissues expanding, it's very demanding on a body. And the physicality of it demands that you rest, especially in the morning. That's why it's quite normal for young kids to sleep a long time, sometimes well past noon. 12 hours is nothing for a young person growing in their peak. To be able to sleep that long is not really a challenge. The problem becomes when you grow up, when you become an adult, when you now have to provide for yourself and your family, your wife, your children, you have to pay the bills, you got to show up to work on time. This whole idea of sleeping in and having these late mornings where your day starts at 11, 12, 1 o'clock even, that becomes a really problematic. So the idea is if you're sleeping in late and you find yourself in your 30s and 40s and 50s, and you still can't stop sleeping in, then that needs to change because that's holding you back. And the other analogy, the other way that it's explained is that late morning sleep, meaning to say that mornings are your youth. It's the time when you're young. It's the time where you have energy, you're vibrant, and you can be invincible to the world. And that's why you're more productive. When you're in your 20s and you're in your 30s, you've got all the energy in the world, you've got all the optimism in the world. The world is still a clean slate and you can go out there and achieve without a lot of the negativity and the pushback that comes later on in life when you're tired, when you're fed up, when you've been through the ringer a few times, when you've seen different elements of life that you're not exposed to yet as a child, they bring you down. They hold you back. But when you're young and you're in your youth, that's when you need to strike. That's when you need to give 100% and achieve greatness. That's why it's saying late morning sleep is a problem, meaning to say get active while you're young. What's midday wine? Exactly what it sounds like. Midday wine. It says over here very clearly that one should refrain from intoxicating drink during the day. As a stimulant in the morning, believe it or not, or as a relaxant in the evening, which is very common today. You come home from a hard day's work, you have a glass of wine, you sit back, it unwinds you. No problem. It's a relaxant, gets you ready for bed. Even in the morning, I never knew, but apparently wine as a stimulant in the morning works. It gets you going. Okay, I don't know. I'm not much of a drinker, but apparently that's the case. The problem becomes the midday wine. Once you're on a roll, once all the cylinders are firing and you're at work and you're productive and you're doing things, to stop in the middle of the day and have a glass of wine or an intoxicating drink is going to have the opposite effect. It's going to bring you down. It's going to undo all of the things that you're setting out to achieve. So cut out the midday alcohol, guys. If you find yourself doing that, it's something that's going to slow you down and destroy everything that you've come to build. And the last one, children's chatter and sitting at the gatherings of the ignorant, what's it referring to? Children's chatter refers to the involvement with foolish pastimes of youth to which men are often attracted. Guys hang around, they start schmoozing, it starts getting silly, they start reflecting back on their childhood and the silliness that took place at the time. There's a time and place for that. There's a time and place, usually very infrequently, because the more you find yourself sitting and talking about idle chatter and childish foolishness that you used to engage in as a child, the more you hold back your growth, the more you want to remain in that childhood state. And I understand it. I get it. A lot of people want to remain children forever because life gets difficult. As we grow and we take on more and more responsibilities, all we want to do oftentimes is just go back to our youth. Go back to when we were living in our parents' houses and we didn't have to pay the bills and we didn't have to go to work, and all we did was hang out with our friends and be silly and do foolish things. A lot of people just think every day, why can't I get back to that? Those days came and went. They served a purpose. Take what you have back then, the friendships that you developed, and work with those. But to try and go back and to actively remain a child for the rest of your life is not on the agenda. It's simply not an option. That wraps it up for Pirke Vot, Ethics of the Fathers. We're getting right back into our book. Just as a reminder, we're talking about somebody who's sick. We're talking about people who find themselves as patients in a hospital, somebody who was diagnosed with a very serious illness. So now here's what it says: don't waste a moment. A sick person needs to utilize any and all available time for self-evaluation and soul searching. If you find yourself in this position where, God forbid you were diagnosed with something serious, this is your opportunity to stop and reflect. A lot of people lie idle in their beds, either in the hospital or at home, if they've been discharged and sent home. They're sitting in their beds for hours, being catered to, being waited on, freed from the demands of the normally busy routine. And these bedridden people need to take advantage of this extra time that's at their disposal. It's directed from above. God put them in that position where now they have ample time and opportunity for self-evaluation. I remember a long time ago, probably 20 years ago, when I had the merit of bringing in my rabbi, Rabbi Mizrahi, I brought him in many times to Toronto to do lectures, many lectures. And we would do it would always be multiple days, two or three days. And I would have two or three lectures lined up for him every day, and thank God we would pack the holes. But during the day, the rabbi wanted to make very sure that he wasn't idle. Don't leave me a minute of idle time. I want to go from event to event, from speaking event to speaking event. And sometimes it wasn't so easy. Sometimes I didn't have speaking engagements lined up, let's say in the middle of the day on a Tuesday or on a Wednesday. So what we would do is I would take the rabbi and we would go visit sick people, people like the ones we're talking about in this book, people who were given a serious diagnosis, and suddenly they find themselves in a hospital bed or at home. And I can tell you that on more than one occasion, I remember vividly going into these homes of people lying in their beds and seeing them doing what? Watching television, soap operas, the young and the restless, ridiculous mind-numbing junk that does nothing to help this person heal. Sitting in front of a tube and just watching show after show after show, binge watching. You just got a serious diagnosis. You've just been told that the clock is winding down, that your days are numbered, and you've got to go home and get your affairs in order. And what do you choose to do? To come home and watch the young and the restless. This is exactly what the book is talking about. You find yourself with all this spare time because God put you in that position to have that spare time so that you can do the very thing that he wants you to do, which is to reflect why was I put here? Why was I given this illness? Do I know that God runs the world? And if I do know it, what am I doing to connect back to him so that he could help me to undo this illness? And instead, they're just sitting and watching a television, some ridiculous drama that's just going to get them excited for no reason. This specifically is the time when your soul needs to get a fair hearing, where God is waiting. He's sitting there and saying, okay, now I put you in this position. Let's see how the introspection goes. Let's see how you can dig down deep and come up with your real emotions and talk to me like a father. And if you can, then we'll work together to get you out of this. But instead, what do you do? You flip through the channels, sitting and waiting for what? For your day to come so that they could put you in the ground? It doesn't make any sense. How terrible it is to stick a television in front of a patient's face, it drowns out that soul's voice. And it distracts the person for what they really need to be doing, which is praying and assessing themselves. It's so true because the caregivers are often thinking, let me just distract them from their illness. And so, in their attempt to do something good for this person, they're actually harming them by putting that television in front of them or that today it's a laptop or an iPad and just sitting and binge watching. I mean, it's bad enough that we do it when we're trying to be productive. I get it as a mechanism of winding down a little bit. But to binge and to go into the late mornings, two, three, four o'clock in the morning, and to have to wake up for work the next day, even when you're healthy, it's mind-boggling. I mean, I used to be guilty of it myself, so I get it. You want to remove yourself a little bit and live in a bit of a fantasy world and not so much heaviness, I get it. But that has to be tempered. You have to recognize that you have to be responsible. You got to get up in the morning, you need to be refreshed, you need to be at your best. And if we go back to what we just talked about with Pierre Kavot, the best time to be productive, the best time to get results is in the morning. It says, and there's very good reason for it, that the early bird gets the worm. Those sayings come from somewhere deep and meaningful. To be productive, to be successful, requires that you get up early in the morning. That doesn't mean that you can't be successful if you sleep your life away and you wake up at two, three o'clock in the morning. If God needs to give you the money, then he will give you the money. There's no question, because it's part of your test. But if you want to be productive and it's not necessarily something that you need, but you can do with it and it wouldn't harm you, then God needs to give you that money because he sees that that's what you're going after. When you wake up early in the morning to go after it, it's your way of showing Hashem. Look at how serious I am. This is important to me. I want to be able to earn more so that I could be able to do more. More Torah, more learning, more mitzvahs, spending time with my family, being able to grow, going on vacations, being able to wind down so that I can come back refreshed and invest more in your Torah and the proper way of living. So I need that money. What's the best way to show it? Is to get up early in the morning to go to work while everybody else is sleeping. So the bottom line message for today, my friends, for that sick individual is that if he has Amuna, which is the key to success, then he doesn't have worry and he has much more opportunity to succeed in rectifying his misdeeds. Why? Because he becomes aware of his relationship between the sins and the sickness. That's the key. If you don't have amuna, then you're suffering from fear and anxiety, worry and depression, negative thoughts. Why? Because you don't make the connection, you don't understand that there is a reason why you are ill, and that it was given to you in order to incentivize you to be able to get you moving, to fix and move forward. And then it can be removed from you. But if you don't know that, then you're just sitting worried and panicking. Why do I have this and what's going to be my end? Why do I deserve this? What did I do wrong? This kind of individual does not profit from the experience of illness. You hear that? Does not profit from the experience of illness. You have an option. You can actually profit from your illness, but instead they just suffer all the more. He puts his trust in doctors and medicine, and he's simply a candidate for more disappointment. That's the person who lacks Amuna. I don't connect the dots, and therefore I run to the doctors, I run to frail humans who are faulty and are going to make all kinds of mistakes and are self-serving, as we've said many times, and all they're going to do is put us through the ringer, as opposed to going back and recognizing this came from my loving father. There's a message in it. Just as quickly as he brought it on, he can take it away. All I need to do is connect back to him. When you pass the test of Amuna, you bring gratification to your creator, the one who created the world so that people will learn Amuna. That's the reason he created all of this. That individual is fulfilling his mission on earth. And that's why he merits a high score in the test of Amuna, as well as a full and complete healing. That's how it works, my friends. That wraps it up for today. Tomorrow, we've only got a page and a half left or so of this concept of how to deal with illness from a position of Amuna and how not to deal with it. And then we're on to new subjects. Wishing you an amazing week, my friends, until 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 to the