Episode 116 - The Gym Is Easy Try Beating Your Yetzer

The loudest voices often sound the most certain, but certainty is not wisdom. We open with a grounded challenge: a person can be highly educated and still be a fool if their intellect becomes a tool for justifying cruelty or shutting down honest questions. Using a classic teaching, we explore a sturdier definition of wisdom: learning from every person, listening across perspectives, and doing the uncomfortable work of refining your own view until it aligns with truth.

From there, we get personal about strength. Real strength is not a physique or a highlight reel, it is self-control. We talk about anger management, mastering impulse, and why the yetzer hara can outlast your willpower if you do not train your character with patience and consistency. If you have ever promised yourself you would change and then watched yourself repeat the same pattern, this conversation gives language and direction for starting again with one trait at a time.

We also redefine wealth in a way that cuts through modern money anxiety. Rich is being happy with your lot, enjoying the fruits of your labour, and living with gratitude for your spouse, children, community, freedom, and opportunity. Then we switch gears into finances and emuna, connecting livelihood to trust in the Creator and the belief that sustenance is provided across creation. That shift can reshape your money mindset, reduce fear-driven overwork, and bring more calm to decisions about career, family, and responsibility.

If this helped you think more clearly, subscribe, share the episode with someone who needs the lift, and leave a review so more people can find The Trust Factor Podcast.

Transcript

Clarity And Trust In Noise

SPEAKER_00 0:10

The Trust Factor is a ticket to a better life. The Trust Factor shows you how to get through the mind. Trust Factor. 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.

Wisdom Beyond Degrees

Strength Means Self-Control

Rich Means Content With Your Lot

Finances Linked To Emuna

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Trust Factor Podcast. It's Sunday. I hope you had an amazing Shabbat and a meaningful Shabbat. We've got so much to cover off this week. We're switching gears when it comes to the Garden of Amuna. We are out of health. I hope you enjoyed Friday's episode because I got a truckload of responses. So many people have reached out. I guess it hit home. There are a lot of people who are dealing with painful diagnoses and they don't know how to manage them. And I guess this podcast made a real dent in their lives. It helped people. I've got so many amazing comments. They're on Facebook, they're on YouTube, they're on social media. Have a look and see. People are benefiting from it. So send it around. If you know somebody who's suffering, somebody who needs that extra bit of pickup, chizik, send it along. Let's get right into it, my friends, because there's a lot to cover off. Benzoma Omer. Benzoma says, who is wise? Who do we consider a wise person? Is it somebody who's intelligent, who's spent all these years in higher education growing their wisdom, or even somebody who sits and learns Torah all day long in order to grow in his Torah knowledge? Is that a wise person? Or is it maybe an old person? Let's read. Who's wise? Simple. Anybody who learns from every person. He who learns from every individual. As it says, from all my teachers I grew wise. I want you to understand this is a very important concept. I just finished listening to an individual online. I forget his name entirely. I'm going to go with Charles Small. I believe that's his name. This is just coming to me now. This individual said in a very powerful video that he was invited as a scholar to a teaching in Columbia University. One of the top universities, Ivy League universities, some of the biggest names in American history, in world history, have come out of Columbia University. And you'll remember Columbia University from the days of the Ten Cities and all the people trying to pretend that they're righteous, fighting for justice for Palestine, all that wackiness was in Columbia. And he said he was invited to a teacher to go and teach with the highest level of scholars in the world in Columbia University. And he went and he was floored because what he saw was the smartest people philosophizing and debating and using their massive intellect to do what? To justify the wholesale slaughter, murder of people who disagree with the Palestinian cause, including people on their own campus. These were the smartest minds using what sounded like very flowery, intelligent language, to be able to make an argument that they should be able to slaughter people in the streets if you don't agree with the Palestinian cause. Or you can be the smartest person in the world and still be a complete and utter fool. There is too much of that going on in the world. So clearly, it's got nothing to do with how many degrees you have. That doesn't make you wise. What makes you wise is learning from a wide spectrum of individuals, not just taking one position and running with it, but asking the questions, looking at the other side of the argument, figuring out both sides and maybe even the third and a fourth position, and then coming up with your own answer or what you consider to be correct. That's one who's considered wise. Somebody who learns from all of their teachers, and in fact, from all of mankind, because you can learn from everybody. Who is strong? He who subdues his personal inclination. As it says, he who is slow to anger is better than a strong man. And a master of his passions is better than a conqueror of a city. You think it's difficult to go to the gym and lift weights? Anybody can do it. Anybody can go into a gym every day and commit to working out half an hour, an hour a day and start with the bar, put on 20 pounds, and start to work your way up. And eventually, you'll get beefy, you'll get strong, those muscles will grow. There's nothing stopping you from doing that. That's just physicality. That's easy. You want to be strong, really strong? Conquer your evil inclination. Let's see you do that. Do you know how many people I've seen fall by the wayside? They step up and they think that they've got this and they haven't, and they fail miserably, and then they end up making excuses for why they failed. The reality is the evil inclination has been around a lot longer than you and I have. And he's given us desires that we need to overcome. And those desires are not easy. Somebody can spend a lifetime in this world trying to overcome just one negative character trait, just one. It's not easy. And even that sometimes people aren't successful at. So they've got to come back for another go. But that's the principle that if you really want to be somebody who is considered a hero, somebody who's considered strong, be slow to anger. Don't get fired up at the first opportunity. And if you know you've got a negative character trait, work to fix it. And when you fix it, then you will have bragging rights to considering yourself a strong individual. The fact that you can lift weights doesn't make you any better than everybody else. Physicality is temporary and it fades. Look at Arnold Schwarzenegger today. Works out every day. At one point he was Mr. Olympia, Mr. Universe, or whatever his titles were. Strongest man in the world today. What is he, 80 years old? He's just like everybody else. But the wisdom that you gain stays with you forever. You pick it up at 40 and you repeat it your entire life and it never goes anywhere. That you take with you to the grave. Who is rich? He who is happy with his lot in life, as it says, when you eat of the labor of your hands, you are praiseworthy. And it is all well with you. You are praiseworthy in this world as well as the next world. Somebody who is happy with his lot in life, that is a rich person. We are living in a world where no matter what you amass, no matter how hard you work, in a world of materialism, and it's never enough. You always want more and more. We've said Yeshua Mea Rotze Matai has a hundred, he wants two hundred. That's how we were created. That's the drive, the evil inclination. It says never be content with what you have. You have a million, now you want two million dollars. You have a hundred million, now you want two hundred million. You got a billion, now you want two billion. It simply does not end. So what ends up happening? You spend your whole life not enjoying the fruits of your labor, working overtime, working like a slave, putting out fires left, right, and center, doing all the heavy lifting, paying everybody else. All your employees are out in the evenings going to restaurants and spending time with their families and going on vacations and doing all these things. They're minimum wage employees. They're working for you, earning minimum wage or whatever it is, an average salary,$50,000,$75,000,$200,000 a year. They punch in, they punch out. You, you are so busy trying to amass more, trying to double your worth that you never actually stop and enjoy what you've amassed today. It's such a shame that after all your hard work and effort, you don't even get to enjoy from your labor. So who is the rich person that can walk around wealthy? I was telling you a long time ago that I have a customer of mine, a good friend and customer. And we often banter back and forth, not just about work, but also about our personal lives. And when we banter about our personal lives, it always ends off with me telling him that he is a billionaire and with him telling me that I'm a billionaire. Why? Because we constantly remind ourselves of the goodness that surrounds us, of our spouses and our children, and our parents and our in-laws and our businesses and the country that we live in and the freedom and the opportunity and the liberties, all these amazing things that we can point at and go, look, look at how wealthy we are, look at how we've won the lottery. Oftentimes we find ourselves speaking like that. That makes you walk away feeling like the richest man in the world. There are people, meanwhile, who have untold fortunes, and their children don't speak to them, and they're married multiple times, and they're busy paying alimony and child support, and nobody wants to relate to them, nobody wants to do business with them because everybody's figured out that they're all self-serving and it's just about how much they can amass. They're never putting it back in, they're never letting anybody else make any money. It's always about them amassing as much fortune as possible. And as a result of that, you wouldn't trade your life with theirs for one minute. You wouldn't trade your life if you knew the good, the bad, and the ugly, and you had it put on the table in front of you, and you put your good, bad, and ugly on the table. You would pick up your lot and you would walk away saying, Thank you very much, because your finances come with baggage. And your baggage was custom created for you to carry. That's why you're content with it. And his baggage, the multimillionaire and the multi-billionaire, he comes with all kinds of trials and tribulations that you simply could not and don't want to hack. So be happy with your lot in life, and that will make you the richest person in the world. Moving on, back into our book, The Garden of Imuna. Switching gears. We're now into finance. We've finished off with the health concepts, which we've talked about. Podcast on Friday garnered a lot of feedback. So many people coming out of the woodworking who've never commented. I've been doing this for over a year now. All of a sudden, there's so many people coming out and commenting, which is great. It means that they're listening. It means that they're benefiting from it, they're growing from it. It was a great, heartfelt interview. If you haven't seen it, go back to Friday's interview and have a listen. But we put health on the side for now, and we go back to finances. Remember, we talked about that. The biggest inclination in the world, two of them, finances and relations. So we're going to be talking about that quite a bit. Let's get into it. It says the quality of a person's livelihood depends on his or her trust in the creator. In other words, simply said, your livelihood and your amuna are directly connected. The more amuna you have, the better your livelihood. The less amuna you have, the worse off your livelihood is. Amuna teaches us that a creator sustains all of his creation. That means even the ants. You walk around and you see little insects on the floor eating, they are also given their daily bread by their creator, just as we are, and just as the beasts of the field are, and just as the plants in the orchards are. They all get their sustenance from the same place, from the heavens. From a one-celled amoeba to magnificent galaxies, from a whale and an elephant to human beings who are the crown of creation. Our sages say that he who gives life also gives livelihood. He can't just give you life without livelihood. He can't just bring you into this world and say sink or swim. He has to give you a livelihood. And that's why they say, by the way, you know, oftentimes people say, when we get a better job, when I get a raise, when I make X amount of money, when I get a bigger house, then I'll have children. And it's such a mistake. Do you know why it's a mistake? Because of this right here. Every child comes into this world with his or her livelihood. Just as you were given your livelihood when you were brought into this world, your child comes in with that livelihood. It doesn't mean he has to wait till he's 18, 20, 22 to get onto the workforce. It means right away that livelihood comes to you when you're raising that child. So it comes with extra resources to be able to pay for that child's weight to bring them into this world. That's why people can have eight, 10, 12 kids and make things work. It doesn't mean that they're living in a lap of luxury. It means that nobody misses a meal. And in fact, that's the case every single time we see it. So bottom line, starting off, this concept over here of finances. Finances, your livelihood, how much you make and how you make it, and how you feel about what you make are directly connected back to your sense of amuna. And that applies equally for an ant on the floor, an elephant, somebody who worships idols, and somebody who knows who created the world. That means us, people who are aware that there is one God and only one God. And how much more so, think about this how much more so is your livelihood guaranteed if he's going to give it to an ant or to somebody who worships a cow? Is he going to give to you, a lover of his, somebody who recognizes that he is the one and only true God. That's the way to operate, my friends. We're going to leave it there today. And tomorrow we'll pick up from this position talking about finances and Amuna. Have an amazing day. Have an amazing week.

Closing Thoughts And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Thank you for spending time with us on the Trust Factor Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

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.