Episode 143 - The Secret to Success: Stop Caring

 Ever feel overwhelmed by everything you think you should care about? You're not alone. 

Tag someone who needs to hear this!

In our hyper-connected world, we often feel the weight of every little thing happening around us. It’s a plague—caring too much can lead to anxiety and depression. The truth? You don’t have to worry about everything. It’s okay to let go of what you can’t control.  

Focus on what truly matters: your family and yourself. Remember, you can’t carry the world on your shoulders.

So, what will you choose to focus on today?  

More insights on managing life’s chaos in the full episode! Link in bio. 

#thetrustfactorpodcast #MentalHealthMattersHealthMatters #MindfulLiving #familyfirstt #selfcare 
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Transcript

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The secret to success is to stop caring. We're living in a world where everybody is hyper focused on information. We have information of what's happening around the world in the palm of our hands, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You're getting inundated. Nonstop. It's a distraction from reality. It takes your interest and your time away from all the things you should be focusing on and puts it on all the minutiae that's in the world, all of the noise that's out there. I need to know what's happening by some random person's house on the other side of the world at any given day that has no impact on my life. It's ridiculous, and yet it's in the palm of my hands and makes you crazy. The Trust Factor is a ticket to a bad life. The Trust Factor shows you how to get through the night. Thank you for joining us for another episode. I'm going to get personal with you guys today. I'm going to invite you into a phase of my life that happened to me that many people might be embarrassed of, but I am not, especially not in today's society that we live in, which is shrewn with all types of pressures and challenges, which ultimately lead to issues of emotional and mental health. About 15 years ago, not long after I started to become a religious Jew, I had my first and only, and God willing, my only ever bout with mental health. I fell into a form of depression, and I didn't know what had brought it on. And I was running around trying to get treatment, trying to get help, trying to speak to people who were going to give me the silver bullet. And believe it or not, I got that silver bullet. But it wasn't the silver bullet that got me out of it. Thank God it was a short phase. It only lasted about six months, but those six months felt like 60 years. And anybody who's dealt with depression knows that a minute is a lifetime. And so those six months felt like many lifetimes. But I did get out of it. And the reason and the way that I got out of it is what I'd like to explain to you, so that it might help you. Because today everybody is suffering from one form or another of mental illness. And we know why. We know it's because we don't nourish our souls. I didn't know that at the time. I actually thought that the reason why I may have fallen into a depressive state was because I had recently, in the previous few years, started to become an Orthodox Jew. Previous to that, 33 years of my life, I spent as a secular Jew. No connection to a creator, no understanding of the inner workings of the world and creation. And suddenly I'm learning every day and I'm growing tremendously by leaps and bounds. And my perspective is completely changing on all of creation and my purpose in this life. I thought maybe that was why. Maybe it was too heavy for me. I only came to realize later on that it was exactly that that helped me to get out of it. Let me explain. In the early days, this is going to sound familiar to you if you've dealt with depression. In the early days, I ran around trying to find out why. Again, trying to find out the reason, the silver bullet, to be able to turn things around. And I didn't get it. All I got was what the system throws at you, which is broken. The system is a secular system. They send the person to school for a number of years, they give him some textbooks, they talk to him about chemical imbalances, they talk to him about all types of different trials and errors. And ultimately, they all are just band-aid solutions because they do not deal with the real problem, which is a deficiency in your nishamah. Your soul is lacking. You're lacking spirituality and the understanding that you have a creator and how this world works. They don't address that. They just address the symptoms, not the cause. And that's what was happening. Talk to this person a little bit, talk to that person a little bit. This guy just wants you to keep talking. This guy wants to explain to you, CBT, that at a red light you stop and at a green light you go. And I'm thinking, are we really having this conversation? There's a real serious issue going on over here. I need to get out of this. I'm not talking to you about what you do with a stop sign. If that's where you are, maybe you're the guy who needs therapy. That's what I was thinking. Anyway, long story short, my friends, because I don't want to belabor it. I found myself sitting outside of a doctor's office, a therapist's office, who I was referred to by somebody, a family member. But this individual was not able to see me because of a conflict of interest that they were working with family members. Okay. He put me on to one of his colleagues, and I remember vividly coming to that office and looking outside, and it was a terrible snowstorm in Toronto, and the snow was coming down seemingly nonstop, and the news was talking about how it would continue to come down, and they didn't know when it was going to stop, and they weren't sure how city crews were going to deal with this, and if people were going to get locked into their homes, and my anxiety was through the roof. And I started to realize that I cared about everything. But I was in that office waiting to speak with this therapist. And the other therapist who referred me was there and said, Look, come into my office. I can't meet with you really, but tell me, give me the Cole's notes on what you're dealing with. Maybe I can give you some insights. And as I was waiting for the other therapist to open up, I gave over what I was thinking to this new therapist who introduced me. And I was telling him about this very fact that it's a snowstorm outside, and that was making me crazy. I was anxious and nervous about it, and I'm depressed, and everything bothers me, and I'm thinking about this, and I'm thinking about that, and I can't. And he says to me, So wait a second. These are the words that changed my life. So pay attention. He says to me, For 35 years, you've been walking around this planet, and you know all of the things that you just told me to be true, but they never bothered you. And today, all these things that you've known for decades suddenly bother you. And I stewed on those words for a minute, and I thought to myself, he's absolutely right. He just gave me my silver bullet, which is what I gave you all yesterday. Go back and listen again. The secret to success is to stop caring. We're living in a world where everybody is hyper-focused on information, on details. We have information of what's happening around the world in the palm of our hands, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You're getting inundated, nonstop. You know what those red circles are on your phone that appear on all your apps every second of every day? As soon as you log off of Facebook, immediately you look back and you've got another notification. What do you think those notifications are and why these companies are so determined to get you to sign up to the notifications? Because it's a distraction from reality. It takes your interest and your time away from all the things you should be focusing on and puts it on all the minutiae that's in the world, all of the noise that's out there. I need to know what's happening by some random person's house on the other side of the world at any given day that has no impact on my life. It's ridiculous, and yet it's in the palm of my hand. So we're living in a world that demands your attention and makes you crazy with all this useless information that doesn't add a drop of value to your life. You may not realize this. I'm telling you this. This is what drops people into a state of anxiety because they're forced to care about things that they never cared about. That's what happened to me. I cared that it was snowing so hard outside. Who cares? Why? We're living in Canada. We're not living in California where they've never seen this kind of thing before in the desert. We're living in Canada. We deal with this thing every year, at least every few years. We've got all the equipment, and who cares? There's a million different ways to enjoy the fact that you're going to be snowed in. There's so many different things, but I don't even think about it. And suddenly I'm thinking about it, and suddenly I care. And that caring led me to anxiety. And the knowledge that this individual gave me, that started the work progress. That started me on a path of recovery, that I led with the Torah, and knowing that Hashem controls everything, and that I control absolutely nothing. The only thing I control is to get up and do something. Make a decision, left, right, good, bad, up, down. That's it. The rest is out of my control. When you drill that into your head, all the weight of the world comes off of your shoulders. Suddenly you're able to just be and exist in any situation and nothing phases you. So what did I do? I went to the opposite extreme. You'll remember in season one, I talked to you about what Rambam Maimonides said about how you heal. When you find out that you've got an extreme character in a certain area of your life, and for me, it was caring. I recognized that I cared too much. So what did I do? I went to the opposite extreme and I stopped caring at all in a way that would normally be not good, in a way that would normally be destructive. But I went there in order to save myself. And I didn't care about anything or anyone for a period of probably six or seven months. Until what happened is exactly what Maimonides said. The pendulum swings. It starts on one extreme where you care about everything. You take it to the next extreme, you have to operate in the opposite extreme for a while, where I cared about nothing. And do you know what happened? Exactly what Maimonides Rambab said. That pendulum found balance. And today I know what I should care about and what I shouldn't care about. And more than that, I know that even when I do care about something, the extent to which I care and how much of my resources I attribute to it will vary depending on the situation. My friends, that was the secret weapon. That was the silver bullet that got me out of it. Again, it's not an immediate cure. It now means you have to work to stop caring. And I say that to so many people that I've met with over the last 15 plus years who are dealing with anxiety, and I keep trying to tell them the same thing. I don't care. Stop caring about all of these things, and you will overcome your anxiety. But it starts with you stopping to care. I know it sounds difficult, but it is a secret. Just think about it. Listen, when I was in flight school, which was a long time ago, probably 30 years ago, I got my private pilot's license. I was working on the 47th floor, First Canadian Place, downtown Toronto. And my office overlooked Toronto Island, and I would see the planes coming and going. It was a beautiful thing. And like many people growing up as children, I was enamored with airplanes, and I wanted to learn to get my pilot's license. So I reached out. And anyways, long story short, I had about 10 or 12 brokers working with me in the office at the bank, and we all signed up and we brought the flight school to our office. They did the flight training, the ground portion in our boardroom, and then we all started taking flight lessons. And like most people, statistically, what happened over here was the vast majority, probably 10 of the 12, stopped with the ground school. They didn't go anywhere. Myself and another couple actually started the in-flight classes. We went on flight with instructors. And ultimately, I was the only one of those dozen people that got my private pilots' lessons. But I tell you this why? Because one of the most important lessons that I ever learned in life was from my flight training. And it goes like this: You're flying an airplane, and suddenly the engine quits. You imagine that. There's no pulling over, there's no calling your AAA or CAA. The airplane has no power. You are about to go down. Now, you can do a million different things, and it doesn't have to be devastating, but the lesson comes from what you do as soon as that engine cuts out. And my instructor taught me that the first thing that you should do when the engine cuts out is undo the last thing you did. Why? Because you could have very well been the cause of that engine cutting out. And one of the things he suggested was the fuel selector. You have fuel tanks in your wings and you can select which wing is going to draw fuel. Now, if you didn't pay attention and you switched that fuel selector gauge, you probably selected a tank that doesn't have any fuel in it, or maybe even had water in it. And suddenly that was your problem. So if I switch to my left tank and then my engine cut out a few minutes later, the last thing I did should be undone, meaning go back the other way. 180 degree rotation. And that's what I did. I went back to the other tank, and there you go. The engine comes right back on. It turned out that what I did was the problem. It's the same idea by anxiety and caring so much. If you find yourself in a situation where you're caring too much about something, do the opposite. Exactly what Rambum said. Go to the opposite extreme and hang out over there for a little while. And when you do that, you will undo the damage that was done by this extreme. That was what I learned from aviation. And that's an unbelievable industry to be able to learn from because that's exactly what they do. They learn not in order to undo the past, because we can't change the past, but we can change the future. And the reason the NTSB comes together and puts together, recreates every plane crash in painstaking detail, where they will rebuild the plane piece by piece, every fragment that they can collect, they will rebuild in a hangar in order to find out what went wrong so that we can fix it tomorrow, because those industries are very impactful. When God forbid a jet liner goes down, hundreds of people can die, which means scores of people, families are affected by this in the most negative way, and society as well. So they invest a lot of time and resources into understanding what happened so that we can stop it from happening in the future. We know how to stop these things from happening. You have to undo what was done wrong. And that's what Maimonity says, and that's what I said, and that's what I did. And it got me out of a life-threatening situation. Because anybody who knows anything about depression knows that if it's anything, it's life-threatening. We just lost, you know, I was telling you about it a few months ago, a very close friend of mine who was dealing with depression her whole life and finally ended it. It is a life-threatening situation. It doesn't have to be. The way out, my friends, is Torah. The wisdom of this Torah is what will allow you to survive and to thrive. It's what brought us this far, my friends. The fact that we've been forgetting about it for the last couple hundred years because new shiny things are abound. All of a sudden, all these other distractions are pulling at us that we didn't have 200 years ago. Internet and all these distractions that take away our time and our focus from the real things, we've forgotten these lessons. And we're not allowed to forget these lessons. These are life-saving lessons. That's it for today, my friends. Have an amazing day. We're going to get right back into the book tomorrow and continue with this conversation around family and marriage. It's a tough one, but it's an important one. That, my friends, is real life. 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 Trust Factor 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.