Episode 153 - Impacting Real Change At Home

Happy Canada Day! In this episode of the Trust Factor Podcast, host we discuss the importance of maintaining routine and the challenges that come with summer vacation. We emphasizes how our habits are formed from a young age and how difficult it can be to break them. As many people find themselves off their schedules during this time, I encourage listeners to relax and enjoy the season while acknowledging that it may lead to delays in podcast releases.

We dives into the struggles of a husband who has neglected his responsibilities and is now facing the consequences. I outlines three key steps for making amends and improving one's situation: 1) Recognize the divine influence in our lives, 2) Learn from past mistakes, and 3) Pray for guidance and support, with 4 and 5 yet to come.

In discussing the need for humility in relationships, I highlight the importance of understanding and valuing the contributions of one's spouse. I stresses that it is critical to refrain from negative comments that could harm a partner's confidence. Instead, I advocates for open communication and support, reminding listeners that both partners should strive for personal growth together.

Ultimately, the message is about self-reflection, personal accountability, and the power of prayer in healing relationships. As summer unfolds, let's remind listeners to remain patient and hopeful as they work towards establishing a more fulfilling routine come fall.

Transcript

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Do you think you're gonna make real change when you're flying on luxury jets from place to place with your rich friends because you've been kicked out of the house? You think that's where you're gonna make real change? When you're flying to casinos and you're going on vacations and lying on beaches and doing all the things you're not supposed to do, or when you're occupied at work, when you're underneath machines, when you're sitting in an office surrounded by people trying to get every spare second that you have, you think you're gonna contemplate your family that you've wronged in those situations? You won't be. That's why God says stop. These are the rules. Remove yourself from the situation, but that's not enough. What do you do when you've removed yourself? The trust factor is a ticket to a better life. The trust factor shows you how to get through the night. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Trust Factor Podcast. It's Canada Day. If you're a Canadian, happy Canada Day. If you're an American, have a little bit of patience. It's just a few days away. The point is, we're off. And so the summer's here. It's crazy hot weather in so many places around the world, including Toronto. So go slow and enjoy the weather. And we're also into vacation months. We're into the time of the year where we get thrown off of our routine. And we are creatures of habit. Routine has been instilled in us from a very, very young age as babies. And a lot of us carry that throughout our lives. And it becomes critically important to us that we cannot change our routine. And so it's going to be difficult for me to be able to get out of the routine of doing regular podcasts on a daily basis. There are going to be delays and days where we won't have podcasts. Maybe some of those days it'll be an audio podcast. Who knows? The point is chill out. It's summer, enjoy it until we get back into the fall. Everybody's back in school and we can re-establish our routine. I'll do my best to keep it all the same. But like I said, I can't make any commitments because there's a lot of changes happening. Good changes, Del Willing. So let me bring you up to speed. We're talking about what this guy has to do. The husband who was derelict in his duty. The husband who thought that everybody was there to cater to him and that his job was to tell everybody what to do. And as a result of that, he found himself in a really bad position. And that was trying to make his way back into his home. And so we said, what does he need to do? Number one, he needs to review the fact that there is a God that runs the world, and that that God was intimately involved in the relationship between him and his wife and his children. And that God understood that this was going in a very bad direction and had to put a stop to it, to put distance between him and his family so that he can contemplate his actions. And that got him removed from the house. So number one, remember that. Number two, learn. Now you've got the time. And now you've been given extra resources to be able to figure out where you went wrong. If you decide now that I'm out of the house, I can spend even more hours in the office working, even more hours with my friends doing ridiculous things, then my friend, you're on the way to being another statistic. Congratulations. If, however, you're broken and you want to get back into that home and you appreciate the fact that you have people who care deeply about you, namely a wife and children, that you have responsibilities for, then you're going to start to ask, what did I do wrong? Where did I stray? And then you find yourself a rabbi, a qualified orthodox rabbi. You'll notice I constantly qualify that with the word orthodox. It's the only type of jewelry that you need to be concerned with. Everything else followed and has been corrupted. That's their very nature. The whole idea of conservative and reformed jewelry, though to many people it may seem legitimate, it is simply just a result of modern times weighing on divine biblical information, trying to dumb it down, trying to make the Torah fit their lifestyle instead of trying to make their lifestyle fit the Torah. They didn't like that the two weren't connecting. And so they created new forms of Judaism. That's why I say make sure they're qualified, they're qualified by being an Orthodox rabbi and have a conversation with them. What did I do wrong? How can I get my life back on track? What have I been missing out on in the Torah? What does the Torah tell me? If you find yourself a Rafshalla Maruj, then you're that much luckier. So that's number two is learn. What did I do wrong? Because if I don't know, then I can't fix it. And number three is start fixing it. You can't do it on your own, and you're not expected to do it on your own. So number three is pray. Talk to your creator. Now that I've figured out what I need to do, it's so hard for me to change even a one of my character traits. I try and I often fail. Whether it's eating kosher, whether it's keeping Shabbat, whether it's keeping the holidays, giving charity, and giving my 10%. I try, but I often fail. It's so difficult to maintain consistency. Sure it is. Life is not a picnic. So you need help. Where do you get that help from? Your divine creator who has the ability to help you with everything. So pray. And the more you pray, the better your odds at success. Listen to what the book says. Designate a time every day to pray to your creator about the situation and ask your creator that he should forgive you for all of the pain and suffering that you cause to your wife and children. One should assess in detail exactly what he's done wrong according to what he's learned. And ask the creator to instill in his wife's heart a sense of forgiveness, that she's willing to forgive him for what he's done and to give him another chance. God can do that. And he's done that many times. We see in the Torah around the idea of Exodus when Moses came to ask Pharaoh to let the Jewish nation leave slavery. And Pharaoh said no multiple times when he's come back and made that request. It says very clearly that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. It might have just been that Pharaoh was prepared at those times to say yes, but God said, uh-uh-uh-uh, this is a learning opportunity, not for you, Pharaoh, but for all the generations of humanity that will come after you and that will read and learn from this Torah, that God has the ability to harden someone's heart. So based on that, we learn that if he can harden your heart, he can also soften your heart. Pray to Hashem, soften her heart a little bit. I know I've heard her allow her to open up a little bit so that she can give me a little bit of wiggle room to be able to prove to her that I'm worthy of being let back in. That's the approach. And if you're not taking that approach, it's not the right one. He needs to put as much effort as he can into these prayers. Say the words out loud. Make sure that your ears hear your words. Very, very important. It's the same thing in divening. When you pray your silent prayer, you have to whisper it at a volume where your ears can hear it. Otherwise, you have a problem. You have to make it real by saying it out loud. And that will also make you feel that much more foolish to realize that you've done these things. Because oftentimes we go through life behaving in a way that we never dreamt that we would behave in the first place. And it's only when your ears hear those words coming out of your mouth that you've done X, Y, and Z does it hit you like a ton of bricks. I did that. I could not imagine in a million years that I'd be responsible for doing something like that to the people that I love. You never contemplated it. You were too busy doing it, that now you've been extricated from the situation. Now you're an outsider looking in. Now you have that longing in your heart, you're depressed about it, and suddenly you're reviewing these things, your actions, your mistakes out loud, it compounds it, it makes it that much more real in your head, and it primes you for real change. You think you're gonna make real change when you're flying on luxury jets from place to place with your rich friends because you've been kicked out of the house. You think that's where you're gonna make real change? When you're flying to casinos and you're going on vacations and lying on beaches and doing all the things you're not supposed to do, or when you're occupied at work, when you're underneath machines, when you're sitting in an office surrounded by people trying to get every spare second that you have, you think you're gonna contemplate your family that you've wronged in those situations? You won't be. That's why God says, stop. These are the rules. Remove yourself from the situation. But that's not enough. What do you do when you've removed yourself? You learn about what you did wrong. First, figure out, care enough to understand what did I do wrong, and then you ask for help and you start that change process. But all of this really hinges on number four, which is internalizing it. He says you have to internalize what you've learned. How do you internalize it? Really, one of the ways I just explained to you was by externalizing it, saying it, put it out there. If it only lives in your head, it's not real. So you have to say it out loud to make it real. And he says, you have to review all of your learning, everything that you've learned with this qualified rabbi on a daily basis. What you've done wrong, what you need to do more of, and what you need to do less of. And he gives an example. This is probably going to resonate. One of the fundamental rules of peace, it says in the house, is never to make any negative comments to one's wife. Guys, that's a hard, fast rule. It is so much easier said than done. You're living with a person, you're with them the majority of your life. You get to see the good, the bad, and the ugly. This means you have to be in a position to oftentimes just shut your lips, seal them. You cannot speak because what you're about to say is not going to make that person happy. That's very difficult. That means you need to negate yourself. You don't exist to an extent in order to ensure that you're not going to harm that person called your spouse. That's what he's saying. So obviously, that's an ideal. If you're 90%, then you're 90% better than most people. If you're 50%, then you're 50% better than most people. But you have to understand that this is a number one rule. Do your best to make sure that you're not going to insult the person across from you. Oftentimes, the best way to do that is to just stop and think. And if they're there, it helps to look at them. But just stop and think to yourself, what does this person do for my family on a daily basis? If you're a man in the relationship and you're running a traditional household where the husband is working and the wife is primarily a caregiver, she could also be working. Then you stop and you just think, what does my wife do for me? She manages the house, she manages the kids, she takes care of their schooling, she takes care of their after school program. She takes care of making sure that I'm, I've got what I need from a food perspective, from clothing, from everything that I need. She takes care of for me as she organizes, she brings in somebody to take care of her, whether she does it or not, today's day and age, a lot of people have help around the home. She organizes, she arranges, scheduling, payment, all these different things. You don't think about them. They handle thousands and thousands of things on a daily basis. And if you just stop to recognize that for a minute in a day, it's easy to look at them and say, why would I insult them? Why would I make them feel bad? It's not that we're expecting perfection, but as long as you're aware, you will reduce the likelihood of that occurring within your relationship. So he goes on to say, fulfilling this requires extensive prayer for the reason I just said. It's not an easy thing. It's very difficult because you're negating yourself entirely. Your opinion no longer matters. Man has a natural tendency to comment to everyone in his environment about whatever mistakes he sees them make. You hearing this, guys? And to point out whatever flaws he thinks they have. Good news. You're not in this alone. Men are programmed very much the same. And women oftentimes are programmed very similarly. That's why we can appreciate it. And it helps to know that we're not alone, that your friends and your family and your loved ones are all dealing with similar circumstances. Right? There are always exceptions to the rule, but by and large, here's the book telling you exactly what you're dealing with at home. The husband comes home and tells everybody you're not good at that and you're okay at that and you can do better over here. Obviously, there's different extremes to it. Some don't do it at all, and some do it all day long. It's very difficult to live in a house with somebody who's scrutinizing your every move 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and doesn't give you any positive feedback. Very, very difficult. You might as well be in a prison. It's torture for many people. But unfortunately, there are many people who live that way. And so that's primarily the guy who finds himself on the outside and needs to make his way back in. He's got to drop all of that. Husbands often think that they have an obligation to point out their wife's flaws and mistakes to help them grow. Such comments don't correct anything. All they do is destroy a wife's confidence and bring her to the conclusion that her husband doesn't love her. Listen to this, guys. This causes a wife terrible suffering because her deepest need is to feel that she's perfect in her husband's eyes. Do you know who hates that? The people of the women's liberation movement. They've hated it for so long because it somehow means that women are dependent on men or that they are inferior to them in some way or another. That is the ideology that brought us to where we are today, where we have record high divorce rates. When it comes to Torah, when it comes to God's divine Torah, you look and learn Torah, you will understand that the woman, if anything, is held on a much higher level than the man is. All throughout Torah. She is the savior. She is the one who keeps the family together. She is the one that saves the family. She is the one doing God's will. She is the one where God says, listen to her. It's the woman who saved the nation multiple times from complete and utter destruction. Those are our foremothers. That's the Torah. The problem is that the people who make these policies that go against Torah because of their hatred of Torah, they don't know anything. They come from a position of ignorance. They know maybe 10%. And because they know 10%, they know just enough to get themselves in trouble. What's it like? It's a guy who watched an electrician who used to work in a construction site when he was a kid and was watching an electrician wire up a panel. And he taught him the basics. Red wire goes with red wire, black wire goes with black wire, the ground wire always needs to be connected. Oh, is that it? Wonderful. I figured this out. I spent six months when I was a kid hanging off the shoulder of a licensed electrician. So I got this. Gets his own house, suddenly decides he wants to rewire his panel, goes in like a hero because he's overconfident, doesn't know what he's doing, and he gets burnt to a crisp. He ends up dying, touching his own electrical panel, which he was so severely underqualified to do. That's the problem we face in this society. People aren't educated. They come from a position of ignorance where they've got so little information, just enough to give them the confidence to enter the ring and have a conversation, and they end up affecting policy that destroys society. Why? Because they had no clue. They never learned Torah. They didn't sit down and understand what the woman's role is in the Torah and how she's actually viewed. They took a couple of sentences or statements out of context and said, What? A woman needs to be perfect in her husband's eyes. And the answer is yes. The woman does not want to be put down. She doesn't want to be reduced by anybody. Nobody does. A man doesn't want to be reduced. Man doesn't want to be put down and made to feel second best. But a woman in her husband's eyes, the man she chose to spend the rest of her life with, the guy who's supposed to be the father of her children, the person she's supposed to rely on for the rest of her life, and that he's supposed to rely on her. They're supposed to work together. This person thinks that I'm a failure. It's the worst thing that she could possibly think. The absolute worst. So that every strip that comes off of her leads her to that determination, to that conclusion that I must be a failure because my husband keeps pointing out all of my failures, never gives me any compliments, never lifts me up. That's a real problem. It's not your job to run around telling everybody what they should and shouldn't do. Your job is to support and guide them. And there's a right way to do with it. There's a right way to have the conversation with your wife to try and make her improve the same way she should try and make you improve. And the same thing happens with your children. You're all out for each other's best. That's the key. Is it that you're concerned about them, or is it that you're concerned about yourself? I want them to change. Is it because I'm uncomfortable in the situation? I would like the situation to be so much better for me, for my own comfort, or is it because I'm concerned about them that I want them to be the best that they can be? 98% of the times, my friend, it's the latter. It should always be the former. It should always be because I want them to grow and be the best person they can be, even long after I'm gone. If I'm gone before they are, I want to make sure that they have the necessary tools and that they have been exposed to the necessary information to be able to be the best version of themselves. If it's done with love and it's done properly, under the guidance of you got it, a qualified Orthodox rabbi, then you can approach this. But still, even then, when it comes to insults, when it comes to put downs, they're simply not helpful. There's a right way and there's a wrong way to have a conversation about how to improve. Have an amazing day. Have an amazing time off for your Canada Day, for your July 4th celebrations. Again, summertime's here, my friends. So be patient when it comes to the podcast, when we put them out, how we put them out. We're going to get through the summer. And then I promise you, by the end of it, by September, things will be right back on track. We'll be right back into routine. And it's going to be an amazing, amazing year. Have an amazing day in the meantime. 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.