Episode 171 - Reactive vs Proactive Mindset

Is faith the secret to transforming your reactions?

Most of us battle with believing in the unseen — especially when life hits hard. We touch, see, smell everything around us, but trusting in a higher power? That’s a whole different story.

In this episode, I talk about how even when God isn’t tangible, faith is the tool that helps us see through the chaos and recognize purpose in the challenges. Whether it’s in your relationships, money, or daily struggles — trusting that there's a bigger plan is what keeps us grounded.

It’s not easy. It requires a shift in how we perceive adversity — not as punishment, but as a sign of love and growth from the Creator. When you learn to see every challenge as a message from above, your reactions shift from reactive to proactive. The secret? Surrender with love, not resistance.

What’s one situation where trusting in the process changed your response?

Worth thinking about.

#Emuna  #spiritualgrowth 

Transcript

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What does it mean to be reactive? You're constantly on the defense, constantly thinking that people are out to get you. You are the victim. If this person did something bad to you because they're jealous of you. If this person wants access to your money, he wants to sink you. That you must have a big target on your back because all of these negative things are happening to you. And so how do you react? From the hip. It's a defense mechanism and you're ready for battle. How do you become proactive? By learning about the Muna, by investing in your relationship with your creator, by reinforcing for yourself that he's intimately involved in your life, that nobody can do anything to you, good, bad, or otherwise, without his express consent. The trust factor is a ticket to a bad life. The trust factor shows you how to get through the night. Welcome to another episode of the Trust Factor Podcast. We started off this podcast when we were talking about this season, season two, The Garden of Amuna by Rabbi Shalom Arush. We started, the book started, I should say, on a 30,000-foot level, looking down broad strokes. What is this concept of Amuna? What is this concept of Bitachon? Having faith in a creator and a higher power, and then converting that faith into trust. So we talked about that in principle, not just in season two, but also in season one. And then we drilled down deep. We went down into individual relationships and individual situations and scenarios of occurring life and how to respond to those situations, how to inject Amuna into your relationship with your spouse, with your children, with your boss and your coworkers, so on and so forth. Gave real life examples that you could utilize in your life. I think you should be utilizing. I hope you are. If you're not, go back, my friends, and listen and learn and start to implement. This isn't theory. This is not philosophy. This is an instruction manual on this life. That's what it was created for. So go back and listen and start to ingrain these ideas into your soul and start to implement them in your life. So now we're going back up to a bit of a 30,000-foot level. Again, high-level reminders of what these concepts are. And then we'll drill down deeper again. It's a difficult concept, though a lot of people think that they've attained high levels of faith and trust in their creator. First of all, it's a great thing that you're thinking that way because most of humanity don't. They don't know of a creator, they don't want to know of a creator, they think it's all them, their intelligence, their beauty, their creativity, their wisdom that got them to where they are. And they're perfectly content feeling that way until they hit rock bottom. When they hit rock bottom, they're the ones who are harder on themselves than anybody else because they've failed. And oftentimes, when they're in the hospital, they're screaming out, where's the creator? Where's God? Well, he's been here all along. Why didn't you call out for him before? Why only now when you've hit rock bottom? That's a different question. But the point is that it's a difficult thing to work on. I'm not blaming people because I know how difficult it is. You can spend a lifetime trying to develop your faith and your trust in the creator. Why is it so hard? It's so hard because he's not physical. He's not here. He's not in front of us. We can't touch him. We can't smell him. We can't hear him. We can't use our senses to be able to figure out that God exists like 98% of the things in the world. I know how much this table weighs. I can measure its dimensions. Nobody will ever be able to convince me that this table doesn't exist. I utilize it every single day. The same cannot be said about a creator when you're trying to establish his presence with your senses. So now we have to get into our nishama, into our soul, which in and of itself is not tangible. So now we have to use the intangible in ourselves to sense the intangible in the universe. Not an easy concept, especially when we're being told that the most important thing to humanity is the material, is the physical, is the here and now. When that's what you're being told, then you're negating, you're not even thinking about your spiritual side. That's why there's been a big revival lately as materialism has gone through the roof, as our creature comforts have increased exponentially. There's been a push towards soul searching and spiritual growth in things like yoga and meditation. It's become a whole thing for a reason because people are deficient in their spirituality. And they're starting to sense that. And now they're going back, they're trying to find out how they can invest in their spirituality. That's what this is. You don't need yoga. Meditation is very important. What do you think prayer is? Prayer is a form of meditation. You see oftentimes people who are praying and they're shuttling, they're, you know, they're they're bobbing around, they're weaving, they're twisting, they're doing their thing. They're in a state almost like a trance-like state, where they're connecting and doing everything that they can. They're using their bones and their muscles to be able to connect back to the ideas that are in their head, because that amplifies the power of the prayer, amplifies their feelings so that they can get a little bit deeper in touch with their soul. That is a form of meditation. So it's not easy, but it's perfectly capable. We see it. We need to look at the examples that surround us. We have giants in Torah, we have giants in spirituality who can show you who lead by example. It can be done. The text, oftentimes, the text will prove to you that there is a creator. There's a concept. I was sitting by a lecture a long time ago, given by a wonderful lecturer by the name of Max Antebi. I met him once at a Shabiltong where he gave over a lecture and he talked about Torah codes. A lot of people haven't got a clue about Torah codes. That is equidistant letter spacing in the Torah. That if you take a page or even a paragraph or even a line sometimes in the Torah, and you circle a certain letter and you count a number of letters and circle the next one and count the same number of letters and circle that letter and do that for a portion of the page. And you take the letters that you get, you find a secret code hidden in those letters. It's very real, it's numerology, it exists, and it has baffled scientists and statisticians for generations. And he did a wonderful job at explaining. But I remember it blew our minds in the audience as we sat and listened to this concept. I was blown away by it, thinking this is crazy. This is God showing you that he knows the past, present, and the future, which is the defining trait of a God. In order for somebody to be God, he needs to be able to know the future. How does he know the future? Because he controls it. That's the only way to know the future. And we're not talking about a single event. We're talking about a series of events. We're talking about a paradigm shift. We're talking about the status quo. He knows what it's going to be. How does he know? Because he manages it. That's the only real way to know. We're not talking about five seconds from now. We're talking about hundreds of years from now or thousands of years ago. It's all written in the Torah. And so being totally impressed by it, I was surprised when a woman in the audience got up and said, Why do we need this? I mean, we know God exists. We know that he's here. We know that he runs the world. Why do we need this? It seems superfluous. And I thought, what do you mean? This is God talking to us. A lot of people say, why isn't God here and now? Once upon a time, he used to speak to the nation. He spoke to us in front of Mount Sinai, right? We heard his voice booming. Yeah. And he spoke to Moses and he spoke to the prophets. You know, if God was here today speaking to us, maybe I'd be more observant. Maybe I'd keep more of the commandments. Maybe I would do so much more if he was only here, but he's not. I don't see him. I can't sense him. So how do you expect me to follow his decrees? If only he were here, I'd be so much of a better Jew. And the answer is you're wrong. You're wrong because that's what happened at Mount Sinai. The Jews not only experienced open miracle after open miracle in Egypt, where God brought down the superpower of the world, brought them to their knees, a global superpower. The Jews sat by and watched as God single-handedly brought plagues one after the other and destroyed Egypt to the point where they sent out their Jewish slaves. And then again, splitting of the sea, an unbelievable miracle that is movies are made about it today. And then food falling from the sky and clouds of glory enveloping them, and you know, their shoes not wearing off of their feet and their clothes not getting soil and so on and so forth. Open miracle after open miracle, they get to Mount Sinai, they hear God's voice booming, they get the Torah from him directly. And what are they doing not long after that? Serving an idol at the foot of that very mountain. They were doing it, and they were holding on the highest level of purity. And if they were holding on that level, what are we going to say? That we're nowhere near that. As we've gotten away from Mount Sinai and the giving of the Torah, we've fallen in our status and our observance of the Torah and the commandments for obvious reasons. We see the noise that we have today, the distractions that they didn't have to deal with back then. But that's just more proof that even if he was here, even if he stood right beside you and told you all the things to do, it wouldn't take long for you to stop following his commandments. So think about it. You don't need him here. You don't need to hear his voice, you don't need Moses, and you don't need prophets. All you need is his Torah and a little bit of common sense. Sit and study Torah with the right person. Torah codes but one example of God showing you that he's real, that he exists, and that he knows everything because he controls everything. But there are so many other ways just to look and assess all of creation or a human body or a human organ, take a human brain and spend your life studying that. And you'll fall in love with your creator and you'll know full well there's no such thing as randomness. Now it's time to climb back up to 30,000 feet. We're talking about our social life. How do we bring these ideas of faith and trust into our social life? So it says that a person undergoes many tests of amuna in the course of your social life. He says, at work with colleagues and with your superiors, in the army with his buddies and with his commanders. This is Rabbi Shalomarush. He lives in Israel. Almost everybody in Israel gets enlisted to the army. That's why it's a big part of their lives. And they have to deal with their friends and their officers, their commanders. In school with friends and teachers, and at home with parents and siblings, and so on and so forth. There are tests in every area and monetary matters. That's a big one. We talked about that the other day. How you start to see somebody's real character when it comes to issues of money. So you deal with money matters when you get robbed or when you're cheated or when other people use your property without permission, or with status. It's no coincidence he's bringing these two examples. Money and honor, right? They go together. Status, when a person is demoted or fails to be promoted, it's the worst thing in the world. Or when he suffers an affront to his dignity. People are so thirsty for honor and respect. Whether they deserve it or not is a different question. But their quest to achieve it is on the highest level. And that's why oftentimes they chase after money. Because money is, in their mind, going to equate them with honor and with respect. And it's not true. Oftentimes it does the exact opposite because, like we said the other day, that person wasn't primed to receive that material wealth. And therefore, that broken vessel couldn't sustain it. And instead of doing good with it, they did all the wrong things with it. And as a result, impacted negatively all of their relationships. So how do you deal with it? There's two ways. How do you deal with these situations? One way is you're reactive. And the other way is you're proactive. What does it mean to be reactive? It means that you're constantly on the defense. It means that you're constantly thinking that people are out to get you, that you are the victim, that this person did something bad to you because they're jealous of you. That this person wants access to your money, he wants to sink you, and that's why this negative thing happened. That you must have a big target on your back because all of these negative things are happening to you. And so how do you react? From the hip, right? It's a defense mechanism. You put up a wall, you put up your fighting gloves, and you're ready for battle. That's somebody who's reactive to life. How do you become proactive? By learning about the Muna, by investing in your relationship with your creator, by reinforcing for yourself that he's intimately involved in your life, that nobody can do anything to you, good, bad, or otherwise, without his express consent. If he doesn't consent, nobody can touch a hair on your head. Which means, if he's your father and he loves you and he's watching out for you, that anything that happens to you, no matter how you interpret it, has to be good. Because you and I know that as parents, we would never do something to intentionally hurt our child. We would put challenges in front of them, yes, but those challenges are for their own good. We gave the analogy of the child gate, right? When a baby isn't old enough to climb the stairs, we put a gate over there. The child might be upset, but we're not doing it to upset the child. We're doing it for their own safety. That's when God puts a stumbling block in front of you because it's for your own good. We don't have eyes to see it. So we interpret it as negative. That's the person who succeeds. When you're proactive, when you're learning that everything comes from your creator, when you're ingraining it in your mind in every single situation, when it starts off negatively because you're learning and you're growing, and you want your immediate impulse is to be reactive, but then you pull back and you say, wait a second. In my assessment later on when I'm praying, I think to myself, did I respond correctly? Could I have responded differently? What would have been the right way to respond? Now I find myself upset. My eyebrows are all furrowed. I can't stop thinking about the situation. I'm harboring all kinds of resentment for this person and that person. Clearly, that didn't end well. Let me reassess. Maybe I could have handled it differently. More than that, why did it happen in the first place? Because he allowed it to happen. So if he allowed somebody to come over and berate me, if he allowed somebody to come over and steal from me, if he allowed somebody to come over and embarrass me, then I was deserving of that. I needed that to happen for my own best, which now means that I did something wrong. I'm the one that messed up somewhere. I may not know where that is. I may not be able to put my finger on it, but I'm reminded that the person who stole from me is just a stick in his hand. That's it. That person came over to do God's will, not mine and not his own. God's will. And God, who loves me, sent this individual over to steal from me, to embarrass me, to mock me, to do all these different things. I need to stop. I need to pull myself back, and I need to reassess and remind myself who runs the world and why this was allowed to happen. When you do that, you recognize it was sent to you by your father who loves you. And there's no way he would ever do anything to harm you. So you you're accepted. So you accept with love. And you say, you know what, Hashem? Thank you. I don't know why you did that. I'm not sure what I did. I'm going to try and do an assessment to figure out what it is so that I can change it so that it doesn't happen again. But thank you. Because I know that you saved me from many, many more difficulties, much greater than the one that you gave me. It's like a parent that wants to punish a child. Parent never wants to punish a child, but sometimes it's necessary. And that's why sometimes we relent, which we talked about the other day, how important it is not to relent, right? Because that's how you teach a child that you stand by your word. But we're human and we love our children so much. And that's why it becomes so difficult to parent and to discipline, because we don't want to see our child suffering. We love them so much, we just want to see them happy and fulfilled. And especially if they're suffering at our hands, we feel like we're the aggressor, even though we know it's for their own best. So we relent and we pull back and we cut the punishment shorter. And the child loses as a result of that. And we also lose because the child now learns that there aren't real consequences to their action, but it's out of love. So God does the same thing. Instead of giving us the full force of the punishment that we're supposed to get, instead of losing a large sum of money, millions of dollars, he lets you off with $100,000. Instead of losing three, four, five hundred thousand dollars, he lets you off with $10,000. You should have lost so much more than that. But in his love for you, he doesn't want you to suffer. So he gives you a smaller punishment, one that you can manage to absorb only if you're holding on a certain level. Remember, you have to be in that relationship. You have to know that he exists, even if you're going to lose $1,000. Because what happens if you're not aware that God runs the world? Even a dollar. When you lose that dollar, you know these people are the people who are constantly on the defense, constantly the victims. I lost here, I lost there. They've got spreadsheets coming out of their ears, and they've got budgets, and they live by it because they want to scrutinize every dollar, because they fear that some of it is slipping through the cracks. And they think that it's only them, they who can make it, and they who can make sure that they don't lose it. That's not how you live. That's not how you live a good life. You live a good life by recognizing where it comes from. Know that there's an unlimited amount that can keep coming as long as you live the life that you're supposed to live, the life that he wants you to live, which is ultimately the best life for you and your family. Have a great 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 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.