Episode 181 - Act Now: Start Your Project Today

The problem isn’t that you don’t know enough - it’s that you don’t act fast enough.

Save this for the next time inspiration hits. 📌
I keep coming back to this:

Inspiration is useless if it never turns into action.
You hear a great idea, feel something shift, and then 10 minutes later life hits you with a million distractions.

That’s why the move is simple - do something now.
Not everything.

Just one real step.

One decision.

One action that gets the ball rolling.
That’s how prayer, growth, business, and life actually change.

Not by waiting for the perfect moment - by moving while the moment is still hot.

What’s one thing you’ve been meaning to act on today?

#thetrustfactorpodcast #JewishWisdom #emunah #personalgrowth #shabbatshalom

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Inspiration is nothing without action. Suddenly you're attacked by a million different ideas and you can no longer focus on the wonderful things that you were learning just five, ten minutes ago. Sometimes it takes a day. You think, okay, tomorrow when I wake up in the morning, I'm gonna make a list and I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that. No. Now stop and do it now. Whenever you know that you have to do something and it's critically important, you stop whatever you're doing and you put it into play right away. Doesn't mean you're gonna finish it. Some projects are lifelong projects, some will take weeks, months, and years. But do something, make a reasonable action to start the ball rolling. The trust factor is a ticket to a bad life. The trust factor shows you how to get through the night. And you're gonna be sitting by your Rosh Hoshana Seder table and thinking to yourself, how quickly did this year pass by? And now you're going to be on the cusp of God willing an unbelievable year. Why? Partially in big part because you've been listening to the Trust Factor Podcast. You've been taking the lessons and you've been materializing them in your own life, making them real, and not just hearing them and thinking that's a good idea. Would be nice if one day I did that. Pause. Whenever you hear a good idea, and do whatever you can to implement it. Take a step in the right direction. Strike while the iron is hot. It is a critical saying because at the end of the day, inspiration is nothing without action. You can be inspired all you want. You can hear all the right information. You could be learning from the most influential people, all the right things. But at the end of the day, if you don't do something to be able to put one foot in front of the next, to be able to implement these wonderful ideas that really resonated with you, it's just a matter of time. Sometimes it's 10 minutes. You just walked out and you've left it all behind because you're inundated with thoughts, with all of the things that are going on in your life, that it doesn't take much. Five, 10 minutes after you've left or you've turned it off, suddenly you're attacked by a million different ideas and you can no longer focus on the wonderful things that you were learning just five, 10 minutes ago. Sometimes it takes a day. You think, okay, tomorrow, when I wake up in the morning, I'm gonna make a list and I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that. No. Now, stop and do it now. The best advice I can give anybody in business is that. And in life in general, whenever you know that you have to do something and it's critically important, you stop whatever you're doing and you put it into play right away. Doesn't mean you're gonna finish it. Some projects are lifelong projects, some will take weeks, months, and years. But do something, make a reasonable action to start the ball rolling so that you can come back and deal with it at a later time and make sure that that ball is continuing to edge forward. So we've been talking about Rosh Hashanah that's coming up, and all of these ideas are going to assist us to become the better version of who we want to be in the upcoming year. And it all revolves around prayer, connecting back to your creator and building that relationship, building your amuna, knowing how he runs the world, how he's intimately involved in my life. And what does that mean practically? What does that mean? What do I need to do? What's my purpose? What's my own individual purpose? And what's my communal purpose, my 30,000-foot purpose? We all have them. Many of them are very similar. Some of them are nuanced and specifically handcrafted for you. But generally speaking, the 30,000-foot purpose that we all have is very similar, that being primarily to emulate Hashem. So what we just finished talking about, which is resonating with some people, is the idea that so many people are not present. You're not here and now. You're everywhere on planet Earth except for where you are right now. Even in our prayers, we're so distracted by the pressures of the world and all the many things that are going on that sometimes we will start a prayer and finish it and think to ourselves, an hour later, did I even pray? I don't even remember praying this morning. It's not that you're getting early onset dementia. It's that you are inundated, that you are in cruise control, that you're doing things by rope, perfectly normal. We all get there. Every single one of us, the idea is to minimize those occurrences. Try to not have them. If you sense that you're getting into that zone, take a minute. That's kind of that's the structure of the prayer, also, by the way. You know, we have prayers that lead into the main prayer. The purpose of having those prayers that lead into the main personal prayer is to prime you. It's to prep you, to get you in the zone, to clear your head of the cobweb so that you can be focused and be present. So do that even before you get into the prayers that lead up to the personal prayer. Shake your head and recognize what's going on. What do I have to be grateful for? What am I about to do? And let's get into it. In our sitters, especially in the Svarthi Siddharth, there are prayers before those prayers, structured ones, because of what I'm telling you right now, that our sages understood this. And because of that, they put in what's called Yehirats, which is let me now prepare myself to get ready to pray. I'm preparing to prepare to pray because we are inundated and we are so far away from where we need to be in terms of being present that we need these prayers to put us back on the rails, get us back on track. These are the people that I was referring to that are in Lala Land. And we see this is a real problem amongst everybody in the world. If you want the best evidence of what I'm talking about, get a driver's license and get on the road. And you will see that most people are not good drivers. And it's not that they're not good drivers because they never got a driver's license or they never did their driving tests. They did. They understand the functions and the components of a car and the rules of the road. Why aren't they doing the right things? Why are they causing accidents, but also frustration? The ones who are causing all of the traffic jams and the ones who are doing dangerous things on the road. Most of the time it's because they're simply not present. They're occupied with something else or themselves, and they're not thinking about their surroundings. They're not thinking about the other drivers. They're just thinking about themselves. When you're present, when you're in the moment, you're not just thinking about you, you're thinking about everything that surrounds you. That's a toward you. That's the idea of personal prayer. That's what you're asking for. Hashem, give me eyes to see what I really should be focusing on. Because if you're not thinking about everybody else, then you're really only thinking about yourself. And that's not what you're here for. That 30,000-foot perspective, that emulating Hashem, applies to all of us. You have to do what Hashem does. You need to be like Hashem. And now you tell me, is there any force on planet Earth better than Hashem at dedicating his entire existence to us? He's focused entirely on us, which means eight billion people, generation after generation, he's intimately involved in every single one of our lives, trying to bring goodness into our lives, trying to educate us, trying to guide us. Right? That's what we need to do. And if we're not thinking about other people, we're only thinking about ourselves. So let's get back into it and review for ourselves and confirm the power of personal prayer. It says self-assessment and the desire to rectify oneself are the basis of personal prayer. That's why we pray. If you're praying to get more money, okay. If you're praying to get healthy, okay. If you're praying for a mate or a match for your child, okay, or for yourself, fine. Children, there are a million different reasons to pray. But that's not why we're there. We're there praying because we want to become better. Why do we want to have a spouse? Why do we want to have money? Why do we want to have health? That's the question. It's not the what. The what, as Rabbi Zachary Wallerstein used to say, that's a lot, often used to say, that the what is not important. The what is often very easy to find. If you have eyes and a brain, you look at something, you figure out what it is. The question is why? What's its purpose? What causes it to do what it's doing? And what do I need to do to change that? That's what's important, the why. So when you're in that prayer and you're asking Hashem for money, why? Why should I give you more money? What have you done with the money that I've given you up until now? What have you done to implement my mitzvahs, my commandments with the resources that I've given you? You want to get out of the hospital bed? No problem. I'll get you out of the hospital bed. But what are you gonna do? Why am I getting you out of there? Where are you gonna go? Who are you gonna focus on? Are you gonna do good? Why am I getting you out of that bed? It's the why. So when you go into the personal prayer, it's not good enough just to ask for money. Tell them why. Hashem, I need the money. Why? Because I want to make this world a better place, because I want to finance Torah, because I want to put my children in private Jewish day school, because I want to be able to celebrate the Hagim in the best way possible, because I want to be able to be part of a Jewish community, to live in a Jewish neighborhood. You know how expensive it is to live in a Jewish neighborhood? It's ridiculous. Go into any major neighborhood, any major city, and you will see that as soon as you get out of the walking distance of a Jewish community, the prices of real estate drop drastically. Drastically, sometimes 50%. Why? For no other reason than the fact that it's a Jewish community. And the Jews will do whatever it takes to live within a Jewish community. So, Hashem, I need the money. Why? Because I need to be a contributing active member of a Jewish community. It's a commandment. You told me that. That's why I need you to give me the money. So you need to get into the why. And the reason that you need to get into the why more than telling him is telling yourself because it solidifies for yourself that you know the difference between right and wrong, good and bad. It solidifies for yourself so that when the money does come and you're not doing the right thing with it, you're going to remind yourself, I made a commitment to do the right thing with it. So I need to shift gears, I need to change directions. The creator wants us to rectify ourselves. As a loving father that he is, he gives us the opportunity to return to him always and repent for anything that we've done wrong. This relationship between Hashem and us, one being the child and the other being the parent. Why? Because it is so apropos, it so fits to be able to allow us to understand the relationship between us. Because he is divine, he is perfect, he lacks nothing, he knows everything. Just like La Havdeal to compare, just like you bring a child into this world, a one-year-old child, what do they know? They know nothing. Zero. They know absolutely nothing. Next to the parent, the parent knows everything. It's all relative. The same way that a one-year-old or a two-year-old knows nothing of this world relative to the parent, so too, we know nothing relative to our creator. He knows everything. He's perfect and he's divine. So Hashem oftentimes creates that relationship, that analogous relationship, to say you're like a child and you have to operate like that. Not that you should be irresponsible and lack direction. On the contrary, what he's saying by that is that you should be like a child in knowing that you know nothing, in relying on me, the same way a child relies on the parent, the same way the child knows that he doesn't have to worry about a meal because mom is taking care of it. She's going to make sure I have never missed a meal. When I cry, when I'm hungry, I reach out to my mother and she provides a meal. Even when they're in diapers and they're an infant and they're screaming and crying, they know that that cry of hunger is going to be satiated eventually because this hero is going to come and save me and give me what it is that I need or change my diaper. They know that the solution is coming. It's imminent. Why? Because they're crying out. That's the prayer. That's the relationship that they're developing. That's how an infant does it. We need to do the same thing, but on a mature adult level. We need to cry out in our prayer and say Hashem. I can't worry about these things. I need X, Y, and Z. You told me, you brought me into this world and you said I need to do A, B, and C. If you want me to do A, B, and C, then I need to be able to have the resources to do these things. You can't command me to do them and then not give me the resources. Now that doesn't mean that you use it as an excuse. You have to do everything you can to try and do it even without the resources. And when he sees that you try to do it even without it, then the resources will flow. And why does the evil inclination stop us? Because he knows that a person nullifies all severe judgments that cause him tribulations and suffering, and he merits living a sweet and meaningful life. So he wants to challenge you. He wants to see if you're doing it for the right reasons and to what extent. What's your breaking point? That's the job of the evil inclination. Listening to the hints. We all see constant changes in our lives from day to day and hour to hour. Sometimes we're up and sometimes we're down. One moment we're full of energy, and the next we can't get out of bed. We feel like there's a weight sitting on our chest. One moment we're happy, and then we feel like weeping all of a sudden. Why? How do I go from smiling happy, everything's great, to suddenly I feel like crying and breaking down and I don't want to talk to anybody? What's going on? Where does all of this stuff come from? Why do we flip? Why is it that we're on this roller coaster of life? Why can't it be a straight line? And the answer is that everything comes from our creator. It's not random. It's got nothing to do with your boss, it's got nothing to do with your hormones, it's got nothing to do with your children, it's got nothing to do with your stress levels. It all comes from a sham. Those stress levels, again, the why, not the what. The stress levels are up. That's the what. The question is why? Where is it coming from? That, my friends, is a shame. Everything that saddens an individual, even the tiniest of mild anguish, she says, even an itch, you get an itch, right? You got to scratch yourself, right? That's a result of a heavenly court decision. And Muna teaches that every tiny anguish in life comes under the heading of heaven-sent tribulations, such as trying on a garment. You put on a piece of clothing that you really want to wear. But guess what? It doesn't fit. That, my friends, is a tribulation. Or you reach into your pocket, the common one, you reach into your pocket, you want to pull out a quarter, but you pull out a nickel, right? That's a tribulation. So, how much more can we say about the big ones, God forbid, the illnesses or the bankruptcies or the all the different challenges that a person faces, not being able to get married, not being able to have children, challenge after challenge after challenge. What are we gonna say about those? If trying to get a quarter and you pull out a nickel is a tribulation, for which you're going to be duly rewarded when you deal with it in the right way. Those are just opportunities to show Hashem, I got this. Nothing's gonna phase me, nothing is gonna upset me. I don't care what it is. From the quarter to God forbid the bankruptcy, I know where it's coming from. But you have to build yourself up, and he has to help you to build yourself up so you can deal with the challenges of life. That's why the challenges get more and more difficult from a child to adulthood. By internalizing the knowledge that these moment-to-moment happenings in our lives are the products of a heavenly court judgment, we greatly enhance our spiritual awareness, our amuna, and our connection to our Creator. There's something called the butterfly effect. You may have heard of this, the butterfly effect. Just generally speaking, is the idea that you could look at a butterfly on the side of a road in Toronto, beat its wings, and then on the other side of the world in Australia, they could be developing a nuclear bomb as a result of that. What's the connection? There might not seem to be any, but there is nothing that is random in this world. And there is cause and effect for everything, even a small itch, even the tiniest thing that swells you down for a millisecond. That millisecond delay that pulling out that nickel instead of that quarter caused for you, that you needed to go back into your pocket, that millisecond could have saved you from a life of misery, from a serious tragedy in your family got from it. How? That could have meant that you walked out uh that millisecond earlier, and that's when the robber came into the bank and robbed the bank, or that's when something fell off of a building and hit that spot, or that's when the bus came out of nowhere and could have run you over. It's a million different things. We have no idea, but there is no such thing as coincidence. Everything is perfectly curated by a loving father in heaven who controls everything. If we understand that that's the case, if we walk around operating like that all the time, it makes life so much easier. It makes our challenges so much sweeter, so much easier to manage. It's not easy. Don't be mistaken. It's not easy to do what I'm telling you to do. People will work a lifetime to get here. Some people will never get there. But when you do, the reward is so sweet. It's the answer to so many of your problems. It's the difference between living a life banging your head against the wall and trying to understand why you're always the victim, to living a life where you're on top of the world, irrespective of how much money's in the bank, irrespective of how big your house is, how nice your car is. None of those things matter. Why? Because you have clarity, because you're sensitive to the relationship. You know who runs the world, and you know that it's all for your benefit and that everything will come in time and a little bit of patience. Have an amazing Shabbat, my friends. We'll speak on the other side. 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.