BEGINNING WITHIN PODCAST

Welcome to our premier podcast where I’d like to introduce both the podcast and myself.

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Beginning Within is about life, it’s about your life, it’s about inspiring you and I to live our lives in as healthy a manner as possible with a special focus on our emotional and spiritual health. It’s about bringing clear and deliberate language to many areas of our lives which are often left ambiguous, leaving us susceptible to making unhealthy choices. A healthy life is essentially one where we focus and align as much of our life as possible on our purpose and mission. If you want to live a more deliberate, focused and meaningful life, welcome!

My name is Aryeh Weinstein, in my official capacity I am a Rabbi and a teacher. When I’m not hiding behind titles, I’m a Jew who is trying to use the energy G-d has endowed me to fulfill the purpose I was created for. I work on becoming more authentic and responsible and owning everything I think, say and do. I measure my success by whether I’m moving in the right direction. I’m a husband and a father as well as a mentor to many in my community in Newtown, Pennsylvania.

So what is Beginning Within? At the core of everything, all of our challenges and issues in life, especially in regards to our relationship with our own selves, others and God is the need to begin within. In brief this means that we need to stop pointing fingers outward and waiting for the people around us and the circumstances around us to change because none of those things are within our control. So as long as were waiting for those things to change we are effectively making ourselves victims of those people and circumstances. There is nothing more comfortable than sitting in a place where we disown responsibility and are not required to do anything. Beginning within is all about asking ourselves repeatedly the one question that matters in every situation. That question is, “what can I do about this situation?” Beginning within is about changing the one person we can change. Beginning within is about learning that by transforming ourselves we transform the world.

This podcast is opening with 3 podcasts. A new episode will be added every week. Each episode will be short and to the point and no longer than 10 minutes. I would love to hear from you and get your feedback. You can reach me at info@beginningwithin.com.

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What is the one thing that we are most constantly reliant on to survive?

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Oxygen. There are many other things we constantly need, however, the most basic of them all, is oxygen. You can survive for a few days without water, food and shelter. You cannot survive more than a few minutes without oxygen. Not only is it important to alway a great s have access to oxygen, it’s important to breathe in clean oxygen. We can survive on polluted oxygen but we often pay a hefty price for it. It shows up in a significant slack in our performance, affecting our focus, energy and sharpness. It also leads to all different forms of illness.

While this is all true for the survival of our body, our emotional and spiritual wellbeing is also constantly reliant on another form of oxygen. What is the one thing that our emotional and spiritual wellbeing is constantly reliant on? Our knowing that we are worthy, that we are invaluable and indispensable. This knowledge is oxygen to our wellbeing. The clearer we are that our individual existence if for a purpose which cannot be fulfilled by another, demonstrating our inherent worthiness, the better we can step into our responsibility in fulfilling this purpose. The less clear we are about our inherent worthiness, the weaker we are, affecting our determination, resilience, drive and purpose. A lack of clarity is similar to polluted air. It leaves us weak in our performance, affecting our focus, energy and sharpness. It also leads to all different forms of emotional unhealthiness which I’ll explain in future episodes.

There are two ways which we can seek out awareness of our worthiness. The path we choose to take has enormous implications on our life. We can seek our worthiness from within or we can seek our worthiness from without. When we seek our worthiness from within and become aware of our inherent value, we become emotionally and spiritually healthy and strong. We become more focused on our purpose. We become centered and the creator of our destiny. When we seek worthiness from without, we depend on the people, things and circumstances around us to tell us that we are worthy. We become dependent on them all. We worship them like false Gods, hoping that they will provide us with the oxygen that we desperately crave. As the great American poet, Robert Frost, wrote in his famous poem, The Road Not Taken, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

Here are the facts:

Just as we must have oxygen, as our survival depends on it, so we must feel a sense of worthiness because our emotional and spiritual survival depend on it.

Just as the quality of the oxygen we breathe has a direct effect on our physical health, so it is with the quality of our spiritual oxygen. The more our worthiness comes from a healthy place which is within, the healthier we become. The more our worthiness comes from an unhealthy place which is without, the more polluted our oxygen is and the more unhealthy we become.

So what’s the most important question we can ask ourselves now? Where do I get my self-worth from? Sometimes we have a hard time determining where we are at? We are biased because it’s simply not possible for anyone to self-introspect with bias. Once easy way of assessing where we get our self-worth from is by observing our actions, our words and even our thoughts. I would recommend beginning with your actions. In fact, let’s focus on the very word action. Is more of my life acting or reacting? Do I spend more time responding to email or sending my own email? When I’m part of a group discussion do I put out my opinion or do I react to others opinions? These are simple expressions of someone who lives in response to everything around them with no center vs. someone who acts because they are not the effect of everything and everyone around them.

I was heard it told of man who was brilliant. Anything someone would share him he would always argue was always the opposite. They say that when he died his soul stood before the A-lmighty. The A-lmighty turn to him and said, “On earth you were known to be a brilliant intellect. Why don’t you share a brilliant idea and show us what you achieved?” The man responded, “G-d, why don’t you share a brilliant idea and I’ll refute it?”

It’s a cute story that really demonstrates the tragedy of a person who never owns the very place G-d created for them and rather plays life safely by always living in reaction instead of action, living from without instead of beginning within.

What is one thing I can do to make your day better? This is one question that I believe, if we asked far more, can save many relationships.

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My friend shared a blog post with me which was one of the most moving blog posts I’ve ever read. In fact, it brought me to tears. If you’d like to read this blog post I will post a link to it underneath this episode at beginningwithin.com. The post is titled, How I Saved My Marriage by author Richard Paul Evans. I am going to paraphrase the post and share why I found this so moving.

The way he describes his marriage is one where their personalities clashed more and more as their marriage went on. The fame that came with becoming a successful author didn’t help the marriage either. Things were so difficult that going on tour was a relief. There seemed like there was no hope in them ever having a peaceful relationship. Each of them became more defensive and hid behind more walls and they had even discussed divorce more than once.

One night, on tour, they had just had another fight over the phone when his wife hung up on him. He felt alone, frustrated. He had reached his limit. He broke down while taking a shower, not understanding why two good people couldn’t just get along. He asked himself, “Why had I married someone so different than me? Why wouldn’t she change?” From somewhere deep down he had an inspiration. “You can’t change her, you can only change yourself.

Returning home, he met an ice cold wife. That night, while lying in bed, another inspiration came to him. When he awoke in the morning he turned to his wife and asked, “How can I make your day better?” “You can’t,” was her angry reply. “Why are you asking?”  His reply was, “Because I mean it. I just want to know what I can do to make your day better.”

She responded, “You want to do something? Go clean the kitchen.”

The next day he asked the same thing. “Clean the garage” He didn’t really have the time to spend two hours cleaning the garage but he did.

On the third day, when he asked his wife what he can do to make her day better, she replied, “Nothing! You can’t do anything. Please stop saying that.” And his response was ”I’m sorry, But I can’t.

She asked, “Why are you doing this?” And his reponse was, “Because I care about you.” “And our marriage.”

He did this every day. One day during the second week, after his the question, his wife broke down crying. She said, “I should be asking you.” He responded, ”You should,” I said. “But not now. Right now, I need to be the change. You need to know how much you mean to me.”

Like the walls of Jericho, their walls came tumbling down. Suddenly, two good people who never thought that they would have a normal relationship or were even capable of having a normal relationship were experiencing the true depth of what marriage is. Their marriage was not even saved by outside help. It was saved by one person simply coming to the realization that it is pointless to insist that those around me should change. It is very powerful on the other hand to look within ourselves and ask what we can change. Yes, the other person should be asking the same question, but that’s for them to come to understand and to do. The one thing that I and you need to do is to change ourselves. It’s also interesting to note that through him changing she in fact changed as well. And that is because when we begin it within we become a source of inspiration and the beginning of a new movement of change that becomes inspired in those around us.

Here are the lessons that we learn. We must stop spending our time trying to change the people things and circumstances around us. We must spend our time changing the one and only person that we can change, ourselves. When we change ourselves we suddenly begin to notice the changes we’ve always wanted to see in the people and circumstances around us taking place. Lastly, it does not take 2 people to fix a relationship, it only takes one. Which one? The one who is responsible enough and willing to begin taking full responsibility for their own life and stop insisting that the other change.

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How I Saved My Marriage

The saying is, “You can’t be everything to everyone.” We all know that this is true.

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In fact, whenever we want to do anything, one of the first questions we should ask ourselves is, “who am I doing this for?” When we do something for everybody it usually ends up being nothing for nobody. In fact, before producing this podcast I needed to think long and hard about who the audience is that I’d like to reach. Without knowing that I cannot possibly produce the message that would be appropriate to the audience.

The people that we do have the power to reach are what we can refer to as our circle of influence. Our circle of influence are the people who we have influence with. They will listen to us, they value what we have to say and thereby we can influence their attitudes or choices. One thing that very effective people do very well is identify very quickly their circle of influence. When they find themselves in a situation, before they proceed and try and do something about the situation the first question ask themselves is do I have the ability to actually influence this situation. If I don’t then it is out of my circle of influence and I am not spending my time wisely when spending it there. There may be someone who comes to us for help. If we can identify very quickly whether we can or cannot help them, in other words, whether they fall within or without of our circle of influence, this will serve not only us but also them. If someone comes to me with a financial problem I need to tell them that they need to speak to a person who works in finances. I simply don’t have the expertise to help them. I can still assist them with finding someone who works in finance but trying to help them with their finances would simply be unfair both to me and to them.

Accepting that which is our circle of influence and that which is beyond our circle of influence can sometimes be very difficult. The reason for this is because we can have a strong emotional attachment which makes us desperately want to be able to help another person. The classic example of this is a parent with their teenage child who won’t listen to them. This is, unfortunately, extremely common. We may know this from when we were teenagers and we may know this from our own teenagers. Now this is not exclusive to teenagers but it’s such a common example that I’ve chosen to use it. A parent desperately wants to see their child make the right choices. A very painful thing for a parent is to see their child make a terrible choice and not having the influence to get them not to. Why teenagers don’t listen to their parents is an entirely different discussion which has a lot to do with the way we parent. Very often we continue to attempt to influence her child not knowing what else to do and in the process only create greater distance between us and our child. This is for one reason. Because they are currently outside of our circle of influence. What we can and should do is find others who have influence over them and approach them about the issue and have them discuss it with our child. In fact, in life, very often the way to influence a situation or person is not directly but through another person who we know has influence.

In business we seem to know this very well. We always seek out being introduced to a new potential client. The introduction by someone that has influence with the potential client opens up the door to us, influencing the potential client to consider us.

There are ways to broaden our circle of influence. This is definitely something that we should pursue. How do we go about broadening our circle of influence? As with everything else there are 2 ways, without and within. One way people create influence is by becoming a status symbol, developing an air of importance about themselves or using name dropping to come across as powerful. This surely does create some more influence but it will usually be shallow and short-lived. When someone develops themselves to be a person who lives with integrity, genuinely care for others and genuinely value others, they become a source of true everlasting influence. There is nothing more valuable than the real deal. Someone who is true to themselves within and without and that is the way they are with others. This is actually a very valuable commodity because it is high in demand and low and supply. In other words, when you accept that your lack of influence on another has more to do with you than the other you are on the road to broadening your circle of influence in an everlasting way.

There is a spiritual teaching that says that every single soul is assigned a designated part of this universe which they are put here for to influence in a positive way. This would mean that in fact we must learn how to expand our circle of influence to ensure that we impact every part of the universe that has been designated for us. So I’d like to leave you with a question. What is it that is limiting your influence on others and what is the one thing that you need to do in order to expand your circle of influence.

Is the real me my body or is the real me my spirit?

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Today I want to share with you something about myself that I think is very special. I own the most sophisticated machine that actually exist to date. It’s more complex and has more parts to it than any other machine I know. Of course, like most of the machines that we own, it requires a lot of maintenance and upkeep. However, even without upkeep it holds up pretty well. At least it gives the impression of holding up well but its performance weakens a lot. Its upkeep requires time, focus and effort, things which I do not always want to invest into it but its performance will remind me that it is well worth the investment of my focus time and effort.

By now you may have figured out that the machine I’m talking about is not only my machine but the machine that you have to and that is the body. There is a particular reason why am referring to it as a machine. One of the biggest mistakes that we make in life is when we identify our self with our body and not with our spirit. In other words, when we think of ourselves which part of us do we identify with? Is the real me my body or is the real me my spirit? When I think of myself to I think of myself as a guy who is 5 feet and 8 inches tall, bald with a sweet tooth? Or do I think of myself in terms of my personality, my unique traits and talents? Another way of asking this question is “Who serves who?” When my body is my core identity then my spirit is here to serve my body. When my spirit is my core identity that my spirit is here to serve my body.

There was a great sage by the name of Hillel. When he would go to eat he would say that he was going to perform an act of kindness with his creature, referring to his body. It’s almost as if he saw his body as a pet. It wasn’t him, it was something that he had a relationship with. This meant that even when he was eating he did not see it as something that was an expression of him. He saw it as an act of kindness from his spirit to his body so that his body can continue to function in a healthy fashion.

This is the reason why I am using a different language to refer to my body. I want to see my body is a machine, as a tool that was given to my spirit to achieve its purpose in this world. This is very important to me for 2 reasons. The first reason is because I have realized that when I slip into the confusion of seeing my body as a purpose in and of itself it always distracts me from leading the meaningful life that I seek. My body has its own agenda seeking pleasure self-indulgence and really anything that makes it feel itself. It has a very short term outlook on things and never considers the long-term effects of its decisions. If it makes me feel good now my body wants it. So I think of it as a machine. It is not my purpose. It is here to serve my purpose.

The 2^nd reason why I like to refer to it as my machine is because I have a really hard time taking care of my body. It’s much easier for me to let my body take over me. I have a really hard time overcoming my laziness, my desires and my cravings. So I call my body a machine. It reminds me that I must be responsible in taking care of this machine otherwise it will begin to fall apart. It makes it easier for me when I look at it as a machine to remind myself that if I don’t keep my body in control and make sure it does what it needs to do and stay away from what it must not do my machine is going to fall apart.

So I try and take care of my machine. I try not feeding it foods that don’t let it thrive. I try making sure it gets the rest that it needs. I try to exercise my machine so it stays in good shape and conserve my spirit in its most optimal way. I have found though that in taking care of my machine and doing acts of kindness with it, this itself could lead to its own form of obsession with my body. This is because everything we do can turn into some form of its own worship. And so like everything else in life, it is a balancing act. We must take care of our machine and we must ensure that it never becomes about our machine.

It is vitally important if we are seeking to lead a meaningful life to do whatever we need to, to keep it clear to ourselves that our true identity is with our spirit and our body is simply a machine, a tool that the spirit uses to accomplish its purpose in this world. The dominant voice in our life must be our spirit which then drives our body and to action. This is meaningful living. So I’d like to leave you with a question and that is what is one thing that you need to do to ensure that you remember that your spirit is who you are and your body is simply here to serve the real you?

There is a very simple question that we should ask ourselves whenever we have a dilemma. That question is “What is it that I would like to see happen?”

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There’s a cute quote which states, “If you don’t know where you’re going any road will get you there.” I love this quote. The reason why I love it is because it actually expresses the reason why we prefer not knowing where we are going. It can actually be quite terrifying to articulate in very clear terms where it is that we want to go. This is the reason why we often speak in vague terms. The moment we state what we want we become accountable to a clear goal. If I say that I want to make $200,000 this year there is suddenly a clear marker that will announce whether I was successful in my pursuit or not. And we’re usually terrified of being a failure. So we don’t state our goals clearly. And what happens? You obviously don’t reach a goal that you don’t set.

I have experienced a few times, where I had the courage to state a clear goal to a group of other people. Actually stating the goal in definite terms was the most helpful thing I did to reach the goal. When you put something out there and in fact make yourself accountable your entire being begins to operate in a whole different mode. You subconsciously operate with the knowledge that you need to reach this goal. While I haven’t always met the goal that I stated, it always brought me to a very significant increase from what I had achieved in that area before.

Recently, someone called me for advice about a certain situation. It was a situation that had a lot of drama involved. I was trying to help the person see the situation more simply and clearly. I had the advantage that I wasn’t personally involved in the situation. Therefore, I wasn’t caught up in the whirlwind of drama and that this person was caught up in. I asked them a simple question, “What is it that you would like to see happen?” Suddenly, the person was silent. They then said, “I’m not sure what I want to happen.” In this instance, I actually knew what the person wanted to happen. Because they were so caught up in the drama of events, everything was confusing them. I suggested to them that perhaps this is the end result that they are looking for. I then ask them, “is this correct, is this what you would like to see happen?” They said, “that’s exactly what we would like to happen.” I then asked them, “So what is it that you need to do to make this happen?” They knew immediately what it is that they need to do. I then advised them to forget about everything else and everyone else involved in this situation and to do the things that they needed to do to get the result that they wanted. Suddenly a very complex dramatic situation was resolved and they achieved what it was that they wanted.

My point, there is a very simple question that we should ask ourselves whenever we have a dilemma. That question is “What is it that I would like to see happen?” “What is it that I would like to see happen?” This question realigns us and gives us clarity as to what our goal is. It permits us to focus on that and not get caught up in all of the other secondary things going on around us.

So why don’t we simply ask ourselves this question? This isn’t such a novel piece of advice. Yet, at the same time we so often find ourselves drawn into a situation where we’ve totally lost focus. Our child might say something which outrages us and we simply lose perspective. How dare they say that!? What type of a kid talks that way?! Don’t you dare ever talk to me that way! Our spouse might point a finger at us and blame us for something and suddenly the conversation spirals to point that we both wonder how we got from there to here.

Actually, the other night I was talking with my wife and I mentioned that someone from a certain school called and I couldn’t talk so they’ll be calling me back. She asked why they called. They hadn’t actually told me why they were calling so I didn’t know. I told my wife why I think they called. She felt they were calling for another reason. So I jokingly said, “great, now we’re going to spend the night fighting because some guy decided to call and didn’t tell me why he’s calling,” and we both had a very healthy laugh. It was funny because we were both able to envision a couple ruining their night over something completely irrelevant that they got caught up in. There was no chance this would happen to us in this instance but believe me, it’s happened to me too many times.

Here’s the deal. The more anchored we are from within, the more we walk into every conversation with a clear perspective and the more difficult it is for us to become derailed. The more anchored we are from within, the less affected we are from without.

As my dear friend, Dr. Avraham Leedes wisely taught me, many unhealthy people thrive on drama. Make sure you are always standing on the periphery of their whirlwind. Their every intention is to get you drawn in. When we ask ourselves, “What is it that I would like to see happen,” we remind ourselves that it surely isn’t spending the next 20 minutes arguing with this drama. So, I’d like to leave you with this question, and I hope you ask it of yourself in every situation or conversation that you are in. “What is it that I would like to see happen?” and simply stay on course with only that.

Take on the challenge of becoming an individual who is committed to speaking truthfully and to realizing that the one who gains most from this is none other than yourself.

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How much money have movie theaters and amusement parks lost off children who were 13 years old whose parents said they are 12 so they would only pay the children’s rate? I suspect that if we add up the number it would be staggering. This actually plays itself out in numerous ways beyond the movie theater and amusement park scenario. And these are from people who would all consider themselves honest people. Quite frankly, whenever I bring this up, people want to change the subject. It hits too close to home for too many people. And honestly, I have no doubt that I did in some shape or form until someone woke me from my stupor and gave some thought to what I was doing.

I’m raising this particular example which really plays itself out in many ways. We lie in some “small” way to gain some benefit. We often justify the behavior with different justifications that are usually weaker than a 3 day old. It usually holds up because most everyone else is depending on the same justifications.

I feel that what helps me step away from negative behavior is when I gain a deeper understanding of the damage that my negative behavior creates. Therefore I want to get to the bottom of what happens when we lie, what we are actually doing when we lie, and the effects that it has which may be far beyond what we realize. Every time we lie, essentially what we are doing is hiding the truth. That is exactly what the point of lying is, not to reveal what or the way something truly is. Another way of saying this in our modern-day lingo is we don’t show up. By virtue of the fact that we are lying, that we are hiding, that we are not sharing what is, demonstrates that we are not showing up. Not showing up has enormous ramifications not only on our relationship with others but also with our ability to stay in touch with reality and also with our relationship with our own ourselves. In fact there is a saying in Yiddish that “a fool only fools himself.” In other words, while we may be fooling others through our lie, the one who is most blinded by our lie is our own selves. This is because we do everything possible to make this lie believable to the point that we actually begin to believe it ourselves. This is the reason why when we hear people using very weak justifications for different things that they do it’s very hard to help them realize how empty their justification is.

There are a few things that we need to pay attention to now that we understand that lying is really hiding. When I am not willing to show up for another, I am not available or present to be in a relationship with that person. This is simply because I am not showing my true self and therefore I am not there. This means that every relationship I have with people ends up being quite shallow. In lying we also create a distorted view of reality. We argue that the circumstances are always different than the way they truly are. This actually turns us into delusional people. We feel safer lying/hiding and creating a delusion rather than facing reality. I probably don’t need to explain how unhealthy it is to live in a delusion. It’s actually very hard to live to lead a productive life when our feet are not on the ground, so to speak, and we are not in touch with reality.

So lying is just another one of those tactics that we use to provide us with short-term comfort. Very often it leads to long-term pain. This is always true whenever we choose to try and change the reality around us, the outside, in place of taking responsibility and owning up to who we are on the inside. Showing up in life and owning who we are can be painful at the moment. We are often terrified to actually be honest about who we are at different times. We fear the reaction that we are going to get from other people and rightfully so. We’ve had enough experience to know that when we do share any fault or weakness that we have there are always those who will try and capitalize on our area of vulnerability. The power of it though, is that we begin speaking truthfully. And as we do that we discover the enormous power of just simply showing up. No more games, no more hiding, no more make-believe, no more false realities, no more delusions. We simply show up and share who we are as we are at this moment. When we begin doing this we begin to discover how powerful and peaceful this approach to life is. The more we do it the less fearful we become of it and the more people admire us for the enormous courage that it takes to begin living a life speaking truthfully.

To become a little bit more spiritual and philosophical I’d like to throw in one more idea which I find to be extremely empowering and important. I find that the point of speaking truthfully actually runs to the very core of our purpose in this universe. This is based on a deep concept which I’m going to share in a few brief words. When God created the universe, being that He is an infinite being, meaning that he is everywhere and anywhere without limit, he needed to step to the side and make space for other existence aside for Himself. Essentially, God went into hiding. In fact, the way we say universe in Hebrew is Olam. This Hebrew word is derived from the word he’elam, which means hidden. This is because the very existence of the universe came about through God hiding Himself. Part of our mission in this universe is to reveal God from within the universe and this is why living a purpose driven life is so powerful.

I share all of this to bring out one point, that every time we hide behind a lie we are perpetuating the very problem in the universe that we are supposed to be correcting. And every time we speak truthfully we are correcting the very fundamental weakness of the universe. This is why even when we may find some justification to respond to someone else’s lie by lying back to them in return there is a deeper and greater damage which we are creating. When we accept our global responsibility and realize that we are part of something much greater than ourselves then we understand that lying has much greater ramifications then the isolated incident that we are dealing with.

So I encourage you to be courageous, to take on the challenge of becoming an individual who is committed to speaking truthfully and to realizing that the one who gains most from this is none other than yourself. And so I leave you with this question, “The next time you are faced with the opportunity to make a short-term gain through hiding behind a lie, will you remember the damage you are creating to the greater universe?”

No one should be beyond accountability and everyone should have to explain their actions.

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You may be familiar with a website called glassdoor.com. It’s called this for good reason. This website permits you to search for a job and find out how the employer is rated by his or her own employees. What!? How dare an employer be rated by their own employees who they hired?! But yes, the boss is suddenly subject to the assessment and critique of their own employees. No longer are they hidden behind the door because the door is now glass. This website essentially believes that transparency only exists when it flows in all directions. No one should be beyond accountability and everyone should have to explain their actions.

Is this about employers? Definitely not. It’s about transparency, no matter who. Do think this might be threatening to people? It depends. On one thing. If they’re trying to hide. You and I know that the moment we’re hiding something there’s a problem. Did you ever notice that most wrongdoing is done in hiding, in private and in secrecy? It’s more pronounced when we talk about a perpetrator who threatens their victim if they say anything. It’s even more pronounce when we talk about a dictator who kills anyone who doesn’t align with them. While all of these scenarios are of varying degrees, at their root, they all share the same characteristics. Someone who is doing something wrong and attempting to protect themselves through a cover up, through hiding.

The reality is that it requires an almost herculean effort to be accountable to oneself. This is why transparency is so important. This is also why accountability is so necessary. They are the safeguard to so much of the negativity that we find around us. When we insist on transparency for ourselves and others, it is not a disciplinary act. It is actually a gift. It’s the gift of bringing out the best in people which can only be done when we are held accountable. This is why I find this website, glassdoor.com, to be a big step forward. This is also one of the great gifts of our current time. Due to technology, there are continuously fewer corners to hide in while more and more is becoming exposed. While initially this may be frightening, it offers us the gift of becoming more transparent people. And while this may be creating many other problems, I’m focusing on its silver lining.

When we want to measure the greatness of an individual, we should never measure it by whether they have done wrong but rather by how they deal with what they’ve done wrong. As humans we are inherently imperfect. We are all born with desires and inclinations for unhealthy things. This should be no surprise to anyone. It’s whether we can look at our wrongdoings with honesty that differentiates the great people from the average ones. Once again, hiding from reality is weakness, looking it in the eye is greatness.

You may have heard the story told of a young man working for IBM who made a decision that most warned would be unwise. However, he was convinced that he knew best and went along with his plans. That mistake cost the company 10 million dollars. Needless to say the young man was immediately called to the office of IBM founder Tom Watson Sr. I can only imagine what was going through the mind of this young man. Sweaty palms, trembling, fear. Upon entering Mr Watson’s office the young man looked down and said, “Well I suppose you want my resignation.” “You can’t be serious!” Mr Watson exclaimed, “We just spent 10 million dollars educating you! You’re not going anywhere!” One thing Mr. Watson understood. Mistakes have a tremendously high value, deeply embedded lessons that we don’t quickly forget.

A young man who I mentor once asked me about a habit that I have. My response to him was, “When you see that I have conquered this then you’ll know that I am great.” And just in case you’re wondering, I’m not great yet.

You probably know the very first biblical story about man, eating fruit from the tree. Can you remember what Adam and Eve did right after they ate from the tree? That’s right, they hid. G-d doesn’t condemn them for eating from the tree. G-d knows very well how strong the snake, our evil inclination is. So G-d simply asks them a simple question, “Where are you?” Of course G-d knew where they were. He was trying to gently they coax them out of hiding. You see, hiding was now a choice they were making on how to respond to their mistake. This, hiding, was the big problem. If we hide from our own selves, there is no hope.

So I leave you with a question, a challenge. In the next 24 hours, observe yourself, what are say and also what you choose not to say, and see if you can find a moment when you are hiding something. Then ask yourself, “What do I have to lose if I came out of hiding and what do I have to gain if I came out of hiding.” Remember, “Who is mighty? He who has conquered himself!”

When you learn to forgive you become a much more powerful person than you were before.

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You deliberately insulted me in front of the entire family! Why should I forgive you? You cheated me out of $300 dollars. Ok, so you finally paid me back. Do you know how much aggravation you caused me? I’m not going to forgive you. We can paint many, far more serious scenarios that we’ve been through. Abuse, blatant mistrust, being violated in any number of ways. Forgiveness is a tough one. Some people simply refuse to forgive. What should you do? Why should you forgive?

Like many things in life, the harder something is the more it has to offer to us. In general you will find that those things which challenge us usually offer us the greatest benefit when we take it on. Forgiveness is one such thing. The first person that benefits from forgiveness is ourselves. It simply frees us of lots of negative energy. The even greater beneficiary of forgiveness is our relationship. Our relationships improve tremendously when there is forgiveness. To understand this we need to understand how forgiveness works.

When a child does something that their parent told them not to do and then the child comes to the parents and says, “I’m so sorry,” it’s usually very easy for them to gain forgiveness. Why? This is because the relationship between a child and a parent is very deep. As long as the depth of the relationship is deeper than the offense which took place, then all the child needs to do is reveal a deeper level of their relationship. On that deeper level of their relationship, the offense doesn’t exist. This is why when a child so sweetly says I’m so sorry the parent forgives them. This explains what happens in a marriage. Our spouse does something which they know we don’t like and we get very upset. So they buy us a gift with a nice little note apologizing for what they’ve done wrong and suddenly we give them a big hug and say it was all nothing. What happened? What happened is that they truly did hurt us. Yet our relationship runs much deeper than the level of that hurt. So when they show up on a deeper level and say they are sorry from that deeper level it is easy for us to forgive. Why? Because on this deep level there is no offense and on this level we were never hurt.

It’s similar to when I have a headache. I have a class that I’m scheduled to teach and I’m in no mood due to my headache. Two minutes into the class and my headache is gone. It really isn’t gone. It’s simply that I’m operating from a deeper and more focused place when I’m teaching. The headache never existed there. When I go deeper I lose the headache.

What does this tell us? That the deeper a relationship is the easier it is to forgive and to gain forgiveness. The shallower our relationship is the more difficult it will be to forgive and to gain forgiveness. It’s like a bank account. When the bank account is full, or in a relationship, deep, there’s more to draw from. When it is less full, there’s less to draw from.

This happens to be why G-d is so forgiving. I inherent connection with our creator is super deep. Simply coming back to our awareness that we are created by G-d and put here for a purpose brings us back to a deeper place with G-d. From that place, G-d says “We’re all good.”

This doesn’t mean, though, that you can’t forgive when a relationship isn’t deep. You can always forgive. But being that you can’t draw on the relationship, it requires more from your end. The primary cause for all human issues is our own self orientation. This shows up in all of our issues because it’s at the root of every issue. You’ll hear this a lot from me. Let me ask you a simple question. When you don’t want to forgive someone for what they’ve done to you, ask yourself why. Typically, the answer is something like, “How can I forgive them after they’ve done … to me!?” In other words, we’re focused on what was done to me. Imagine, and at first you may only be able to imagine, if you spent a few minutes trying to understand what made them do what they did. If you’re truly trying to understand what their motivation or drive was, you will usually understand them. When we stop being self-oriented and thinking about what happened to us and instead become other-oriented, thinking about what could’ve led to them doing such a thing, we suddenly become more forgiving. When may even feel sorry for them being so out of control. I don’t mean justifying what they did, I simply mean understanding what led them to doing the wrong thing. We must also learn to make sure we don’t put ourselves in a situation where they can do this to us again. However, we can still forgive them. For example, someone insults me publicly. Why would they do that? Perhaps they feel the need to put me down. Imagine how weak their self-esteem must be that the only way they can raise themselves up is by putting me down. I feel sorry for them.

You will also discover that when you learn to forgive you are a much more powerful person than you were before. Holding a grudge and being unforgiving requires no power. It’s our instinctive reaction. When someone does something to us and we are unforgiving, our emotional state is being defined by them. They are holding the reigns on our mood. When we learn to be forgiving, we remain in full control of our emotions. We are essentially stating, I will not become a nasty person because of the nasty things you’ve done to me. I will not play by your rules. I will not be lowered to your level. This is only accomplished by someone who is powerful. This is only accomplished by someone who spends the time to learn how to focus on others instead of themselves.

And here’s one more point that you must remember. Forgiveness does not mean giving a free pass to anyone. Forgiveness is not and cannot be in the place of justice. When any form of restitution is due, whether I forgive you or not, restitution is due! This is their obligation to take care of. When someone damages my property and creates a financial loss for me, I can forgive them by understanding whatever led to them doing that, their hurt, their anger problem, their jealousy, whatever. However, I will still bring them to justice to pay for the loss they created.

This blend of forgiveness and justice is the beautiful recipe that Judaism teaches us. Everyone is held responsible and at the same time we can be understanding and forgiving, not condemning. I understand your mistake and I also know that you are responsible to make things whole again. I understand that you mistakenly spilled the milk and you must understand that you need to clean it up.

So what grudge are you still holding on to which you should be letting go of? Let go and become a more powerful person.

Just because someone decides to act offensively does not mean that I need to be offended.

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There is one point I’d like to make in this episode and this is it, “Just because someone decides to act offensively does not mean that I need to be offended.” This is an unbelievably liberating idea. Whenever we get offended, we can try and fix the situation in one of two ways. We can try and force the offender to stop being so offensive. Simply put, we can try and change them. That leaves us with an endless number of people to try and change while knowing that we really don’t have any control over them. The other approach is to learn not to get offended. I hope you don’t get offended by this, however, the healthier we are the less often we get offended. So which road do you choose to go on?

Many times we see emotions in the context of cause and effect. Or in the modern day lingo, IFTTT, if this then that. If you tell me I’m ugly, I feel insulted. If you call me baldy, which in my case would actually be very accurate, I feel hurt. If you call me a racist, I feel devalued. Believe that our emotions are the effect of what others say or think about us is one of the most disempowering and crushing beliefs. It destroys our individuality and our responsibility toward self-determination. The natural effect of this belief is that you become responsible for me. I am no longer responsible for myself because I don’t control my own feelings, you do.

I like the descriptive analogy of an owner walking a dog. When you see someone walking their dog on a leash, it is very clear as to “who is the master and who is the slave,” so to speak. The leash is tied around the dog’s neck and the owner, holding the other end of the leash, can pull as he pleases. Every time that I permit someone to change my emotional state by what they say or think, it is as if I’ve tied a leash around my neck and handed the other end of the leash to that person. I am essentially telling them they have full control of my emotions. In fact, this is the way we verbalize ourselves when we believe this. We say, “He made me feel.” “She made me feel.” “You always make me feel.” Under such conditions, we have no control. It is other people who decide how I’m going to feel today.

Perhaps the worst damage that comes from such thinking is giving up our responsibility and self-determination. Every single one of us was created to be a cause, not an effect. This is what makes human beings unique. We are the only creation that has a fully developed internal system which permits us to override our instincts. We are fully capable of having thoughtful emotions, meaning, emotions that are generated after a thought process. We do not have to be a victim of instinctive emotions, meaning, emotions that are generated by our instincts. This is essentially the difference between humans and animals. It is due to this human ability that we hold human beings to a very high level of accountability. Why? Because they can. We cannot hold someone accountable for that which is beyond their ability.

So when we go through life feeling like our emotions are the effect of others, we are giving up our humanity. We are giving up our uniqueness. We are giving up our responsibility. We are giving up our ability to determine what our lives are going to be dedicated to and focusing on that. We are essentially deconstructing the human being.

The classic example of this is when a child pushes the buttons of their parent. When a parent responds and says, “Why do you always make me so upset,” what does the child learn from this situation? The first thing the child learns is that they have control over their parent’s feelings. Which is why children become an expert at pushing their parent’s buttons. In the vision for a moment a child holding on to the end of the leash which is wrapped around their parent’s neck. I know it sounds pretty graphic but it’s not such an uncommon scene. True the leash is invisible but that is exactly what we are seeing when a child is always the cause of their parent’s feelings.

What do you think a child would do if they did not get the emotional reaction that is so common? What do you think would happen if as parents we didn’t say, “You always make me….” Even more importantly, imagine what would happen if we didn’t get into an emotional state when our children push our buttons. They would immediately recognize that their parents are self-determined individuals. I cannot control how they feel, they decide how they feel. And even more importantly, the parent would be a beautiful example of how one must go through life as an independent and self-determined individual.

Another classic example is when we tell our spouse that we’re in a bad mood because of what they said or did. When we don’t own our feelings, it brings a level of instability into the relationship. This is simply because the more unstable our emotions are the more unstable our relationship will be. The more our emotional state is controlled by others, more unstable our emotions will be. The more stable our emotions are, the more stable our relationships become.

There’s no question that hardly a person is in full control of how they feel without being affected at all by others. However, we can most definitely improve where we are on the spectrum and this can have a far greater impact on our lives than almost anything else. Millions of dollars cannot give someone the inner peace and stability achieved when we improve ownership of our emotions. Most importantly, we cannot bring our light to the world as long as we permit others to hold it back by a leash.

So once again, I remind you of this. “Just because someone decides to act offensively does not mean that I need to be offended.” It’s your choice to try and change all of the offenders or simply work on improving yourself. Which do you choose?

If we can accept five basic life principles we can be way ahead of the curve when it comes to bringing happiness to our kids.

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When you ask most parents what they want for their children they say, “I want my children to be happy.” When this is our deepest want for our child, it becomes our obsession and drives how we interact with them. We let them know what they must do to be happy. Then we compel them to spend 20 or so years in school to achieve what we told them will make them happy. If they’re still on talking terms with us at this point, there’s a chance they will confide in us that the basket we placed all our eggs in to make them happy, well, had a few holes in it, to say the least. If we’re very lucky they’re part of the 10% of America who is happy with their career and life. If we weren’t struck by the lightening of luck, they’re as unhappy as 90% of our country.

So where are we going wrong? Believe it or not, this is a lot simpler than you might think. If we can accept five basic life principles, we can be way ahead of the curve when it comes to bringing happiness to our kids. Here they are:

1. A child is an independent person, they are not an extension of you.
2. You don’t get to choose who your child is.
3. You can’t make your child or anyone other than yourself, happy.
4. The most important thing your child needs from you is the knowledge that you love them for who they are. This is the single greatest contributing factor you can offer your child toward making them happy.
5. Spend more time supporting your children discovering who they are than who they should become.

I want to be clear. It is very important that we be happy. Happiness is a most important and extremely powerful emotional state which we should strive to be in as often as possible. When we are happy, we are expansive. Limiting beliefs don’t live in the mind of a happy person. We see true possibilities that we are often blinded to. We easily overlook inconveniences and other people’s faults. We find solutions we ordinarily wouldn’t discover.

However, the irony of happiness is that the more we seek it the more elusive it is. It is one of those things which finds us, we don’t find it. Happiness is not a product you can find. It’s a byproduct. When we develop a healthy perspective on life and live our lives based on healthy values, happiness shows up more and more. This is also why there are so many studies today that all say the same thing. The secret to happiness is doing for others. How can that be? How can doing something for you make me happy? Because happiness is a byproduct. It’s not something I can do for me. It’s an outcome of things that I do. Particularly, it’s an outcome of doing for things or people outside of me. So should we spend our time doing things for our children that will give them momentary happiness or should be spending our time instilling a perspective and values that will always provide them with happiness?

This is also why teaching our children many things which are uncomfortable lead to them being happy. Our natural instinct as parents is to protect our children, defend them and always make them feel good. However, we all know that our child will never learn how to ride their bike unless we let go, giving them space to both get hurt and develop a new skill. In exactly the same way, our children develop when we give them the space to figure out their squabbles with a friend or owning a decision that is age appropriate for them. Support them when they make an unwise decision and point out to them how well they’re doing when they make a wise one. Let them know that no matter how they do, you love and embrace them for going through the process of learning how to make choices. This is called loving them for who they are. As child psychologist, Haim Ginott writes, “The measure of a good parent is what he’s willing not to do for his child.”

The Grant Study, one of the longest-running longitudinal studies of human development, discovered that people who develop a mentality that when something needs to get done, it may as well be them and the need to contribute to the greater whole, usually do much better in the workplace. This is something anyone can develop, whether you do or don’t have the money or intelligence to get into an Ivy League school. The Grant Study demonstrates that teaching our children these values will do more for their success in the future than any ivy league degree.

Do I need to take my kids to Disney World to make them happy? If their friends just went, should I feel like a bad parent because I can’t make them happy? Does taking our kids to Disney World make a child happy? No. It gives them a pleasurable experience and great bonding time with those who they go with. There can be many benefits from such a trip, but it does not make them happier people. The issue isn’t whether we should or should not take our kids to Disney World. The issue is only one thing, being aware that this is not what makes children happy and that a parent who for whatever reason can’t take their kids, shouldn’t feel like their kids are now deprived.

I block the internet on my teenage kid’s phones and iPods. Do I feel that I’m making my kids unhappier? Absolutely not. I would argue that they are being taught the importance of self-control, not living like the Jones’s but living life on their own terms. They may fuss about it, but things will never be the true source of one’s happiness.

So how dedicated are we to our children’s happiness? I have no doubt that in our heart of hearts every parent is truly dedicated to their children’s happiness. I also know that in reality, what our children need for happiness can be counterintuitive. It can also require that we do things which are uncomfortable for us to ensure that they grow into happy adults. So I ask you, “Are you ready to commit yourself to making yourself more uncomfortable so your child can be happier?”

It’s possible to do things for ourselves without it being about ourselves.

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Chris Solinsky was the American 10,000 meters record holder with a time of 26:59.60 as well as the first non-African to break the 27-minute barrier in the 10K. Here’s how he described the race: As the race started, I settled in mid-pack and tried to shut off mentally. I was able to just fall asleep, stay relaxed and cover the moves until about midway, when I picked up a side stitch. I dealt with the cramp for about four laps until it faded. Once it did I began to enter the state of flow. The pace picked up to splits that would normally intimidate me, but in that state, I did not even think about it. I was able to respond to every surge because I was focused on doing whatever it took to beat Rupp. With just more than a mile to go, I knew I was going to win; in fact, I was literally licking my chops. I decided I was going to make a move around 800 meters to go. I intended to not only make a move but to make a statement. As I closed in on the finish line, I had no clue how fast I was running or that I was even close to 27 minutes until about 150 meters to go.

As I took my spikes off, I discovered a blister on my foot the size of a softball. I did not even realize it was there until then.”

What Chris was sharing is what many people call being in Flow or being in the zone. It’s the same as when a musician enters into a zone where they are no longer consciously controlling their fingers which are playing but in some sense the music is flowing from their being through their fingers and their fingers are in perfect harmony with the music. When someone is speaking and they get deeply in touch with themselves, becoming less self-conscious, they can begin expressing themselves from their most authentic place. Entering into such a zone is very powerful and described by people who experience it as something extraordinary.

In the science of Jewish spirituality, we learn that our greatest power and abilities come out the more we get out of the way. The quote, “I am my own worst enemy” is what comes to mind. When we are too self-aware we actually become our own hindrance. Think about this. Imagine if you were consciously aware and focused every time you took a step. It would not only take you far longer to get from one side of the room to the other, your chances of falling would rise dramatically! There’s a cute story told about a Rabbi with a long beard. A child once met him and asked him, “Rabbi, can I ask you a question that I’m curious about?” The Rabbi said, “Sure.” The child said, “I was wondering, with that long beard that you’ve got, what you do with it when you go to sleep. Do you put your beard above your blanket or below your blanket when you go to sleep?” “Gosh,” the Rabbi said. “You just stumped me!” “I never thought about that. Well, you may guess what happened that night when the Rabbi went to bed. He didn’t sleep very much. The entire night he was tossing and turning, putting his beard above the blanket and below the blanket, and whatever he tried, it didn’t feel right. What happened? He suddenly became too conscious of the position of his beard and what never bothered him before wouldn’t give him any peace. The issue, he was getting in his own way.

This is all similar to the way people have described out-of-body experiences that they’ve had. It is an experience that typically involves a feeling of floating outside one’s body and, in some cases, the feeling of perceiving one’s physical body as if from a place outside one’s body. In this experience, the person is able to observe their body as if it is something separate from them. It’s the experience of being me while not being consumed by me. Meaning, that we don’t get lost in our own feelings and subjectivity but we can see ourselves much more objectively.

This entire idea of being in the flow or in the zone, getting out of the way and not being self-absorbed to the point of sabotaging our own selves is really the description of a selfless person. Please understand, a selfless person takes a very good care of themselves. They don’t neglect themselves at all. The difference between the selfless person and the selfish person is why they are taking care of themselves. The selfish person is consumed with themselves and therefore cannot help but think about themselves, their concerns, need and wants. The selfless person stands outside of themselves, like the out of body experience. When they observe that their self needs something in order to be able to fulfill their purpose then they take care of themselves. The point is that it’s possible to do things for ourselves without it being about ourselves.

This ability, to bring our full talent and power into something without it becoming about us is the most beautiful way for a person to live. This is really what true humility looks like. This is the healthy way to hear criticism. We don’t make it about us but rather hear it objectively without turning it into our identity. And what we must remember is that our lives are a continuum. No one is perfectly selfless. We only seek becoming more selfless. Our job is to ensure that as we progress, we are moving away from self-absorption and closer to the “out-of-body” or out-of-self” living.

So I leave you with this question, what are you doing to ensure that the parts of your life which are being lived for you, do not become about you?

When Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty, or give me death,” he understood that when we take away one’s liberty we have given them a sort of death.

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As much as every single person needs to be loved, we also need to be respected. When we aren’t respected we easily begin to feel terribly demoralizing. When we aren’t respected by others who won’t give us our space to feel as we wish and to choose as we wish we become dispirited, disheartened and lose confidence and hope. When we aren’t respected by others, we often feel enslaved and controlled. We stop making choices, waiting for others to make it for them.

Have you ever seen a child who says “I don’t know” to almost anything you ask them? There’s a good chance that there is an adult not too far away who always makes decisions for this child. Not only that, but when the child does make a decision, that adult tells them why their decision is wrong. We don’t really need to look at children, we can find this with adults as well. It’s not very uncommon for someone to repeatedly tell their spouse “I don’t know.” When the other person always insists on making your decisions for you, you reach a point where you stop expressing your opinion. Some people even reach a point of forgetting what their opinion ever was or is.

There is a fear that our child or spouse won’t be the way we want them to be. How do we typically deal with that? We simply put all our energy into making sure that they will be who we want them to be. We tell them how to dress, we tell them what to say, we tell them where to turn and even when to turn, we tell them what they should be doing. We are essentially trying to control them. This is the most demoralizing thing we can do to a fellow human being. They are thinking and feeling beings just like we are. They have the right and the need to express those thoughts and feelings. Every time we try and control someone else’s thoughts and feelings we are disrespecting them.

Respect means giving another person the space to be who they are. Respect means stepping away from the other person because you respect them. You respect their right to be them even though that may be different than you. You respect their right to be them even though they may be diametrically opposed to you. It doesn’t make a difference if it’s our spouse, our child, someone from the other political party or our business competition. When we act respectfully to others we bring more dignity to the world. When we disrespect others we make the world around us a less dignified place.

Who demonstrates respect more than anyone else? The A-lmighty. While G-d has a purpose for every single one of us and counts on us to fulfill the purpose He created us for, He still respects us. He gives us space to make decisions and come to discovering and fulfilling our purpose on our own. He actually created us with freedom of choice. This is the greatest act of respect and dignity that G-d shows to every single one of us. This is the dignity He asks us to show every one of our fellow human beings. Let them make the choice that they wish to make. Unless they are bringing harm upon themselves or others in some serious way, give them the same respect that you want from them. The dignity to be you.

When two people respect each other or a group of people respect each other, everyone feels safe to be who they are and share who they are. Such relationship cultures bring out the best of people and produce loving and peaceful environments. This is one of the most powerful gifts that we can give to another person. It’s the gift of letting them know that we support them for being them. It’s the gift of letting them know that they are fine just as who they are. It’s the gift of modeling to them how to respect a fellow human being.

If that’s not enough, it also empowers people to lead responsible lives by making decisions and taking responsibility for them. As long as you are making decisions for someone else they always have someone to blame. The moment you give them the respect and space to make those decisions on their own they begin to lead responsible lives.

This, I believe, is the greatest issue that our country faces today as we stand before an extremely hostile and divisive election. It matters far less who is right than how we relate to those we disagree with. We can and should use every bit of influence that we have to get others to agree with us. However, the moment we use control we are destroying the very fibers that have embroidered our democracy. The candidates are highly significant. Who wins will have a worldwide impact and what has the greatest impact of all is our ability to respect others. There’s a reason why our founding fathers fought to live in the land of the free. It requires an inner fight to quell our desire to take the easier approach controlling others. There’s a reason why we call our country the home of the brave. Only brave people find the strength to respect others who think and feel differently than them.

And it’s very likely that when Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty or give me death,” he understood that when we take away one’s liberty we have given them a sort of death.

So next time you’re sitting at a table where a political discussion comes up and you hear views which are different or even diametrically opposed to yours, you will once again get to choose what type of American you want to be. One that gives others liberty or one that gives others death.

The question I leave you with today is,  “Will your future behavior demonstrate and genuine belief in our democracy and liberty?”

How do you lead your life, with a scarcity mentality or with an abundance mentality?

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I have a grandfather who lived in Russia during World War II. He knows what it means to be hungry. He also knows what it means not to know where your next piece of bread will be coming from in the morning. I would think that someone who has gone through such an experience would hold on to every piece of bread very tightly. What’s most interesting is that out of this experience my grandfather shares every bit of food that he has with others. He even funded a restaurant that was run by my grandmother which consistently lost money every month. The food was great and every schlepper that walked in off the street was given a free meal. So here’s a man who was raised in an environment of extreme scarcity and yet he lives with an abundance mentality.

It’s interesting how many of us who live with abundance lead our lives with a scarcity mentality. We are terrified of giving. What happens if nothing is left for me? This contrasts greatly with those who have truly experienced scarcity in their lives and yet they live with an abundance mentality. They are the first ones to give and they give abundantly. How do you lead your life, with a scarcity mentality or with an abundance mentality? This doesn’t only pertain to food or money. This pertains to how generous we are with compliments, with sharing productive ideas, with giving our full attention and with giving others the space to shine.

The context of our lives can either be lived in a giving mode or in a taking mode. Benjamin Franklin said that a penny saved is a penny earned. On a very basic level, this seems correct. Every penny we spend is one penny less for us and every penny we save is one more penny more for us. However, when we look a little deeper, we know this not to be true. Every businessman knows that in order to make money you need to spend money. So we invest and spend money and only through spending do we begin making. So we suddenly realize that giving is what enables us to take even more. Let’s take this a step further. It is not only important to invest our money but even more important to invest and give of ourselves. Many businesses today have a policy that the customer is always right. Many stores take back returns with no questions asked. In other words, they are entirely there for the customer. They act with abundance grace. Nordstrom, the well-known chain department store, is well-known for an incident where they took back a product which their store didn’t even sell. The best way to get someone to be committed to you is by showing your commitment to them. Again, by beginning with ourselves and demonstrating commitment we suddenly experience commitment from others.

I was taught this concept on an even more spiritual level. Whatever it is that you want to get, you should be the model of by giving to others. Judaism teaches that when someone is struggling with making a living, there is something they can do that is meritorious for them to be blessed with making a better living. Can you guess what that is? Yes, it’s giving charity. Here’s the concept. You’re short on money. So what should you do? Give away your money. Who would have ever thought? I’m actually pretty uncomfortable giving this advice to people. I’m concerned that they’ll think I lost my mind. I’m concerned the person might say, “Did you just hear what I said? I don’t have enough money. Now you’re telling me to give it away?” And the response is yes, giving is the greatest seed to plant if you want an abundant harvest.

Of course, this is exactly how it works in our relationships. Classically, when things are not working out with a couple, they both show up at the marriage counselor with their complaints. He doesn’t do this for me, she doesn’t do that for me. He should be saying this, she should be doing that. We are very focused on what the other person should be doing. We are missing the point entirely. The best way to turn around a relationship is simply by changing how we give to the other person. Outside of extreme situations, by focusing more on what the other needs and by giving even more to them we create the natural feeling within the other to reciprocate. Interestingly, one of the classic ways of marketing is by giving value to people for free. How is that going to help me sell my product? When people receive things for free they feel obligated to reciprocate. This is why they will be more willing to purchase your products. And this is exactly how it is in relationships. You may be thinking, “By giving him more I’m creating a bigger narcissist.” Most often this is not the case. When we dedicate ourselves to being there for another consistently, until they know that we are unconditionally dedicated to them, we suddenly discover an entirely new person.

Then there’s a completely different level of giving. It’s when we simply let go completely. It’s when we forget about ourselves entirely. It’s when we devote ourselves entirely to the other without any thoughts for how this is going to bounce back to us. While living in this state constantly may be unrealistic, there are definitely moments during our life that we can give in this way. This is the most beautiful giving a person can do.

Here’s the good news. The A-lmighty is an infinite being. His resources are unlimited. He invests in every single one of us, investing in each of us different gifts. Everything he invests in us is for the purpose of us giving it out and make the world a better place. If you were to give your money to an investor to invest for you and you did not get a good return on your investment, would you continue giving your money to that investor? Or would you seek out an investor who gives you a good return on your investment? The A-lmighty is just the same. He invests in every single one of us, quite abundantly I may add, and he watches what we do with His investment. When we hold it tight by our chest with a scarcity mentality and the great fear that we will lose it if we use it, the A-lmighty is not making good on his investment. When He sees that we have faith in His infinite being and we accept the purpose that He is investing in us, then we develop in abundance mentality. And the more we make good on His investment, the more he invests in us. And then there are those moments, those rare and beautiful moments when we are reminded of what the A-lmighty does constantly at every moment of the day. He gives and gives and gives and gives to a vast and enormous universe endlessly. And then we become inspired and we give simply to give, because there is, at the end of the day, nothing more beautiful than giving.

The key to remember is two things: Respond to the person, not the problem. Labeling positives reinforce them, labeling negatives diminish them.

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I recently heard the lead international kidnapping negotiator for the FBI until 2008, Chris Voss, interviewed by Mike Dillard on his podcast. He shared a very insightful incident which reveals a tremendous approach to assisting someone when they seek guidance. It’s particularly powerful in that it is so simple and yet not so common. It’s simply remembering not to respond to the problem but rather responding to the person. Most often, somewhere within us lies the answer to our own problems. When someone else acknowledges how we’re feeling about the problem, this assists us in freeing ourselves of our overwhelming feelings and leaves us clear to discover the solution.

Here’s the incident that Chris shared. He had just begun volunteering for a suicide hotline where he began learning emotional intelligence very deeply through this work. He shared:

I get a call one night and a guy is absolutely beside himself with anxiety, something that is going to happen to him the next day and through the course of the call I only say three things to him, it takes about nine minutes and it turns him around 180 degrees from the beginning of the call. I felt his anxiety at the beginning, you know he said, “I’m trying to put a lid on this day,” and I could hear it in his voice and I said, “you know you sound anxious,” that’s all I said.

We have scientific data that backs up if you observe or what I refer to as label a negative emotion, don’t deny it, just state it, just observe it- it actually slows down, and diminishes the reaction of the part of the brain where negativity bounces around. I use that as a skill in business negotiation all the time. I’ll say you guys are really unhappy with me, you think I’m being unfair. And that makes it go away; it doesn’t reinforce it. A law of the emotional universe is observing a negative diminishes it every single time without fail. It might not make it go away, but it always diminishes it.

I didn’t know that at the time, I just labeled what I heard. But now I’ve got him in a more solid state of mind, he’s talking, he’s telling me what he’s dealing with and that he’s got a lot of support from his family and he’s going on about his family. So basically I observe a positive, which is sort of a summary of what he said and I said, “Wow sounds like your family is really close.”

I had someone once say that to me when I was describing my family and I have a very clear recollection of how enormously good it felt at the time. So when I said that to him immediately a massive amount of strength comes into his voice, and he’s talking a little more and he’s telling me how hard he’s working to beat these problems. And it struck me that he sounds really determined so that’s all is said.  Again, it’s labeling a positive. Labeling positives reinforce them, labeling negatives diminish them. Our gut instinct is that the opposite is true, but it’s not. So I hit another positive, I said, “you sound really determined,” and bang, that put him over the top. He said, “Yeah I am determined.” Then he’s said, “I’m going to be fine tomorrow. Thanks for everything you have done,” and he hangs up. And I just said three things.

This conversation is so revealing of how we can help people get out of their current emotional state. It’s simply by stating what we are observing. So often we’re wracking our brains to come up with some great wisdom or deep insight that will solve their problem. So often, our wisdom or insight doesn’t satisfy the person. Very often, they just repeat the problem. This is because we are not giving them what they really need. They simply need to be understood. We need to answer the person, not the problem. What does this person need? The very first thing everyone needs is to be understood.

There’s a very simple way to do this and that’s what Chris Voss’s story teaches us. By simply acknowledging to a person what they just shared, we help them enormously. Labeling positives reinforce the positive, labeling negatives diminishes the negative. I recently did this without even realizing and it worked wonders. Someone came over to me and made a comment in an accusatory tone, covertly blaming me for an inconvenience they experienced. I heard them and responded, “You sound angry.” That’s it. I did not address whether or not they were correct. I didn’t apologize. I simply stated the emotional state I felt from the person. A short while later they came over and apologized. It wasn’t until after they apologized that I discussed the problem. First answer the person, meaning, answer their feelings. Only afterward deal with the problem if it even still needs to be dealt with. How often do we try and respond to the problem unsuccessfully simply because we haven’t answered the person, his emotional state? He’s too emotional to properly deal with the problem!

This is particularly powerful with children. Acknowledging their negative emotional state helps diffuse it and acknowledging their positive emotional state helps expand it. Instead of dealing with whether you will give them the candy they are upset they didn’t get, first acknowledge their emotional state. “You seem very upset!” This helps them become more aware of their emotions and diffuses it as well.

The key to remember is two things:

1. Respond to the person, not the problem.
2. Labeling positives reinforce them, labeling negatives diminish them.

So often, we try and hide from the reality in the hope that no one will know and we can sweep it under the rug or really, that it will magically go away. Guess what? Hidden things don’t go away. They just show up in their time. When we hide things, they are bound to surface at some point. By acknowledging them, that his how we truly diminish them.

So I leave you with this question. Are you ready to listen to your next conversation a little differently by hearing what emotion the person is projecting and acknowledging it to them?

The primary reason we don’t stand out from the herd is because of a fear. A fear that we might fail, a fear that we might not be accepted, a fear that we will be criticized. It is true that it’s always much safer not to stand out than it is standing apart. The number one regret that people have on their death bed is, “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

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I once hosted Dr. Mordechai Kedar to give a lecture in our community. Dr. Kedar is an Israeli scholar of Arabic literature and a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University.  He also served for twenty-five years in the IDF Military Intelligence. He shared one anecdote that has always remained with me. He was once taking a train from New York to Washington D.C. to give a briefing to some department. He was sitting next to a woman and they exchanged greetings and what they each do. She said she was an anthropologist. Dr. Kedar asked her, “As an anthropologist, how would you describe the American people.” She responded very simply, “They are sheep.” Whether there’s any truth to that or not I’ll leave up to you as I’m not an anthropologist and that’s a sweeping generalization. The reason why this anecdote struck me was that it made me revisit how often I act as a sheep, as a follower of the herd, in place of standing out from the herd.

The primary reason we don’t stand out from the herd is because of a fear. A fear that we might fail, a fear that we might not be accepted, a fear that we will be criticized. It is true that it’s always much safer not to stand out than it is standing apart. There’s no risk and of course, there’s no gain. This fear very real. We will sacrifice shining the very light that G-d endowed us with, the entire purpose of our unique existence so as not to stand out. We will spend our lives surviving amongst the herd instead of thriving outside of the herd because of this very real fear. I try to be very conscious of this and always think about what it would feel like to know at the end of one’s life that they didn’t shine their unique light.

You may be familiar with the book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. The very top regret, the number one regret that people have on their death bed is, “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” I don’t want to be one of those people with that regret. Do you? Statistically, we will be one with that regret. This is why we need to exert tremendous energy to break away from the herd. The good news is that we are each our own statistic and it’s all a matter of choice.

You may have read about or even remember the 1948 elections. November 3, 1948, was Election Day, Dewey versus Truman. The polls, the media, and the experts predicted an easy victory for Dewey. The Chicago Tribune had to go to print early due to a new form of printing that they adopted earlier that year. To stay ahead of the competition the managing editor had to decide on the headline for the paper before Election Day was over. Should he trust the experts? He decided “yes,” so he ran with the headline, “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.” Two days later, when Truman was handed a copy of the early edition en route to Washington, he grinned and posed for the cameras with the paper, making this headline one of the most famous in print history.

Research indicates it’s a natural tendency to follow the herd. Studies demonstrate how most groups naturally follow the majority. If individuals have information, even if there are many with this information, they will still follow the majority even if that information is contradictory to the majority. Perhaps due to the influence of social media, researchers have seen how people have become even more susceptible to the herd mentality and overly influenced by their neighbors, rather than rely on their own instinct, spending too much time copying one another, and not making their own decisions.

So what’s the message?

The very first Jew was known as Avraham Ha”Ivri, Abraham the Ivri. Ivri means from the other side. While the world had one view, Abraham had another. His entire identity became intertwined with the character of holding his own, formulating his own view and not being swayed by another. He remains one of the most influential leaders of all time whose influence still pervades throughout the world today. He was the first in his day to recognize a monotheistic G-d and stopped worshipping idols. Try and imagine the enormous fears he must’ve have to overcome to stand by his position. He knew that this was his light, the light he was created for, the light he must shine in the world. Abraham didn’t regret his life. He truly lived it.

To live by our values and not by societal values nor by our friend’s expectations is living a life that is true to ourselves. Break away from the herd! The great American political commentator Will Rogers said, “Always drink upstream from the herd.”

I’ve noticed how even when I’ve chosen to stand outside the herd, I still carry the fear of the herd with me and in shows up in my timidness. Yet I’ve also noticed how the herd never likes those who step away from them until you actually do. Once you step away, you gain their greatest respect. This is because in the heart of every man is the desire to shine his or her light in the world yet they often don’t find the strength to do so. And when they see someone that does, they are inspired and motivated once again to run from the herd.

So I leave you with this question. What is one thing you need to do in your life that will take you one more step away from the herd?

Even if there was a way to protect ourselves or our children from challenges, it wouldn’t serve us or them well. Why? For the very reason, we all know intuitively. Without challenges, we don’t develop and grow.

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The fantasy of every person is to live a life of pleasure and bliss, free of pain, worry or anxiety. It’s very common that we desire this for our children as well. We’ve learned that there’s no escape from hardship in our own lives. We hope that through our ability to control so much of our children’s lives we can at least protect them from the many challenges that we’ve encountered in our lives.

Of course, there is no way of protecting anyone from the challenges of life. However, what we really need to understand is that even if there was a way to protect ourselves or our children from challenges, it wouldn’t serve us or them well. Why? For the very reason, we all know intuitively. Without challenges, we don’t develop and grow. If a child didn’t rise and fall and rise and fall he would never learn how to walk. Learning any subject only comes through the discomfort of study. Only one who has gone through the effort of raising a child can experience the satisfaction that only a child can bring to a parent. Only through extreme dedication and hard work does one learn to become a doctor. Only through trial and error, sometimes affecting other people’s lives, does the doctor become even better. Only one who has suffered a loss can truly console another who experiences the same. There are deep levels of emotional and intellectual wisdom that we only receive by going through an experience. Often, it’s only through the deep sting of an insult or a hurt that awakens us to an entirely new level of sensitivity.

“No pain no gain” is, no pun intended, a painful truth that we’d rather ignore. Yet, the best way to dispel darkness is with a ray of light. The best way to dispel fear is by looking it in the eye. The way to look at a challenge is to ask, “What potential opportunity lies behind this challenge?” We must know that G-d constructed the world in such a fashion that the opportunity always lies behind and challenge and that the pain always comes before the gain.

For me, this podcast is a perfect example. I spent over a year working just to launch this podcast. I’ll be spending much more time before reaching the results I am trying to achieve. I know that the more time I put into it and the longer I remain dedicated to it, the greater the results will be.

In our attempt to make our children happy, we will do much better teaching them how to respond to their challenges rather than protecting them from their challenges. Challenges are one of the greatest sources of potential growth and satisfaction. The more we protect our kids, the more difficult a time they will have when life throws situations at them and you’re not there to protect them. The more we guide and encourage our kids, the more independent and capable they will become. I don’t protect my kids from cooking because they may burn themselves, I encourage them to cook while observing them from behind. I don’t protect my kids from carrying a glass bowl, I encourage them to do so carefully. If the lesson costs me a $15 bowl, it’s the least expensive tutor I’ve ever hired for a lesson that will remain for a lifetime. There is no greater teacher than experience. No, I would never let them do things which can put them in danger and will protect them from experiences that I assess to be beyond their ability to handle.

There’s a story told about a man watching a butterfly trying to squeeze out of a cocoon. After a few hours, it stops. A man observing felt compassion for the poor butterfly which seemed stuck. He took a knife and cut open the cocoon. The butterfly now emerged very easily. However, the man noticed that it had a withered body and shriveled wings and was unable to fly. What the man, with all his kind intentions, did not know was that the restriction and the tiny opening is G-d’s way of forcing fluid from the body to the wings so that they would be healthy and fly.

There is a Jewish teaching that I have been teaching my children from a very young age. It’s one of twelve unique Jewish teachings that they all know by heart in Hebrew. Whenever we have a family birthday we repeat all twelve passages. Yes, I’m indoctrinating them. So should you. This particular teaching states, “If one says I have put forth effort and did not succeed, don’t believe them. If one says I have not put forth effort and have succeeded, don’t believe them. If one says, I have put forth effort and succeeded, believe them.” The message is very clear. Things that come without effort are not an achievement nor do they have much meaning for us. When we put forth effort, it is impossible that nothing has been achieved. The bottom line is that we must exert effort.

This takes us back to the fundamental value of living life with a long term outlook instead of a short term gain. They say that anyone who invests in the market long term always comes out with a gain. It’s those who become scared when the market drops and sell out of fear that always lose. Offering ourselves immediate comfort by taking the shortcut to avoid pain ends up costing us significantly as we move on in life, unprepared due to the shortcut we took.

Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski shares an insight that he learns from lobsters. A lobster is a soft animal that lives inside of a rigid shell. That rigid shell does not expand. Then how can the lobster grow? As the lobster grows that shell becomes very confining.  The lobster begins to feel under pressure and uncomfortable. So what does it do? It goes under a rock formation to protect itself from predatory fish, casts off the shell and produces a new one. Eventually, that shell becomes very uncomfortable as it grows. So the lobster, once again, goes under the rock to shed its shell and produce a larger one.  The lobster repeats this numerous times.

The stimulus for lobster to be able to grow is that it feels uncomfortable. If lobsters had doctors they would never grow because as soon as the lobster would feel uncomfortable it would go to the doctor and get a valium or a Percocet pill. Then it would feel fine and never cast off its shelf. From the lobster, we learn to realize times of stress are also times that are signals for growth and if we use adversity properly we can grow through adversity.

So I leave you with this question. Next time you experience a hardship or challenge in your life, will you get distracted by your attempt to understand why it happened and protest how unfair it is or will you focus on what you can do with the experience by noticing the opportunity of growth it is offering you?

We live in a polarized universe. This is why everything needs balance. Our psyche is the exact same way. Our psyche is polarized. A proper balance between love and respect keeps us and our relationship well-balanced and stable.

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We all know how important love is to a relationship. Perhaps this is the reason why we describe the intensity of a relationship as being in love. Did you ever hear someone describe their relationship with their fiancé by saying, “I’ve fallen in respect?” Did you ever hear someone describe their relationship with their girlfriend by saying, “I am so in respect her?” Well, neither have I. We are all very aware of how much love can define a relationship. Another fundamental leg upon which every relationship stands is respect. We live in a polarized universe. Which is why everything needs balance. Our psyche is the exact same way. Our psyche is polarized. A proper balance between love and respect keeps us and our relationship well-balanced and stable. Lacking either of the two makes a relationship unstable.

What is respect? I am not talking about the formal respect that comes out of protocol for a dignitary or important person. I am talking about respect for every person we encounter. Respect is the exact opposite of love. Loving someone is embracing them, adoring them, being all over them and giving them. Love is always expressed by drawing closer and closer to the one we are in love with. Respect is giving space to the other person to express their individuality. Respect is creating important and healthy boundaries. This is why we are taught to respect our parents by not interrupting them when they are speaking. We are not supposed to sit in their designated seat. These practices ingrain within children the importance of giving others respect. When another person responds to a situation very differently than we would have, by simply accepting the way they dealt with the situation based on their personality without protesting or telling them what they should have done, we are showing them a tremendous level of respect. When they say they’d rather do this instead of that we don’t stand in judgment of them, we accept that that is what they want and that is fine.

When we respect someone we restore their dignity. We are essentially telling them, “You are ok just the way you are.” Yes, there are times when we do things that should not be respected. However, who G-d made us to be should always be respected. Many relationships fall apart because while there’s plenty of love, there’s very little respect. Everyone needs to be respected, especially from those who are closest to them.

While children must be raised to respect their parents, the best way for parents to raise respectful children is by modeling respect by respecting their children. I don’t mean that parents should give in to every whim of their child. I do mean that while we guide our children based on our values, we always do so in a respectful manner. Crushing our children with demands and orders similar to the way we would instruct a dog, is undignified and disrespectful. When we take the time to explain things to our children, to show them why and to help them understand, we are treating them with dignity. This is the reason why children brought up in an “I said so” home, are resentful of their parents or continuously pursue the respect of their parents.

This is how dictators and authoritarians lead. It’s almost like a cult.

In a cult you have to listen to the leader and if you don’t you get punished.
At home, you do it my way or I will give you the silent treatment.

In a cult, you must submit and not have any independent ideas of your own.
At home, you must do it my way or take to the highway.

In a cult, if you defy orders you get sent out.
At home, if you defy orders you cannot participate.

It is not uncommon that the one thing that is making a spouse more and more distant in a relationship is the fact that they are not being respected. Stop telling them how to do things! If you are experiencing distance in your relationship try this. Practice keeping your mouth closed no matter what you are feeling and permit the other person to do and be the way they want. Yes, it may as an inconvenience for you. This is who you chose to marry and sharing life with another person requires a level of sacrifice. You will also discover that this sacrifice is the best investment you can make because when you respect your spouse you begin discovering a more wonderful spouse than you ever could’ve imagined.

In many ways, respect is the bedrock of a relationship. As long as you respect me I know that we can work things out. The moment someone feels that they are not respected is there really anything to discuss? If you don’t respect me, will we ever be able to work things out?

So why is it so hard for us to respect? This is because respecting means less of me and more of you. Again, this is the exact opposite of love. Love is me being all over you. Respect is me stepping to the side and letting you be you. This is hard for two reasons. The first reason is that it’s difficult minimizing ourselves. The second reason is that it’s difficult for me to accept who you are, what you want or how you do things when they are not the same as me. Sometimes it comes from a fear of what may happen when things are done differently than the way we are accustomed to. Whatever it is we need to get over it and give a lot more respect to our friends, spouses, children and every single human being. Just a little more respect can make an enormous difference in any relationship.

So I leave you, as always, with a question. What is one thing that you can do to show more respect to the people who are dearest to you?

We must develop a long sighted vision for our lives and realize that the price we pay when we choose the shorter longer way is enormous. I would say that the price is crushing.

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Using fear, intimidation and power get quick results. We see such tactics being used around us all the time. These are the tactics of tyrants, dictators, and despots. Large countries of millions of people are kept under control this way. Intimidation and instilling fear in others don’t require any particular skill. The more base a person is, the more readily they’ll use these tactics to control others. Why do they use these tactics to control others? For two reasons.
One, they get the quickest results. People have a visceral reaction to fear and intimidation. Most people will immediately comply. If they don’t, usually raising the level of fear and intimidation is all that’s required.
The second reason why these methods are so common is because they require the smallest amount of talent. Even little children learn at a very young age how to intimidate and even terrorize others.

If we’re honest, we’ll probably be able to find moments when we’ve used these tactics, even if we don’t use them on a regular basis. What do you do when your spouse doesn’t want to do what you want? If you get angry, yell or sulk, you’re trying to force them to agree with you. What do you do when your child doesn’t listen? Do you yell at them? Do you threaten them? Do you raise your voice? All of these are tactics to force your child to listen. This is exactly where our children learn how to control others, from the very model we may have become for them. It horrifies us when we see them behaving this way while not noticing that this is precisely how we may behave. In fact, they learned this behavior from us!

I do need to clarify that as parents, we have an obligation to raise our children with a value system. We cannot let them talk disrespectfully or act inappropriately. We must respond when we see them behave this way. The question is only how we do this. The quickest results will always come through forcing them and the smaller they are the better this works. We intimidate, threaten or scare them into doing what we said. In addition, we don’t need to take a parenting course to learn how to do this. It almost seems natural

This is what I call the shorter longer way. This means that in the short run, we get the results we want very quickly. That’s why at first it is the shorter way. However, it evolves into a much longer way. Every time we use force we create a greater distance between us and them. The moment we can no longer force them or they have the ability to get away from us, not only do we have no control over them, we have no influence over them either. They have no loyalty to us, to say the least. Citizens of a country led by a dictator will use their first opportunity to get out of the country or bring down the regime. This explains a large part of teenage rebelliousness.

Here’s a simple equation to help you remember this. Externally stimulated obedience equals internally stimulated fury. We feel deeply violated when we are forced to do things. We are being stripped of our human dignity. Even G-d doesn’t force us. He gives us free choice.

This is the reason why we must approach everything in life using the longer shorter path. This is always the path which requires more effort up front and far greater benefit down the road. It’s like a financial investment. The market has demonstrated that whenever someone invests long term they will always make money. Whenever we are investing short term the risk is much higher. When it comes to our relationships, this means taking the time to get our spouse to see our point of view. When it comes to our children it means lovingly insisting what must be done, not angrily doing so.

If this is true, why don’t most people do this? Why do we commonly turn to the easiest way and the quickest result? The reason isn’t very deep. We have a human tendency to look for the easy way out. It’s that simple. We live in an age that has been coined the “fast food era.” We want it and we want it now. Speed has taken on a very high value. It gives us the feeling that if we get it done quickly, it’s a big success. This is all while knowing that fast food is quite unhealthy. It offers us a quick meal and resolves our immediate need, our hunger. However, long term, it creates many other health issues which can ultimately shorten one’s life. Healthy, nourishing quality food takes time and effort to prepare. It takes longer up front and saves us tremendous suffering down the road.

There’s a story in the Talmud with Rabbi Yehoshua who said: “Once a child got the better of me.” “I was traveling, and I met with a child at a crossroads. I asked him, ‘which way to the city?” and he answered: “This way is short and long, and this way is long and short.”

“I took the ‘short and long’ way. I soon reached the city but found my approach obstructed by gardens and orchards. So I retraced my steps and said to the child: “My son, did you not tell me that this is the short way?’ The child answered: ‘Did I not tell you that it is also long?'”

We can’t afford to take the shorter longer way. We must develop a long sighted vision for our lives and realize that the price we pay when we choose the shorter longer way is enormous. I would say that the price is crushing. Imagine children who are raised by parents and teachers who take the longer shorter way. Parents who ask how I can influence my children instead of forcing them. Teachers who ask how I can get through to this student instead of remaining in control of the student. Marriages where we choose to love our spouse instead of trying to reshape our spouse.

Yes, it requires far more effort up front. We need to learn to slow down, be less reactionary and far more thoughtful. We must stop being instinctive and become far more thoughtful. Then, we actually become a source of influence on those around us instead of alienating those who are closest to us. If we learn to take the longer shorter way we will reduce the biggest heartaches in our lives. This is the true path to world peace.

So ask yourself, through every step of your life, am I choosing the easy way or am I stepping into the longer shorter way?

What we must learn to develop more than anything else is the truest expression of who we are, our SQ, our soul quotient. Yes, we need to let it shine!

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In honor of the holiday of lights, Chanukah, I may get a bit more spiritual than usual so hold on tight and stick with me. Of course, it all leads to a very grounded direction in living our lives. There’s no better way to give your brain muscles a healthy stretch.

Imagine you were to walk into a completely bare room and I were to ask you, “So what is in the room?” The answer would be, you! If I were to then walk into the room and ask you the same question again, “So now what is in the room?” The answer would be, you and me. Nothing too deep. This does reveal to us, though, what is so unique about light. If there is darkness in a room and you suddenly bring in some light, there won’t be darkness and light in the room, there will only be light.  This demonstrates the power of light. Light is overwhelming, in a very good way.

In this scenario, we used the example of physical light. We all know, though, that light shows up in many different forms, not just physically. Did you ever ask someone to enlighten you? Enlighten you? What does that mean? It means giving you a new understanding about something that you may still be in the dark about. This new understanding enlightens you. In fact, not only are you enlightened, you are no longer in the dark. Not only are you no longer in the dark, you can’t turn the darkness back on. The new idea has enlightened you to the point of no return. You can no longer go back to the darkness you were in beforehand. I hope you’re grasping the power of all this.

There’s another level of light. Deeper than physical light and deeper than intellectual enlightenment, there is energetic enlightenment. What’s this? This is when we create positive energy in any given environment. Good energy, positive energy, and holy energy are all synonymous and in Jewish mysticism, they are all referred to as light. This light is the most powerful because it is not limited to physical light or to an intellectual awareness. Good energy raises up everything around it. Have you ever left a friend’s home and said, “I don’t know what it is but their home exudes good energy.” There’s no question that your friends home is built on good values and is dedicated to doing good things. It’s even more common to experience this energy from people. There are certain people who simply give off a very positive energy. Yes, some are born with a more positive energy than others. However, people who exude good energy have typically put effort into that by dedicating themselves to a prescribed value system and by infusing their life with good deeds. We all have the ability to raise our level of good energy and it all begins with dedicated ourselves to more inherently good and positive things and by leading more selfless lives, which is the bedrock of goodness, living less about ourselves and more about our purpose.

In fact, in Hebrew, every letter has a numerical value. We call this numerology, gematria. Very often we discover great revelations when finding two words whose letters add up to the same numerical total. The Hebrew word for light is ohr, aleph, vav, raish or 1 + 6 + 200 = 207. The Hebrew word for secret is raz, raish, zayin or 200 + 7 = 207. Our mystics indicate that this teaches how everything in the universe is embedded with light, illumination or energy. When we want to know the true identity or core of somethings real being, their secret, if you will, it is by revealing the energy of that thing, of that person or place. It’s the energy of any given thing that truly captures what it is or who they are.

I was raised within a particular Jewish spiritual philosophy known as Chabad philosophy, where we learn to make our lives a source of light for others. We are taught to be lamplighters. To be a lamplighter we must first illuminate our own life and then spread the light to others. To live life as a lamplighter is to always ask ourselves, how I can enlighten this moment, this situation, this discussion, this room. It’s a value system that demands. It demands that we ask, in every encounter that we have, “am I the beneficiary of this encounter or am I the benefactor?” “Will this encounter influence me or will I influence it?” These encounters don’t necessarily have to be with people, they can also be with things. “Am I enlightening this place or these objects with a purpose or are they enlightening me?” “Am I using this in a way that I am only taking from it, or am I also offering something through my engagement with it?”

Surely there are times when we come to receive, to be a recipient, to be influenced. However, in all other situations, we must be shedding light. I’ve heard it said that life is like an escalator going in a downward direction. If you’re not making a determined effort to move up, you automatically start going down. If we don’t become a source of light, we automatically become influenced instead of the influence.

King Solomon wrote in his book of Proverbs, the candle of G-d is the soul of man. Our light shines from our soul. There is nothing more powerful than someone whose soul shines out with very little filter. In our fear of discovering who we really are, we settle for a mediocre self. It feels safer to us. We filter the light of our soul so we shouldn’t appear too different. We filter the light of our soul through our limited minds and hearts. If our minds can’t grasp it or our hearts can’t feel it we don’t accept it. We develop IQ, intellectual quotient. We develop EQ, emotional quotient. What we must learn to develop more than anything else is the truest expression of who we are, our SQ, our soul quotient. Yes, we need to let it shine!

So the next time you light Shabbat candles or Chanukah candles or for that matter, any candles, look at that light, remember it’s power to obliterate the darkness and ask yourself, “Are you ready to let your light, your soul, shine?”

I’m here to tell you in no uncertain terms that guilt is destructive. Period. You should do everything possible not to feel guilt and you should not be using it to motivate people to do what you feel they should do.

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Feeling guilty feels good. We feel like we’re being responsible and doing something about the issue. Look! I care! I have a conscience! If I didn’t care I wouldn’t feel guilty. Often, we associate guilt with being religious. We feel like we’re making G-d happy because we’re guilty. This idea of using guilt as a barometer to measure that I’m a decent person and even feeling holy when I feel guilt is so deeply engrained in so many that it’s one of those ideas I always receive backlash on. I remember discussing guilt with a group and a psychologist was in company. He argued the benefits of guilt and how, because of guilt, people motivate themselves not to do things that they shouldn’t.

So I’m here to tell you in no uncertain terms that guilt is destructive. Period. You should do everything possible not to feel guilt and you should not be using it to motivate people to do what you feel they should do. Yes, you’re hearing this from a Rabbi. I do my utmost not to say things that will make people feel guilty. That is not the way to get people to do the right thing. It is actually destructive to the very good you’re trying to achieve.

Let me first define how I’m using the word guilt so we understand what we’re talking about. Guilt is the feeling that I am bad because I did or did not do something I believe I should or should not have done. Guilt is defining who I am by the actions I do, the words I speak and the thoughts I think. The key issue with guilt is that it defines a person by their outside, what they do, instead of by their inside, who they are. Our negative actions do not make us bad people. We are all G-dly souls with the spark of the Divine. Improper behavior and mistakes do not define who I am, who you are, or who she is. There is being and then there is doing. We shouldn’t confuse the two. The key here is NOT to personalize. You shouldn’t personalize the behavior of yourself or others. That means our actions are separate from who we are. I am NOT what I do. When we internalize the difference between who we are and what we do, we realize we can change our behavior but the core of who we are never needs to change. So maybe some remorse, but no guilt.

I am not saying we shouldn’t examine our behavior. We should look within and we need to do so honestly and bravely. Looking within ourselves honestly and bravely means doing so without judgment and condemnation but rather with a focus on how to improve for the future. It takes time to get comfortable doing this. There is a part of guilt that we’re attracted to which is why it’s so popular. When I’m feeling guilty, I’m feeling myself, I’m feeling alive, I’m keeping the focus on me. This is the perverted pleasure of guilt and this is why personal blame is far more popular than personal responsibility. Honest and brave introspection doesn’t make it about me.

We should periodically reflect on our behavior and actions, but we need to do so without judgment. Honest assessment without accusation leads to change. Evaluation with harsh judgment leads to guilt. Guilt is not only unproductive, it’s harmful. At best, it only motivates us to do better in the short term. The guilt that arises from harsh self-talk and harsh self-judgment often leads to depression. It steals our joy. Thinking we can never change or we’re a terrible person isn’t going to lead to anything productive. Being hard on ourselves and beating ourselves up over mistakes and bad actions isn’t good.

There is another serious consequence of judgmental introspection and negative self-talk that we don’t usually consider. The way we speak to ourselves is actually the way we speak to others. If our self-talk is full of judgment, that’s what we’re conveying to others. You may think you’re covering up your judgment with some smart wording. What’s actually happening is your judgment is felt very strongly no matter how well you think you’re hiding it. I have found that the only people who walks out feeling there’s no judgment are the judgmental person themselves.

Here’s why using guilt on another is never helpful. When we guilt others into doing something, at best we get an immediate result, as the person wants to limit the pain of the guilt and shame. What’s really happening is you teaching this person that you are a source of pain to them. They begin learning to hide from you for their own safety. Greater distance is created between the two of you only lessening your influence on them. The moment you shame someone, you push them away. Do you really want to push these people away from you?

Relationships can only blossom when the other person feels safe. In a healthy relationship, the other person knows you may disagree with their action and they also know that despite that you sincerely care about them. Any action or behavior doesn’t change that. Your judgment of them do to an action of behavior will change that. Guilt is a common method parents and spouses use to motivate their kids to do what they want. “You mean that after all I’ve done for you, you won’t do this for me?” Instead of inspiring proper behavior on its own merit, we make them feel that their no good because they won’t do what we want.  Once again, we use guilt because it’s the shorter longer way. It gets quick results but is always destructive to the overall relationships.

Just for today, pay attention to the way you are talking to yourself. Do you like what you hear? Do you need to work on the way you’re evaluating yourself? Do you need to work on how you speak to yourself? We also need to remember, the way we are speaking to ourselves is the way we speak to others. Is that what you really want other people to hear?

So become a source of motivation, to both yourself and to others by using less guilt and more inspiration.

When we don’t understand another person’s perspective, we can either see it as their issue or as our issue. Remember the saying, “Judging another person doesn’t define who they are, it defines who you are.”

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In the past few weeks, I had conversations with a number of people who have used the same phrase, “I just can’t understand how someone can …” This is a very common phrase that we use when we feel that someone makes no sense. It’s a way of saying that they are beyond comprehension, it’s a put-down, the ultimate level of ridicule. “I just can’t understand.” Do you find yourself dismissing the notions of others in a similar way? I think it’s worthwhile to understand what we’re really saying which we may not realize. In fact, understanding this is very important and there’s actually a lot at stake when we don’t.

When we don’t understand another person’s perspective, we can either see it as their issue or as our issue. When we say, “I can’t understand how ” what we’re trying to say is that they don’t make any sense. The proof, I can’t understand it. Of course, this is the height impudence. More so, though, which is most important to note, is what we’re really saying. When we can’t understand another, the problem isn’t with them, the problem is with us. Why can’t we understand another thoughtful person? We try and make it about them but it isn’t at all. It’s all about us. Open minded people understand others. No, they don’t necessarily agree with them, but surely they understand them or at least make a great effort to. It is only the close-minded individual who is too scared to consider a reality outside of their own that continues to announce, “I just can’t understand.” It’s about time we began understanding.

What is really needed is the readiness to absorb a new perspective. This is truly one of our greatest human challenges. Opening ourselves up to something new and different. The first step is the willingness to leave the comfort of your previous perspective and try the new perspective. When you go to a restaurant, do you always order the same thing or do you like trying something new? If you’re a person who enjoys trying new things, new perspectives may be easier for you to adapt to as well. Many people will order the same predictable dish over and over for many years. This is their nature. New things don’t come easy for them. Regardless of how natural it is for us, if we want to be open-minded we need to train ourselves to go into spaces, whether they be physical, emotional or intellectual spaces, which are new to us.

Productive people often challenge their own positions to see if they are correct or if there is a better perspective they can have. In any important endeavor, it is vitally important to question the way were doing things. This is how we come to newer and better ways to be far more productive. In business, money is a strong incentive and supports us being more open-minded. The challenge is when we don’t have a financial incentive. Can we incentivize ourselves?

The bottom line is, will you find the courage it takes to step out of your comfort zone and entertain opinions that you don’t necessarily agree with? One of two huge benefits will be gained by it. One, you may find out that you are in the wrong. Two, you will have a much easier time explaining to others why you think the way you do once you truly understand the other side. In fact, you’ll have a much easier time convincing others now that they felt understood. As Stephen Covey taught as one of his seven habits of highly effective people, seek first to understand, then be understood. This habit can not only transform ourselves when we practice it, it can give us the ability to transform the world.

When we learn to understand other people, it draws us much closer to them. Not only because we understand them but because they feel understood. We demonstrate that we can have a conversation without personalizing it or making it emotional. We also demonstrate that we are not so self-absorbed. Remember the saying, “Judging another person doesn’t define who they are, it defines who you are.” When we can’t understand another person, it doesn’t say something about them, it says everything about us.

One way to easily develop an ability to understand others is by training ourselves not to counter what another says. I practice listening to people say things which I completely disagree with without sharing an opposing view. I will generally do this when I know that they are not in the position to hearing another view. This is the perfect situation to spend time understanding their position better. And I have always found that this only leads to me being able to gain their ear in future conversation.

If you want to be a part of the solution, take responsibility and understand others instead of casting blame by implying they can’t be understood. So next time you hear an opposing view, maybe even one you feel is heretical or destructive, seek to understand. It’ll do good for you and the world.

When I accept and celebrate my uniqueness, I celebrate the uniqueness I see in others. When I don’t accept and celebrate my uniqueness, this leads to me discriminating against others.

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Discrimination is vital to your success and your ability to support the success of those around you. When we properly discriminate between our talents and the talents of others, we can live in a world where everyone’s strengths can be celebrated. Together, we can create a wholesome world through complementing each other and giving everyone their space to shine through maintaining a perspective of ourselves that is grounded in truth and positivity.

Recognizing the two definitions of the word discriminate makes it clear that while one form of discrimination is destructive, the other is vital. Here they are:

1. recognize a distinction; differentiate.
2. make an unjust or prejudicial distinction in the treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, sex, or age.

We must remain committed to the necessary form of discrimination while we stay away from the destructive form. The first definition, recognizing a distinction, celebrates the beauty in uniqueness, difference, and individuality. This comes about through an awareness of a uniqueness, discriminating between. This is what we refer to when we say that someone has a discriminating palate. They can appreciate a distinct style, taste, approach or personality. The second definition, judging another’s distinction, condemns and punishes uniqueness, difference, and individuality. This comes from a fear of something or someone different.

The ability to discriminate properly is based on discriminating between and not discriminating against. This notion of discriminating between versus discriminating against can be used in relation to our own sense of self as well as the way we interact with the world around us. And as always, the way we discriminate with ourselves is the way we discriminate with others.

Am I comfortable accepting the unique physical features that I was born with or am I constantly trying to change it? Am I comfortable accepting the unique talents that I was given and the talents I was not given or am I trying to be someone I am not? Am I comfortable showing up just as I am or do I feel that I’m not good enough? These are very healthy questions to ask ourselves. They challenge our feeling that I need to be different than I am in order to have value. They reveal that the only way I add value to the universe is by specifically accepting myself and living up to myself. We must discriminate between ourselves and others. When we don’t accept ourselves as we are, we are discriminating against ourselves. When we constantly perceive our lives through a lens of comparison and unproductive self-judgement, we are being dishonest with reality and distorting the truth?

We then take the exact same attitude we have toward ourselves and relate to the world in that way. When I accept and celebrate my uniqueness, I celebrate the uniqueness I see in others. When I don’t accept and celebrate my uniqueness, this leads to me discriminating against others. I expect them to be who they are not. Not only is this an unfair expectation, it is a destructive expectation. It is not only destructive to them but to the universe. The world needs their uniqueness and encouraging them to be anything other than themselves is destructive the greater picture.

Have you ever heard the expression, “An inch wide and a mile deep?” Many people use this expression regarding business. Know what your niche is. Narrow your niche as much as possible. That’s your inch wide. Then go as deeply as you can in developing this niche. That’s your mile deep. This makes a business stand out in one very specific market.  When we go a mile wide and an inch deep we end up with a very different result expressed in this expression, “A jack of all trades, and a master of none.” Being a jack of all trades is the same as trying to be everything to everybody which we cannot possibly be. This is all just as true with our own selves. We cannot compare ourselves to others and try to be like them. We must discriminate between ourselves and them.

This is not easy to do. It can take us a good few years to get to know ourselves better and better. Yet, as we do we should be narrowing ourselves more and more so we can go an inch wide and a mile deep. It’s like giving a speech. They say, and I can vouch for this, that it takes ten minutes to prepare a two-hour speech and it takes two hours to prepare a ten-minute speech. Living our uniqueness takes focus and effort, there’s no question about that. It’s a matter of our commitment. And when we focus on our uniqueness we begin assisting others in finding theirs. We support them in knowing that discriminating is a good thing which they must embrace, as long as they’re discrimination between.

So take it on. Who were you born to be? Don’t be scared of defining yourself. The more you define who you are the more clarity and focus you bring to what you need to do with your life.

So next time you find yourself discriminating against someone, look within yourself to find where you discriminate against yourself. Learn to embrace who you were created to be and you’ll find yourself embracing others much more.

And I leave you with this question. Who did G-d create you to be?

That’s what we should say it. You’re not in the mood to make your bed? So what? You’re not in the mood to smile, come out of your room when you’re prepared to smile.

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I heard a very telling story from the well-known talk show host, Dennis Prager. Sometimes a good story can serve as a trigger we can always go back to, to snap ourselves back into a healthy perspective. That what this story does for me. I hope it can do the same for you. Here is Dennis telling the story at a live lecture:

In 4^th grade I went to a Yeshiva, a Yeshiva is an orthodox Jewish all-day Jewish school. And I’ll never forget 4^th grade, I have only one memory from 4^th grade. The Rabbi announced one day, “Boys it is time to daven Mincha,” which means it’s time for the afternoon prayers. So I told you I have chutzpah, I always had chutzpah. I always have respect but I always have chutzpah. So I walked over to Rabbi Fustag and I said, “Rabbi, excuse me, I’m not in the mood to daven Mincha.” I have to tell you this moment really is a big one in my life. If G-d enabled me to have five videos from five select moments in my life, that would be one of them. Rabbi Fustag’s reaction, it was a combination of so many things but mostly, “WHAT?” He understood mood, he understood daven Mincha but he never put them together. I put them together for the first time. So seriously, he thought about it and then he said, “Huh.” In the Jewish studies half of the day they call you by your Hebrew name, my Hebrew name is Shmuel.  And he said, “Shmuel Prager is not in the mood to daven Mincha, so what?” I’m not kidding, they guy changed my life. All the sudden I realized my moods don’t matter. It was an unbelievable moment, unbelievable. It wasn’t an unbelievable religious moment, it was an unbelievable behavioral moment. My mood would not determine whether I did X, my feelings didn’t matter, you mean so what? I mean if you were a modern Rabbi you would say, “Look, you know, I fully understand that, why don’t you open up to this.” Shmuel, Shmuel, what are you really feeling? The guy, under torture he couldn’t have come up with that one. The guy was from Eastern Europe, the guy, I don’t know if he knew the word feeling? All he knew is, when it’s time for the afternoon prayer, you do the afternoon prayer.  What’s the matter with you? It’s a very big deal. That’s what we should say it. You’re not in the mood to make your bed? So what? Right? That’s all. Here’s the better part. You’re not in the mood to smile, come out of your room when you’re prepared to smile. 

The idea that he shares so humorously is actually very profound. You don’t need to want to do something in order to get it done. You don’t need to be in the mood. My wife repeats something her mother says all the time. Your face is public property. Put on a smile. What she’s really saying is, “You don’t need to be in the mood, to shine your light on another person.”

This concept is fundamental to leading a value based life and an effective life. If we let our moods control our behavior, we will have a very hard time staying committed to our values. We also won’t be very effective at different things we want to accomplish if our moods can get in the way. Think about Olympic athletes who train day after day for years, following a specific regimen. Plenty of them wake up not wanting to continue and yet they do. They override their mood to accomplish something greater. I’ve said in the past, we need to see our lives as our personal Olympics where we strive to actualize all that G-d invested into us. One of the most basic tools we need to accomplish this is the ability to override our moods.

There isn’t a person in the universe who isn’t challenged by their moods. We all have days when we don’t want to get out of bed. There’s that joke about a mother who continuously attempts to get her son out of bed for school. After the fifth attempt, the son says, “But why do I have to go?” To which the mother replies, “Because you’re the principal!” You see, everyone has days. We all have days when etiquette is the last thing we care about. There are times when we’re ready to throw in the towel on the challenges of life. How we respond to the challenge of our moods can make all the difference. There’s no question that we need to take the longer shorter way of developing a healthy perspective on our life and challenges. This takes time and infuses us with the preventive medicine we need when circumstances can affect our mood. A healthy perspective, like our immune system, protects us from getting into a bad mood.

Yet, we all have those days. Some bacteria slips past our immune system and we pick up a bad cold or the flu. Likewise, even with our best perspective, we wake up one day and our mind is focused on the wrong things, we have a lousy attitude and we’re not interested. This is when behavior is so important. Then is when we must stubbornly tell ourselves, “So what?” Are we an instinctive animal or are we a human? The greatness of the human is our ability to override our feelings. As I mentioned earlier, we can either do this by having our intellect create a perspective that directs our emotions. Or, when we’re having a rough day, by having our behavior override our emotions.

This is one of the greatest life tools we can teach ourselves. It is also vital that we teach this to our children. It can be one of the biggest gifts we give them. Sometimes children should do things simply because their parent asked them to. Not always, but once in a while. This is actually the blessing G-d gives us through commanding us to do things which the human mind cannot comprehend. It trains us to do the right thing even if we can’t develop a feeling for it because we don’t understand it. And, no joking, you’ll be a better child and spouse by learning to do things for your loved ones whether you understand them or not. When you do something for someone else, it’s about them, not you.

If you want to condense this all into three words, remember Nike’s slogan, “Just Do It.” So the next time you’re not in the mood to do what you know you should be doing, ask yourself this two-word question, “So what?!”

If you truly loved the fish, you wouldn’t be eating it. You’d let it swim in the river. You probably mean that you love yourself.

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Isn’t it interesting that so many of us feel so lonely and unloved, feeling that we don’t receive love from others while at the same time we put out so much love, we love so many things. It seems that for many people love only flows out and it doesn’t flow in. Perhaps this is all part of our misunderstanding of what love is.

Love is one of the most misused words I know of. We talk about things that we love and people that we love. We talk about things and people we’re attracted to as being in love with them. Yet there’s a world of a difference between being attracted to someone and being in love with someone. When we’re attracted to someone, we are the subject. It’s about me. When I see that person, I get a certain feeling within me. Something happens to me. It’s a feeling that makes me feel good and therefore attracts me to them. When we love someone in the true definition of love, I want to give to that person, I want to bestow upon them. In the truest definition of love, I want to give to them for them. This is how I would define love in its pure, idealistic definition. Giving to another for the other.

There’s a story told about a man who goes to a restaurant and orders fish. His favorite fish, salmon. While he’s enjoying his dinner, a friend walks in and asks him what he ordered. He says, “Can’t you see? Fish. I love fish.” His friend tells him, if you truly loved the fish, you probably wouldn’t be eating it. You’d let it swim in the river. You probably mean that you love yourself.

You see, very often what we’re really saying is that we love ourselves. When we eat fish, it’s surely not because we love the fish, it’s because we love ourselves. Any vegetarian will be happy to tell you that you don’t eat steak because you love the steak, you eat steak because you love yourself. When it comes to food, our misuse of the word love has little ramification. We eat foods because we like them and if we are more elevated, we eat food because it sustains us. However, when it comes to our relationships with other people this distinction is very important. With things, we have a one-way relationship. The brownie is not going to get hurt or feel violated by the fact that you’re eating it out of your own self-interest. Relationships with people are of course very different. It would be worthwhile for us to analyze our loving relationships with this perspective in mind. In fact, coming to terms with the truth of this distinction can be the key to improving many relationships with your loved ones.

Sometimes, before I marry a couple, I ask them each to write a one-page letter explaining why they want to marry the other person. Often, the entire letter is all about how wonderful their future spouse is because they make them feel different wonderful things. It is much less often that they share objective beauty about the other person without focusing on the benefits they gain from them. This is how love is taught in our society. My attraction to things that serve me or make me feel good are things that I love. As is quite obvious, this attitude makes our relationships all about me. This is actually, perhaps ironically, the exact opposite of what love is. True love is when my relationship with you is about you and your relationship with me is about me.

Think about it this way. Imagine if you were dating someone who you were very strongly attracted to. You knew you would get a tremendous amount of pleasure out of the relationship. Yet you also knew that you were not the true soulmate of the person you were dating. They really needed to marry a different type of person. What would you do? By moving along with the relationship and getting married to them you are actually demonstrating that you don’t love them. If you were to tell them, “Look, I am really attracted to you but I realize that you need someone a little bit different than myself. As much as I would love to get married to you, that would not be right for you. So, with a broken heart, I think the right thing would be that we break up.” Now that would be an unbelievably courageous and even more so, an enormously loving gesture toward the other person. Why? Because you are telling something to them which is entirely for them.

Love is me giving you for you. Sometimes we can give to another person but it’s not truly for them. There is a benefit that we are getting out of giving to them. It’s an exchange and when it’s worthwhile I’m happy to give to you so that I get my side of the deal. You may call it a purchase or a mutual agreement. What it is not is love. Love is when I am giving to you and it is for you. You may choose to give me something in return but if that is not the intention of my giving to you then I am truly loving you.

Of course, love does not need to be demonstrated in absolute terms every time we love someone. Sometimes we are doing for another person while also intending to be a beneficiary. The point is that the more we are focused on another the more we are loving them and the more we are focused on ourselves the more we are loving ourselves. It’s no big art to love ourselves, it’s quite natural. It is an art and requires significant self-development to learn how to truly love others. It’s no art to seek a loving relationship where someone loves us. It is an art to learn how to be loving in a relationship. The irony is that the best way to find a loving relationship is by being a loving to the other person.

This is true as well regarding love for our own self. When I give myself things which I am attracted to that make me feel good, all while I know they are not good for me, I am being unloving to myself. When I give things to me which are also good for me, then I am truly loving myself.

This is true as well when we talk about loving G-d. To love God is not to do what I want, it is to do what He wants. Oh yes, I can feel how difficult that is. Doing entirely for another really takes me out of the picture and I don’t really enjoy that. This is very true. True love isn’t always easy. Stick it out long enough and you will discover that the rewards of showing love to others are far greater than you can imagine. Almost everyone in the world is seeking true love. It’s a rare commodity because not many are ready to dedicate themselves to being true lovers. Become a true lover and you’ll be offering a very rare commodity. You will also suddenly find that you have real friends, a real spouse, and dedicated children. And you will be making an invaluable contribution to the world.

So I encourage you to take it on. Every time you have an interaction with your quote unquote loved ones, ask yourself who you are really thinking about. Just asking that question can give you the space you need to shift from thinking about yourself to thinking about them. It can change that moment from an unloving one to a loving one. Enough of these moments will transform your relationships and they will transform you.

What we need to remember is that in the accident and mistake our loved one makes lies our greatest opportunity to strengthen our relationship. It is there that we show our true colors. If we can embrace then, they feel a love they’ve most likely been looking for all their life.

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A few years back my family went on a two day family trip. We piled into our minivan, two adults and six kids. That’s every seat if you’re familiar with minivans. Our itinerary was to meet cousins at a small amusement park and then visit my in-laws and sleeping over. The next day we were to get together with other cousins for another kids activity. Off we went. We had a great time at the amusement park. We then headed to my in-laws. We found ourselves in bumper to bumper traffic when it happened. I was driving and I rear-ended the car in front of us pretty hard. Thank G-d no one was hurt. While the damage to the car in front of us was minimal, the damage to our hood and everything under it wasn’t pretty. We knew this from the way the engine was smoking and leaking. It was not in drivable condition. We were stuck at the side of the highway.

The moment after we crashed, my wife turned to me and said, “It’s ok.” I’ll never forget these words. I obviously didn’t feel very good about crashing with my entire family in the car, affecting a nice family outing and creating the inconvenience of being stuck at the side of the highway. Never mind the scare of crashing with my wife and kids in the car. My wife’s two instinctive words told me she genuinely accepted me, even when I wasn’t convenient and even when I created a scare. “It’s fine.” She was saying her feelings for me are not determined by how convenient I am to her or by how big of a mistake I make.

Unconditional love is an ideal. It isn’t something we perfect, yet we strive to get closer and closer to it. There’s a teaching in Ethics of Our Fathers which says, “Any love that is dependent upon a condition, when the condition ceases, the love ceases; but if is not dependent upon anything, it will never cease.”

There are special opportunities to show people we truly love them. They are at the most unexpected times and not when we typically think. Additionally, simply telling our children how much we love them or how special they are does very little for them when they’re not backed up by our behavior. You can actually measure the impact you’re having based on the difficulty involved. Saying I love isn’t hard at all and that’s about the extent of its impact. Our words are hardly as deep as our behavior and will never compensate for our behavior.

So what are those special opportunities when we can demonstrate our deep love for someone? Specifically at a time when they are usually not accepted and loved by others. When they make a mistake, when they’re inconvenient or when they cost us our time or money. When our children listen, are orderly and make us proud, and we tell them we love them, what are they hearing? They are hearing that as long they are convenient, easy and make us feel good we love them. It’s very likely, as I explained in episode 24, that we are only loving ourselves and the satisfaction we have when our children makes us look good or feel good.

How do our children know and how do we know that the natural and often hidden love we have for them has actually become part of our behavior and our conscious selves? When we express the same sentiment to our children when things don’t work in our favor. How to we react when our child spills their snack in the car? Do we respond with a focus on ourselves and the inconvenience they’ve just created for us or do we respond with a focus on them, understanding that children mistakenly spill things at times just like adults? How do we react when our child screams in the supermarket for a candy? Do we respond with a focus on how they are making us look and therefore take it out on them or do we calmly remind ourselves that children love candy and haven’t yet developed self-control? The way we respond in these challenging situations tell our children whether we love them consciously. We may hate to hear this but our actions do speak to our children much louder than our words.

Imagine a child carrying a plate of china to the table. This plate is from a set with serving for eight. Let’s put our imagination into slow motion. As the child is carrying the plate you begin to see one of the side dishes begin sliding off the plate. Before the food splatters all over the floor you can see how the plate is beginning to fall. Following the food is the china plate which soundly crashes to the floor, smashing into numerous pieces. As we look at the parent we noticed a change in the color of their face. We begin to see strong emotion. We notice a strain in their neck as they begin to yell at their child.

That moment, when the china plate crashes to the floor, is the signal to the parent. It’s the signal that announces an opportunity to show their child unconditional love. It’s the opportunity to let their child know that they are more important to them than a replaceable plate of china. It’s an opportunity to let their child know that their value is far greater than their mistakes. So the parents stays calm and tells their child it’s ok. They say, “We’ve all dropped things. We’ll go get a replacement tomorrow.” Perhaps they’ll even tell the child to get a broom and begin sweeping it up, empowering them in a vulnerable moment and teaching them the clean up after their mistakes in a constructive way. This child is lucky. They will always remember they are more valuable than some china. They are more valuable than their mistakes. My parent truly loves me. They are freer than most people because they won’t enter into everything they do in life with the worry of what happens if or whether someone will yell at them. This child feels loved. All of this isn’t only true with our children. It is most relevant for our spouses and our friends.

I can’t tell you how many times people have broken a glass at my home, we do a lot of hosting, and they apologize profusely. I always tell them it’s totally fine, it’s just a glass. Let’s keep things in perspective. It’s a cup or two of coffee. Our friendship is far more valuable than a glass. It’s really not big deal.

What we need to remember is that in the accident and mistake our loved one makes lies our greatest opportunity to strengthen our relationship. It is there that we show our true colors. If we can embrace then, they feel a love they’ve most likely been looking for all their life.

So I leave you with this challenge. Think of one person you love, a spouse, a child, a parent or a friend. Challenge yourself not to get upset the next time they make an inconvenient mistake but rather hug them and say, “It’s ok. I love you all the same.”

The main reason most people go to work is to make money. The main reason we make money is to provide our family with a quality life where they can thrive and be productive. If we’re too busy living with a scarcity mentality of saving, saving, saving, is it really worth all the work?

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Sleep is a big deal for me. When I don’t get enough sleep it really impacts my day. I know some who don’t need more than four hours of sleep every night. I know others who need seven hours of sleep but function pretty well on five or six. That’s not me. So one of the things I did to help my sleep is bought blackout shades for my bedroom. One of the things I love about going to hotels are the blackout shades. I find myself sleeping more soundly and not waking early because of the morning light. It was a modest purchase. I would say that when measuring the cost and the benefit, it was a steal. The enhancement to my quality of life is significantly greater than the financial burden.

Let me tell you about my kitchen. I’ve mentioned in past episodes that we do a lot of hosting. My wife does a tremendous amount of cooking. Not only does she prepare a home cooked dinner for the entire family every night, we host many guests for the Shabbat and Jewish holidays. She’s easily cooking 80 meals on any given weekend, and we’re not talking macaroni and cheese. We’re talking about at least a four-course meal. Bottom line, the kitchen is a very important room in our home for both personally for our family and for our communal work. The kitchen as it was when we bought the home, was working. It wasn’t great, it had a number of limitations, and it worked.

We decided to invest tens of thousands of dollars into entirely gutting and redoing our kitchen so that it would be fully functional and make my wife’s efforts as productive as possible. We keep kosher, so we separate our dairy and meat products. This means two sinks, two ovens, two microwaves, two dishwashers and double the counter space. We added proper lighting. The guy at Lowes Home Improvement was shocked. He had never laid out a kosher kitchen before. Now there was one detail we needed to figure out. The funding. Thankfully, we were able to get an interest-free loan which I’m paying off monthly over 10 years and the monthly payment isn’t pocket change. Oh, and few years prior, we finished our basement which I pay for monthly. I won’t bore you with all the details there.

What I’m getting at is this. A quality of life has high value. It’s the way we experience our day-to-day living. The main reason most people go to work is to make money. The main reason we make money is to provide our family with a quality life where they can thrive and be productive. If we’re too busy living with a scarcity mentality of saving, saving, saving, is it really worth all the work? What it demonstrates is that our fear of not having enough is greater than our value for a quality life. We must also realize that our quality of life usually improves our ability function more productively, making us more productive at work. Some will argue and say, I get a quality of life by knowing I have a lot of security in the bank. This is definitely true. However, this is only true when we let our fear lead us. I understand that sometimes we just don’t have the money. There are plenty of things I can’t do to enhance my quality of life because I simply can’t afford them and it would be irresponsible of me to invest in them. I understand that by putting ourselves out too much, we’ll be stressing ourselves which greatly impedes on our quality of life. I know that stress very well. What I’m talking about is making an assessment of the quality of life versus money and seeing if we have simply become a victim of finances or we still remember what the finances are truly for.

The extreme example might be when I can buy my spouse the exact gift she would love for $10 more but don’t because there’s a cheaper one available even though it’s not their favorite color. Think about the purpose of the gift. Who is it for? How will the proper gift enhance your relationship? I suspect the proper color is worth far more than $10 to the relationship. Think of it this way. When will you be ready to love your spouse more than $10? Clearly, at this time, they are not worth the $10 investment.

So you may say, “Oh no, G-d forbid. I absolutely love my spouse. What are you talking about? It’s just that the color doesn’t make such a big difference.” I will challenge that comment by encouraging you to ask yourself, “When I say the color doesn’t make such a big difference, who am I really thinking about, me or them? For them, it does make such a big difference. It makes such a big difference if for no other reason than them knowing that their spouse will overcome their own preference just for me.

A less extreme example. Should I hire a trainer to help me with my exercise? Should I hire a coach to help me with my business? Assuming that we need help in these areas, how much would more success in these areas contribute to our quality of life? When we are led by money as the be-all-end-all, the answer is simple. Don’t spend the money. When we envision our overall happiness, health, and productivity, it may be a very wise investment. Sometimes a significant investment in our children at a young age can do more for them than most of the other things we do for them. I spend a tremendous amount of money giving my children a private education which offers them not only informational education but also an education of values. I know that my children’s quality of life will be much more enhanced down the road if they have values. Information and careers have a smaller impact on quality of life.

My point is, we are particularly vulnerable in our decision making when money is involved. For most people, it raises instinctive fears. Next time you need to make a decision that involves money, pause. Give yourself a moment to properly assess what your decision truly is. Don’t trade quality of life for a few dollars. A quality of life should have an extremely high value. Ask yourself this question, “Is my money owning me or do I own my money?”

Sensitivity is a great virtue. Being sensitive to others is most important for our relationships. As social beings, we cannot afford to compromise on our sensitivity without compromising our relationships.

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They say it’s a rough world out there. There are many different approaches that people take to put up with or deal with the challenges that come their way. Some of us become intimidated by those who are rougher and tougher and we back away and make room for them. Others do quite the opposite. They develop their own rough stance ensuring that they don’t get pushed over by others. Some of us are thin-skinned and too sensitive to handle certain situations and some of us develop a thick skin so that those situations won’t hurt us or bother us and permit us to hold our ground.

When I was in my teenage years and even into my early 20s I was very intimidated by other people. I would usually back off if anyone ever attacked me. I don’t mean a physical attack but any forms of intimidation usually worked to get me to back off. I did not have the inner strength courage or self-esteem to stand up to others who showed a stronger presence and were willing to bully and intimidate. At that time I understood that I had one of two choices. Either I become less sensitive by developing a thicker skin, learning not to care or be concerned about the things and people around me, simply care less. Or I remain sensitive and thin-skinned while knowing that I cannot step into certain arenas which were too rough for my thin-skinned personality. Honestly, I did not like either of these choices. Perhaps it was because I was dissatisfied with these two options that I didn’t relent and continued to pursue the proper approach. Here’s what I discovered.

Neither being thin-skinned nor thick-skinned is the proper way to deal with things. Let me use an example of a salesman. The salesman goes out to sell and for every sale he makes, he receives many rejections. Not only does he get rejected numerous times, some of the rejections are harsh, insensitive and insulting. How would you coach the salesman to remain effective despite the challenge of such an enormous amount of rejection? Some people will tell the salesman, “You have to develop a thick skin and so the comments won’t bother you. If they insult you, insult them right back. Show them that you can be just as nasty as they are.” Others may tell the salesman, “Get out of sales, it’s not for thin-skinned people like yourself. To be a salesman you need to be able to handle rejection without it affecting you. If you’re this bothered by the rejection you’re in the wrong line of work.” I would say that neither of these approaches is the proper way to coach this person. Either you’ll be teaching the salesman to lower themselves to the nasty person or you’ll be teaching him to run and avoid the problem.

So why are these two approaches so common? When we are sensitive, which is a beautiful virtue, we suddenly find ourselves vulnerable to many people who will take advantage of our sensitivity with their coarse and insensitive behavior. We suddenly find ourselves compromised. We end up feeling weak and vulnerable due to a virtuous characteristic. To spare ourselves of this vulnerability we often start behaving with the very same insensitive behaviors that we despise. To some extent it works. We become more thick-skinned, we put on a front, we avoid our feelings and we get hurt less. Others can’t seem to find a way to develop a thick skin and therefore they simply avoid people and circumstances that can capitalize on their vulnerability. Both of these approaches demonstrate a weak person. When I develop thick skin I am showing that I have no way of dealing with you while protecting my integrity and I feel compelled to desensitize myself. When I run away so that you can’t hurt me I am even more clearly demonstrating that I am too weak to deal with these uncomfortable circumstances.

There is a third approach which is a much better way. It is also the way to revealing our personal inner power. It will not only serve a salesperson much better, more importantly, it will serve the person themselves much better. Granted it’s not the easiest approach but like everything else in life, it will provide, by far, the greatest dividends. Sensitivity is a great virtue. Being sensitive to others is most important for our relationships. As social beings, we cannot afford to compromise on our sensitivity without compromising our relationships. Imagine if there was a way to remain sensitive while not being vulnerable to the coarseness and insensitivity of others. By learning not to run away and avoid the problem and at the same time not lowering yourself to the inappropriate behavior of the other. It’s by learning to stand in our place and not let the comments or insults of others affect us. When we learn to take full responsibility for our feelings, we suddenly experience the power and freedom of being in control of the way we feel. We suddenly experience that someone can say something hurtful to us and it doesn’t hurt us. The art of being able to interact with someone while staying beyond their periphery if needed is the ingredient that creates the person of true strength.

Suddenly we are not the effect of the behavior of the people around us. Rather we determine our inner emotional state. It’s always fascinating to also see how people quickly change the way they talk to us when they realize that their nastiness, insults or attempted forms of emotional manipulation have no impact on us. However, the question always remains, how do we learn to do this? Yes, ideally this would be fantastic but is it really a reasonable expectation? The answer is a resounding yes! It is absolutely a reasonable expectation. It is only a question of whether we truly desire to dedicate ourselves to changing the way we function so as to achieve this. Once we have a true desire to go through the effort in learning how to take full responsibility for our emotions, we need to have a path, a method that shows us how to change this.

I will actually be running a free webinar on this very subject in the next few months and if you’re interested in participating in this webinar please make sure that you are signed up to our email list. You can do so by simply going to www.beginningwithin.com and you will be from the first to know when this webinar is available.

So remember, don’t compromise your sensitivity. It’s what makes you beautiful, and remember that you are the one who gets to choose whether the comments that someone tells you will be hurtful or not.

The way to build trust lies in the hands and is the responsibility of the one trusting. I must trust even before someone has proven to be trustworthy. By doing so, we are assisting them in rising up to the level of trustworthiness.

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Developing the ability to trust is a great challenge for one simple reason. If I need to trust someone or something, that means they are in control of something and I am not. This is why I would need to trusting them. It can be your computer guy, your secretary or you spouse. It’s very hard to feel secure when we are not in control. I know some people who literally harass those that they are supposedly trusting. They are in such fear that the other person will forget or won’t properly do what they need that they don’t stop reminding them. It’s very devaluing. Do you trust me or not? If you don’t, don’t ask me to do it. If you do, stop harassing me.

By now you know that I don’t have a perfect driving record. I’ve been in a couple of accidents but please don’t hold that against me. I may not be an excellent front seat driver but I do an outstanding job as a backseat driver. Here’s the interesting thing. My wife has been in the car with me at least twice when I’ve had an accident. I’ve never been in the car with my wife when she was driving and experienced an accident. In fact, I don’t know of any accident that my wife was ever in. Yet, when I’m driving she’s quite calm and when she’s driving I will at times serve as a backseat driver. What’s the issue? Trust. When I’m not in control of the steering wheel I feel more vulnerable.

Trust is a vital ingredient in relationships. This is because when someone trusts us, it’s their greatest way of demonstrating their true value for us. This is what we should be giving our spouses and children. One of the greatest gifts you can give anyone is your trust in them. It’s one of the only real ways that we can demonstrate that we truly value them. It comes close to unconditional love. Perhaps it’s an outgrowth of unconditional love. I learn this from my closest relationships which are why I put great effort into letting go. I have found this to transform my relationships as well as assist the other person with experiencing their own transformation. I also know how empowered I feel when others demonstrate their trust in me.

However, trust works in a counterintuitive way. The challenge of trust runs around in a circle like a catch 22 and we must be the ones to break that cycle. You see, it’s very common for people to say, “When you earn my trust I will trust you.” In our fear that things won’t work out as we want because we’re not in control, we blame our lack of trust in the other person on them. You are not trustworthy or you are not trustworthy yet. When you will be, then I will trust you. Instead of placing the responsibility on ourselves to find the courage to trust, we dump the responsibility on them to first demonstrate their trustworthiness. This is funny because if we are already sure that they can do what we’re asking, no trust is required. If we only trust people after they’ve demonstrated that they’re trustworthy, we aren’t really trusting them.

This is where we conveniently go wrong and how we perpetuate the circular catch 22. When people don’t feel trusted, we are subtly telling them we are not convinced they are capable. When people are trusted, they most often rise up to the expectation. This is why the way to build trust lies in the hands and is the responsibility of the one trusting. I must trust even before someone has proven to be trustworthy. By doing so, we are assisting them in rising up to the level of trustworthiness. Yes, they may make a few mistakes, and they will typically rise up to our level of trust in them, assisted by the enormous support they are receiving simply from our trusting them.

This is most obviously demonstrated with children. Children are young, they have so much to learn and are limited by the limitation that comes with their age and lack of experience. There are many things for which they are clearly not yet trustworthy. However, when we place our trust in them, two enormous results are produced. The first is the empowerment and self-esteem we give them. We are essentially telling them to do something knowing it may go wrong and it’s very likely that it will the first few times they do it. It sounds like unconditional love, doesn’t it? Secondly, they mature by learning to do things that society may believe is beyond their age. They learn to take on responsibilities and take ownership of their own selves. They also learn by our model of trusting them, how to trust others, ensuring great relationships for themselves. I always ask my kids to do things they may not get perfectly the first time. When they ask me to do something I often ask them if they tried first. When they say they can’t, I’ll often tell them to do their best and to call me when they need help.

This is so important in marriage as well. Trust your spouse if you’re going to ask them to do something. They may forget or not do it to your liking. Firstly, trusting them is usually far more valuable than what they forgot. Secondly, it is when we are permitted to learn from our own experience and mistakes that we come to doing things better.

There is a biblical passage which we recite in our daily prayers which really demonstrates the way trust works. Blessed is the man who trusts in the L-rd and the L-rd will be his security. It is only after we trust in G-d that G-d becomes our security. This is how trust works. You need to demonstrate trust and suddenly you will find the unexpected results that come forth and the people around you will become a much great source of security for you.

This is how the science of spirituality explains trust. As a great spiritual master taught, “Think positively and it will be positive.” What he was teaching is that the trust in G-d itself that it will be good is what elicits the blessings of goodness from above. Isn’t it interesting that we have two messages printed on every American coin and on every one dollar bill: “In G‑d We Trust” and “E Pluribus Unum, Out of the Many, One.” We cannot be unified with others if we don’t trust.

So I’d like to ask you to think of one person in your life who you are close with but haven’t given your full trust to. In which area of their life are you always interfering and trying to control? Test yourself and let go for a month. See what happens. You’ll be surprised by the results!

We must never assess ourselves by the results, we must always assess ourselves by our efforts. There are no guarantees in life when it comes to results.

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I’m in the midst of a working on a building campaign in our community. We’re building a Jewish ritual bath otherwise known as a Mikvah. One of the recent challenges that I’ve had was in the layout of the building. We want to follow a particular layout that gives off a certain feeling which we’ve seen at another Mikvah. We also want to add some elements which are not in that Mikvah. I spent a few hours on the phone with our architect trying to reconcile the two so we can accommodate everything we want. However, we met with no success. I was feeling quite frustrated and was ready to throw in the towel, as they say, no pun intended.

Then I had a second thought. I reminded myself that the number of possibilities for anything in this world is many and that I need to take a step back and give this a little more time so we can get the final product that we are looking for. I sat down with my wife to reconcile the conflict we were having and within 10 minutes we came up with an approach which isn’t perfect but definitely doable, a huge step forward from where we were. This is now one more event that I can turn to in my memory to remind myself not to give up easily on something that’s important, there is always a way, and there’s often more possibility than we see. The only question is whether we are committed to finding it.

There is always a way, there is always an approach, there is always a solution. It may not be perfect but we don’t need perfect. We need the best way to step forward from where we are. This project is a huge project. Many things need to get done, zoning, permits, lawyers, engineers, architects, builders, and about $700,000 still needs to be raised. I wake up every day and ask myself how I can keep the ball moving forward. What do I need to do today to get to the next step? With this approach, we have already been able to buy a property and get the variance needed to use the property for this special purpose. There still so much more to do and I know that we will always find a way. Why? Because we will do whatever we can every single day. To expect anything more from me would be completely unrealistic and unfair. There is one thing I can always expect from myself and that is to always do everything I can.

There’s a story that means a lot to me which occurred with the great mystic known as the Baal Shem Tov. There was a knock on the synagogue window when he was teaching his students. It was a peasant whose wagon got stuck in the mud. He was looking for some help to pull it out. When the student who went to the window returned to the table, the Baal Shem Tov asked him what he wanted. After the student shared his request, the Baal Shem Tov asked his student how he responded to the peasant. The student replied, “I told him that I can’t.” The Baal Shem Tov replied, “It isn’t correct that you can’t, it’s that you don’t want.” He was encouraging his student not to confuse not wanting to do something with not being able to do something. The difference is tremendous. Once a person, in fact, does everything they can, they should feel calm. You’ve done what you can.

Here’s something we must never forget. We must never assess ourselves by the results, we must always assess ourselves by our efforts. There are no guarantees in life when it comes to results. We don’t have control over results. We may do everything we should in the most outstanding way and a circumstance or person beyond our control can entirely derail the efforts we made. The one question we should be concerned with is, “Have I put my best foot forward?” If the answer is yes, we should feel good about the situation. Of course, good results would be great. We pray that G-d does His part and produce good results from our efforts. But let’s not confuse our roles here. We work in the effort department, G-d works in the results department. The good news is that the science of Jewish spirituality teaches, the greatest way to inspire results from above is by putting in our best effort below.

With this simple perspective, we can eliminate the vast amount of worry many of us carry around on a daily basis. Worry comes from fear. To worry about things which are out of our control is futile. The moment we begin to practice letting go of that which isn’t in our control, we begin worrying much less. Let’s say I put my teenage child on an airplane. Have I done everything I could to make sure he is safe and knows where to go after he lands? Did I instruct him to do everything I could think of to prevent him from getting confused or have a problem? If the answer is yes, it’s now time to let go. The results are not in my hands.

Yes, easier said than done. However, here’s a simple tool that can make it easier for you to eliminate the worry. Ask yourself, “Have I done everything I can to get the results I want?” By focusing on what you can do you will remove some of your focus on the result. By practicing this behavior repeatedly you will be putting your attention on the positive, what is within your control, instead of on the unknown, the outcome or result. Within a short amount of time, you will be worrying much less.

When we do think about the result, we must remember episode 28 about trust. Developing our trust muscle is vital to eliminating worry. Trust in G-d that you’ll get the results you want while remembering that you don’t work in the results department.

Some people feel like they’re being responsible when they worry. It shows that they care. Worrying is actually being irresponsible and it’s counterproductive to caring. It puts us in an unhealthy state of mind which makes us emotionally unavailable. It leads to making unwise choices. It has significant health ramifications. If I asked you if it’s responsible for me to do something that will put me in an unhealthy state of mind, make me emotionally unavailable and make me sick, would you say it is responsible?

So I leave you with this to remember. Worrying isn’t responsible and doesn’t fix problems. Put a strong focus on what you can do. Don’t confuse what you don’t want to do with what you can’t do. Trust in G-d that He will provide the results you want.

If you want to live a meaningful life that is more in touch with reality, begin developing your spiritual self. There is far more reality in our spiritual space than we may realize.

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My 8-year-old son came home with a very interesting image a few days ago. It had two words, reality, and fantasy. I’ll have the image posted on the episodes page, beginningwithin.com/podcast/030, for you to take a look at. The way the two words were shaped, when you flipped and inverted the word fantasy, you can see the word reality spelled. It made me think of how often we see a reality which is truly a fantasy or we perceive something to be a fantasy when it’s the reality.

There’s a brief incident related in the Talmud. Rabbi Joseph who took ill and slipped into a comatose state. This may be the first recorded out of body experience. When he regained consciousness, his father asked him what he saw. He said to his father, “I saw an upside-down, inverted world.” “What is given great value in this world is of low value in heaven. What is of low value in this world is given great value in the next world.”

Along these lines, I’ll share another quote which can shed some light on this piece of Talmud and the fantasy/reality image. This is a quote from Rabbi Chaim Miller’s book, The Practical Tanya, Chapter 1. “I possess two sorts of consciousness, two ways of interpreting the meaning of reality. My Animal Soul conceives the world purely in terms of sensory perception, the visual and the empirical. Since my five senses cannot directly experience the spiritual or the Divine, my Animal Soul mistakenly views itself as possessing an independent existence from G-d and has a self-centered orientation. My second, Divine Soul interprets the world through the more abstract lens of contemplation. It attempts to discern the truth of things beyond their deceptive appearance, believing that the direct experience of the senses is short-sighted. Its natural tendency is to be drawn to its source. The task of my Divine Soul is to enlighten my Animal Soul about its erroneous Perception and to teach it the truth beyond its limited sensory faculties.”

I have to say that the Talmudic story and this clear explanation from Rabbi Miller instruct much of my life. It reminds me that too often things are quite the opposite of the way they look and maturity is knowing this in real time, now, and basing my decisions on this knowledge. There are many examples of how our external selves believe one thing while our internal selves know better than that. We all know that money doesn’t bring happiness, yet we make many decisions as if it does. We all know that people on their deathbed don’t wish they’d spent one more day at work, yet we often choose one more day at work over many other meaningful options. This is all because we live in an upside down world, an inverted reality where the physical and material seem so true that even when we know otherwise, we struggle to let go.

The anthropologist Matt Cartmill once said, “As an adolescent, I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life — so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.” I’m not sure this is exactly what he intended but I would say that if you want to live a meaningful life that is more in touch with reality, begin developing your spiritual self. There is far more reality in our spiritual space than we may realize.

Here’s another way that G-d reminds us of how deceptive the physical world is. You may have heard that the images formed on your eye’s retina are upside-down. Our brain works very hard at flipping the image so we see it right side up. This is why simply closing your eyes for a few minutes can give you a well-needed rest.

Your brain can be retrained, though. In one psychological study, participants were asked to wear inverting lenses – lenses that invert the image before they get to your eye, so when your eye inverts it, it’s right-side-up. At first, everything appeared upside-down to the participants. But, after a few days, people began to report that everything appeared right-side-up! As a second part of the study, the people were asked to take the glasses off. Now that they are used to the lenses, their NORMAL vision appeared upside-down!! Within a day, though, their vision returned to normal. The reason you don’t see everything upside-down, then, is simply because it’s easier to think about right-side-up!

Now, who came up with this design? Why not just have the eye see right side up and save a lot of brain power? Science can explain how the eye works as I just demonstrated. Spirituality, on the other hand, can explain why, what’s the meaning behind it. The only part of our experience we first take in upside down is our vision. Do you hear the meaning I do? Don’t be fooled by your physical experience, there are many more dimensions of reality floating around and within you which physical tools cannot capture or measure. Just like your brain has the ability to flip any image it sees, you have the ability not to be deceived by the false impressions of the physical world. And as I always like to add, the greatest beneficiary of practicing this is you. It will deepen all you experience in life because you’ll be operating on a deeper platform.

So G-d gives us an annual holiday which we call Purim. One of its main themes is v’nehapoch hu, how a sequence of events seemed to be going one way and ended up going an entirely different way. Only someone with a deeper perspective would’ve given consideration to such a possibility.

There is physical maturity and there is spiritual maturity. Physical maturity comes on its own and remains relatively shallow. Spiritual maturity comes through effort, revisiting what appears to be so true, and gives you a life of depth and richness.

So I leave you with this question, “What is one thing you are doing on an ongoing basis to become more spiritually mature?”

Drama is actually a distraction from reality. It’s one of the worst ways to deal with anything.

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Drama is exciting. It makes us feel busy, responsible and involved. It also helps us feel ourselves in a very concrete and emotional way. Our heart is pumping, we’re impassioned, and a sense of self-righteousness may overtake us. We feel like we’re responding in a powerful way. It also looks like we’re concerned and ready to take on whatever the issue is. For all of the above reasons, we easily become addicted to drama. It makes us feel so productive and alive. The drama also causes us to secrete endorphins which are the pain-suppressing and pleasure-inducing, not much different than the effect of some drug addictions. So we’re driven to find drama even when it doesn’t exist. We step into conflicts even when it isn’t our business and we feel guilty when we’re calm. We turn everything into a bigger deal than it is and we often find ourselves in the middle of a crisis.

Oh, a little tip. When you’re around a drama addict, don’t dare let yourself stay calm.  If you don’t respond dramatically to an event you will be accused of being self-absorbed, indifferent and not caring. This is a tactic that drama kings and queens use to draw you into the fray so you won’t remain standing on the side. Drama addicts find it very disturbing about seeing others not get caught up in the drama while they are in full swing. So the accusations start to fly.

I can clearly remember a call I once received from a gentleman from the West Coast. He introduced himself as the relative of a girl whose Bat Mitzvah I would be officiating. I never encountered him before and had no context for what was coming next. “You’re not allowed to make the Bat Mitzvah service the way you’re planning on doing it.” I was quite shocked, to say the least. What made this even more confusing to me was that he wasn’t asking me anything. He made a statement, “You’re not allowed to.” I was also able to hear the emotion in his voice. He was making this call to set the world right, or at least to set me right. I should’ve thanked him for sharing this information with me and said goodbye but I didn’t. Instead, I walked right into the drama. I asked him why which lead to a back and forth like a good ping pong volley and I can still feel the tension that built up inside me during that call. At the end, I did find the wisdom to ask him if he called to let me know I’m not allowed to do what I planned to. He said yes and I thanked him for sharing that and hung up.

I actually met him at the Bat Mitzvah and he was all fine and didn’t continue the drama. Probably because he didn’t need to. I had already learned my lesson from our first conversation which I owe him a thank you for. Here’s the lesson that I learned

Drama is actually a distraction from reality. It’s one of the worst ways to deal with anything. It distracts us from the issue at hand and put the focus on us and our drama which, of course, we love. It’s part of the addiction, to feeling ourselves and feeling good. While it definitely does look like we’re concerned about the issue, the truly concerned find the most productive response to the issue at hand. They don’t spend time on what will give the appearance of them caring.

I’d like to encourage you to gain the confidence to know this and act accordingly. When you first insist on standing outside of the fray you will probably get negative feedback. Sometimes the other person’s drama will escalate with the attempt of using higher levels of drama to pull you in. You need to make a long-term commitment not to get pulled in and the longer you stay at it the more you will be appreciated. This is because it not only serves you best, it helps the dramatic one minimize their drama. Drama is like a game of ping pong. Someone has to hit the ball back to you if you want to have a game. When you refuse to play, their drama gets diffused. As they see your commitment to this new way of life, their drama will begin to decrease.

This demonstrates two fundamental Beginning Within lessons. Number one, always take the longer shorter way. If you only think about this situation, you’ll join the drama instead of dealing with the backlash if you don’t. When you think long term you acknowledge that it’ll be painful in the short term, but long term, your relationship will be so much more peaceful. Number two, changing yourself is the best way to influence change in others. The more you genuinely stand outside of drama, the more others will feel your strong position not to get drawn in and the less they will use drama with you. So there, because of what you did to yourself they will behave more appropriately. This is true with most behavior.

So be brave. Every time you see drama remind yourself that your role is to ensure that you don’t get drawn in. Then ask yourself if there’s something productive you can do about the situation. If there is, do it. If there isn’t, remain calm. If you are criticized for not caring just smile and remind yourself that you’re walking the longer shorter road. It isn’t easy but it ends up being much easier.

Freedom is most pronounced when we can impose our own limitations on our own selves not due to inhibitions but due to our own choosing.

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Are you willing to make yourself free? I try to every day and I find it to be one of the most difficult challenges in my life. Yes, I live in the United State of America, the cradle of democracy and freedom. Yet, it still does not make me free. It only clarifies that my lack of freedom cannot be blamed on the environment I live in because I live in a free country. It’s the undesired blessing we receive when we no longer have anyone to blame and we are forced to take responsibility. In this case, the gift of democracy isn’t that it gives us freedom. It’s that it forces us to take responsibility for it.

Let me explain. Freedom is the ability for one to freely express their inner spirit, their soul. Freedom is living true to one’s inner self without letting external controls or inner inhibitions to limit them. Freedom is most pronounced when we can impose our own limitations on our own selves not due to inhibitions but due to our own choosing. Through our value system directing us, we harness our power in a focused manner, through choosing to discipline and focus ourselves in a particular direction that only a free person has the ability to choose. We don’t do this because of other people’s expectations or because we’re seeking their acceptance, prestige, money or power. We do it because it is true to our inner core.

On February 11th, 1986, in a historic event, the refusenik Natan Sharansky was finally given his freedom by communist Russia. The KGB brought him to the Glienicke Bridge in East Berlin, which he was to cross to reach the American KGB counterparts. When they finally took their hands off him, he was given his last instructions. He was to walk across the bridge to the CIA in a straight line. So what did Natan Sharansky do? What he always did. He demonstrated that no one owns him. He zig-zagged deliberately across that bridge, defying orders, risking everything.

This act by Natan Sharansky powerfully symbolizes the two forms of freedom, which we often confuse. One is freedom from, and the other is freedom to. Usually, when we speak about freedom, we imply freedom from. When Natan Sharansky was being let go by the KGB, he was attaining freedom from a people who were suppressing him. Yet, simply leaving their clutches did not determine that he would live freely. There are many constraints that limit us.

It is only when we know what we are living for and we dedicate ourselves to it, that we are experiencing true independence. And that is what we call freedom to. I am not free simply because no one controls me. I am free when I define the purpose for my living.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks uses this differentiation in translating two Hebrew words that loosely mean freedom. The word Chofesh is very often used for vacation. Well, what is a vacation? It’s getting away from work. We call that freedom from. Cheirut, mentioned in the Exodus from Egypt, is freedom to.

The association between the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Torah is also about two freedoms. In the Torah G-d explicitly tells Moses, I am liberating the Jewish people so that they shall serve me at Mount Sinai. It was at Mount Sinai that the Jewish people received Torah. This statement from G-d sounds quite contradictory. If the Jews left the slavery of Egypt to serve G-d, did they really experience liberation or did they go from one servitude to another? They got out of Egypt only to find themselves enslaved to G-d.

Yet, that is what true freedom is. G-d is taking us out of the external clutches of Egypt, but that doesn’t suffice. He’s then giving us a purpose for living with the choice to commit to it, finding true inner liberty. This is ultimately the conflict of our soul, which is exiled within our body. It longs to be liberated, so it can override the body’s material and physical indulgence, to let us experience true freedom. What do we really mean when we describe a person as open, free-spirited? That is actually someone who had the guts to ask, “What has G-d made me to be,” to find the answer within and to pledge their life to it.

The eight-day workshop of Passover is for discovering not only how to leave external restraints, but more importantly, how to find out who we truly are, how to dedicate ourselves to the mission that G-d outlined for our path in life. Identify one constraint that is holding you back from dedicating yourself to your G-d given purpose. I bless you and myself to find the strength to break out and to break free.

Many people complain. What’s wrong with them? Don’t they realize? Why can’t they relate and on and on? Some actually take responsibility. They ask, “How can I make this relevant to them?”

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The most widely observed Jewish holiday is Passover. By observed, I mean that more Jews participate in a Passover Seder than other holidays. And I know that many have a very difficult time participating because they have a hard time relating to the holiday. This still doesn’t excuse us, though, from discovering the meaning within the Seder and the entire holiday. A friend recently shared his frustration, in particular, with the very last part of the Seder. At that point, half the guests have left, everyone is tired and have lost their patience for things that they find has no relevance.

So what do we do? Many people complain. What’s wrong with them? Don’t they realize? Why can’t they relate and on and on? Some actually take responsibility. They ask, “How can I make this relevant to them?” In my attempt to assist my friend in making the very last part of the Seder relevant, this is what I shared with him. I hope this can enhance your Seder and spark your interest in taking responsibility for the Seder you will be participating in.

At the conclusion of the Seder, we make a blessing and drink the fourth cup of wine. We then announce, Next Year in Jerusalem, L’shana habaa b’Yerushalayim. How can we make this statement relevant to a young generation of Jews who don’t have an appreciation for Jerusalem as a city or for what it represents to our people? Here we go.

Everyone, gather around the table. Stand in your place. This year we’re going to conclude our Seder just a little bit differently. Fill your glass with wine as your fourth glass of wine. Hold it up and close your eyes. Listen to what I’m going to share.

Do you think that the Jews thought about freedom every day when they were in Egypt? I don’t think so. I think they were primarily thinking about getting through their next day, an issue going on in their family or a health issue they were dealing with. Even when Moses first came to them to let them that G-d told him G-d would be taking them out of Egypt, they couldn’t listen. They were too worn out and exhausted to even be able to hear such good news. I used to wonder how they couldn’t hear Moses sharing the message they were waiting for the past 209 years.

You know what, I no longer wonder. In fact, I’ve come to the realization that I am the same way. My ears are closed every single day. They are closed to the very hopes that lie so deeply within me. The visions and possibilities that I once dreamed, the yearnings, the heartstrings that I used to pluck, they have all become dormant, they have quieted, they have lost their voice. They are closed, not because I don’t yearn to hear them, not because I no longer crave for them. They are lost because I have become overwhelmed with life. My mind is occupied with supporting my family, making sure my job is stable and productive, caring for them, providing, making sure the house is supplied, everyone has what they need. Even this Seder was quite an ordeal. It all came together so beautifully and I’m grateful it did. Yet, in all my doing, I haven’t found time to be. To just be me. To be the person G-d made me to be. To express that part of me that is deeper than all the things I do. That place that craves a more real engagement with life, a deeper connection, to experience, at least in some small way, the yearnings of my soul, the feelings that come from plucking the untouched heartstrings of my heart.

We all have something much deeper going on inside of us. Every single one of us. The longer we hide from it, the more difficult it is to uncover. So here we are, gathered again, at the conclusion of our Seder. We will drink our fourth glass of wine. Our sages say that when wine enters, our inner secrets are loosened, they can be released. Following the gematria numerology system of the Hebrew language, the numerical value of wine, yayin, is 70 and the numerical value of secret, sod, is 70. This is deep. So let us pray in hearts that as we drink our fourth cup of wine we reach to deepest depths of our soul. The place where our soul’s yearnings, hopes, and desires are, and let us give them expression once again.

After we drink our fourth glass, let us all say together the very words that express our national yearning, desire, and hope, Next Year in Jerusalem. These words are expressing the yearnings of the soul of our people. That we all be united with our people. That we experience unity and oneness, strong feelings for each other, even those Jews who seem so different. That we live in peace amongst all of humanity. That we clearly experience the presence of the Divine, and that our deepest selves sprout forth, no longer inhibited by our bodily desires and limitations.

Join me in drinking our fourth glass followed by our prayer, Next Year in Jerusalem.

How do you think people feel after encountering you? Do you think they leave feeling uplifted and encouraged or dejected and discouraged?

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There are some special people I’ve encountered who always make me feel important. Once particular Rabbi comes to mind. Whenever I meet him he gives me the warmest welcome. He always has time for my questions. I feel that he truly values me as a person. There are other people who don’t quite embrace me in the same way. In fact, with some people I feel less than, when I leave them. Once I’ve begun taking responsibility for my feelings this has improved significantly. However, there still remains two types of people, those who raise others up and those who bring others down.

The law of gravity reminds us that it’s always easier to bring things down than to raise things up. To move things against gravity requires an effort. This is not much different when it comes to people. It’s far easier to put someone down than to raise them up. How do you think people feel after encountering you? Do you think they leave feeling uplifted and encouraged or dejected and discouraged? Did you ever ask yourself this question? It’s worth asking because the answer will reveal something even deeper.

You see, some people flatten themselves out so they can make room for others. Some people flatten others out to make more room for themselves. The irony is that the more we need to pronounce our presence so that others are aware of us, the needier we are and the more dependent we are. This is why, as we make our selves more pronounced, we are actually diminishing ourselves. We are unknowingly demonstrating our desperate need for acknowledgement from others. We are unknowingly showing our fear that the other person’s presence will diminish our own. So we hurriedly diminish them, we flatten them out. It may be with a comment, a slight of hand, a biting joke or a maneuver to undermine them. It’s really all the same thing, our attempt to minimize their significance in the hope that it’ll raise ours. In behaving this way we are achieving the very opposite. We are demonstrating how fearful we are of the other and how desperately we depend on our power, position, respect or whatever it is, to know we are worthy. In simple English, everything I just describe is arrogance.

When we’ve developed ourselves, we discover our true significance which comes from a place much deeper than anything outside of us can offer. It comes from our essence, our spirit, our soul. Then we live a more fearless life. We don’t depend on other people and things to feel our value. We comfortably flatten ourselves out, so to speak, to make room for another. We know that their greatness cannot diminish us in any way. There is no threat in raising up the other person. Ironically we discover that it’s the flattened person, the unpronounced individual who doesn’t impose him or herself wherever they go, who is the truly the great one. In simple English, we call this humility.

Many are of the assumption that humble people are meek and weak. No, no, not at all. You now see how it’s the arrogant person who always needs to assert themselves who is weak. Weak and desperate for others to affirm them. The humble person isn’t desperate at all. They are not in need of anything or anyone to affirm them. They are inherently affirmed by their creator.

Now, when do we truly see the power of a humble person? At the very same time we see the weakness of an arrogant person. When a situation arises which warrants that something be done but it would be unpopular. It is not uncommon that the right thing to do is also the unpopular thing to do. Mr. or Mrs. Arrogant won’t do it. Their decisions are ultimately decided by others, by what others think. If it’s unpopular, forget about it. Yes, they’ll come up with justifications, but that’s not what’s truly driving their decision. It’s always one thing, what others think. Mr. or Mrs. Humble, they will rise with the force of a lion to do what is right. Their decisions are ultimately decided by what’s right, not by what others think. They are strong and independent and stand on their own feet. They never need to justify. They just do what’s right.

So you see, humble people aren’t door mats at all. They choose to flatten themselves out before others. They don’t need to massage their ego. They dropped off their ego on the side of their journey a while ago. However, if flattening themselves out will support dishonesty, the one who once thought to be meek and weak will suddenly tower with power.

So where are you on the spectrum of weak to strong? In the very same place as you are on the spectrum of arrogance and humility. What’s far more important than where you are on the spectrum is, of course, which direction you’re going. This effects every single thing you do. This is why we have an 8 day humility workshop called Passover when we only eat matzah, flattened bread, and we don’t eat risen or inflated bread. Let me tell you, 8 days of matzah leaves it’s impression on you. Hopefully, the impression is left deeper than the surface level of your body, it reaches your soul.

Now ask yourself how your life would look different if you were less dependent on what others thought and less in need for others to acknowledge you? Imagine the power that would spill forth from your very being. The power that G-d invested in you, awaiting to be liberated. After all, only the humble are powerful enough to liberate themselves.

It is specifically to help you make this a reality that I created my online course, Beginning Within Master Course. To teach you how to live a life which is less reactive and less defensive as you learn to stop taking things personally. Through learning the concepts and far more importantly, practicing the nine exercises that are available in this course, you will be walking the road to liberation. With the 30-day money back guarantee, there is no risk. For the next few weeks, use the discount code Passover2017 and receive 23% off. And you’ll still have 30 days to receive a full refund if you’re not satisfied. Looking forward to you joining me there.

Redemption means they were free from constraints. When all of our fears and concerns are go, our song flows freely from within.

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Have you ever composed a song? Have you ever thought of composing a song? I have thought about but have not yet done it. The idea of composing a new song is very enticing to me. I’ll tell you why. Truly great songs aren’t really composed. They flow. When we get into a certain state, we create the possibility for there to be a surge of energy which starts flowing from deep within us. If you know what I’m talking about it’s probably because you’ve experienced it in some form. If you think I’m getting a bit too far out there, hang on and I’ll explain.

I’ve experienced this when I prepare speeches. Usually, preparing a speech requires some good effort. I have to work, think and research. Then I need to reorganize the ideas and find ways to make sure it’s relevant. Sometimes I’m lucky. I become impassioned by an idea that resonates deeply within me and a speech starts flowing out of me and I just write down notes. This is one example of what I mean by composing a new song.

I think one of the biggest mistakes we make in life is when we go about creating a purpose for ourselves. We were each created with a distinct purpose. It’s only that it requires the courage of a real man and sometimes a good number of years to discover it. So, instead of standing up to the challenge, we simply create a new purpose for ourselves. It’s something we can then choose, it’s easier and it doesn’t require us to step up like a man.

You see, it’s actually easier to spend years and years in school to learn to become a doctor, lawyer, Rabbi or whatever, then to discover our unique purpose. Why? Because what’s necessary to discover our purpose is to let our spirit soar free. To remove all our fears and inhibitions, our insecurities and hesitations and to let it rip, as they say. And we all know that in any and every arena, the ones who stand high above the rest on not necessarily the most talented ones or the smartest ones. They are the ones who know how to let go so their spirit leads, not letting room for anything to stop them from being who they are. It doesn’t make a difference if they’re a spiritual leader, a sports player or a businessman. It’s when our spirit becomes liberated that we begin singing a new song, our song, the one song we are meant to sing.

One of the most inspiring passages in my daily morning prayers are these words, “With a new song, the redeemed people praised Your great name at the edge of the sea.” Oh, how I love this passage and oh how I struggle with it. After the Jewish people crossed the sea which  G-d split for them, seven days after having left Egypt, the broke out into song. Their experience was so powerful that it exposed a very deep part of themselves. So they sang, but not just any song, they sang a new song. A song the world never heard before. They were able to do this because they were redeemed. Redemption means they were free from constraints. When all of our fears and concerns are go, our song flows freely from within.

This passage is so meaningful to me because I yearn to sing a new song. I yearn to find the ability to let go of myself when I am speaking to others so that I am not busy tripping over myself but rather fully consumed in them. I yearn to express my wants to others without dressing up my words and disguising what I’m trying to ask for but rather speaking with full truth and transparency, letting go of the fears of rejections. I yearn to do those things I believe I should be doing even while knowing that some might stand in judgment of me or flat out disagree with my choice without fear of what they’ll think of me. I yearn to become more and more free of my inner inhibitions so my song can be sung with ever more notes. I yearn for the day when my song flows so freely that I don’t even recognize it because I never heard it so freely expressed. I yearn to join my brethren who sang their song at the sea.

It’s no wonder this all occurred at the sea. Water covers everything within it. Dry land leaves everything exposed. The symbolism of the splitting sea is the direction we must take to be able to sing our new song. When we let our deeper and truer self become exposed, no longer covered by the waters of fear, we suddenly discover our deeper self, exposed and revealed to ourselves and to the rest of the universe. It is at such a moment that we have begun to live up to who we were made to be.

Discover your song, sing at the top of your lungs because this is the sing we are all waiting to hear you sing.

There is only one moment you need to transform. By transforming this moment your entire life improves dramatically. It is this moment that Dr. Viktor Frankl refers to when he says, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

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I recently spent some time with my wife which can be a novelty when you have eight kids. During our time together my wife expressed a number of things that I do which she really appreciates. One was that I handle all of the finances for our family. Another was that whenever any of our kids need something arranged or taken care they know they can come to me and I will take care of it for them. I had expressed to my wife a number of things which I appreciate about her. One of them was her tireless dedication towards our children and her caring for them.

We were in the car on our way home and I passed my phone to my wife and asked her to type a text message to our daughter from me being that I was driving. Our daughter was going to be taking a train home from New York later that day. She has a debit card which she uses for purchases such as a train ticket. That morning I realized that there was no money in the debit card account so I wanted to let her know so she could plan accordingly and not get stuck in the train station without any money. I began to dictate the text that I wanted to send to her. Here’s what I said, “The debit card doesn’t have any money on it.”

At this moment, my wife suddenly interjected and with concern in her voice said, “How is she going to buy a train ticket and get home?” This was actually the exact same concern I had which was why I was sending her this text. However, the moment that my wife interjected with clear concern in her voice I was ready to jump into my natural defensive mode. I almost responded in some of the classic ways that I had responded in the past. “You think I didn’t think of that?” or “I don’t need your help handling this, I have this under control.” Or “Did you even know that the debit card to didn’t have any money in the account?” This is what I could have and would have said had I not begun practicing capturing this moment and transforming it.

Why would I respond in such defensive ways? For a simple reason. The way I heard my wife’s words was not as a concern for our daughter but as a judgment on me. My own insecurity translated my wife’s concern into an attack on me, assuming that she said I am not being responsible and I am putting our daughter in a very vulnerable situation and any other types of thoughts that we think when we are insecure. The irony of this all is that when I respond defensively, I can see from my wife’s look at me that she has no idea where I’m coming from. How can she? She said one thing and I am responding to a completely different statement.

In this particular situation, shortly beforehand we just had a conversation where I expressed heartfelt gratitude for the fact that she is so devoted to our children. Her question of how our daughter was going to buy a train ticket was out of her great dedication and concern for our children which I appreciate so much. I was also just reminded by her how much she appreciates that I handle the finances and the needs of the kids. It should have been clear to me that her statement was not a judgment on me at all but rather a loving mother’s instinctive concern about her child. Yet, when this very brief moment slips through our fingers and we don’t have the training to process what our loved ones say to us, we very often personalize their words due to our own defensiveness and insecurity.

What I did say in this instance, despite my awareness of those defensive feelings, was something unnatural for me. I said, “That’s the next issue I’m going to address in the text.” I then continued dictating the text. “If you need money to buy a ticket please borrow money from a friend and you’ll pay them back when you return.” Now, if you’re wondering how this all turned out, my daughter texted back shortly afterward that she had bought a round-trip ticket earlier in the week so she did not need to buy a ticket.

What I’m attempting to demonstrate is that there is only one moment you need to transform. By transforming this moment your entire life improves dramatically. It is this moment that Dr. Viktor Frankl refers to when he says, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” This space that Dr. Frankl speaks of takes only one second on the clock. This is part of the reason why it slips through our fingers so quickly. However, when we train ourselves to catch this second and use it to choose our response, so much of our life begins changing. If there’s one moment that can dramatically improve your life, it’s this moment.

There are two things I must point out about this moment.
1. It repeats itself numerous times a day. While this can be challenging, it means we have endless opportunities.
2. It requires repeated conscious practice to grab ownership of this space of power.

There is a process that we can follow which makes it much easier for us to capture this moment which repeats itself so often in life. When we follow this process we dramatically increase peacefulness, equanimity, enhanced relationships, and happiness in our lives. All of these benefits come out of capturing this one moment. It is this process that makes us less self-oriented as we stop personalizing everything that goes on around us.

Briefly, the process works like this:

1. Be aware of the words or action that took place.
2. Be aware of your personalized judgment of what it says about you.
3. Notice the negative feelings being created by your personalization.
4. Pause and create a space so you can reevaluate the event and the notice a more honest and less defensive version of what happened
5. Only then do you respond.

Practice this over and over and over as often as you can. You will notice a good number of opportunities to do this every single day when people engage you in one way or another. Capture this moment and you can’t imagine what this will do for your life.

Do you wish you knew how to do this? Do you believe that it isn’t really realistic to be able to capture this moment? Do you realize how this can transform your life? If you answered yes to these three questions you’ll want to go to beginning within.com and click on courses because it’s there that I will hold your hand step-by-step until you learn how to do this and experience a different life. I spent years putting this together for you. It’s finally done. Sometimes we spend our time and money on everything but the one thing. I can tell you from experience that this is the one thing that will transform everything.

Are you ready to take this on? Then meet me at beginningwithin.com and click on courses and if you have any questions whatsoever you can always email me at info@beginningwithin.com. Take it on!

I have tried to live by example and inspire others, inclusive of immediate family members. They might have gotten somewhat inspired, at times, but the flip side is that they absolutely drain me. I am running on a very low fuel. I can no longer continue to worry about them. I need to save myself from falling. Yet, if I stop “worrying” about them, they will most like stop with religious observance and that will bring me down, for I am outnumbered with absolutely no support. so I am in a lose-lose situation.

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Welcome to our first Ask Your Question podcast where you can ask me your questions and I’ll answer them on the podcast.  Just go to BeginningWithin.com/podcast where you can submit your question in writing or as a voice message.

Here is this week’s question:

I have tried to live by example and influence others, inclusive of immediate family members.  They might have gotten somewhat inspired at times but the flip side is that they absolutely drain me.  I am running on very very low fuel.  I can no longer continue to worry about them.  I need to save myself from falling.  Yet, if I stop worrying about them, they will most likely stop with religious observance and that will bring me down  for I am out numbered with absolutely no support.  I am in a lose‑lose situation.

Okay.  So here is what I would tell you, and I want to focus on a few points here, a few fundamental concepts.  And I’m sure there’s much more to the situation than I’m aware of but from what you shared, here is what I would tell you.  Number one, you must be clear that you must put on your oxygen mask first.  We have to always know that if we are running low on fuel, we can do nothing for others.  So we must take care of ourselves.  And here is what we need to remember about taking care of ourselves:  When we take care of ourselves to rejuvenate and refuel, we are not doing something selfish, we are actually doing something selfless.  The definition of selfish is when I’m doing things for me which are about me.  But when I’m doing things for me which are about my family or my friends, that’s selfless.  So you need to put on your own oxygen mask first and remember that by doing so you are actually being selfless.  That’s Number one.

Number two is, when we take responsibility for the failures or the wrongs which are out of our control, we begin destroying ourselves because it’s out of our control so I cannot take responsibility for your failures.  I can not take responsibility for your wrongs.  Even if you may be my relative and I feel like I should or could have some influence on you if I’m doing my best to exert that influence and yet my relative or my friend still does that wrong thing, they are responsible, not me.  When I carry responsibility for everything everyone is doing around me, I crush myself.  We cannot do that.  And this is actually the art of Beginning Within, to learn the art of not being the effect of the circumstances and people around us.  Because when we let the circumstances and people around us determine our well-being, we will always be out of control.  Because we are not in control, we’re letting everything else determine that.  We take responsibility for what is ours and we do everything possible to influence everything beyond that.

The next point I want to make is that we must do our best to have influence but we need to understand how influence works.  The best influence is always indirect.  That means that we don’t go to the other person and tell them, you need to change this.  Because then we are not influencing, we are actually trying to fix.  The way to create influence is by being a genuine, authentic example of what it is that we want to see in others.  That means that when the other person looks at me, they see me living my life this way in a pure state, not in a way that I’m doing it so that they will do it, but I’m doing it because I simply believe in it.  I learned this, for example, when different people who speak would tell me sometimes that they once gave a speech ‑‑ I have many colleagues who are rabbis and they tell me they once gave a speech and they were hoping a certain member of their community would listen because they had this issue and the person who has the issue is never the one who gets the message.  And there’s something I actually learned from this and that is that when we speak if we really want to have an influence on the people listening, we can’t be speaking to them, we need to be speaking to ourselves.  When we can find that issue in some way in ourselves and we discuss it as a point of how I struggle with this, how I work on this to change it because I know this is the right way, that’s when other people can hear it, when they see us working on it within ourselves.  And that’s a hard thing to do, especially when people are close to us or they are relatives.  Sometimes we want to go straight over to them and say, you shouldn’t be doing this.  But often, especially when people are adults, that is the wrong approach.  That is what I like to refer to as trying to exert power, where we’re trying to impose change on others.  And change always happens slowly, and it happens through influence, not through power.  And influence is best done when we are the example of what it is we want to see in another person.

And the last point I want to make is there’s a difference between our children, our young children and then teenagers and adults.  We have a responsibility to our young children because they are still immature and we need to actually use discipline.  And when I say discipline, I mean that we have to create boundaries for them because sometimes they might not even realize how dangerous, whether it’s physical danger or emotional danger or whatever it may be that certain things that they will do are.  So we need to actually exert.  We do need to use a certain element of power.  Again, I don’t mean physical power but I mean the power of imposing on them.  However, we need to realize that there is a scale.  And as our children are getting older, we need to be sliding on the scale from, we’ll say, control and power, towards influence.  And so imagine there’s a scale where you have control on one end and influence on the other.  We must be moving, as our children are getting older, from control to influence.  We always want to use influence instead of control but there are going to be circumstances, especially when our children are younger, where control is very important.  That is not going to be effective as they get older and older and so we need to continuously develop more and more influence.  And that influence comes from being the example.  And the question here actually begins by saying, I have tried to live by example.  Well, guess what, that’s fantastic because that is the best thing you can do.  The results are not in your hands.  What is expected of you is one thing, to do your best, live by example.  And if you’re doing that, don’t take responsibility for results.  Because results are God’s department or, in this case, the other person’s department.

So I wish you tremendous luck.  It’s not easy to implement these points overnight.  But if you think about them, with time, you will see a shift in the right direction. I wish you all the power to experience that.

Thanks for your question and I look forward to more questions.  Go to BeginningWithin.com/podcast and send them in.

My nature is to worry about things. My husband is the opposite: He always says, “Everything is going to be fine. It’s all going to work out in the end. God’s in control.” While I appreciate that outlook on life, and perhaps even envy it, I feel it can breed complacency and lead someone to be less proactive in changing a negative situation. He tells me “worrying won’t solve the problem,” but I feel that in many cases it can be a powerful motivator toward action.
Is worrying always bad?
Is there a way to reach a feeling of calm about the future without falling complacent?

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Here is this week’s question:  My nature is to worry about things.  My husband is the opposite.  He always says everything is going to be fine, it’s all going to work out in the end, God is in control.  While I appreciate that outlook on life and perhaps even envy it, I feel it can breathe complacency and lead someone to be less proactive in changing a negative situation.  He tells me worrying won’t solve the problem, but I feel that in many cases it can be a powerful motivator towards action.  Is worrying always bad?  Is there a way to reach a feeling of calm about the future without falling complacent?

So we have a whole lot over here and I’m going to focus on the two final questions.  Is worrying always bad?  I wouldn’t say worrying is bad and that’s because we all worry.  We all worry.  So I don’t want to use the word bad.  I would say that worrying is unhealthy.  It’s unhealthy and it’s unhealthy because it stems from the fear of something, we are in fear of something, and whenever we enter into a state of fear, it has a lot to do with the fact that we are personalizing this event or anticipated possible event affecting me in some way instead of objectively looking at the situation.

So worry also is a very unhealthy way to motivate ourselves.  And when we use unhealthy ways to motivate ourselves, while it will motivate, it does work, but it actually leaves us prone to be much more inefficient than we should be and it leaves us prone to stumbling because we are not using a healthy motivator.

Now, let me use an example to explain what I just said because it may have sounded very philosophical but I want to ground it so it’s very clear.  I am actually going to speak this weekend at an event which I was invited to be a guest speaker at.  And I was getting nervous about this event and whether my speech is the right speech and whether it’s going to be received well.  Is that problematic?  Well, on the one hand, we can say it’s normal.  Most probably most people who go up to speak to a crowd which is not their familiar audience is going to be nervous.  However, even though it is very normal, it is still, if we look at it truly, it is unhealthy.  And the reason why I say it’s unhealthy, ideally even though it’s very very common and hard to overcome, but I describe it as unhealthy because the reason why I get nervous is when I begin to personalize the speech.  What I mean by that is when I’m thinking about what are people going to be thinking about me?  What are people going to be thinking about how good of a speaker I am?  How are people going to like the way I presented?  And all of these different types of feelings, which are all an outcome of the way I’m bringing my identity into what I am doing and defining my value based on the presentation.

Now, here is the reality.  The reality is that I am very prepared and I am going to bring my very best to the stage.  And whether people do or do not love the speech that I give, I have done the best I can do and I cannot offer any more than that.

And if I was not personalizing the speaking, I’d be very comfortable and clear about that.  Here I am, I’m going to give my whole being to you now and this is the best I can do.  Of course, I’m not verbalizing that to the audience, but that is the way I do not ‑‑ I can bring myself to the event without personalizing it.  And, actually, when I do that, which I actually process in my head, I’m far less nervous because I’m taking everything God has given to me and I will do my best with it.

So we worry when we are personalizing the event and we’re worried about how that is going to affect me, how that is ‑‑ what is that going to say about me, etc. When we look at the event objectively and just simply say what ‑‑ how can I make the best of this situation, the worry goes away.  And because the worry goes away, we are actually able to bring our full healthy consciousness to dealing with the problem in the best way possible.

One of the examples I love giving about this, which I give in many examples that have to do with unhealthy emotions, are commandos in an Army.  Commandos in an Army, if they are going to get into an unhealthy emotional state, if they are going to start worrying in the middle of a mission when things did go wrong, they have every reason to worry, they’re trained not to worry because the moment they start worrying it distracts them from proper results.

So we need to hopefully learn how to bring our full motivation to resolving an issue or making, preventing an issue or bringing a great outcome to something in the future without the worry but with a motivation of truly caring that that should turn out to be the best that it can be.

The second question is, is there a way to reach a feeling of calm about the future without falling complacent?  Well, if I get calm ‑‑ and this is a great question because normally we have this conflict.  The easiest way to be calm about something we normally worry about is to stop caring.  And that’s really the question.  Is there a way to feel calm without becoming complacent?  Can you feel calm and yet feel full concern for a situation?

So either we worry, which is unhealthy, or we stop caring, which is very unhealthy.  Can we care without worrying?  And the answer is absolutely yes, although it is a life long journey to learn how to do this and I encourage everyone to go on this journey.  We must go on this journey.  It actually makes us very powerful people as we grow on this journey of learning slowly but surely as we evolve to worry less while being fully concerned about the situation.  And we do this by integrating our belief in God into our tangible life.

Integrated belief.  That means when we integrate our belief in our life.  We call that in English faith.  Or as Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes, faith is not certainty; it is the courage to live with uncertainty.

So when we can actually learn to take steps in an environment of uncertainty knowing that I am doing the best I can do and this is actually what God instructs me to do, if that’s such a situation, but even if not, as long as I am taking all of the wisdom that God has given me and I’m making the best choice I can make in this situation, which is the best I can do with this situation which God has given me, then I know that I am doing my best, there’s no need to worry because, as your husband says, worry does not help, it actually distracts greatly.  And you will make the best situation when you’re not worrying.

How can you measure your faith?  Very easily.  By how much you worry.  When we worry a lot, we know our faith is low.  When we begin to worry less, that means that our faith is growing unless, of course, we are turning into a complacent person.  But assuming that we’re not really concerned about doing our best, we’re not worrying, that means our faith is growing, which is fantastic.  Is this easy?  No. Should we strive for this?  Absolutely.  This must be on our radar and part of our goals.  And part of all of this is accepting what is in our lives as coming from God for a purpose and doing everything possible to change it to the future.

So these are the two keys.  We have to accept what is but not with resignation but also with a mission to change it for the future.  So when I accept that this is the situation now, I’m not worried, I’m accepting that this is clearly what God wants from me right now and then I say, how can I do everything possible to change it for the future?

And the best ‑‑ the best, simplest way to sum this up is whenever you have a situation, ask yourself why is God doing this for me as opposed to asking why is God doing this to me.  When you ask why is God doing this for you, you’re acknowledging that God is putting this in your life for a purpose and there’s great value here.

Now, how do you know if when you begin not worrying as much it’s faith or maybe it is complacency?  How can we determine when it’s just complacency or it’s really faith?  Or, when our spouse tells us to stop worrying so much just have some faith, well maybe they’re just being complacent.  How do we know for ourselves ‑‑ because our spouse needs to know for themselves ‑‑ how do we know for ourselves whether it’s faith or complacency?

The answer is very simple, if we are not worried, we are calm but we are still motivated to do something, that’s a sign that we are having faith.  But if we are not worrying and we’re not motivated to do something, there’s a very strong likelihood most likely it’s complacency because that’s exactly what complacency is.

So it depends on where our lack of worry comes from, complacency or faith and trust.  And another quick point in regards to relationships is that our concerns are for different things, so sometimes some concerns that my wife has may be very different than the concerns that I have; and the concerns that I have may be very different than the concerns that my wife has.  And I have a tendency, of course, to be very faithful about my wife’s concerns because I’m not concerned about them and that’s really complacency.  And it may work vice versa, I don’t know.  But, you know, every relationship is very different.

The point is that we all need to assess for ourselves whether we’re being complacent because we’re really not concerned about it or whether we are not worrying because we have faith and that’s indicated by how motivated we are to still change the way things are for the future.

While worry may not be healthy, what’s wrong with using it to get you to do the right thing? Very often we use anger to motivate us to do things we otherwise might not do? Is there an issue with using the wrong motivation to do the right thing?

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While worry may not be healthy, what’s wrong with using it to get you to do the right thing?

How many times have you tried to improve your life and relationships only to find yourself back where you started?  Real change can’t happen without a proven method and the tools to implement it.  That’s why I included nine powerful exercises in my Beginning Within Master Course.  Are you really committed to experiencing more common peace in your life, meaningful relationships without the drama?  If you’re really committed, this course was made for you.  And there’s no risk.  There’s a 30‑day money back guarantee.  Just go to BeginningWithin.com.

Welcome to another episode of Ask Your Question.  And this week’s question is, while worry may not be healthy, what’s wrong with using it to get you to do the right thing?  Very often we use anger to motivate us to do things we otherwise might not do.  Is there an issue with using the wrong motivation to do the right thing?

Great question.  And the truth is that the most important thing is doing the right thing, not the motivation.  So it’s far more important to do the right thing with the wrong motivation than having the right motivation but not doing the right thing.

Similar to when there is a fire, you don’t start filtering the water.  You use dirty water to put out the fire.  However, as we pursue higher and higher levels of efficiency and effectiveness in life, motivation plays a very important role.  Because when we do the right thing for the wrong motivation, the wrong motivation always makes us prone to stumbling, doing certain aspects of what we’re doing in a way in which it should not be done and similar types of challenges.

For example, when we worry, a part of us is consumed with an emotion which is distracting us from what it is that we need to do.  Anger would be the perfect example of this.  And the example I like to use is a boxer.  If a boxer gets angry at their opponent during a boxing match, then they stop being strategic in their strikes.  So they may have a burst of energy and start throwing punches, but usually, those punches will not be accurate or timed well or positioned well because the anger distracts them from being strategic.

And that’s a perfect example of wrong motivation, where wrong motivation actually takes away from our effectiveness and our efficiency.  And that’s the reason why ultimately we want to refine ourselves so that we don’t have unhealthy emotions because it makes us much more powerful in life.

And this goes back to the example I used in last week’s episode of nervousness.  It’s very normal to get nervous but our nervousness is typically, not always, but typically it is from our own self-consciousness when we’re in a situation.  And that can actually be diminished to some extent and that makes us that much more effective.  I know when I am nervous and doing something while on one hand, it motivates me, on the other hand, it’s also distracting because I’m more concerned about appearances or what other people are thinking than I am about making sure that my message may be resonating with people.  This would be in a case of when I’m speaking.

And, likewise, we have another example of the right thing with the wrong motivation, competition.  When competition drives us, while competition can be a very strong driver, very often that turns into me out doing you, that is my barometer of success.  And that is, firstly, not a true barometer of success because sometimes I may outdo the other person but I’m still not doing very well and sometimes that person drops out and then because they’ve dropped out I lose my motivation because my entire motivation was external coming from not wanting them to do better than me versus me truly being dedicated to whatever it is that I’m doing.

So there’s a Jewish teaching that tells us that we should do things with the wrong motivation but still doing the right thing because eventually, we will start doing things with the right motivation.

However, we need to keep in mind to pursue the right motivation because that is what makes the difference between a very effective, efficient and powerful person and someone who is always tripping over themselves because they are always consumed with personalizing whatever is going on around them and feeling self-conscious, which always takes away from being focused on the right thing and the result that we need to bring out.

Thank you for joining me for this episode.  To get the most out of the podcast go to our website at BeginningWithin.com for a free gift called, Seven Timeless Laws For Changing Your Life Now.  And please remember to rate, review and subscribe to this podcast because that’s how new listeners find us.

Asking in place of accusing is always the better approach. Instead of defensiveness, you get facts. It also can be the gateway to deep trust in a relationship.

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Hello there, everyone.  Today I want to share with you a very simple and yet challenging tip that can be very transformative in my and your life.  And this came out of a discussion I was having in a class where we were studying the very well-known Biblical story of Adam and Eve where G-d turns to Adam, after he eats from the tree and goes into hiding and says, Where are you?  And Adam’s response is that I heard your sound in the garden, your voice in the garden and so, therefore, I went ‑‑ and I am naked so I hid.  And G-d then said, Who told you that you’re naked?  Have you eaten from the tree which I told you not to eat from?

G-d does something very simple over here.  G-d doesn’t say why did you and makes an accusation but G-d asks a question, “Where are you?”  And asking the question actually softens the reality and makes it easier for Adam to come to terms with the reality, although he still doesn’t do that right away.

But we all know that what normally happens when someone accuses us of something is that we get defensive.  We actually run away from the reality.  Whereas, when we are not attacked or accused but we are only asked, it makes it much easier for us to face up to what it is that we have done.

So imagine this scenario, imagine that your spouse or your friend is taking the car to go to work and you tell them, Look, the car is almost on empty, there’s almost no gas left.  Make sure to pick up gas on your way to work.  And you get a call 20 minutes later from your spouse or your friend and they say, Hi, I really need your help, I’m stuck on the side of the road.  And you already know what happened.  They ran out of gas.  What is the classic response?  Well, why didn’t you fill it with gas?  What’s wrong with you?  I told you it’s on empty and I told you you’re going to run out of gas.  Why didn’t you listen?  Right?

Now, that is such a classic response that it’s quite common that the person making the call for the help is already waiting for the onslaught and the attack and the accusations to come.  They’re already worked up themselves anticipating what is going to be coming from you.

There is another way that we can respond and that is with a question.  What happened?  Did you run out of gas?  Very simple.  Instead of saying, why did you, we ask what happened, did you run out of gas?  And they will say yes.  And then you can simply say, Okay, let me help you so that we can get you moving and get to work.  And we remove the entire drama.  We help them as we would regardless, and we are saving ourselves from the divisiveness that gets put into our relationship.

And this all sounds like a beautiful communication tip because many people say that relationships are all about communication.  And I am here to tell you that this is not a communication tip.  This is actually much deeper than a communication tip because relationships are far deeper than communication.  It’s not about how we communicate, it’s how we feel.  Our communication is only an outcome of the way we are feeling.  You see, when we simply learn how to say the right things, the feelings behind the right words that we’re saying aren’t there and they come across very strongly

So here is the actual tip.  The actual tip isn’t not to accuse but to ask, the tip is to understand why we accuse.  And once we understand why we accuse, we can change that so that we stop accusing.

You see, when the person calls up and says, I ran out of gas, the reason why you or I may get frustrated or angry and point fingers and make accusations is because we are thinking about ourselves.  Oh, my goodness, now I have to take care of all of this.  I have to make calls, I have to make sure you get the gas, what a headache, why did you have to do this to me.  However, when we are fully focused on the fact that this other person is trying to get to work and stuck on the side of the road, regardless of why it happened, that is the reality that they’re in.  And we just clarify that they are out of gas and say, Okay, I’ll be right on it.  Then who are we thinking about?  Not ourselves, but them.

Bottom line, whenever we are consumed in ourselves we will never respond properly; whenever we are consumed by the reality or the other person, we will have a much healthier response.  And that’s the reason why Adam was in defensive mode and God wanted to soften that so God asked him a question, because who was God in fact thinking about?  God was thinking about Adam.  And when we think about another person, then we speak appropriately, we don’t blow the fuse and we don’t make accusations.  The accusations are a direct outcome of the fact that we are consumed with ourselves.  And that ‑‑ which is the natural reaction.  But we want to pursue in our lives living the unnatural or what I would call the supra natural way which always offers the most productive reaction.

And imagine this, if you consider this, too, you will understand how powerful this is.  The person making the call that they ran out of gas is in most instances anticipating the accusations that are going to come.  That’s what they’re used to from most of the people around them.  They already are experiencing so much negative energy, which is completely unnecessary, even before they make the call.  And the fact that you respond positively diffuses all of their negative energy from them, A.  And, B, it instills in them this beauty that in their relationship with you, you are not there to point fingers at them but you’re always there to cover their back.  And that creates such an enormous level of trust and such an enormous feeling of love and caring that it does wonders for a relationship.  If you’ve ever done this you know exactly what I’m talking about.  If you’ve been the recipient of such a response, you really know what I’m talking about.  And if you never experienced this, I encourage you to offer it to the people who are very near and dear to you and you will see the beauty of it.

So I want to leave you with this challenge:  The next time someone does something which is causing you an inconvenience, instead of accusing them of having done things in a way that they should not have, even if that is 100 percent true, just be there for them.

One point we always need to remember, you’re not going to change the way they decided to approach that situation because clearly you told them to do it one way and they decided to do it a different way.  But you can change the way you react.  And the way you react to them will influence them to reconsider the way they do things.

Take it on and experience the beautiful results from it.

What makes giving difficult is that it’s giving of myself. Giving of myself to another is always difficult. This is why justifications abound around giving.

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What makes giving difficult is it is giving of myself and giving of myself to someone else is always difficult.

I want to talk to you today about giving.  Are you a giver?  Do you describe yourself as a giver or do you struggle to give?  Do you give easy compliments?  Are you quick to share money, your time or whatever other assets or talents or gifts that you have?

We’re all inspired by givers, especially when we are the benefactor of a giver.  However, it’s much harder for us to give ourselves.  And sometimes we just don’t see ourselves as givers.  Sometimes we don’t even realize how much we have to give.  This itself is a tremendous tragedy when we don’t realize how much we have to give because we all have so much to give.

You see, giving, generally speaking, is a selfless act.  Because if I give of myself to someone else, it is selfless.  I would actually describe it as holy.  And it can be very difficult.  And let’s be very clear about why giving can be very difficult.  And I say we need to be clear because we can use justifications all the time to hide behind what makes giving truly difficult.  What makes giving difficult is it is giving of myself.  And giving of myself to someone else is always difficult.  That is something which is hard.

So when someone comes to me and tells me that they are starting a nonprofit just like mine, they are a budding start‑up Rabbi and they’re raising money.  Right, I can always justify not supporting them by saying, look, hey, I’m doing the exact same thing as you and I have to raise money every single day as well, what’s the point of me giving you money?  Or, I can say, we all have something to give.  And, therefore, I am going to give this person to support them, to show them that what they’re doing is good, is important, and I want to support what they’re doing.  And so I actually try to give them relatively generously so that they see that I’m not only just giving them but I’m extending myself to them.  Because giving in and of itself is, generally speaking, a selfless, holy act.  That’s not true 100 percent of the time but that is usually true.

So I want to break down giving into a number of categories and my hope is that in going through these categories, we can see the process that we can go through as individuals in growing as a giver and moving forward in our mindset as a giver.

There’s no question that certain times giving can be destructive.  That’s like when we spoil our kids or when we give someone money and we know that they’re going to use it in a self‑destructive way.  No question about that.  And if we know, we can determine that a certain situation is such, then we definitely should not be giving.  And this teaches us something very important and that is that everything that we do must be led by a perspective, not by our feelings.  If we are natural givers, as some people are, if we follow our emotional nature, we will always give, even when it’s destructive.  So we always need to be led by a perspective.  And the perspective is that when giving is proper, we should give; when it’s destructive, the destructive giving is truly just a small percentage of giving.  We like to make it a larger percentage to justify our not giving but it’s actually a very small percentage of our giving opportunities.  But when it’s there, we need to use our minds, even if we are givers to control ourselves.

But then there is a second stage of giving and that is when we have an opportunity to give and we don’t give.  And the reason why we don’t give is not that we shouldn’t be but because we use a judgment on the other person or situation to justify why we shouldn’t give.  In other words, we are so entrenched in not giving it’s so difficult for us that we find every single excuse why we shouldn’t give.  So we convince ourselves that the other doesn’t deserve it, that they need to take more responsibility, why should I give, someone else can give, et cetera.      And in those situations, we need to realize what is going on within us.  We need to realize that we are justifying not giving instead of doing what we should be doing, which is giving.                 There’s another stage above that and that is giving begrudgingly.  That’s when we know we should give and we are clear that we should give, our head is very clear but our heart is caught up in some other place.  Our heart hasn’t caught up with our mind and so we emotionally don’t want to give.  And, thank God, we listen to our head and we give.  But we give begrudgingly because we’re still upset about it, we wish the person hadn’t asked us, we wish we hadn’t bumped into them or whatever that circumstance is.  But we did and we give, we know it’s the right thing to do.  But it’s a very difficult thing for us to do.  That’s fine.  If we’re clear about that, that’s actually an advanced level for us to at least be aware of the fact that I know I did the right thing and I know my heart is not yet in the right place and that can give us the ability to aspire to get to a better place, to align our heart with our mind a little bit more.

And that is the next level.  The next level is when we learn to give generously.  That means our heart has caught up with our mind.  And not only do we understand why we should be giving, but we actually feel to give.  And that’s when we can give generously with a full heart, where we can make the person, the recipient, the one who we are giving feels so good because we demonstrate to them how much we value the need that there is and that we are happy to give, we are happy to support.  And that’s very very powerful.

There’s actually one more level of giving, which is even higher than giving generously.  And this is very advanced and this is giving compassionately.  Giving compassionately is when the other person doesn’t deserve to be given.  They truly don’t deserve to be given.  However, we know that if we show them compassion, even though they don’t deserve and say, look, I know you don’t deserve this but I’m going to support you anyway, we may not verbalize that but we feel in our hearts that this person doesn’t really deserve it but we want to extend ourselves to them because we know by extending ourselves and showing them compassion that in itself will uplift them.  And that will actually help them get to a better place.  That is giving with compassion.  And so that’s when the person doesn’t even necessarily deserve, but we go beyond the judgment of whether the person deserves or not and we say, but this person needs a loving arm around them, they need to feel the compassion, the embracing of another human being.  And we give them and that transforms them.

And I’m sharing all of this so that the next time you have a situation where you can give, you should truly ask yourself if you are thinking, you’re still deliberating should I be giving or not, you should ask yourself, why am I deliberating?  What is my conflict?  Is it a conflict because I really don’t know if it is healthy for me to give to this situation?  Or is it that my heart has not yet caught up with my mind?  And even if it’s a situation where you decided not to give, ask yourself, even though you chose not to give, why did you truly decide not to give?  Was it because you don’t want to give?  Or is it truly because it’s an unhealthy situation which doesn’t warrant giving?

Answering these questions is the way we transform our inner being and we become more selfless and holy people and greater givers.

Only if we’re thirsty for a resolution or an answer will we find one. This is why, before going into meetings I ask myself, “What is my objective? What outcome am I seeing?”

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Before going into meetings, I always try and ask myself, what is my objective?  What outcome am I seeking?

Have you ever noticed that how thirsty we are for a particular result will have a significant impact on our success in achieving what it is that we’re seeking?  When we’re not very thirsty, we’re not very determined, then it’s going to be much harder to achieve whatever it is that we’re seeking.  That’s why determination is far more important than skill.  Someone can be very skilled but if they’re not determined, they will not use their skill to achieve what they’re seeking.  However, when someone is determined, they will compensate for any lack of skill.

And that’s why this saying is so true, that it’s not the size of the man in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the man.  The size of the determination.  The size of how thirsty we really are to get the results that we want.

I’ve noticed in many projects that I do that sometimes I’m not really determined, I’m not really ready to go all the way and make sure that this is going to happen.  But when I have that determination, that no matter what I must make this happen, that is when I know that I’m going to and I always do see results.

And very often when we’re in conflict, and I found this as well, when I’m in conflict with another person, I’m not really thirsty for a resolution.  I get distracted by my need to be right or to look good.  And when I can recalibrate myself and ask myself, what do I really want out of this conflict, do I really want to see a resolution, if I can refocus myself that is when I actually see myself focused on a resolution.  And that’s the reason why before going into meetings I always try and ask myself, what is my objective?  What outcome am I seeking?  Because when I walk into a meeting and I know exactly what outcome I want to seek, I can stay focused on that and I don’t let other things distract me.  I don’t get worried about whether I’m right or they’re right or whether this is making me look better or worse because I know exactly what outcome I want and I stay focused on that.

And this is really powerful because, in particular, when we are in conflict with another person and we want to have a resolution, we can actually sit through a meeting where we will be entirely wrong, based on the other person’s words, and whether we, in fact, are wrong or not is irrelevant to us because we’re not focused on being right or wrong, we’re focused on the resolution.  So that person can insist we’re wrong and we can be fine with that even though that’s not true because we’re not here to be right.  We’re here to resolve the conflict.

And this is the truth behind what Stephen Covey teaches in his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, seek first to understand, then to be understood.  The only way we can sit with someone else and spend our time understanding them, especially when they have a completely different viewpoint than we do, is when we walk into that meeting saying, I want to understand where this person is coming from.  I’m not here simply to impose my view on the other person by speaking as loudly as I can over them but I want to hear what they have to say.

We need to have the right mindset when we walk into the meeting in order to be able to have a conversation with someone in that way.  And this is the reason why when we are thirsty, we know we will do anything to get something to drink.  And the thirstier we become, the more open we become to entertaining possibilities that we haven’t entertained before.  And this is exactly why hitting rock bottom can be so effective.  Because if we weren’t open enough until we hit rock bottom, hitting rock bottom sometimes opens us up to possibilities that we would never otherwise entertain.  And so it’s an unfortunate blessing that enters into our life because when we slam really hard on the bottom, we suddenly say, hey, I need to consider things I wasn’t considering until now.

So when we’re in conflict with another person, what do we really want?  Do we really want to let them know how terrible they are?  How wrong they are?  How foolish they are?  Or do we really want to find a resolution to the conflict?

The way we engage in that conversation tells us how thirsty we really are for resolution.  And I’ve encountered this a lot when people ask me questions, they’ll ask me why, why this, why that, different questions that people have.  And I can tell from the way they’re asking the question that they don’t really want an answer, they’re not thirsty for an answer, they’re thirsty to let me know how strong their question is.  So very often I’ll ask them, well, how badly do you want an answer?  Typically they’ll say, well, I really want an answer, that’s why I’m asking the question.  But I try to demonstrate to them that it doesn’t sound like they really want an answer.  And from the resistance of anything I will tell them it can be quite clear that they’re not seeking an answer.

And so when we ask questions, we have to ask ourselves, do we really want an answer to this question?  Sometimes we like to stick with the question, either because we’re so proud of it or because we’re more comfortable in the question because that supports our world view or whatever it may be rather than actually hearing an answer which may change the way we see everything.  So I like to show people sometimes that if you stay with that question, you can.  But I want you to realize that living with that question the rest of your life may keep you in a very painful place or in a very unsettling place.  And it may be worthwhile to open yourself up to truly seeking an answer.  Because seeking an answer will actually give you a lot more peace in your life and take away the pain that you’re living in.

And this is the reason why if we want to move on in life, then we need to be thirsty for a new way instead of being comfortable insisting on the way that we’ve been using.  If we want to grow in life as a person, we have to be ready to approach everything with an open mind.  And we do that when we are thirsty to move on in life when we are thirsty to grow.  Because that thirst is like someone who has hit rock bottom.  When we are thirsty, we are ready to drink new ideas that we weren’t open to until now.

And so I encourage you, as I always try to encourage myself, make sure you’re always thirsty for a new type of drink because that may be the drink that will transform your life.

There are a few basics steps we can follow that will help us truly care for other people. It’s a very powerful thing to do for another.

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There are actually a few basic steps that we can go through that will help us truly care for other people, which is a very powerful thing to do for another.

Can you remember a time when you shared something with someone, something personal that you were going through and you were able to sense that the other person didn’t really care?  They acted like they cared, they said things that demonstrated care, but you knew that they didn’t really care.

One of the ways that I really learn about where I need to improve is when I look at experiences that have affected me and how I felt about them and then I ask myself, well, how am I in such a situation?  So in the context of caring, when someone shares something they’re going through, how much do I really care about what they’re going through?  I’m not talking about showing the other person that I care, I’m talking about truly caring.  Because showing someone that you care, while it’s better than not showing at all but, ultimately, where we are at really always comes through.  And if we truly do not care or we care to some extent but we’re not truly engaged in what they’re going through, then the person knows at what level we’re at with them.

And wouldn’t it be beautiful if we gave others what we wish we would get from others, that when we’re going through something and we’re sharing with them that they’re really attentive and that they really feel for us?  And in the case where they can actually do something about it, they would do something about it.

Someone tells me that they lost their job.  That is frightening.  And the question is, how much do I feel the fear and the concern that they are feeling?  Is there something I can do to help them?  Not just an off‑the‑cuff question of can I do something to help them but to actually take a few minutes to think about whether there is a way I can help them.

Someone tells me that they’re lonely.  What can I do about that?  Maybe I can find someone to put them together with that they can spend time with, which would be a mutually beneficial relationship.  Have I even given time and effort to thinking and brainstorming?  Am I feeling the pain of their loneliness?

Someone tells me they’re ill, they’re sick, right.  So these things are all things that can be dismissed very easily or they are things that we can take a few moments to really put ourselves in their shoes, to the best of our ability, and not only feel what they’re going through, which is very very important, but to actually care enough to do something about it.  Not just the classic proverbial, so sorry to hear that, I hope things are going to improve or whatever it may be.

Now, it’s not always about doing something because sometimes we truly cannot do anything for them.  Often all people really need for us is to truly emotionally care, that we really care about what they’re going through and they can feel that we are really hoping that this is going to be resolved for them.  Because often the person themselves can fix their problem but they still need the emotional support that we all need when we’re going through something.

And this always comes from caring, when we have that friend or that family member who truly takes the time to care.  And caring is not easy.  Because we all have a lot going on in our lives, it requires a mental and emotional focus.  And as with everything, mental focus means I have to take my mental focus away from myself so that I can be thinking about another person.  Emotional focus means I have to stop thinking and even caring for these few moments about myself and to put my full emotional focus on the other person because this is always the obstacle.

It’s that common thought that pops up the moment someone is sharing something with me.  And that is, how is this going to affect me?  How much time is this going to cost me?  How much money is this going to cost me?

We have a nature of turning everything that goes on in our lives into how it reflects about ourselves.  And as long as we are thinking about how it reflects us, we cannot possibly truly care for the other person.

There are actually a few basic steps that we can go through that will help us truly care for other people, which is a very powerful thing to do for another.  Number one is to simply be aware.  Awareness is the most powerful thing.  So if someone is sharing something with me and I am consumed by something going on in my own life or I don’t want to be bothered by their issue, the first and most important thing is to be aware of this, to simply acknowledge that I’m too caught up in myself to want to care about the other person.  And once we have that awareness, we can actually do something about it, even though we’re not yet really truly caring.  Because the second step is to ask ourselves, if I wasn’t thinking about myself and I was truly thinking about them and caring about them, what would I do?  What would I do if I was truly caring about them?

So I’m telling myself, true, I don’t really care, but what would I do if I did care?  Or, another question would be, in reverse but accomplishing the same thing, if you were in that situation that they are in, what would you want them to do for you?  And now you have something tangible that you know can be done, which would be a genuine expression of care.    And, of course, Step Number 3 is do that.  Even though you may not emotionally be there, you may not be feeling the care, but you are in enough control of yourself that you can get yourself to do what you should do for them even though you’re not emotionally there.  And you will find that as you go through this process, your emotions will come along with you.  And you will be training yourself to be a person that learns to truly care for someone else.

And you will become a rare and much-needed presence in the lives of other people.  And you will also be connecting to people on the truest level, where you meet them, not where they meet you.

The reason why we only listen to certain people is largely because of the way they speak to us. This explains why people don’t listen to us. It’s not only because they don’t listen, it’s because of the way we speak.

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The reason why we only listen to certain people is largely, not entirely but largely, because of the way they speak to us.

How often is it that you say things to people and they simply don’t listen?  You tell your spouse something and they don’t listen.  You tell your children things, they don’t listen.  You tell your friend things, they don’t listen.  People simply don’t listen.  And when they don’t listen, what do we classically say?  Oh, you never listen.  Oh, they never listen.  We always blame the other person for being someone who never listens.  And that’s the reason why we’re not being heard, because they’re just people who don’t listen.

Yet, what’s shocking is, that when a friend proposes the exact same idea that we suggested to them, we suddenly see that they listen, which only outrages us more.  You listen to them but you don’t listen to me?  Why do you always listen to them and how come you never listen to me?  And we become outraged by this.  However, if they are people who never listen, why do they listen to their friend and why don’t they listen to us?

So I’d like to ask you two questions.  Number one, by blaming them after they don’t listen and saying, oh, you never listen, does that ever help in getting them to listen?  Or, do they continue not to listen?

And, Question Number two, is it in fact true that they never listen?  Apparently, they do, because they listen to their friend.

So let’s reverse the tables here so that it will be easier to look at this more objectively.  Let’s talk about a scenario where someone is giving us an idea and we are not listening.  Right, so our spouse or our parent or our friend is telling us something or suggesting something and we just don’t listen.  I hear what you’re saying, but, whatever.  And they then tell us, what’s wrong with you, you never listen to anything I say.  When they say what’s wrong with you, you never listen to anything I say, does that encourage us to listen to them now because they said that?  Or does that only solidify us not listening to them?  In many cases, it only solidifies us not listening to them.  Why?  Because that type of a judgemental statement, oh, you never listen to anything I say, only creates a greater separation between us and them and so we just further our not listening to them.  So not only is our perspective that they never listen or you never listen not productive, as we just demonstrated, but I want to tell you that it’s also not true.

We listen to our friend when our friend tells us the exact same idea.  So why is it that we didn’t listen to our parent or our spouse or whoever it may have been?  It’s not because we don’t listen.  It’s because we only listen to certain people.  And the reason why we only listen to certain people is largely, not entirely but largely, because of the way they speak to us.  And this is true when we speak to others.  The reason why our child or our spouse will listen to their friend before they listen to us is largely because of the way we speak to them.  Not because they don’t listen.

So instead of dumping the blame on them, we should take responsibility for the way we speak, at least that’s what we should do if we want to see better results.

So here is the key to speaking to another person so that they will listen, and this key can take many years to perfect because it’s not easy and it’s got to be a reflection of who we are as a person.  If we’re putting this on, it’s never going to fly because people read right through us.

The moment we speak to another person and any part of our speaking to them carries a personal agenda, even if it’s only 50 percent of it or only 20 percent of what we’re saying to the other person, but part of it is a personal benefit, then it makes it very difficult and I would say nearly impossible for the other person to listen to us.  Because they’re not hearing a clear message that is out of pure concern for them, they hear an agenda and that automatically gets them to reject what we’re telling them.  It’s very hard for us to do this because it’s very hard for us to speak with complete concern for another person.  That is a very selfless thing to do and it’s very hard for us to be that selfless.

Most often, if you pay close attention and you’re a little bit honest, you will notice that when we are telling someone something harsh or a correction, whatever it may be, it’s with some form of anger.  And we’re more interested in letting them know how wrong they are or that the way they’re doing it is wrong or that what they’re doing is frustrating me and, therefore, they should stop doing it that way.  We’re more interested in letting off some steam or sometimes in letting them know that they are wrong.  And it’s a form of self-righteousness and that is a communication which has so much to do with us and far too little to do with them.  And, therefore, they reject what we’re telling them.  And this is exactly why most criticism is actually ineffective.  Because the way we criticize very often carries a significant element of how I am so frustrated with the way you are or with the way you just did that as opposed to being completely concerned that the person be able to produce better results in their life for themselves or that they do things which are wiser for themselves.  It’s more how that bad choice affects me and I can’t stand it.        And when people hear us speaking that way, they have a very hard time listening.  The same way we have a very hard time listening to people who speak to us that way.  Only when our concern is for the other person alone do most people listen.

Now, this isn’t a black and white thing.  The reality is this:  The more we can communicate with people without our own personal agendas drawn into the conversation, the higher a percentage there will be of another person listening to us; the more we are bringing our own agenda into the conversation, the smaller a chance the other person will listen to us.  And the reason is not because they don’t listen, it’s because we don’t know how to talk, which is to talk out of complete concern for them instead of a talk which sounds like concern for them but really is a release, letting off steam or whatever it may be for ourselves.

So next time you expect someone to listen, I would suggest that you listen to yourself as well.  And pay attention to whether it is truly all about them that you are telling them, that when you’re speaking to them is it truly all about them or is some of it really about you.  The more you ask this question and the more you minimize your conversations with people being about you, the more people will be listening.

True mastery is being insulted by someone in front of a group of friends while maintaining the clarity of mind that what he’s saying is all a reflection of him and not a reflection of you.

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Imagine someone telling you some insulting comments, straight to your face they just insult you; imagine they are insulting you in front of a group of people, a group of friends, so it could be embarrassing, and you have the clarity of mind to understand that the words he’s saying are entirely a reflection of him and not a reflection of you.

The way we engage with other people and with the world around us makes all the difference in how we experience life and how we experience this world.

There are common ways of engaging with the world where the world overwhelms us, over takes us, dominates us.  But there is a way for us to be engaged with the world without getting lost in the world.  And this is really the key to true mastery of life.

Generally speaking, there are two approaches to dealing with something which is a challenge.  Let’s take food as an example.  We all have weaknesses when it comes to certain foods and there are certain foods which are not healthy for us and, yet, we have a desire to eat them.  So what do we do about that?  Well, the simplest way to deal with that is to keep the food out of your house.  If it’s not available to you, then you can’t engage with it.  Very simple.  The risk of keeping the food in the house is that you will indulge.  So when the food is present, it’s very difficult to control ourselves.  So one way of dealing with that is just out of sight out of mind.

But that’s not the most powerful way of dealing with it.  Even though that is a smart thing to do, keep the food out, that’s very smart because we know the reality of this challenge of engagement that I’m talking about.  However, the truest level of mastery is having the food present and not letting the food control me but me having a very clear focus on why I eat and why I shouldn’t be eating that particular food.

Let’s look at this in the context of relationships.  Certain people bring up pain for us.  We go to an event or to a celebration and let’s say there’s some family member there who we have some bad history with and just seeing them brings up emotion.  I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about.

So what do we do?  Well, there are a number of things to do.  Some people don’t even go to the celebration, they just stay away.  Some people will go to the celebration but they will always stay on the other side of the room.  They’re living totally at the affect of this other person.  Some people go up to the person, but what ends up happening is they lose it and they give the person a mouthful and they say things that they shouldn’t say.  And we are engaging with the person but we are not engaging properly.

So either we disengage or we engage inappropriately.  Just like the food, either we disengage with the food or engage with the food but in an unhealthy way.  The true master is walking into a situation where a person who brings up painful emotions is present and staying above the situation.  So a true master is someone walking into a situation while staying above the situation.

And so it’s the ability to learn how to go into a situation, meet a person who raises a lot of emotion, but be so conscious beforehand of who it is that you’re meeting and the situation you’re putting yourself in that the emotions don’t get raised.  That is true mastery.

Imagine someone telling you some insulting comments straight to your face, they just insult you; imagine they’re insulting you in front of a group of people, a group of friends so it could be embarrassing, and you have the clarity of mind to understand that the words he’s saying are entirely a reflection of him and not a reflection of you.  And so you don’t personalize the insulting comments that person is making to you.

Then that is being in a situation while staying above the situation.  That is you mastering the situation, not the situation mastering you.  That is the most powerful way to engage.

We are spiritual beings in a physical world.  This presents an enormous challenge.  Because as spiritual beings in a physical world, we can easily get lost in this physical world, which inherently presents a challenge to spirituality.  And so we can do one of two things.  Either we can climb a mountain and meditate on high somewhere, avoid all of the challenges of being engaged in a physical world, or, we can become a Hedonist and just indulge in the temptations of the physical world against the mission and pursuit of spirituality.

The true master of life does neither. The true master of life engages the world and influences the world instead of becoming influenced by the world.

That is the most powerful way to engage. And, of course, the question is, but how?  How do we engage?  How can we have that food on the table and still not eat it?  And this is a major challenge which all of us deal with.

Here is one major step we can take.  And if we have the desire, this step will make the difference.  And this step is having a strong awareness or a very strong conscious presence to the things that we do in life.  And this can transform our life in so many ways.  When we become much more conscious of why we’re doing everything we’re doing and we become much more aware of everything that we engage with, we don’t become mindless but we become far more mindful.

So if we are aware of what this particular food does when we eat it, and we are aware that the reason why we want to eat is to make ourselves healthy and nourish ourselves and strengthen ourselves and that this food is going to weaken me and in an hour or two it’s going to actually make me feel bad, if we can think about that and remember that bad feeling we had the last time we ate such a food, that awareness itself can help us being engaged with the food in the sense that the food is there but actually not letting the food control us.

If we’re aware of a particular person who is a problematic person and that’s the reason why we don’t like to be in a room with them, but there’s a circumstance calling us for us to be in the room, a greater circumstance than the relationship we have with that person, so then just being aware and reminding ourselves, okay, this person is going to be there and this is the type of person they are and this is probably what they’re going to do and don’t get caught up in it, that itself is one of the most powerful things we can do.  Simply to remain mindful and not get caught up in it.

I have advised people numerous times when they have these conflicts with other people or they have to engage with someone but that other person classically brings things up which then divert the focus of the conversation to a very unhealthy place, and I tell them, memorize exactly what you need to tell them and no matter what they respond to you, repeat the same thing over and over. So you’re walking in, you’re prepared.  You can engage the person and you’re prepared so that the person cannot engage you in a direction that you don’t want to go.

Whenever we engage in the world, we can ask, what’s my higher purpose in engaging with this worldly thing?  Why am I engaging with it?  And before we engage with it, we ask that question.  And by doing that we can actually transform our entire engagement with whatever it is that we’re interacting with.

We have to remember that our goal isn’t to attain perfection and to become a true master because we cannot attain perfection and true mastery.  But it is our goal to do our best and move closer and closer towards perfection and true mastery. And the only way to do that is by engaging while staying above what we are engaging with.  So that what we are engaging with doesn’t control us, is not a master over us, but we remain a master over it.

The greatest act of love can be creating boundaries and definition. The most loving relationships can fall apart without exercising boundaries and definition. We cannot succeed at anything in life without exercising self-control, boundaries, limitations, and definition.

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The greatest act of love is creating definition.  And this is the reason why sometimes the most loving relationships fall apart because boundaries are not being set.

Any person who has succeeded at anything definitely exercised setting boundaries and limitations, definitely exercised self-control and definition, defining who they are.  And definition means by defining who I am, I am also defining who I am not.  Anyone who has ever been very successful at anything has definitely been focused.  Focused means that I am putting my attention on this and I am not putting my attention on that.

And the reason why setting boundaries and limitations, exercising self-control, defining ourselves, all of these things are not so common or not as common as they should be is that, A, self-control is difficult.  We all know that.  It’s very difficult to exercise self-control.  But it is a must.  And, secondly, setting boundaries often doesn’t appear nice in our superficial world.  It seems harsh, even though it isn’t.  Sometimes it’s the greatest act of kindness when we actually set a boundary or exercise self-control or we define things, that it’s going to work this way and it’s not going to work that way.  But it has the appearance of something harsh.

That’s the reason why when a parent is in the supermarket with their child and the child is demanding something, they want a candy or whatever it is, it’s much harder for the parent to tell the child no when other people are around because we have the fear of judgment from others that we’re being a harsh parent.

In reality, though, restricting our children from many different things is the best thing we can do for them.  It’s that superficial appearance that sometimes frightens us.  And so in front of others, it may be hard.

And sometimes we ourselves have built this stigma within ourselves that when I ‑‑ whenever I say no or whenever I a create a limit, that I am doing something which is not nice.  And that is 100 percent false.  There’s nothing further from the truth.

Very often by saying no we are doing a tremendous act of kindness.  When our spouse asks us if it’s okay to do whatever it may be and it’s not okay for us, by answering no, it’s not okay for us, we are actually doing an act of kindness towards our relationship.  By saying it’s fine, we all know it’s only a matter of time until this leads to a much greater outburst and damages the relationship even more.

So pleasing other people, while it may in the short‑term be very sweet and very nice, it’s actually much harsher to the relationship than when we actually take the strength and the courage to set boundaries and limitations, to exercise self control with ourselves, to define to others who we are and what works for us and to focus our lives on saying, this is what I’m going to be doing, that is what I am not going to do.

Of course, it’s much easier to please.  And this goes back to a principle which, hopefully, you’re very clear on now, that the shorter longer way is always longer; the longer shorter way is always shorter.  Meaning that when people are short up front, we make it easier in the short‑term, it will always be more difficult in the long‑term; when we take the more difficult step in the short‑term, it always leads to much more ease later on.  And that’s why we always need to take the longer shorter path.

Definition and boundaries are one of those things that create discomfort, but it’s working through the immediate discomfort that’s going to lead us to long‑term comfort.  And the reality is that all people love boundaries.  When we create boundaries between ourselves and others ‑‑ and when I say between, it’s not necessarily between.  Boundaries don’t need to separate us, they only define the context within which our relationship can work.

People know where they stand with us.  We know where we stand with others.  It brings tremendous clarity and definition for everyone and, therefore, it actually makes it easier for people.  And that’s the reason, actually, why children love when parents set boundaries for them.  Because they actually know the structure of the environment and how things can work and how things cannot work in their home.

And this is the reason why a laser beam is so powerful.  This is the power of a laser beam.  Its focus and the reason why it’s so intensely powerful is because it’s focused on one thing.  It’s not dealing with a lot of things.  It’s not having a broad affect, but it’s having a very powerful, focused affect.  And that’s because when we can focus our energy in a particular direction, and the only way we can do that is when we set boundaries for ourselves, then we can actually be very effective.

And that’s why sometimes, as I mentioned earlier, the greatest act of love is creating definition.  And this is the reason why sometimes the most loving relationships fall apart because boundaries are not being set.

And this is why we have a term called tough love.  Tough love is doing something which appears tough but it’s actually very loving.  It’s loving to the relationship, it’s loving to ourselves, it’s loving to the other person because it’s in the best interest of everyone and creates an environment where love can thrive.

Now, you must be prepared.  Because whenever you stand for something which is defining yourself, I believe in this or I stand for this, you will have opposition.  And you will have people accusing you of doing things which are wrong or being a harsh person, of creating division.  Because boundaries create an impression of there being a division.  But the reality is, what you’re creating is something very effective because you are actually standing for a position.  When we don’t stand for a position, we cannot be effective at all.  When we do stand for something, even though not everyone will like it, but when we stand for it, we can actually have an impact on the world, which is what our lives are all about.

Of course, we need to do it in a proper context and not in a way where we’re beating other people down.  But we are raising ourselves up by standing in a particular place.

We’ve all seen organizations, leaders who live in the fear of setting boundaries, of defining exactly what their organization is or standing up for the right cause because of whatever fears they have in setting boundaries or in defining themselves.  And those leaders always remain weak and those organizations always remain relatively ineffective.  Because the only way we can have an impact is when we focus and we actually set boundaries.

And so I leave you with this very simple question:  What is the next boundary that you need to set in your life to make yourself a more effective person?

Spirituality is very important because it enriches and deepens our experiences in life. When you get to the soul of the matter you begin experiencing the very essence of the person or the thing.

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Spirituality is very important because it enriches and deepens our experiences in life.  Very much so because when you get to the soul of the matter, then you are really experiencing the very essence of the thing.

Hi, there, everyone.  Today we’re going to do something a little bit different, just slightly different.  I want to dabble with spirituality.  Really, what spirituality is.  Because we’re all made up of the physical, we have our body; we have an intellectual dimension to us, an emotional dimension to us, and we have a spiritual dimension to us.  And the reality is, to experience an enriched life, we need to actualize all four of these dimensions.  We can’t leave either one behind.

And so I want to dabble ‑‑ I think we’re most familiar with the physical, very easy because it’s concrete, our body.  We’re very clear, you know, to the extent that we know, but we are very much aware of our body.

Intellectual, we’re getting a little bit more abstract but we all think, we understand what intellectual is.

Emotional, we all feel, we know what emotions are.

Spiritual becomes much more tricky and that is because it is the most metaphysical of these four dimensions.  And that’s why some people will say, well, I’m not really a spiritual person.  Other people will describe themselves as a very spiritual person.  The reality is that we are all equally spiritual.  What makes us spiritual is the fact that we have a soul, which is a spiritual entity.  And in that respect, we are all equal in that we have a soul, a spirit within us.      However, we are not equal in how consciously spiritual we are.  In that way, we differ.  And that really depends on a number of things, but what it depends on which is in our control is how much we are willing to develop our spiritual side.  And spirituality is very important because it enriches and deepens our experiences in life.  Very much so.  Because when you get to the soul of the matter, then you are really experiencing the very essence of the thing.

We know this regarding people.  When you get to the essence, the spirit of a person, you are really experiencing the person.  The body of a person is just sort of a cover to the true person.  So the body is, if we engage with the body of a person, we’re not really engaging with the person.  That’s why a corpse is not something or someone we want to have a relationship with.  And that’s because a corpse without the spirit is pretty much lacking the person behind that body.

So that being said, I want to use a very common question or one form of a very common question which is asked by many people to me in many different forms as a launching pad for just simply explaining the very very basics of what spiritual is or what spirituality is.

And the question, the form of the question is one that was just recently asked to me and so I’m using this form, and that is someone asked me, their daughter asked them if God is married.  If God is married.  And he asked me, well, how do I answer that question?

And that is a great question, it’s a great question for a kid, and it’s a great question for an adult.  If you have that question, it’s a great question because it will lead to really understanding what an entity like God, which is an entity which is spiritual and not physical, is made up of, so to speak, and how a spiritual entity works.

And so here is what I suggested to him, that he should have this conversation with his daughter.  And here is the conversation:  Have you ever felt the wind?  Of course, we all felt the wind.  The Wind can be very strong if you go outside during a very strong storm where there are howling winds, winds can knock us over, there are tornados.  The wind can be very, very powerful.  However, the wind, when we go outside and we feel the wind, we don’t see the wind.

So, suddenly, that brings up an awareness for a child that, oh, there are things which are really powerful in this world even though I cannot see them.  That is already a step towards the spiritual, towards understanding that there are entities in this world which do exist, which are very powerful, which I am absolutely sure are there even though I cannot detect them with my eyesight.  Excellent.

This not every child is going to be familiar with but there is something which is a dog whistle that is a special whistle that dogs can hear because it gives off a sound on a frequency that a dog’s ear can pick up but a human ear cannot.  And we can tell our children about this and ask them, well, what’s going on?  Is there really a sound in the air or not?  And the answer, of course, is yes, otherwise, the dog wouldn’t respond to them.  It’s just that I may not have the tool to pick up the frequency of that sound.  But that doesn’t mean that it does not exist.         Again, a sound is a spiritual form of something, which we cannot see and sometimes we cannot even hear it even though the sound is there.

Let’s look at fire.  Now, a child, depending on the age of the child, may have experienced this as well, if you have a candle and you want to take your finger and move it right through the flame, which you should not teach your child to do but I’m sure you probably have done, as I have done, when you stick your finger through the flame, the flame doesn’t stop you.  It’s not a solid physical entity.  You can feel the heat.  We will get burned by the flame, but the flame is a very spiritual form of a physical presence.  The proof of it is is that you can move your hand right through it.

So now the child is getting a very clear understanding of what spirituality is.  It’s an entity which is more abstract and not as tangible and concrete.  It’s not something we can hold, it may not even be something we can measure in the way we measure ordinary things, with a ruler, so to speak.

Now, here is the last example and the last example is to tell the child to imagine a magnificent castle.  Close your eyes and imagine a magnificent castle.  The child closes their eyes and they imagine this magnificent castle which they know from all the fairy tales they read and watched on TV.  And you say, well, how big is the castle?

Oh, it’s a huge castle.  It has eight stories and huge towers.

And you ask them, well, how did that large castle fit into your head?  Isn’t your head much much smaller than the castle?  They’ll say yeah, well, it was only my imagination.  Were you able to picture the entire castle?

Yes.

Here is the thing.  The castle that you’re imagining in your head is in a spiritual state, it’s not in a physical state.  That’s the reason why we can have an endless number of thoughts in our very small mind, small in the sense of the physical space of our mind, because thoughts are spiritual and, therefore, they don’t take up space.

Once we start to understand how spirituality works, we understand suddenly that God is not a man and God is not a woman and God is not married.  Because God is not a being which is physical like we are and, therefore, doesn’t function as a physical human being does.  And that’s the reason why God can be everywhere because God is not confined by space.  God isn’t even confined by time.

These are deep ideas.  But we need to understand these in order to understand the dimension of spirituality.  And if you’ve never dabbled with what I just discussed, it may have just answered some very fundamental questions that you have had all your life.

So I would like to ask you to share this with a child, any child.  Maybe your children or other children.  And believe it or not, children are far more adaptable to spirituality than adults are.  And that’s why it’s so important to give them this gift at a young age.  Because when they have this at a young age, it sticks with them much better than trying to train an adult mind, which is fixed in its thinking and has gotten stuck in the physical dimension of reality.

And, if you’ve connected with everything I just shared with you, congratulations, you have just graduated Spirituality 101.

Our life is entirely different when we are leading it. It demonstrates that we are taking our life seriously by doing our best to live up to who G-d made us to be.

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Life is completely different when we are leading.  We are actually taking our lives seriously and we are going to do our best to live up to who God made us be.

It is so much easier to follow.  It’s so much easier to sit back in life and not to initiate.  I’m not saying that it’s much easier, I’m saying that it’s so much easier.  That’s the reason why we will often choose to follow rather than lead.  Because it’s so much easier.

When we’re sick, what do we do?  We go to the doctor and ask the doctor, what should I take?  We put our entire health in the doctor’s hands with often not even thinking about what we may have been doing that caused this or what we can stop doing to eliminate this.

My relationship isn’t working.  We just go to the therapist and say, can you fix this for us?  We are just following because it is so much easier.  We want to turn something into a success, whatever type of an endeavor it might be, we go to the quote/unquote, expert, tell me the steps that will make this work.  We put the power in their hands without actually taking complete, full ownership of what it is that we want.

It’s our nature to always look for a leader, to look for someone who is going to do this for us, who is going to lead us in this direction.  And very often as people when we don’t find a leader, we create one.  We take someone who is really not a competent leader and we make them a leader because we so desperately want someone to take us to the, quote/unquote, Promised Land.

Why?  Because it’s so much easier.  It’s so much easier to be a victim, to be able to have the opportunity to blame someone else when things aren’t working rather than standing up and taking responsibility.  And that’s why we live in a culture where people spend their time blaming other people for the way they feel, for whatever is going on in their life instead of taking responsibility.  Because taking responsibility means that you are taking leadership in your life.  You are actually leading your life.  And that is so much harder.

When we follow, we are not taking a stance, we’re not taking a position.  We’re safe.  We are not saying, this is who I am, this is the way I’m going to do it, this is what I believe.  We don’t take a position.  When you don’t take a position, there is nothing for anyone to challenge.  It keeps us very safe.  And what we do is we only react to other people’s positions.  And that’s why we become very judgemental.  We’re busy looking at what anyone else is doing who is taking a position, who is taking a stance, and we’re explaining why they’re wrong, why they shouldn’t be doing it.  Well, what position do you have?  What stance are you taking?  And that’s why I believe that even taking a wrong position is very often better than taking no position at all.  Because at least the person taking a wrong position is making an attempt to lead their life.  Maybe they got it wrong this time, but at least they have the courage to stand up and say, this is the position I’m taking.  Okay, it was wrong, we’ll get it right next time.  But the courage is there, the leadership is there and so they can actually stand up and lead their lives.

And the reality is that the reason why it’s so difficult to lead our lives is that leading is lonely.  Most people don’t lead.  And that’s why they say, it’s lonely at the top.  And I’m not talking about being a world leader, I’m not even talking about being the leader of a community, I’m talking simply about leading our own lives.

Simply defining your path will isolate you to some degree because you have now defined yourself, which automatically differentiates you and separates you from others who are defined differently.  However, one cannot actualize their life without beginning to lead their life, without saying, I am going to be a leader in my own life.

And this is what happens when we do lead, when we do take a stance, when we do take a position, it causes others to complain about us, to blame us.

And you have to remember this very clearly, remember that people who blame do not lead.  This is exactly what will differentiate you from those who are blaming you, that you are leading and they are blaming.  And you should let that remind you of who you are, that I am going to lead my life.  And, yes, I know people will now blame me for taking this position or making this decision or doing this thing, but I am a leader.  I am not going to be the person standing on the side blaming everyone else who has the courage to lead.

People will tell you you’re breaking up your family because of a decision that you made, you’re arrogant.  They’re going to say you’re selfish and you’re only thinking about yourself.  And all of this can possibly confuse you.  You do need to look into them to make sure that they’re not true because sometimes we can be arrogant and selfish and sometimes what we do is breaking up a family.  However, when it’s coming out of defining ourselves and doing what it is that we believe is the right thing to do, then we are being a leader.  And that’s exactly what we should be.

And because others choose to see what we’re doing in some other way because that’s what suits them and they are blamers instead of leaders should not change us from leading our lives.

And this is one explanation of a teaching from Ethics of Our Fathers, which says, be a tail to the lions rather than a head to the foxes.  In other words, hang out with the leaders, don’t hang out with the followers.  You see, the moment we go from being in the category of foxes, even if it’s the head of the foxes, to the category of the lions, even if it’s the tail of the lions, we have moved into an entirely different league.  We are moving from a league of followers to a league of leaders.  And it’s better to be a tail leader than to be a head follower because life is completely different when we are leading.  We are actually taking our lives seriously and we are going to do our best to live up to who God made us to be.

If your life is being led, as most people are, by those people who are around us, then you’re not leading.  Here is how I see it as a Rabbi.  I can do all the things that Rabbis do.  I look at what Rabbis are supposed to do, and I do them.  I’m not leading my life, I’m following the system, the way everyone is a Rabbi.  It is only when I look into myself and I ask if this is what or how a Rabbi should be doing these things that I am now becoming a leader.  Because even if I’m doing the exact same things as every other Rabbi is doing them but I’m doing them after I ask the question of whether this is the best way to do it, is this what I should be doing, only after asking those questions can I look at myself and say, yes, I am finally leading in my position as a Rabbi.

And this is why real leaders innovate.  They are always looking for new and better ways to do things.  They are not satisfied with the status quo and the way everyone else is doing them.  And we can all lead our lives and we all must lead our lives, as long as we are unafraid to be alone, to be blamed and to be accused.

And, so, I strongly encourage you to ask yourself, are you leading your life?  And if not, when will you begin?

When you wake up with an ache you know somethings wrong. We don’t embrace pain and are thankful for it indicating there’s a problem. Feeling self is much the same. Feeling self is an indicator that their’s a problem. We’re too self-oriented. We are much happier when we don’t feel our self.

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