EMET Talk - Rabbi Akiva Rutenberg

all right challenge yourself Winston Churchill said okay you did this first part you did great Winston Churchill said it takes 5 minutes to prepare a 5 hour speech but this something you told me right and five hours to prepare a five minute speech and I think George Washington is a letter a famous letter where he writes to somebody I don't have time to write a short letter so I'm going to write a long letter was it Mark Twain maybe both of them who knows okay so the topic that I would like to to speak about is something that's very close to my heart maybe some of you heard me speak about this before but it's something that I really believe if I'm going to make my pitch to you is the most important thing or maybe the most important thing that you can Implement into your life that will make the greatest change and the idea is being intentional and this idea came to me like a lightning bulb um about two years ago when I was having a conversation well see I got a phone call from a woman who I was counseling her and her husband and um the husband is a very busy man he has a few businesses and he works really hard and I got a phone call from her it was a Thursday afternoon I remember I was in the EMT office and she says my husband who was barely home the whole week forgot to tell me that he's going to Miami for the weekend and this like steam coming out of her ears so I call the husband he's like waiting for my call and he's like Rabbi it it wasn't intentional okay and I honestly believe that it wasn't intentional but I realized there that in life a true successful life needs to be an intentional life not a life where we're excusing oursel for being unintentional you know in Hebrew we have a word kavana the word kavana means intent to be intentional the says that it's better to have one minute of prayer with kavana than one hour of prayer without kavana why is kavana so important why is it so important to be intentional and I would say in our society with all the distractions that we have with social media with WhatsApp with our phones with our text messages constantly bombarded by news and all these different feeds and our phones and everything else it's almost impossible to be intentional we are like a ping pong bow that's we being pulled in 16,000 different directions and usually they're not in the directions of our kids our spouse Torah Mitzvah there all these different distractions around us and I believe that if we can work on this one thing if we can work on this one thing to be more intentional in our life it will change every other aspect of our life every other aspect of our life will will change by changing this one thing the BTO says that where your thoughts are is where you are this is intentional thoughts not random thoughts that go through our mind but if you are thinking about something that's where you are so if you're spending time with your children but your mind is in the business deal and your mind is worrying about what happened here and what happens there and what's going to happen and am I going to get another audit am I this you are not with your kids don't even claim you are you're not and if you're with your spouse in a restaurant and every 5 minutes you're looking at your phone and she has to VI for her attention you're not in the restaurant you may physically be in the restaurant but you might as well be and your office but if we can be intentional and we can leave our phone in the car and I have a challenge to everyone in this room and everyone who listens to this that when you go on a date with your spouse whoever is more attached to their phone leaves the phone in the car and whoever's less attached to the phone gets to bring their phone into the restaurant I recommend very strongly that people do not use their phone in their bedroom they don't have their phone phone next to their bed this device that was created by Steve Jobs to make our life better unfortunately has made so many problems in the process there is an item on Amazon you can buy anyone would like I can send you the me the link it's a $21 alarm clock they're legal okay you can get an alarm clock you can get a dumb phone you can get a landline if you go to sleep at night with your phone next to your bed and you wake up in the morning with your phone the amount of stress that you're bleeding into your life what's the point point if we can live an intentional life it changes every other aspect of our life I'll tell you something personally that I started doing about 8 months ago I turned off all notifications on my phone so I don't get WhatsApp notifications text notifications and it's usually okay I think my wife is sometimes annoyed by it but but it's it's usually it's usually okay um and because of that I'm much less distracted when I wake up in the morning I try to go to SCH 7:00 and leave my phone at home and I don't see my phone till 8:45 in the morning by doing these things and I'm still very much talking to myself because this is a very much a work in progress as well by doing these things we're showing the people around us in our life that they're important that they're valuable by not doing these things the ultimate message even if it's unintentional is that the people in our life around us are just not that important I jokingly say that there's three places in heaven there's Heaven hell and the place for people with good intentions okay and the reality is is that that's not where we want to be we don't want to be in the place for people with good intentions we want to be in the place where we're actually living a life of kavana a life of intention um I'll give you one other example to bring this home there's a couple that I was talking to recently and the husband works really hard and when he gets home from work he often is on his phone watching Ben shapo okay this particular guy likes to watch Ben shapo and the wife is home all day with the baby and the wife feels very neglected by this now this same guy also around 7 8:00 at night he doesn't have such high energy and he's pretty tired and she also doesn't feel very good about that so he's on his phone and he's tired and one of the suggestions I made to him was why don't when you get home talk to your wife for a few minutes have a little snack and go use your exercise machine in the basement and watch Ben Shapiro while you're using your exercise machine so you got your Ben Shapiro fixed you got your exercise you're going to be much more alert this is just one example but if we would be intentional right if we would be in our relationships similar to the way we are in business right our relationships would be so much stronger every relationship we have the P Mish says if we will go after our spiritual Pursuits like we go after money we'll have a tremendous connection to hasem so my challenge to everybody here each and every one of you think of ways to be more intentional in your life between your friend and fellow fellow man between you and your kids between you and your spouse I shared Friday night that my son who's in Yeshiva in St Louis came home from Yesa about two years ago he came home he's about was like 18 19 years 18 years old at the time and I took him out for lunch and I left my phone in the car and I went into the restaurant with him and I saw his eyes light up because he saw that like oh it's not just like oh Dad's hungry let's eat lunch but like obviously if I'm putting my phone in the car I want to spend time with him I want to connect and it's not about the quantity it's about the quality look for opportunities to be intentional and B we'll all come together with intent and connection we're going to take a photo right now kak everyone [Applause]