Dr David Lieberman Transforming Relationships (Part 9)

everyone welcome to transforming relationships part nine of this amazing series um with um with dr dr lieberman and uh following uh this lecture will be um the the great rabbi david gowasser renowned speaker and author and love it's a great honor to have dr bieberman our goal sir um and um thank you everyone for submitting questions we're actually going to start off tonight with with one of the questions that was submitted and the follow-up from a previous class um everyone uh continue um submitting uh questions and feedback to to events.org e-v-e-n-t-s at chazaq.org just uh one programming note um we know that uh i believe then we could tune in every um uh every saturday and went to chavez but also he's um we're gonna be we're gonna be honored on tisch above day itself we're going to be having um 25 different speakers speaking on tish above day itself and the previous night bishop and i are having charlie rory 10 15. so um um dr davidson's gonna be speaking um you can tune in at 11 am to hear from the great dr lieberman um and um without further ado let's uh let's get started um so um in previous um in a previous quest or maybe friday a few of them i would say we were talking about self-esteem i think last time we talked about um um how if you have low self-esteem grew up with low self-esteem how you can increase that how you can build a bill to help these healthy self-esteem so someone submitted a question there saying that that um that that that just in um so obviously it's a process we have to build it our self-esteem but let's say like in reality right now the situation is right now as as individuals as as interacting with people as couples coexisting with each other how how can we um how can we co-exist how can we thrive and even though and like right now at this moment we have varying levels of self-esteem so what's the best thing about that wow that's a very thoughtful question so you know self-esteem refers to degree to which a person loves themselves and feels worthy of good things in life end of the day we all walk around as we said last time with the exception of i'm sure a couple of siddhikam who who we all walk around with some you know dense to our self-esteem um ultimately the way we build self-esteem is to the quality of our choices meaning that uh you know we've as i said it's in a lot of talks on tony time if the whole paradigm you have a body ego and soul body wants to do it feels good ego wants to do what looks good and our soul and hashama wants to do what truly is good they all battle it out the more a person gives into their ego gives them today to her um or over indulges in the body eats an excess extra sleep excess entertainment all of those things chip away at our self-esteem or self-respect so you can't give self-esteem to somebody else as mu as as wonderful as it would be to be able to do that uh now with children it's a little bit different we get into that because by children self-esteem and confidence are interwoven by adults they're completely separate but the degree to which we make better quality choices is the degree to which we infuse ourselves with a greater sense of self-esteem so when i make a choice that is beneath my madriga beneath my spiritual level i feel shame shame is a self-correcting mechanism that hashem created to it's our neshama to wake us up reminding us that we've done something that is beneath us the idea of shame is to go ahead and to make us feel the pain of our behavior because it moved us away from our potential away from hashem and then to do truth and move forward but if we're not willing to accept responsibility and we recuse ourselves of obligations responsibilities and we lay blame somewhere else it's going to injure our self-esteem so the mindset is you know if you want to give yourself a quick jolt of self-esteem the very best thing you can do is to begin to make better quality choices you know you mentioned on the tish above uh when they're speaking about uh how to you know sort of erase the stain of shame and transform those relationships where maybe there's a conflict of feud or estrangement so whatever baggage we're walking around to we're able to sort of release but ultimately you know on a day-to-day basis the way to to move forward uh with greater self-esteem is to do trouble where we've fallen down and begin to move forward responsibly not beat ourselves up with guilt not you know uh wrap ourselves up in a blanket of shame and self-pity but rather to accept responsibility and then minute robbie we will accept responsibility to popular lives that we've been neglectful of could be emotionally spiritually financially physically whatever it is wherever we take control and take responsibility we will inject ourselves with a greater sense of self-esteem and the idea is to build on that because the more we love ourselves the more you invest in yourself the more you invest yourself the more you can love yourself but when a person grows up behind the eight ball and and they have low self-esteem it's very very difficult um without a protocol in place to just sort of make better choices because what if i don't love me why would i want to invest in me so you know it's it's behooves us not just for our own emotional health but for the quality of relationships to begin to turn that around to begin to invest ourselves in a positive way build our self-esteem and doing so improve our relationships i hope you're paying attention and this is all going to be in the final so i'm saying so so obviously i'm saying they're saying that that we have to build our own self-esteem so that but let's just say that that um that let's say like ourselves let's say we have a higher level of self-esteem and then i would say like a friend or a spouse etc they they they don't have that so so i guess so so what do we do i'm saying do we we have to build that in them what do we do very good so it's like this a question that people ask a lot is let's say that we have a friend now we really love ourselves we've got great self-esteem we're amazing we're whole but not everyone is like us right you know some people are walking around not feeling so great they didn't have amazing childhoods like we did yeah um so so uh what's what are we to do so when you want to help somebody to to you know get out of a rut let's say you try moving that person and they're like a rock you just can't do it one of the best things you can do for somebody that's that's in that little place is to let them know just how much you love them and how much you care about them how much you respect them and when you accept this person unconditionally whomever it is that person will begin to feel that they are worth something and when they feel they are worth something that's when they're going to begin to make better choices but you can't give someone self-esteem what you can do is allow for that connection where they feel that you know what you're investing all this time your money energy resources to loving this person at some point if that love is really unconditional it's go even though it may not feel like it or may not seem like it it's going to seep in it's going to seep in at some point this person will say wow maybe maybe there's some value to me and at that point they can begin to sort of just move their lives forward in a healthier way but you'll never be able to give somebody to haka rebuke or to get them to be more whole and healthy simply by feeding their ego it has to come from a genuine connection a genuine love a genuine caring and then when that is complete and unconditional and i want to tell you i've seen you know some of the most hard and difficult challenged kids i say kids meaning young people teenagers even adults when somebody has that unconditional acceptance not approval unconditional acceptance where they're not going anywhere it doesn't matter what this person says or does how much they push them away they're not budging at some point they're going to stop pushing and they'll say wow okay i really am loved i really am worth something and that's when you can move the person that sounds great i think you address the question um so um i guess we'll just jump off a self-esteem um i guess maybe um a jump off of that question would be where about that everybody everybody wants to be inspired they want to be uplifted so they can do great things um in the world um so uh but but sometimes we're we're just not feeling it we're just uh we're down like how do we how do we how do we get that um that inspiration that's what charlie herrari is for right listen to charlie he will he'll help you move mountains look you know what sometimes people say you know motivation uh you know it wears off but it's true so does eating so does sleeping and those things come in very handy so you know to constantly give ourselves a and you know look motivation won't get you from point a to point b but it'll help to get you excited about moving and i'll share with you one fantastic technique that i give over when i do a lot of corporate work and that is that if you think about robbie the choices that you make the decisions that you make are very often based on your state meaning how are you feeling at the moment so if you're in sort of a blah sort of you know blah state you're going to make a lot of choice if you're in an energized sort of motivated high-energy state you're going to make maybe a more assertive maybe a more um greater step maybe a more ambitious step you're going to do something that is quite different so rather than try to reorient your thinking sometimes people say you know i want to be more successful i want to take that leap you can't change your thoughts without changing your emotional state um and the meaning that the physiology so really rather than sitting so you're never going to make a good decision by sitting slumped over like this saying i want to move my life forward i wish i could do it doesn't work you really literally one of the best things you can do is to move your body physiologically speaking there's a whole field called on body cognition that uh speaks to the integration and the the symbiotic relationship between our emotional state and our physiology so when you are in a more sort of like a power pose you're taking up more space you're feeling physically bigger meaning you're more expansive you're going to make more assertive more maybe even aggressive but uh but you're gonna take more responsible risk and chances but when you're in sort of a closed physiology and you're feeling uh and you're sort of like hunched over physically and you are withdrawn into yourself your choices are going to follow so if you want to sort of snap yourself out of that just spend a few minutes sort of re-energizing the physiology and you're going to see in a different emotional state you're going to be thinking differently and you think differently you're going to be making different choices so yeah that's how i was going to ask as a follow-up about that that that finds let's just say um you get a thing as we know like sometimes as we know uh even specifically now during um time periods like you get you get you got a short clip you hear it um inspiration inspirational talk like like we're doing right now so like like how do you take that to the next level so you're saying that so like good so you're saying good so i'm sorry i i interrupt you forgive me you're yes you're saying i'm saying like how do you like so you were saying that one method is is you have to physically you have to have to move you have to you have to do things you can't just you just sit there and just say okay now the whole everything's going to change in your life that's right and that really by the way is you're touching on the secret when inspiration strikes when a person feels inspired that is their neshama sort of just being shaken with the ego out of the way but the most valuable thing you can do is to capitalize on the moment the mistake that people make is they become inspired and then they go take a nap or they'll go have a sandwich they go wow you know what i really feel like i can do this let me go ahead and just take a walk take a nap or take a break and i'll come back to it and then you're like why was i so excited about that the reason is it wore off is because you need to create a cli a physical vessel here in this this in this world when that feeling of inspiration when you're in a shama sort of gets the message so if you don't take action here it will dissipate the best thing you can do is when you become inspired is to take an action it doesn't have to be a huge step it doesn't have to be everything it has to be one concrete step in the right direction and you'll sort of help to build a physical vessel a place that can hold that enthusiasm that inspiration and then when you build it you'll get another wave and another wave of another wave but if you don't take action if you simply just stop and don't move that inspiration will dissipate you have to capitalize on the moment and as the familiar ephemerism says strike while the iron is hot so that we have to we that we have to make it into what would you call it a a routine a ritual that now you're gonna you're gonna implement every day or every week or monthly or something that that that's going to take effect that's right the ron paul talks about the importance of you know alacrity uh theresa's is is moving when you feel that uh inspiration is to move don't think that it's going to last forever the reason why again it dissipates is because you don't take action in the physical world you have to take sort of some step and if you get in the habit of feeling inspired moving feeling inspired moving you're gonna go far you're gonna go very far but again it begins with taking an action and once again don't think it has to be huge it can be a small small quantifiable step that allows for you to sort of capture that inspiration so i guess going off on um i'm thinking about taking that step so i guess that let's say like um let's say like people they don't know they don't have clarity like like where am i going like like they don't have had how does i guess it's a bigger topic but like like how do you like um see like a goal like you have to write it down to think about it what do you have to think about every day yeah yeah yeah how do you what's goals like how does that relate to inspiration excellent so there's a lot to unpack there but in broad strokes um as someone once said you know if you can't hit a target that you don't see and you certainly cannot hit a goal that you don't have so if you don't know where you're going as the saying goes any road will get you there you have to be very clear about what you want the brain doesn't work on generalities it works on specifics you need what's called a mission statement you want to be very clear what you want to accomplish when you want to accomplish it how you want to accomplish it deadlines are very very critical um as you know i wrote a book called how free will works and there's a whole thing a whole section about how to take the hero that gift of free will and maximize it and one of the steps in that is to be able to not just set uh objectives but to have deadlines because human beings human nature is what it is and we will not you know what it's like it's like you know when shabbos comes in late in the summer and short during the winter you know you've got an extra couple of hours in the summer somehow we're not sitting around drinking iced tea flipping through hamadiya magazine two hours before shikiya we're running to the last minute because there's something called parkinson's law which basically says has to expand and contract depending on how much time you allow for it la myself bottom line is that you need to give yourself a goal as well as a deadline what you want to accomplish when and then the brain will go ahead and um create a path in order for you to get where you want in order to hit the goal within a time frame but if you don't have a time frame we've just seen it time and again and the research is clear and from life experience is clear you know what if you have forever to finish something it never gets done but put a fire under yourself have a real concrete deadline you're going to move so uh the world runs on expiration dates coupons of expiration dates you know tax returns of expiration dates you have to be able to give yourself a deadline or things will slap on forever okay so you're saying that we have to say you're saying that we have to have um you have to obviously have um you have a map you have to know the destination and you also have to know um okay you have to get there by certain time you have to certain like uh even like you're saying like um would you say that even let's say like um like mini like like that this is the weekly uh i gotta do by the end of this week wherever it's not only just like in my lifetime that that's that's right because i'll talk about dividing the goal into small doable segments so that you can feel a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction as you move along but also you know there's this it's interesting there's a whole kabbalistic underpinning to time frames and one of the things there's a lot to flesh out there but one of them is you don't make your to-do list in the morning in the morning is a time for action a time for conquering the time for expansion the worst time to make your to-do list is when that energy of the world is for going out and conquering at night when the energy is towards um constriction and towards uh being reflective and meditative that's the time you'll find that putting your list together what you want to do the next day the night before is infinitely more effective than waking up in the morning with a to-do list and beginning to write it out because you've just got the wrong energies for each one okay well some great practical um tips um i think we'll uh we'll stop here for tonight i think we learned um a lot about uh what is inspiration and um what is it not i guess and how to how to go about um you had inspiration and relating to goals and destination okay great so um thank you dr lehrman um as usual for uh always inspiring us and uh we will see you next week and please everyone submit as i uh everyone please uh submit your questions to events at kazakh.org any questions that will which will be um addressed in the future class thank you everyone thank you dr wigman