Josh Brody - Finding Menuchas Hanefesh when Bitachon Is not Enough - Project Inspire Convention 2025

hi um you know I will tell you that I think that people who tend to take a look and try to pay attention to Society at large will tell you that there are certain trends that you can see within society that like infects how people think right politically you see this all the time right go back five years ago black lives matter was like the thing right now nobody could care less right now it's more like Hamas right and you see the same thing in education it's the same way there are certain trends that you see that change over time that's sort of like people at large tend to change how they think I I I I think this is same that the same thing is true when it comes to fir Society from society I think I've kind of like tried to pull a lens back a little bit well I don't have great research on this to prove what I'm about to say is true see if you if you agree or disagree with me you know 15 20 25 years ago really Hot Topic in Judaism was Lara right whatever you look people were talking about lashar different sh about it nowadays and this is probably true I'd say for about the last 5 10 years Bon has become like the topic everybody wants to talk about Amazon had like 18 different books on bakon right if I ask you name a bestseller on the art scroll bestseller list art scroll has its own bestseller list I doubt any of you would realize that the Bas English Bas halan bahon is Arts girl bestseller everyone wants to talk about bakun now I think the reason for that actually is pretty straightforward the world is nuts everyone wants to figure out a way how they can actually like find a way to stay calm to stay centered to like find that port in the storm that will help them get through life and so if you're from person the concept of Bon I mean besides the fact that it's basically the reason we're on this planet but it gives you something to sort of hold on to to try to find that measure of of calmness in your life now truth is this is not only true in the from Community I think if you were to go outside into the non-jewish world you'll actually notice the same thing right one of the biggest corporate buzzwords a little bit before Dei became popular was mindfulness everyone wants to talk about being mindful why because if you're mindful you're present it helps keep you calm which is also the name of a very popular app right everyone wants to say come so so we're all looking for the same thing so this is something that bahon gives you because it can help you have a certain level of and whether you realize it consciously or not the truth is that pretty much everybody knows that living a life ofes is a better way to live right I think all of us want to be or think we are that really calm person who was very calm you know under pressure when when my oldest was born um I to say it bluntly I was a total wreck like I I I was just like we're in the hospital and my wife's doctor wasn't there so we had somebody who else was on call and I'm kind of like freaking out and I'm you know we learned one of the things you know you learn when you're a young married man is you know when your wife's expecting you you you go to learn how to do the breathing exercises right did did this right um I had no clue what was going on my wife you know in labor I'm trying to tell her to breathe she looks at me like I'm crazy what are you doing and I'm just I'm a total wreck okay when when my daughter was born a couple years later so I'm like trying okay I'm going to be under control and my wife's doctor was there and we're in the room trying really hard to stay under control and he looks around and he says hm we don't have a nurse to help us and this set me off like I'm totally like now I'm like freaking out again and he was like no it's okay it'll be fine I've done this before no issues and that just had this incredibly calming effect on me and I was like okay everything's going to be fine we all want to be that person have a level ofes live our life calmly and feel like okay I'm under control in my life great how exactly am I supposed to do that so you'll tell me that's what B is for Amazon 18 different books on B learn and you will find that sense of that you're looking for in your life except well I mean I don't want to speak for anybody else in the room but speaking for myself sometimes B just doesn't quite get you where you need to be in terms of that feeling of calmness that feeling of like sometimes B it's just not enough and then you you start to go through this guilt pattern right where you feel like okay so I should have moreon I don't I feel guilty I don't feel good anymore now I feel worse I should have more Bon I beat myself up over it and you know goes on and on and on and instead of actually being able to feel more calm you feel worse because now you feel worked up and guilty and what exactly are you supposed to do if you can't feel a of is not doing it for you now why your is not doing it for you is a very very individualized question but one one reason could be you know RBA famously writes that there is nothing that a person fools himself herself more about than where they're holding in bakon everybody thinks that they're about Bon until you know until you're in that moment the famous story I love saying over it was actually I read it for the first time in a children's book it totally blew my mind mind Shan writes over this story that in the old yeshu one time he saw a kid that got hit in the head by a some Arab through a rock ad him hit him in the head and he grabs his kid he starts running with him back to the from neighborhood and some woman like sees him running with this kid and she starts calling out to them it'll be okay hashm will take care of it everything will be fine and then as gets closer she sees it's her own grandson and she loses it and starts freaking out and doesn't necessarily help us if we're not really holding by it and it's it's a lifetime's worth of work why we doing working at it and getting better at it is not the kind of thing that's going to happen overnight but if I want to have am I am I basically saying that if I don't feel or have that level of that I'm going to never be able to feel in my life I mean it's hard to imagine to think that I'm not going to be able to feel that sense of calmness simply because my B is not good enough it it I I almost go so far as to say that can't be right it just can't be but it's not only my my view Yak lugasi who's mashia he has this wonderful wonderful saer called yesu and a lot of the things we're going to talk about tonight come from his safer and one of the things that he says brings from the balat he brings from the a person's ability to control their thoughts is inherent it it's innate you have an ability to control what you're thinking and how you're feeling so you have to be able to calm yourself down right by the way as as just a little tip don't ever tell somebody else to calm down that never ever works but you have to be able to do it for yourself somewhat so if you don't have that level of but you want to feel like what are you supposed to do so Perhaps Perhaps the problem is are definition of what actually is we might actually have that wrong like I think you heard take take a poll right Define manases I would guess that most people sitting in this room would say something along the lines of I don't have any digus nothing to worry about everything's under control things at work are fine things at home are fine feel like I'm doing okay in my you know Hashem like no D everything is is fine but if that's your definition ofes it almost means by definition that if things are not fine that you can't feel manes like I I my job can be a little bit crazy at times and as my my my family will will tell you when shabas starts as shabas is start starting to end that's when the stress starts because I know I've probably got about 600 emails waiting for me and so so you tell me that I can only feel when I'm in a situation where I don't have to worry about anything but if things are going on that make me nervous I can't feel a sense of manes that means I don't have control over my life so if we're defining as a lack of Da you've got a little bit of a problem you're never actually going to be able to feel that sense ofas so what exactly you supposed to do you know if you think about people who are very calm Under Pressure like listening to Steve gar today right like you think like wow how awesome is that you know I wish I had a story like that where I I pulled up until got my grabbed my gun from next to me and again running out to you know kill some terrorists I don't have any stories like that the stories I have are not nearly as exciting so when I was a very young associate um my office mate worked at a very very large law firm and we were working on what at the time was the single largest corporate restructuring of all time it's about $8 billion in debt and the company owned what was then the largest fiber optic Network in the world and we put the company in a bankruptcy and we were selling it now this sale and for some of you in this room you're going to look at me as I'm saying these words and think like I have no idea what you're talking about but just trust me on this one this was something that was highly confidential and it was not supposed to be known outside of a small circle of the company it's and its advisers now there were a number of parties some of the biggest names in finance that were bidding on this company company called Global Crossing and my office mate well she was in charge of sending out to all of the different parties who were interested in bidding a list of like bidding requirements but she made one little mistake she didn't BCC everybody she cced all of them the next day the front page of the New York Times was a list of all of the parties that were interested in bidding now you might imagine my office mate was kind of freaked out by this I was freaked out by it and I had nothing to do with it what does she do she walks down the hall to the head of our group who was again I'm not going to bother you or bore you with the details but just suffice it to say man was a legend in the world of corporate finance and she walks into his office with a copy of the New York Times back back then it was you know people actually had the hard copy print right she walks into his office and she shows it to him he stops okay first let's make sure they spelled my name right second let's go call the client no stress no drama no anger just don't we all want to be like that where something crazy happen happens we just okay what do you do Freelander sayses has nothing to do with lack of daus so the gar Nar says that a person is like a city what does it mean it's like a city explains freedlander a city has a government think of New York City right you got the mayor for how much longer I don't know and he has all of his various department heads you know Department of Education Department of energy the sanitation police fire every single one of those department heads needs to make sure that they're doing their job if the dep head of the Department of Sanitation decides that she's in charge now of I don't know say the Department of Education well you're going to have a problem because now she's not doing her job she's doing something else and if the head of the police department decides now he's in charge of the Department of energy same thing for the city to work properly every single aspect of that city has to be using the talents that they have and they have to stay in their Lane every human being is given certain certain talents if you don't use your talents in the right time and the right place you're going to feel confusion but using those talents in the right time in the right place doing the job you're supposed to do that says Freelander that's said differently is the feeling you get when you see a job in front of you you know what it is that you're supposed to do and you do it and you don't think about anything else you don't think about what happened previously you don't think what's going to come of it in the future you just focus on what it is that's in front of you to do and you do it that's you know the truth is we probably all know people who have tremendous talents but we're never really mat because they couldn't actually figure out the right time and the right place as to where it is they're supposed to be doing or what they're supposed to be doing and they end up basically getting in their own way but a person who's able to focus on what it is that he or she has in front of them and don't doesn't worry about anything else doesn't worry about what's going to be later what happen previously did I get it right last time will I get it right next time I don't know all I know is I have a job in front of me to do right now and that's all that I'm going to do that's an incredible feeling ofes but there's something else that you have to know that goes along with this Hashem created every single one of us with a job to do the the the uh the famous Jewish philosopher Jerry Seinfeld has this great line where he talks about like why do people get so excited about birthdays a big deal all you did was not die that's his line but the truth is the right way to think about birthdays this has been attributed to although I've never actually seen it inside is that the B your birthday is a day thatu decided that the world could no longer exist without you because Hashem does not do duplicates if you exist in this world it means that there is a job that Hashem wants you to do that only you can do and that job that you have exists every second of every day there is something for you to be doing in this life in your life that relates to your relationship to Hashem your a hasem and the world around you if you don't appreciate that you can start to find yourself living in a world where you're just like okay now what we just like I have nothing to do without recognizing that if you're still around you do have a job you it's like if if you ever met somebody who's like much older like really towards the end of their life and all they do is they talk about what once was right the Glory Days what what what used to happen but they're making a huge mistake because the fact is they're living in a world now they still have something they can accomplish that they can do that nobody else can do now by the way listening to people like that explain to you how they used to live in The Glory Days is actually a huge like totally serious you should absolutely do it of course on the flip side younger people tend to spend their time thinking about what's going to be how many times have you had like a thought in your head I'm going to do five years from now I'm going to be an accomplished fill-in the blank and five years go by and nothing because means in this moment that I'm in doesn't matter what else is going to happen or what's been in this moment Hashem has a job for me now it's not always necessarily so easy to figure out what that job is and sometimes that can actually be a little bit of a cause of our own problem with the lack of because we don't really know what is it that I'm supposed to be doing in this moment but if you look at things from the perspective of Hashem gave me a job to do and living my life is part of that job and I need to focus on what's in front of me now not the things that I wish happened not the things that I hope would happen not that hey I wish I was sitting on a beach somewhere s p coladas because then I'd have absolutely nothing to worry about you ever do this like you come back from vacation and it's like oh man that vacation was so great then when you're going on vacation it's like oh man that vacation is going to be so great when you're on vacation you're spending all the time thinking about what happened when you left the office what's going to be when you come back because you're not even enjoying or taking advantage of the moment they you're in your job when you're on vacation I was going to say is to vacate but I don't think that's actually the right word your job on vacation is to relax in that moment your job is to relax and relaxation you know it's going to take different forms for different people but if you don't realize what it is that you're supposed to be doing you're never going to findes because we make this mistake and assume that manases andas ha are the same thing when in reality they have nothing to do with each other in fact can cause a lack of you ever lay in bed at night like terribly worried about what's going to come up at work or something in your life the next day you're in bed right you should be totally relaxed you're going to sleep yet your mind is moving at a million miles an hour that that you're experiencing is causing a lack ofes when you realize that is about focusing on the thing that's in front of me now I'm doing the job that I have in front of me now then you can actually do it and you can start to experience what really feels like because you're doing the job that you have to do now of course as I mentioned a second ago sometimes knowing what the job that we have to do can be a little bit hard to to figure out but I think part of the problem that we have is that we make a little bit of a mistake in terms of thinking about what our job in life is because again I think I've already ask most of us what our job in life is we would say it has something to do with a hasem and that's obviously right but the problem that we make is or we create for ourselves is we don't translate what it means to do your a Hashem into the actuality of what it means to live life day to day give you an example so um a friend of mine was learning in Kyo many many years AG go and he was learning in in and he comes into to for seder and he was very excited working on a certain Su whatever it was and in the middle of seder somebody comes in and tells them that you know nobody had cell phones back then so he was the somebody his wife had called the I guess the pay phone and comes in and says to him there was some problem in the house she needed him to come home and he was very very frustrated by this cuz he's I'm the middle I'm much in the middle of learning for Crader like my wife needs me to come home I'm I'm I'm I'm here and as Ro K said to him you're making a mistake it's obvious right now that Hashem wants you to go home you have a certain level of clarity that most of us may not have it at any given moment time in our lives it obviously you need to go home your hasem now go home help your wife the problem we have is that we live our lives thinking that Aus Hashem it has to be our Focus which is true we don't realize that how we work on our aod Hashem has to be viewed through the lens of what else is going on in our lives at that moment give you another example friedlander at the end of his life was very sick he was actually in in in a hospital in New York and he was experiencing tremendous pain and he wrote a letter I believe this to was to his son you know talking about the types of things that some freeder talks about and he was explaining how hard it was for him with all the pain he was experiencing to actually do his usual s and the things that he used to do to work on himself but then he says to his son I realized something that I've been missing all these years I thought of life as the different sort of buckets into which we place the aspects of our life I have my learning I have the that I do I have you know my relationship with my with my wife and my relationship with my kids and and all the things that I do in my life and then I have this last bucket which is dealing with challenges and so everything has to be the same and I need to deal with the challenges in my life as best as possible but that can't impact my learning my my and so on that's the wrong way to look at it you have the things that you do in your life how things are going at any given moment that's what Hashem is asking of you how well are you doing in your learning for example when things are going fine but how well you're doing in your learning when things are not going well Hashem does not assume or expect that it's going to be the same he just wants to know are you still trying it's like when I was in high school like the really in thing for those of us who are on the basketball team you know you know it's like you're on a basketball team in yiva and basically a bunch of short white Jewish white kids so we'd always try to come up with different ways to jump higher right and of course none of them ever worked and one of the things that we did was this was very inv vogan like in like the late 80s early 9s they had these shoes they had these huge platforms like on the front of the foot like right like right right down here and you basically supposed to play in them because like you're supposed to be walking on your tippy toes because guys don't wear heels right and essentially you're supposed to be running around that's supposed to make your calf muscles much much stronger okay I don't know which K came up with this idea but clearly he was a marketing genius CU everyone I know bought them but never worked but the reality is when you're playing in that sort of environment you're not going to play the same way as when you're wearing regular shoes but the idea is are just are you trying the same how are you doing when you're wearing you know ankle weights it's not going to be the same as when you're not but that doesn't matter it's not supposed to be that's not what hasm is asking of you Hashem just wants you in the moment to do the best job that you can with the abilities that you have in the challenges that he sends you cuz those challenges were tailor made for you you want to findes you have to get out of this mode ofes is only available to me when nothing's going on when it's easy when I'm relaxed when work's great and the kids are good and you know everything at home is fine and it's 75 and sunny outside that's that's it's not life life doesn't work that way and if that's what you thinkes is you're never going to find it because you're going to spend your entire life chasing a dream and missing out on the feelings you can get the feelings of accomplishment the awesome feelings you can get by living a life of focusing on what it is that's in front of you and those mistaken definitions totally mess us up you see a very very similar idea when it comes to just general happiness right you ever hear this this line right happiness is a choice you heard this before right the first time I heard this I was like oh that's fantastic I didn't realize it was a choice now that I know it's a choice I'm only going to choose happiness that lasted for about an hour like what do you mean I'm trying to choose happiness why am I not feeling happy well maybe the problem is I don't really know what happiness is so um my son's rash sik loves telling over this this Misa that a Bak that he knew was suffering from whatever it was challenges he was going through and having a hard time you feeling Sim so his Riva I think it was Stern told him you know there's there's an alter yid in in Lawrence by Nyon he he learned in brisk by the brisar RV go talk to him okay this kid goes and he talks to uh sit and he starts asking about you know things that happened in brisk and uh rean says to him and I'm a third generation American so I'm going to say this in English because if I said it in English in in yish none of us would understand it so he says toan like you know in brisk what was it like so says to him brisk very very focused on Sim and this kid looks her I don't know I don't think of brisk as like the Paradigm of what SIM is you know you want to talk breest of maybe I don't think of brisk is Sim when I looks at him and says oh oh you're talking about H I'm talking about Sim we make this mistake Sim to us often means like a party right okay be happy but what if I'm not feeling happy what if I don't have a party to go to or what if there's a party to go to and I'm just not feeling it that's so I I can't feel happy because I can't have this environment around me that's creating happiness just doesn't really make any sense or here here's a I I'm I'm actually afraid to do this actually live we'll see what we'll see if this works okay so I'm going to give everyone a choice I could wave a magic wand you can have one of two things I can either give you5 billion or I can guarantee that you'll be happy the rest of your life but you'll be poor anyone okay don't answer it's okay when I do this in like with with with with the with secular crowds right everyone puts up their hand and says they want the $5 billion why because they say well if I have if I if you you're Josh if you give me happiness I'll be happy but I'll be poor give me5 billion I'll be happy and I'll be rich without realizing that $5 billion is highly unlikely to actually make you happy because if you don't know what happiness actually is you're never going to achieve it so of all places to go for definition of Happiness the pet Reba who's A rebba in the war so ghetto and again just to give you some idea of what he went through one of his early M the way the way the way he gave over his St how the as KES got printed in of itself as a a nigla in terms of how they found it but you know he see speak by shalas and then they write it down what shabas so one year he was talking about the concept of what it means to have happiness and he says to his by the way you know you talk to me about being happiness thinking we're suffering so much you think we suffered more than anyone else in in Jewish history is what he writes two years later he says over the same mimer and in the as kodes on the bottom there's a footnote I take back what I said nobody suffered the way that we have just to give a sense of how much suffering they went through in the war so ghetto but the PETA of all people has a definition of happiness because happiness is the pleasure you feel from the process of growth the work that you put in to try and make yourself better gives you a pleasure that is unmatched in this world that's happiness happiness is not something I happen to get a new pair of shoes a new bottle of wine happiness is not even friendships or relationships true happiness only comes from the work that you do to make yourself a better person not that you accomplish it not that you succeed but that you put in the work to make yourself a better person think for a second about how you feel after you control your temper go to the gym do a favor for somebody you can't stand maybe spend a little extra time learning a little extra time saying to hilum think about the pleasure that you get beforehand no interest ah I want it I'm not sure not for me but then you do it that pleasure that you feel that's happiness recognizing that your ability to be happy it is a choice because it's the choice that comes from deciding I'm not going to take it easy see the thing is we live in a world where everything around us whether we realize it or not is us being bombarded with the message easier is better flip through any one of the from magazines and read the ads right just look at them you'll see every single one another PES program another type of food you've never had before you didn't even know you realize you needed another restaurant look everyone needs to make money I'm not trying to to harp on them but the fact of the matter is we don't even realize how much we we are bombarded with this message that easier is better you want to be happy you need it to be easier but the technology that we use in our lives that has become so much a part of our Lives is all about making things easier so naturally whether we realize it or not if we don't stop and focus and change our mindset we're never going to be able to find happiness because happiness requires doing the work you know perms coming up on Friday right so one of the things that I found over the years this is probably more true for the men in the room than for the women is that people look forward guys look forward to perm crazy and women hate it because the sh stuff is crazy right but guys look forward to perm because to them it's like the opportunity to feel a sense of of real Sim try this or don't try this at home especially if you're married don't try this with your husband it's a bad idea ask a guy the day after perum how he feels two days after perm how he feels that Sim that you had where is it what did it do for you s you kidding me it's gone like I'm still getting over my headache for my hangover over Sim I don't have SIM anymore what do you mean what was the point of going through perm if you don't have some Sim that you can take with you but the problem is our definition of sim is totally messed up it's just a question of what party am I going to next whose suit am I going to stop by which R am I going to go to and not realizing that the work of PM is real work you want to tap into that Sim you need to realize what it is in your life that you don't like to do and figure out a way to do it figure out a way to work harder I didn't say happiness is fun because the truth is it's not about fun real happiness brings with it that that we are all so desperately searching for the thing that we want in our lives more than anything because I'll tell you something no matter what you have going on in your life and every single person in this room without a doubt has something going on in their life that's that's life but if you want to make that life whatever your own pecola is if you want to make it not just tolerable but enjoyable live life you're not looking forward to the next vacation because the only thing you can imagine and you're not going through the week just saying okay when's the weekend going to come so I don't have to worry about whatever it is that's bothering me but I want to live life where every day I'm happy and that means making sure that I know I have to put in the work because without doing that it's just going to be an elusive dream that you spend your entire life chasing and for every single one of us and this is this with this I'm going to end you know we're living in the month of now is the time to make that decision to choose that I want more happiness in my life and that means very practical think about something in your life that you want to be better don't go crazy something small something you want to be better and think of a way that you're going to work at it it it could be anything I mean the op the options are literally Limitless but now is the time if you want to find that in your life you want to find that Sim you have to find that one thing to start with that I don't have because I'm not working at it because I want instead I try to take it easy I don't work so hard and when you have that choice and you decide I'm going to work out a little bit more that's when you'll see the rest of your life is going to start to feel different because every area of your life you're going to find opportunities for okay take a deep breath what's in front of me now what's the job I have to do what do I need to work at to make my life a little bit better with that I give a br to all of us that this Ador and this perm will all experience a true Sim in our life that we can carry with with us the rest of the year