MindFlex - Getting Up After the Fall - Mrs. Mimi David - Setback or Opportunity to Reset?

missouri where i am the director of women's education for east st louis and i'm really glad to be here with you tonight we're talking tonight about setbacks versus resets so i don't know who's watching this but i'm sure a lot of you have been to israel and if you haven't been to israel please get to israel as soon as corona is over please god soon and they open the borders go to israel if you haven't been there in a while i highly recommend shout out to the age destiny trips they're awesome okay and in the on the age destiny trips you'll actually get to do what i'm about to talk talk about and that is tour ain't getting to hike and getty a lot of you have done that already engetti is one of the more famous places to be to visit in israel it's gorgeous it's down south it's a hike you go up the mountain uh there are waterfalls and and you see wildlife and the view of the dead sea it's just beautiful really gorgeous and i recommend going in in february in the winter because you're down in the desert the weather is beautiful then it's like 80 degrees outside and the water is really rushing because the waterfalls fill up from the rainfall in jerusalem believe it or not comes all the way down to the south and so when you go in february you get the full ain't getting experience and when you go to ingedi or if you've gone already you may have noticed that if you look on the sides of the of the mountains when you're walking up the path as you get closer to the hike as you get closer to the part where you can climb up the mountain there are holes in the ins into the walls of the mountain on the sides and those holes are caves and if you've already been there but you're going to go back look out for those caves and if you haven't been there yet look out for those caves because i'm going to share a story with you which you may have heard it's a great story and it happened in one of those caves the story is about king david so this story takes place oh you know 3 000 years ago you know in israel we have history jewish history for thousands of years in america you want to see something old it's like 400 years old you go to israel you can see old okay you can see stuff from 3 000 years ago so if you go to aim getty the story that happened there that happened about 3000 years ago is a really great story it happened to king david now king david as many of you know had a really tough life really tough i mean the poor guy was tortured by his brothers he was tortured by his father-in-law wanted to kill him chased after him for years tried to kill him and then his own sons tried to kill him and on top of all that david himself had a tough personality he actually was that classic red-headed hot-headed temper guy he was a bloodthirsty guy he really by nature was out to kill and he had to spend his whole life controlling himself from within and also dealing with so many struggles from outside from without and the reason why david ended up being such a great king and such a great role model for us as jews is because of that not it's because despite all his challenges he really rose to the occasion he really became an incredibly strong and worked on person and a real role model for us and that's why he's the epitome of kings and even you know all our great kings came from david so david at this point in in the time about 3 000 years ago is on aim getty and he's with his men and he's running away from saul who was saul saul was his father-in-law saul was the king of israel david was about to take over for saul and be the new king and saul had decided from various reasons multiple times that david needed to be killed he was rebellious he was rebelling against the king that's punishable by death and jewish law and saul was out to kill him he was chasing after him and david spent a good part of his time hiding from his father-in-law saul and the story took place on in getty david and his men are there running away from saul and saul's coming so david quickly hid in one of those caves at ain getty so when you walk up that path as you get toward the hike and the lower waterfall look at the caves i don't know which one he hid in but in one of those caves this story happens david's in the cave and he's hiding from saul and saul has no idea that david is in the cave well saul at some point needs to use the bathroom and he walks into the cave that david was hiding in so picture the scene david is hiding he's quiet he's in the back of the cave and suddenly saul walks into that cave and david has his moment he can just kill the guy and be done with it his father-in-law who's tortured his life made his life so challenging and difficult now is his chance he has a sword soul has no idea he's there just get up and kill him and keep in mind david was blood thirsty by nature he wanted to kill him he wasn't scared he wasn't scared of pulling out his sword and killing him that's what he wanted to do and he is filled with this burning desire to just kill saul and be done with it but he doesn't he holds back and instead he sneaks up to saul and he takes his sword and he slices off a corner of saul's cloak saul was wearing some royal robe that was you know multiple layers and he didn't feel it and david quickly and quietly cut off a piece of saul's cloak saul finishes his business goes out of the cave david and his men wait until saul and his men are on the next mountain over they don't see david there they couldn't find him so they move on they're on the next mountain over and david and his men climb to the top of ain getty and david holds up that piece of cloak and he calls out to saul and he says hey father-in-law dad look what i have look what i could have done to you and saul actually has his moments of clarity everybody in their life even tough people have moments of clarity and he has his moments of clarity where he says you know david you're just a much better person than i am wow he realized what just happened now david went after the story he wanted to write it up in his diary which we all know it's king david's diary we call it tehillim psalms some people think tehillim is poetry it's really not it's actually really a diary of david's life every time he went through something that was a monumental event that was a difficult situation a challenging situation he wrote it up in his diary called tell him called psalms this story was monumental he stood in that cave he had his moment to kill saul and end his suffering and he didn't it wasn't the right thing to do it would have been murder and he held himself back and that took such tremendous effort on david's part and he he was so filled with emotion when it was over he burst into a chapter into hillem and songs he burst into this diary entry and he writes chapter 57 it's my favorite chapter go look it up okay it's great he writes chapter 57 in sahelm in psalms and there's one verse in there that i want to focus on for tonight and that's verse three verse three says at crawley lo kim el yon i call out to god on high meaning above all my understanding la cal gomer alai to the one who finishes on my behalf what was he saying god you finished things for me what was he what was he what was the intention of david in this line what david meant was i live an insane life i live an insane life i'm running from everyone i never have a minute of calm and i just want to do the right thing i also am fighting my own nature all the time controlling myself i just want to do the right thing i don't know where any of this is going to end up god only you know all i know is i'm gonna put in all my effort i'm gonna do my best and you hashem you're gonna say where all that goes you're going to control the the outcome of all this because you are the one who finishes for me the truth is this is an idea that applies to all of us we think that we're investing and we're researching and we're putting in the effort and we are building and we are working on something and we're creating and we're doing and we're it's all us but at the end of the day the outcome ain't in our hands it isn't all us the end result totally up to god and all of you who are joining me tonight have had a story like this you probably have thousands of stories like this where you worked at something and you worked at something and you worked at something and poof just didn't work out the whole thing disappeared i know i had that i'll give you one example of that one example of that was a couple of years ago my husband and i had been looking for a house in our neighborhood we used to live in another neighborhood in missouri called chesterfield it's a suburb of st louis those of you who've been here maybe heard of it um and we were looking to move to university city new city uh the other neighborhood and we were looking for a long time it was really hard for us to find a house because houses in university city are small shoe boxes and we at that point already had our seven children so we couldn't fit in the shoe box and we were just looking and looking and finally after two years we found a house that was really gonna work for us and we gave him a contract we had a deal going we had the contractors come and needed a lot of work to make it work for us but it was going to work for us and we had the contractors come we had estimates given we were ready inspectors came we were ready to close on the house and last minute the whole thing fell through the whole thing we had put in so much work and we had put in so much time and we had a contract and we even had the contractors the work was planned out we had it all worked out and the whole thing fell through the outcome's not in our hands the outcome is not in our hands that part is in hashem's hands so when we when we say setback versus reset there's a difference a setback is i have a goal i am going somewhere i am headed on a certain path and nothing's going to stop me i may have setbacks along the way but i'm going to go there right you're trying to lose weight you're trying to lose weight so you're eating healthy tons of vegetables lots of lean protein healthy carbs in moderation everything you're going there right you're losing 20 pounds and one day you have a setback right you're with friends and you're going out for lunch and everybody's just having a muffin and they look so good and you just have that muffin i'm nothing so bad ice cream right and you just have that that's my thing more ice cream you have that triple chocolate please vanilla okay triple chocolate ice cream sundae and it's really a setback it's not on your diet but it's a setback you move on you messed up whatever i'm glad you enjoyed it you moved on and now you're going to continue reaching that goal of losing the 20 pounds that's a setback i'm talking about not setbacks but resets i'm talking about where you're headed in a certain direction and then something happens that says bam end it here you're not going this way anymore you're going this way now reset hashem god says i have a different plan for you and the one you thought that was the best plan for you it's not and there's a better plan and it might not happen right away but it will happen one day there's a better plan for you than what you think you're supposed to be doing so with our house story what happened that house fell through and about six months or a year later the much better perfect house for us i should say came up much better location much better house everything about it was better for our family it was the whole thing was like okay now i get it when i was in the moment i didn't get it i was pretty upset and we'll talk about how to react soon but it was a reset it was i'm saying you're on this path but now you're going to turn that way and go in a different direction i'm going to share a story with you it's a true story about a man in mexico city his name was yakovo sherem yakovo sheram was involved in commercial real estate and um he lived in mexico city he had this giant giant really enormous office building it was like a whole campus of office buildings that he was trying to sell and if he sold it he was going to make a lot of money it was really an expensive property and a great area of town and he was really trying hard to sell it one day two men from overseas europe european men contacted him we're really interested in that property can we come and meet with you yes of course so they come to his office first he gives them a tour takes them on the grand tour of the property shows them how you know it's it's enormous and it has so much potential and all the ins and outs they go on this long tour of the property and then they sit down to negotiate and they're talking and they're talking and they're negotiating and negotiating and after a while jacobo realized that it was getting late and it was friday and yakovo had recently started keeping shabbat and he said to the men listen guys i can meet with you for another hour and a half but in an hour and a half i gotta go and they said okay we'll try to make this quicker and they're still negotiating and talking and the time clock is ticking and they're not anywhere near sealing the deal and finally it's a hat you know it's been an hour yeah and jacobo says to them listen half an hour guys i can't do this longer than that and they're like okay they continue negotiating and they're trying to work out the deal and a half hour passes then he says i'm really sorry this is not happening i gotta go my shabbat is more important to me than money and the two men look at him and they're like we have a flight tonight from here back to europe we're not coming back if you walk out right now this deal is over we're not buying the building that's it and he said okay it's not worth any money to me i have other commitments that are more important to me than money and that's going to be it and they were like okay and that's it they left and the whole thing fell apart let's freeze that story right here okay it has a happy ending and i will tell it to you in a minute but let's freeze it right here okay here's yakovo he just lost a massive business deal he just lost potential i don't know the numbers but tons of money okay let's make it up ten million dollars okay a ton of money and he has no way it's over he chose shabbat but he also chose to lose a boatload of cash right that's it the deal's over he's never going to have this deal again what was he feeling at that moment so he made a choice because of his values so i'm sure he was very happy and proud of himself that his values are more important to him than money money is a value but it's not as valuable to him as shabbat that's a choice he made and that's really impressive and he should be very proud but at the same time i'm sure that he was mourning he was mourning the loss of all that money he was mourning the loss of a really good business deal and that's really normal it's really healthy right to feel that loss it's really a normal thing it's it's gonna happen but then what happened the reset happened and the and the great endings of the story happened two weeks later in mexico city it was a tremendous tremendous earthquake the city was destroyed buildings turned to rubble peoples lost their lives homes were demolished the city fell apart and there was one block downtown that every building on the block totally destroyed reduced to to rubble nothing except for yakovo's building his building was still standing nothing happened to it and suddenly his office building was the most wanted property in all of mexico city offices businesses government offices no one had a place to go no one had a place to open they all were running after him to buy his building to take it off his hands he ended up selling it for five or six or ten i don't know the numbers times the amount of the original sale so he had a reset he had a you're going this way but no no this is not going to be the best way for you and he had to shift gears like okay i'm not selling it to these people and then thank god he got to see the positive ending to his story which was yeah it's okay there's a better plan out there we just didn't know it yet but if i wait two weeks i get to see it so sometimes this is what happens to us we have to ask ourselves i know i put in all the effort but i'm not god and maybe god has a better idea of what's good for me maybe he has a bigger picture uh uh he knows the whole thing and he knows where i should go with this that could be so much better for me um we say this uh in in alcoholics anonymous we we've all taken the line from there which is let go and let god and that's what happens when you reset when you reset you say okay i did what i could i put in all my effort i put in all the work i had my hopes up i i thought this was going to go a certain way didn't go the way i planned but you know what god i'm putting it in your hands it's not in my hands then the outcome is up to you i think a lot of us have gone through this over the last four months corona has created a situation in every single person's life i don't can't believe that there's a single person out there that didn't have a reset in their life or a thousand resets in their life in the last four or five months all of us the way we were planning our summer vacations the way we were planning our family get-togethers our passover seders the end of the school year our jobs our financial situations our kids events i mean we've all had probably hundreds of resets i thought it was going to be one way i was supposed to bring 20 women to israel this summer and lead the trip and i didn't of course not no one could go to israel right now unless you're a student or your israeli and that was a major reset my kids thought they had plans for camp nothing reset come up with a different plan we've had family members who couldn't join people to join other family members for passover and they were stuck having a stater by their lonesome that's a major reset this has been a big part of our lives for the last four months and the question is how do we react how do we respond do we flip out do we get completely bent out of shape do we get angry do we yell scream and kick or do we accept now resets could happen in different shapes and forms you can have small ones and you could have big ones i'll share a personal small reset that just happened to me on friday i was supposed to have cleaning help for a couple of hours first time in a little while and she double booked and she went to someone else and at the same minute that i found out i wasn't having any cleaning help i also realized that my husband who was supposed to take my son to an appointment forgot and went to the gym and i couldn't even reach him because he was at the j and he didn't have his phone was on silent while he was working out so my world like exploded for a few minutes like are you kidding shabbat's coming in a few hours and i was counting on help to clean my house and get it ready for shabbat and now i'm gonna have to clean it myself and i have to leave right now and i'm gonna be gone for the next hour and a half while i take my son to his appointment because i forgot to remind my husband about it so i didn't respond perfectly um i did get upset i got very upset it was an overwhelming minute but i did keep trying to remind myself like it's okay it's okay hashem this is meant to be right there's some other plan here and it's gonna work out however it's gonna work out so sometimes resets come in small things right i had a teacher in high school who used to say on a scale of one to ten ten being nuclear war how does this rate so when on a scale of one to ten are my cleaning lady not showing up and me having to take my son's appointment and also clean my house um it probably isn't even a 1 if 10 is nuclear war but it was overwhelming in the moments right so sometimes these resets come in small things like that and sometimes they're big i have a good friend whose son was in dental school he worked really hard in college he did really well on his exams he pushed himself got accepted to a really great dental school and he's becoming a dentist and he's in his first or second year in dental school and he discovered something really disheartening he did not have the fine motor skills that it takes to be a dentist he can't be a dentist a dentist takes very coordinated delicate specific skills and it was a skill set that he wasn't good at and suddenly he has to reset everything he had spent six five or six years to get toward this goal and now poof the whole thing's over the whole thing's gone so that's a major reset on a scale of one to ten ten being nuclear wards it's there it's you know maybe more like a two like he we're three he put a ton of time and effort and money into this and now it's over so these things come up in small ways and in big ways and the question is how do we react to them how do we respond to them so first of all mourning is important i am not an angel and i don't think any of us are expected to be angels we're human beings and human beings have emotions and having that emotional response is normal it's healthy but it has to be expressed in a healthy normal way right so everyone should feel frustration sadness disappointment a little bit of overwhelming feeling when they have a reset in their lives that's normal but the key is to take that disappointment and to turn it to reframe it into acceptance into saying you know what i don't know everything there's a bigger plan out here and i don't i don't know it yet but i'm gonna learn it and it's all gonna be good and it's really hard to do that i'm not trying to say this is easy but it's really important to do that because that's how we get to growth and self uh uh fulfillment in our own lives i want to share another story from the torah with you another reset story that it's pretty powerful and i think you'll enjoy it the story goes at the end of the book of genesis the book of genesis ends off with jacob our forefather dying he's one of our patriarchs and he's dying he's on his deathbed and his sons all know that their father is dying and so they each come for their opportunity to spend their last time alone with their father and to get blessings from their father it's a very emotional and intense time in their lives so joseph one of jacob's sons right one of the twelve tribes brings his two sons to spend time with their grandfather and to get his blessing joseph has two sons ephraim and menasha menashe is the older son ephraim is the younger son and joseph brings these two sons to jacob to be blessed blessings from a rabbi from a great sage from a forefather a patriarch wasn't just like a well wish blessings were like your prophecy this is what's going to happen to you in your lives they were major okay so joseph brings his two sons and asha and he positions them in front of jacob so that jacob could bless them he puts menashen next to joseph of next to jacob's right hand and he puts a fry him the younger son next to jacob's left hand because tradition was the older son gets blessed with the right hands and the younger son gets blessed with the left hand well to joseph's surprise jacob sees the freya menasha and instead of blessing them like this he crosses his arms and he blesses them like this meaning he puts his left hand on the older son and his right hand on the younger son big ouch big big ouch he's telling joseph that ephraim the younger one is going to grow up to be more respectable do more things more accomplished than his older brother menasha big ouch for a parent to hear that and the commentaries ask a question why did jacob do this this he was an old man who was dying this is not a comfortable position to give blessings in why didn't he just say to joseph no switch them i want to fry him over here and i want menasha over here why does he cross his arms instead so rashi the most famous commentary says because it would have been embarrassing for them it would have been much more in their face like oh you don't deserve this blessing but i want to give you a little bit of a deeper answer a deeper answer here would be that this was a climax this was a climax in the life of joseph joseph has been raising his children this is menasha his older son this is he's going to be his pride and joy he's going to be incredible and do great things this is fry him his younger son he's also going to be his pride and joy he's hopefully going to follow in the footsteps of his older brother menasha freeze that frame for a second when jacob goes like this boom poof it's all over your dream for your sons joseph has just vanished they're not going to be what you thought ephraim is going to be the more successful one if frying is going to be the greater role model menash is going to be not nearly as impressive that was a huge huge deal that was not a simple thing at that moment joseph has a test let's see how you are going to react let's see how you're going to respond to this reset this is not a setback this is joseph you're going this way boom jacob's telling him you're going this way and as joseph responds silence doesn't say a word that means he accepted fully he didn't say dad this is not okay no no wrong he tries he says no no wrong one and jacob says no no this is how i want to do it and he just accepts it okay that's how it's going to be might not be what i thought i was working toward i might not be where i thought i was going but i'm not going to flip out i'm not going to lose it it's a reset acceptance i take it from you god you know better than me that moment with joseph is so powerful it's such a lesson of taking something that we weren't planning on and saying i'm okay with it i'm gonna let go and let god because this is clearly what was meant to be and now let's get a deeper answer to why jacob did this okay why doesn't he just tell joseph switch their spots so there's an interesting idea that every one of the tribes corresponded to a month of the year okay every one of the tribes corresponds to a month of the year and joseph actually gets divided into two months one for menasha and one for ephraim and menasha's month is the month of khashvan of the jewish month now some of you may have heard that the jewish month of khashwan is the only month in which we have no holidays no inspiration whatsoever now there are other jewish months without holidays but they have fast days and although a fast day is not a holiday it is still a source of inspiration the month of hashvan has neither no holidays no fast days no inspiration but really it should have had because the first temple was actually finished being built in the month of freshman and the inauguration of the temple the big party our temple is done should have happened in the month of one right then only god said no we're not doing it now we're going to wait and they waited 11 months till the month of tishrei almost a full year later and that's when they had the inauguration of the first temple so khashwan gets gypped it's a month of no holidays it's a month of no in inborn uh you know built into it inspiration not even a fast day and then when it could have had something it could have had a big party in it nope gets gypped nothing there the thing is the sages tell us that's cause you gotta wait a little bit the month of fresh fun is going to have its moment because when the third temple is built the end of days time of the messiah that third temple is going to be finished and inaugurated in the month of kashmar so it's worth waiting for you don't have anything now but you're going to get it in the future when jacob went like this on menasha and ephraim it's very likely what he was saying was i want you to stay in your real spots because that's where you're gonna get to one day right now i'm gonna cross my arms because right now this is where you're at the frame is gonna be the greater one and menasha is gonna be the uh less accomplished even though he's older but one day this is all going to change and one day you're gonna be in your correct spot and menasha you're going to show greatness that people don't realize you have and it's going to come out in your month of cheshvan it's going to come out in that month that was egypt until now it has hidden greatness the greatness of one is not obvious but it will be obvious one day menasha represents hidden greatness that is there that can be touched on and can be brought out if a person recognizes that their their their life their outcomes is in the hands of hashem it's god who runs the bottom line it's not me who creates that outcome he finishes it for me and when we do that we tap into that hidden greatness of menasha the word menasha in hebrew is memnon if you rearrange the letters it spells neshama soul menasha represents that hidden greatness that soul that's deep within a person that has to be brought out that sometimes when we face things that are challenging and difficult we can make that part of us shine by saying whoa it's not how i thought it was gonna be but it's okay it's a reset there's another plan here i'm gonna let go and i'm gonna let god so menasha represents this idea of i thought i was going someplace and i didn't end up there but it's all good it's all good it's a reset and now i'm going to go in a different direction when we react healthy here when we come out with morning and that's okay if it's healthy and appropriate and we can then transfer we can adapt our morning into something deeper called acceptance that's where we show the world it's all going to be good you know we're all in a book we're all in the middle of a book our lives are like a novel our lives are like um 89 chapter book the thing is we may only be in chapter three we may think we're in chapter 93 but we're really only in chapter three and there's so much more that has to play out as we go through life and that's what a reset is it's saying i thought i got it i thought i was heading in one way but i just discovered i've got a lot more chapters ahead of me and the story's going to play out differently than i planned and it's all great and it's all good we just got to let go and we just gotta let go