MindFlex- Take-aways from the Holidays to Apply to Life, Take 1, with Mitch Barnett

beginning of the month of ello 52 days ago and we had an amazing journey and the journey that we went on started in ello which was a time of preparation for rosh hashanah and if the rabbis tell us that if we want to gain inspiration from events we have to concretize those events and so what i'd like to do is walk through this amazing journey of 52 days from the first of ello to simchas torah which was two days ago so that we can see its highlights and hopefully have some takeaways to live our lives differently this coming year so as we start let's talk now about ello what the rabbi say and my rosh shiva rabbi weinberg said on ello the acronym for elol of llama duval ahmed is anila dodi vadodi lee i am from my beloved and my beloved is for me it's a love story i am from my beloved and my beloved is for me and that's the preparation the 30-day preparation for yom hadin the day of judgment rosh hashanah it's an extraordinary idea so how would rabbi weinberg the dean of tara explain this he would ask a question and the question was shouldn't it be reverse not i am from my beloved i we are from my beloved and my beloved is for me the almighty i am my beloved i am for the almighty and the almighty is for me see he would explain that in the desert back when the almighty took us out of egypt it should have been the reverse the almighty started this love affair the almighty showed us his kindness he saved us he brought us out of egypt so i am from i my beloved is for me and i am from my beloved that's what the expression should be my beloved is for me and i am from my beloved and rabbi weinberg would say no that's not what it is he gives an example of this from a story a true story of a rabbi who was in new york back in the 80s and the subways were rough and the people were off and if you remember in the 80s they had these giant boom boxes loud music machines stereos the bigger the better so so it happened a couple of rough guys came on a subway car with a boombox and this rabbi was sitting in a car minding his own business and an old lady starts to scream at these big guys with this boombox shut the music you guys are crazy and she goes on and on these guys get really upset with her and one guy goes over to him she says ma'am i like this music if you don't like this music turn it off and in an instant the woman turned it off so you can imagine what was going on this guy got very very aggravated and he gets over to the woman and he's about to hit the woman and this rabbi says i i gotta get up and he puts his hand in front of the guy and says don't hit the woman and this big guy says what do you want do you want to fight he says no i don't want to fight what do you want don't hit the woman what are you making of this and it goes back and forth and finally they desist the woman gets scared she scampers off to a side of the car and it seems like nothing's going to happen except the music goes on again the woman comes over again and the same exact incident ensued luckily our hero was able to again stop the altercation these fellows got off at the next stop and nothing else happened and this guy was sitting this rabbi this young rabbi was sitting now in his seat in the subway car and he's saying i can't believe it i saved this woman's life and she didn't thank me and then i realized wait a minute the almighty saved my life and i didn't thank the almighty and our young rabbi hero was telling this story over to rabbi weinberg after it happened and rabbi weinberg said that's a great lesson but you know you missed an even bigger lesson and the fellow said what lesson did i miss and the rosh yeshiva said who do you think sent those hoodlums into that subway car it's the same roast it's the same almighty so the roshiva would say almighty is not superman he doesn't just come in and save he also creates those situations so what's the message what's the lesson the almighty creates situations because he wants us to grow he wants us to become bigger people and he wants to bring out a potential in us and so sometimes uncomfortable difficult situations when we start to see things through the lens of the almighty we can understand that they're coming for us for our for love and for our for our purpose and our affection or the weinberg would say getting back to our story why therefore don't we always see things like this in a positive way and he would say we have resentments we think life should be different we think life should be better why me why do i have to go through this why do i have to go through that rabbit wamper would explain you see life is not a spa a spa means you're comfortable no pain no gain he says really life is a gym we're here to grow and the only way that you can grow is with resistance but no one goes into a gym and resents the weights because they realize that the weights give them the resistance that allow them to grow so to life the almighty wants us to grow wants us to fulfill our potential and therefore he's giving all the time to us now let's reel it back i always say you know it might be sometimes difficult to see those hoodlums in the car as the loving hand of the almighty but why don't we first start with seeing all the wonderful things that the almighty does for us see all the good things that the almighty does but see all the good things in our lives it's called gratitude carousel toes we have to work and we did work on this for 30 days an ello on gratitude because if we see life for what it is life's gorgeous i mean weinberg would say life is gorgeous we just have to pay attention to it we have to be aware of it and if we have gratitude we will see how much we have in life the bali musu they're called people who work on spiritual growth and character refinement say that our character traits don't split what that means is that for instance if you're a grateful person and you're grateful to everything and everyone in your life you'll also be grateful to the almighty so they say that the prescription for seeing how much the almighty does for us is to be grateful for every single thing and every single person in your life and therefore what we do in ello and what we did at el is we work on gratitude we work on appreciating all the people and all the things in our lives and that brings us to a great appreciation of the almighty so getting back to our answer the roshiva remy weinberg would say it really is if i take the first step anila dodie and i see how wonderful the almighty has been to me i will start seeing all the things he does for me and all its stripes and all its colors and i'll be able to recognize the goodness that he's constantly doing for me and that is the prelude to the day of judgment which is a mind-blowing idea this love story between us the jewish people and the almighty is the prelude for the day of judgment it gets even more incredible because as you know our day of judgment is very odd in some ways it really is a day that you judge for a capital offense you could live you could die you could have blessing you could have curses all kinds of things are in front of you on the day of judgment so one would think that you would be very serious for the 30 days you would look very hard into your actions in fact the last day perhaps you'd fast you would think about all the things you did wrong you'd look back and you do what the book say is repentance in fact perhaps you'd have yom kippur the day of atonement before rosh hashanah because of course if you're really serious about overcoming a judgment for life and death you would think perhaps it's about my actions to be penitent to see review my actions too fast to be serious perhaps even solid but what do we do we party we wear our finest clothing we go out and we party and we eat and we drink and we don't seem to take the the judgment so seriously so what's going on what's going on because we know it's the day of judgment so if you recall back in rosh hashanah the first rosh hashanah the first day of the month of tishrei is actually the anniversary of the birth of aldemaresho the first man the almighty as it were creates life creates life and it's a proficient day because the the the the spiritual energy that recycles to us every rosh hashanah is a very simple question the almighty says to himself as it were is it worth renewing your contract and recognize the almighty created adam purely to fulfill his potential adam didn't deserve to be created he didn't do anything to be created he didn't merit anything that he was given he was given a tremendous opportunity to fulfill a potential so the almighty as it were every anniversary of adam's birth is saying to himself adam is it worth creating you again is it worth upping your contract right imagine imagine joe judd coach of the giants doesn't go 0-5 which he is now but goes 0-16 he has a total losing record and he has a one-year contract 30 days before the renewal of the contract next year he's going to see ma mara the owner of the team and tish and he's he's begging he's pleading he's saying guys i'm the same guy that you had a shared vision with i'm that guy who can get you to a super bowl and here's why and he starts showing him and trying to convince him that this is the person i am and this is the potential that we have and this is our collective vision and that's what we bring every year as a word of rosh hashanah the rosh hashanah is not going back and seeing what did i do wrong what did i do wrong during the year and feeling bad about it no it's where do i want to go this year who do i want to be this year and to the extent that we show up and we want true life this coming rosh hashanah which has just passed the almighty gives it to us it's a day not for us to look at our actions and do repentance which we eventually do it's a day for us to look at our insides what are our goals what's our ruts on what's our desires and where are we going in life it's a big picture understanding of the world and we say to ourselves this is who i want to be and this is what i want out of life and it converges on a theme called melech kingship because we recognize that the almighty is all that we want it's all that we can want and we throw our ambitions to the almighty's agenda and we say almighty i know how much you've given me i want to fulfill your objectives for the world and i want to live it in in accordance with your mandates for the world and that's my big picture and that's my direction please give me me blessing this year to fulfill my potential and that's how we come out of rosh hashanah confident that the almighty will deliver confident that the almighty will give us a year of blessing to fulfill our lofty ambitions and why do we know that we'll be victorious in this judgment we know we'll be victorious in this judgment because it's our father the king our father is the king and we all know as parents your kid could be doing everything wrong but if he moves just a little bit in the direction you want him to go in you'll give him anything to continue that forward progress and that is the almighty the almighty is our father who wants us to succeed in life and wants us to have simply everything and that's how we leave rosh hashanah but then what do we have to do to continue along and to try to fulfill our potential and our ambitions you see we have to clean up the mess we made so in other words we did those things that last year to relationships we had to people in our lives and to the almighty that brought us further away from them we've now determined we went in the wrong direction and we want to make good and we want to sincerely become better and sincerely live in accordance with our objectives and potential so we have to sincerely now go back and examine our our actions and repair some of the relationships that perhaps we've damaged and asked the almighty to forgive us when we moved away from him in the prior year why because we sincerely want to go forward so we have to clean up the mess and that cleaning and cleansing that we do after we decide where we're going in life is the 10 days prior to yom kippur and in yom kippur we continue to have ex extraordinary opportunity with the almighty because what happened on yom kippur salati kid varekko we were entirely entirely cleansed and forgiven from those things which we did you know when i first showed up in in yeshiva back almost 30 years ago i remember one of the younger rabbis saying yom kippur is the best day of the year and growing up as a reforms you on long island that wasn't my perspective in fact when people ask me now as a banker and they say which holiday is that is that the sad one or is that the happy one and the sad one they're always talking about yom kippur and certainly that was my perspective well this young rabbi's perspective was quite the opposite he said when will you ever have an opportunity to be fully totally cleansed clean as if nothing happened in your life that was wrong totally cleanse perfect relationships on it's unbelievable doesn't happen the almighty allows us to repair all the breaches between he and us and that's extraordinary because we all know when we have issues with people in our lives we can make up we can get we can talk it out we can get people to forgive us but they never really lose that experience with the almighty it's swept it's wiped totally clean etch-a-sketch it goes all the way as if it never ever existed and that's how we come out of yom kippur so imagine the closest now we have spent 30 days in the month of ello really having gratitude for all the wonderful things we have in our life and ascribing those things to the ultimate giver of what we have the almighty and then we set our head straight and we realize that it's all about him and his agenda and we want to tap into our potential and we want to become big people and live in accordance with our promise in accordance with our potential and then the almighty gives us as it were as it were wind in our sails to actually move us toward who we want to be start forward progress and cleaning up the things that we do wrong and more importantly getting resolve and an initiative for the future and before he lets us go on our own he gives us training wheels he gives us a set of training wheels so what are those training wheels called the training wheels that he gives us is called sukkot he says to us you know what i want you to do i want you to go into a hut i want you to go out of your permanent home and i want you to go into a hut for seven days seven days now several lessons we learned from this holiday first one it's called the holiday of sukkot zman this is the time of our happiness so the essence of what it means to be happy comes out of this festival that's the first thing i want to talk about on sukkot happiness so why is that the case so it's the time of the in gathering it's the time when we as jews in an agricultural society had all the fruits and the vegetables and we felt full we were all full and so the first thing we have to know when we have things in life when we have bounty in life we have to realize who allowed us to have it we have to appreciate that we get blessed in life you know you can have so much but if you don't appreciate what you have if you don't appreciate all the good that you have you won't even realize you have good and we all know this we all know this in the secular world in our world if you don't appreciate what you have things don't give you happiness if you appreciate what you have then only those things that you have can make you extraordinarily happy so in the time when we have tremendous bounty we have tremendous good in our lives we're meant to learn the lesson that we have to appreciate all that we have to really be happy and we have to ascribe those things that we have to the giver which is the almighty that's the first lesson of happiness in sukkot they say a beautiful understanding when leia one of the matriarchs had her fourth son yehuda fourth son yehuda she called him yehuda which means from mode i admit what did she admit so it comes out with a question there's a story about that sentence in torah that says leia was the first one to praise and thank the almighty to give hodol and they ask how could that be adam marisha and who we talked about praise the almighty abraham praise the almighty how could leia be the first to praise the almighty and the insight they say is as follows as i mentioned leia had four sons she was one of four matriarchs they were supposed to be twelve sons three sons per matriarch when she realized she received more than her lot more than she was meant then she married it but she got more than she merited in life she called yehudah the name yehudah from i admit and forevermore what it's showing us and we yahudah comes yahudim jews because jews realize that all they get in life is a gift she recognized that all things that i have every appreciation i have is fundamentally based on the notion that i don't merit anything my existence everything i have is one unending gift from the almighty and that's the next level of simca we recognize that it's not just i appreciate everything i have but i realized every pore of my body that everything i have is a gift you imagine living a life where everything you get is a gift you don't take anything for granted you're constantly appreciative of everything you have it's an extraordinary existence and we hope to build that understanding of our wealth on sukkot because we understand the giver didn't have to give us anything and thank god we have so so much in life but it doesn't end there as i said the motiva of the sukkah teaches us two fantastic lessons among two fantastic lessons there's many amazing things that the motif of the sukkah teaches us but one thing it does is it takes us out of our our world inside and it brings us in to a hut for seven days and the rabbis say that everything we do eating drinking sleeping is a mitzvah when you're in the sukkah so what i meant before is during the year the proper relationship to using the physical world is something like this we're supposed to use the physical world for its spiritual benefit so a pithy way to say it is you don't eat you don't live to eat you eat to live so therefore our approach to using the physical world is to get pleasure from the physical world but such that we can do that which is important spirituality so we use the physical world to focus ourselves on our spiritual spiritual objectives we eat to get energy to fulfill we make meals so that we can have people into our home to give to converse with ideas to talk about wisdom for us the physical world is a means to an end it's not an end and of itself and that's how we're supposed to pursue life the training wheels of the sukkah is fantastic in that it's saying to us i'm going to give you a freebie all those things that you can do using the physical world during the holiday of sukkot in the sukkah you get an automatic mitzvah but it's trying to train all of us that our purpose in life is to fulfill torah mitzvahs we're trying to be spiritual people when we leave the sukkah after seven days the way we do that is through our intention and we have intention when we're eating when we're drinking that we're fulfilling our pursuits and our directions in life that's when we that's when we get the spiritual benefit so it's a training ground for us to focus us that when we're going back into the world and we're now going to reintegrate we've been on such a spiritual high we've been thinking and acting in relationship with the almighty for 52 days and all of a sudden we hit the ground and we go to work on monday and we put on our pants we put on our dresses and we do all kinds of things in the world the same way we do it all the time but wait a minute where's our spirituality so the seven days in the sukkah is focusing us on our direction it's focusing us on our purpose that's what life's about that's what we're going yes we're using the physical world we have to make money um during the week we have to do all kinds of things in this world the almighty gave us a body to use this world but use it properly that's the first great lesson that i'd like to share with sukkot the second lesson i'd like to share is as follows we go from what's called a a house of a permanent dwelling and we go into a temporary dwelling that's what it's called on sukkot we go to a temporary dwelling and the rabbis teach us in in that temporary dwelling idea that that's how we're supposed to understand our perspective in life meaning to say we don't get our sense of our self and security and satisfaction from the houses we build and the things we rely on but rather we go into a hut and we rely on the protection of the almighty because we ultimately realize that that is what is behind our success in life the almighty is what i was behind our blessings in life the almighty is what helps us achieve in life and the almighty is who gives us security and and sense of well-being in life it's an extraordinary concept and in fact a great rabbi in brooklyn he passed away i want to say 10 years ago perhaps more rabbi miller miller used to say you know what the real wealth is the real wealth is not our possessions real wealth is faith in the almighty when someone really has faith in the almighty and really understands that everything the almighty gives is for the good he's constantly giving he's constantly in control of things he can allow you to prevail under any circumstances and all that he does for you is good that person is truly wealthy and that really is the height of zman simchasainu when we go through a 52-day cycle and arrive at the end of sukkot after we've gotten our perspective clear and we've been working on this relationship with the almighty and we recognize that we can bring it all together and integrate ourselves with the holiday of sukkot when we merge and understand how to use the physical world that we have to meet spiritual objectives and we recognize more importantly we're our security in life comes from we've reached the pinnacle we've reached the height of our capacity to not only have a great relationship with the almighty but living in this world to have a relationship with the almighty not so simple to do right so we've come a long long way the end of sukkot is very very interesting holiday called shmini at sarah it's an in gathering and today the almighty says as it were i'm going to leave you i just want one more day just with you and that's the eighth day called shmini at sarah shemini had sarah and a holly called simchat torah where we dance and we sing around the torah is how this whole series of 51 days 52 in america ends so how is that the case that this holiday of us and the almighty and this focus on the torah is really the proper ending for this love affair that we have with the almighty reaching a pinnacle on sukkot where we can merge our capacity to use this world and our focus for the future how do we then understand torah connected to that and i'd say it's very simple as i said you know we're about having a relationship with the almighty everything we do in judaism is about that the mitzvoth the commandments it's all about channeling our connection to the almighty having connections during the day to build a relationship with the almighty there's three ways that you build a relationship with the almighty one you talk to him you pray you talk you have a relationship prayer number one number two you emulate the almighty you could be do you like the almighty you're a giver you're a lover you do things in the world to emulate the attributes of the almighty and i tell the story it's a very fond of the story because it brings me back to my childhood when i would go to work with my father and i remember distinctly my father was a sweater manufacturer and he went to various mills in brooklyn and he would tell us during the years you know i go to angelo at seven and i go to fernando at aid and i buy a cup of coffee here and i do all that it wasn't until i went with my father to work one morning and i saw angelo's dying meal and i went to the knitting mill of ferdinand etc and i went to the deli and i got the cup of coffee with him that i really understood him much better i understood where he was coming from so you got to live through it you got to emulate it if you are trying to be like the almighty who is a giver par excellence you come to know the almighty on a higher higher level and the last and perhaps most important way to understand the almighty is through learning his torah through learning his wisdom it allows you to know yourself and how you as a person are going to ultimately find your potential in life how are you going to fill the objectives that the almighty has for you so very much through learning the almighty's wisdom as it were speaking his language coming in contact with his wisdom is the third and perhaps greatest way to develop a relationship with the almighty and to see we've come full circle i want to know if i might kind of go back and i want to talk about perhaps takeaways that we can use to help us concretize the growth that we've had over the last almost two months so i want to suggest the first thing and perhaps maybe the most important thing we could ever do as human beings and as jews trying to reach our creator is work on gratitude work on really becoming people who appreciate every single thing in our lives you know when the rabbis give us in prayers right in the beginning of prayers the morning blessings are things that are meant for us to meditate on day-to-day so that we don't lose track of how wonderful the world is for us and how much we have and as i said not only must we focus on those prayers and say them slow and really go through our day and the more time we spend on appreciating those things that we have and bringing it to our awareness the more pleasure we're going to have from it and the more reality we're going to have in our lives because life is gorgeous we just have to focus on it life is gorgeous my rosh shiva said we just have to focus on and he said being happy which is focusing on what you have is hard work you can be miserable it's far easier but we want to focus on what we have we want to focus on the pleasures of life and what we have and as i said that our understanding of lay is so beautiful if we live a life that everything we get is we're not supposed to get it everything we get we wake up every morning my grandmother overshalom used to say thank god every morning oh yes how you doing grandma regina thank god thank god i got up and as you get a bit older you realize that that's it you you have a winning day you've gotten up and you have so much potential and you have so many blessings in your life so we have to focus on that first and most important idea is we have to be thankful for every single thing in our lives and every single person in our lives we have to thank the waiters and the doormen and the people that do things for us that builds in us a muscle of appreciation and ultimately that's the muscle that we have not just for appreciating that waiter but for also appreciating the almighty and most importantly getting great satisfaction happiness in life first key takeaway number one number two takeaway is as i mentioned rosh hashanah is about getting our heads square where are we going in life what do we want out of life what are our goals what are our ambitions am i living in accordance with what i should be living with so i'll suggest to us that is the mechanism that rosh hashanah forces us toward and if you're like me i kind of get a little bit of a picture but i don't really have it crystal clear so i'm suggesting for for people like me and perhaps even people who do have it clear make a business plan what do i mean by that i'm a banker and i and i know that those companies that have a plan they have a projection they have a vision of where they're going and how they're getting there they're the ones that get closer to what they want to be they're the ones that come closer to their objectives so you want to have a plan you want to have goals you want to understand where you're going so i urge you as i urge myself finish concretizing your business plan what do i want to be where i'm going what are my key objectives what are my key goals what are my key strategies it doesn't have to be complex it could be three goals it could be five goals it could be one goal it could be one or two strategies to achieve your goals it just should be meaningful to you and it should be in line with your vision of what the almighty wants me and what your purpose is in this world business plan the third thing that i urge myself because it's very hard for me to do is understand that we ultimately want to get there and ultimately our actions are important just because i said rosh hashanah is about the big picture it's not about atonement it's not about chuva but those things do matter those things are important we do want our actions to be in line with our perspectives in life from where we're going we want to be we want to be the people of our dreams we want to be the people that fulfill our potential so therefore checking in with your plan is important checking in with how you're doing is very important i also say in business that if a company doesn't look at their business plan at least once a month how did i do relative to my plan how did i do relative my goals what were the obstacles where did i go wrong where did i go right what should i increase what should i look out for what midterm corrections do i have to make it's very important because it's a live plan number one it's a live plan life is challenging so you want to check in on that plan there's some been times that i've made plans and not checked in it's crazy right try to make a plan and try to check into it at least once a month and don't forget don't forget you're not just checking in to what you're doing vis-a-vis the almighty and his objectives and your mission statement but you know what you're also doing you're checking in to see how did i do with my relationships how did i do with the people in my life do i have anything to repair do i have anyone to say i'm sorry to do i have anyone to work harder on relationship on my objectives on my goals because you see that's very important when we come to yom kippur as you might have remembered we can't get forgiveness from people without going over to them and you don't want to wait a whole year to work out your relationships to work out the people in your life so i would suggest that a good time at least a minimum once a month to look back at the people in your lives and the relationships you have try to get those right as well and make mid-course corrections on those that's the third point and the last point i want to say is as i mentioned at the end the holiday of sukkot and really where our wealth comes from our sense of well-being our sense of fulfillment our sense of completeness it comes from us really realizing that the almighty is our father in heaven who's going to take care of us in all ways in all situations always comes for our good has our back it's a tremendous feeling of completeness and satisfaction and well-being so how do we get that we want to work on what miller says is our wealth our wealth is beto trust in the almighty so how do we work on a day-to-day i'll submit to you that perhaps there's two key ways that you can work on it every single day and however you pray whether you pray in an organized fashion with a minion whether you pray in your home whether you say the shema whether you just say blessings whether you say anything anything you say that's prayer in a day you're talking to the almighty and i would suggest to you that what we want to do is we want to ask the almighty for things we want to be real with the reality that the almighty is in control of all things in our lives we want to go somewhere the almighty sends us in that direction we want to have success we put effort to a certain conclusion the almighty delivers for us we want to be real with that notion and the way from my perspective that you're real with that notion is you ask and you simply ask for everything almighty please help me get through this difficult situation work almighty help me have words when i go on that sales call almighty please take care of my children so they're not sick almighty please make me get to my destination i'll be late for me you name it you name it because that's living in reality the almighty is in charge and in control of all the things in our lives so ask ask ask ask first thing the second thing i think is equally important as you accomplish in life thank when you have that business deal and you come up with that great idea on the phone thank you almighty thank you almighty thank you almighty thank you almighty work it in your bones that it's not you you put effort you put a lot of effort and you're meant to put effort the almighty wants you to put out effort but not to think that you are the one that gets things accomplished the almighty gets things accomplished so not only do you need to ask ask ask but you need to thank thank thank thank you almighty for giving me that idea thank you almighty for giving me the words to say in that business call thank you almighty for making things go easy with my son on that net exam thank thank thank so with those four takeaways number one have gratitude so simply everything and everyone in your life number two make a business plan whatever works for you concretize your goals where are you going what you want to be this coming year major objectives perhaps some strategies thirdly check in with those goals at least once a month and not only checking to see are you making are you is your course correct are you getting toward your objectives in life vis-a-vis you and the almighty and his mission for the world but also how are your relationships how are your relationships with your family with your spouses with your friends with your co-workers and with the almighty and lastly ask ask ask and thank thank thank and with those four takeaways god willing we'll have a very productive upcoming year and we'll fulfill much of our potential this coming year be well