Put on A Happy Face (Ep. 132)

what's the longest word in the english language hi this is overallowski and welcome to the rabbi yolovsky show and whether you're watching with our friends over at or anytime or wherever you watch or listen to your podcast as always it is a thrill to have you alone and uh i've been doing some thinking every now and then i do a little thinking and uh i was thinking what i should start talking about now i know it's always tricky when you get involved in a series because what if people aren't really interested in it and then they get sucked into it or what if you for example you know are annoyed by the topic and each week you get more and more annoyed all these things have happened yeah so uh i i i thought about a um i thought about a uh series that i want to start i don't know how far i'm going to take it and that is as you know there is a million clients show particularly between the weeks that are in between pesach and schwarz to one percent of us yeah uh there are those who continue doing it the entire summer until russian and so i decided i want to pick out ideas from 50 yellows now these are relatively um uh innocuous ideas i mean from turkey i wasn't going to have to be from 50 i was i suppose but um i wanted to find topics to be able to talk about now it's particularly during this time of year that we learned vikki yamos between pesach and truiss because this is the it's cut military the preparation was for them to be able to lift themselves up madrega after madrega in order to be able to be zoycha to receive the turret to make themselves into a klee and derek eretz is what allows you to become that klee that can hold torah and uh that was the reason that rachel knew that rebecca would become a tamika because he had such outstanding medos and she knew that because he had such wonderful medos he would be an unbelievable clay to be able to hold all of the torah that he would then go on to receive and of course history proves it to be correct the more you work on yourself as a person the more torah you'll receive so uh so that's why during these weeks during the entire summer months there is a minute as i mentioned to russia to learn from us the reason brought down for that is because uh you know during the winter we're all in our house and in the summertime we start going outside at least if you live in florida and we start mingling with other people at least if you live in texas and this uh because we're interacting more with people we need to learn turkey of us to understand what it's all about so i'm going to start off this week with really one line from paragalas and obviously a exhaustive treatment of picky evos would take much more time than we have but i am going to pick out one line and uh first i want to read a dedication this is uh we have a sponsor this week sponsored anonymously in honor of my dear javert who can't stop quoting you i like him already yeah you are such an inspiration to him and to me by extension especially your smile and laughter brings him so much simha this sponsorship should be as foreign you know i i tell you there are certain people who i know suddenly binge listen to uh certain speakers you know they heard a couple of sherm from them they really enjoyed them they binge listen but the truth there's only so much you can handle that's why i'm always amazed when i get an email from someone who says i stumbled on your podcast and i started from number one and i just kept going without stopping and i thought oh my goodness yeah even i can only listen to myself talk for so long that's that's not even true but anyway so uh uh i want to um i want to quote my line from vicky almost paragolife and that is me cabo call autumn because greet everyone with a pleasant face now that by the way is the answer to the little riddle i gave at the beginning it was a kid's joke what's the longest word in the english language smiles because there's a mile in between the first letter and the last one [Laughter] but uh mechanical condoms have pretty often so first first and foremost i want to point out that it was shamai who said that i don't know sharma gets a bad rap people seem to think that shamai was like the second guy he intercepted no he had a sheet that covered that time she did cover you see somebody come in and say teach me the torah on one foot teach me the turrish mcstarting yeah these people are making fun yeah uh i'll only be magaya if you uh if you um uh make me the calling don't waste my time with jokes you know there has to be a certain prerequisite where a person comes in uh giving it the respect that it deserves and if not then don't waste my time if you walk into a uh conference of major physicists and you come in and say i think einstein was wrong i said really he said yeah time's relative i have relatives they're never on time i'm sorry where did you study physics oh i never did okay so thanks for coming why'd you wait outside yeah your opinion doesn't really count for much you know so uh so xiaomi had a sheet of coconut oil this by the way if you look at the first paragraphy of where it goes through there is always a tension and you find it throughout quirky of us between ava and europe there is this tension warm yourself by the hot coals of the but don't come so close that you burn yourself come close but not that close keep your distance out of the era you have to try to be able to maintain that balance not an easy thing to do so the zoo guys yeah that was why you needed two people one's emphasis was more on ahava and one was more on europe so by shamai and hillel you find this quite dramatically and that's why it says that an oil mahaba why because when the comes that'll be a world of din and in the world of din so we uh we'll go like shaman but in this world in this world we go with the rahman of a hello not because it's right or wrong it's not doing right or wrong it has to do with what the world is that you're living in so nonetheless even though shamai was the one who took the approach of din of yirah and shabbat says macabre upon the office you should always greet people with a pleasant face the mother of the guy and so you put this into a context the little guy used to keep a little notebook of how much time he wasted during the year and i think it was like three hours that he felt was wasted i'm sure his his wasting of time was not our wasting of time emotion shades that's how he used to say in the name of david labor it's the mashiva and founder of yeshiva he says you guys don't even know how to battle at least us when we wasted time we still did something you just do nothing it's just absolutely amazing yeah so um uh so there's a uh the cable called the seven part of the office creeping with a pleasant face so the vulgarian his tummy found him looking in the mirror going [Laughter] [Music] i want to see what's the most pleasant face i can make now this is an amazing thing if you start salon to said that your face is a resistant rocket people look at you and it changes their approach yeah i was learning with a bunch of tom edium in the yeshiva once where i was teaching and uh they were making a fundraising video and they were filming around and finally the guy said to me says see if you can get them to smile because when people see smiling faces they give more money i said okay so he turns to get the camera and i said and that's why god sent down his only son jesus to die in the cross for us of course they were left and they oh that's great let's get that in i'm glad they didn't have the audio [Laughter] like i don't have enough problems oh gosh anyway but um when people smile it makes you feel better that's why little kids they learn how to smile because they know when they smile it makes everybody happy yeah and uh it's obviously there's obviously a trick there was somebody in the gemara who someone saw him they thought he was smiling that he was laughing at him it was just the way his is his face was formed it was just natural you know it's uh it's an interesting thing that there's a natural way that many people look you know i genetically come from a family where we get these big puffy bags under our eyes and our eyelids droop and it was getting to the point where i couldn't see i literally couldn't see yeah a lot of people use that word literally when they mean figuratively you know you literally had smoke coming out of your ears i hope not but i literally couldn't see that i would have to raise my eyes just to be able to say it it was freaking out my students and also was high when i was driving so um i actually went to get a eye lift and to remove some of the bags under my eyes hashem they came back you know because it's genetic i may have to do it again you know but um uh i remember i went for the post opera uh uh evaluation and he showed me the before and after pictures he says see now you don't look so tired and angry i said did it ever occur to you that i'm just tired and angry [Laughter] but be there as it may um you know for a long time my wife thought that i was upset with her because my eyes were like and she's like what's the matter it's like nothing goes why you staring at me i said i'm not that's what they do with my eyes you know so it came out that way you know but uh oh i wasn't really bad chef he said to me your eyebrows fell off of your breath oh the whole your boy was hanging down you had to reattach my brows it was yeah it was it was a mess yeah and uh and and you have to wear these big dark glasses because your eyes are like all black and blue it's like really horrible you know i'd be in the elevator and kids would be staring at me because while you're wearing these you know black glasses and i'd lift them up and they were like hey yeah you get to be my age it's not a lot of fun in life and scaring small children is really at the top of my lips the macabre mercedes part of the office means that that isn't a voda yes there are people who are naturally happy that's wonderful they always have a smile on their face and then there are people who have to work at it and just because i'm not feeling good that doesn't mean that anybody else has to see it rebuild started the muslim movement that he writes what finally pushed him over the edge and inspired him to actually make an entire movement which as you know claire's shell is very suspicious they were anti-muslimics people who opposed him and felt that he was trying to introduce reforms into judaism he had to prove his bona fides before he could uh get anybody even listen to him and since he was one of the biggest of his generation he had to end up revealing a little bit of his greatness who was no slouch on his own said there are only two people in our generation who know how to learn the base of levy and ruby saw salanta and one of them spends his time trying to convince you that he doesn't know how but he's always hidden that's what part of the muslim movement is very hidden so um uh so but he writes what inspired me to start this movement he says i had to talk to somebody [Music] during uh during seriousness it was after darkening now today you don't see it really if we're honest you don't really see it but i'm old enough to remember when i was a kid that just made you but people used to different and people were crying they were crying doppening it was uh the truman sadashi and he was one of the latest we've shown him borderline achrom he says that um uh you know people on on assassinate truly used to take an hour to save pacific december it was it was a very very dramatic time people really felt life and death and um needless to say i would have to say probably the most um powerful i seriously made sure i remember was after 9 11 when the um when the twin towers went down that was just before rosh hashanah and you went into that rosh hashanah and there was a sense of stunned people were stunned yeah the uh the the the reaction among clients was tremendous i remember the nova mystical rabbit was quoted and i think time or newsweek i remember and he said the world will never be the same and it was true it took almost a month till everything went back the way it was but that month was very dramatic yeah because i think it was winston churchill who said that man will occasionally stumble upon the truth but he usually picks himself up and keeps going so uh you know it was it was a an awakening experience anyway before i had to talk to this guy i was successfully trouba and his face was a mask of pain and he was doing true money with dominic he was crying and he comes out i remember michelle said to me i just i have to ask you something michelle said at first i thought wow what a firm guy yeah look at his intensity of his evoda and then i thought what happened to macabre calls him to sit in front of the office because he's doing truman why do i have to suffer why do i have to see this face i i didn't do anything wrong [Laughter] because your face is a richer surrounding because when you walk down the street with a miserable look on your face it makes everybody miserable smile and the world smiles with you or something like that i remember there was some old song [Laughter] yeah who cares what they're wearing on main street in savile row it's what you wear from ear to ear and not from head to toe that matters so um since uh i have no filter i think we've established this if you're still watching the podcast by this point you know that uh you know whenever i get up to speak it's sort of like a high wire performer without a net i know exactly where it's gonna go the only one who's better at that than me is definitely donald trump but you know but uh i also i uh i'm i'm not so good with filters someone said to me once i see you sometimes pause before you say something and think um should i say this or not and regardless of what the conclusion is you say it anyway so but i want to share this with you because i think it's important yeah i i always get a kick out of people who say to me you're just a naturally happy person and i've always i'm i'm i'm always surprised and somewhat gratified to hear that that people assume that it just comes naturally to me and sometimes if i'm in a mood i'll tell them no i am in fact a naturally depressed person that's my normal state of existence i suffered from depression i imagine if i was a kid today that had medication it was never diagnosed just like none of my learning disabilities were diagnosed i was they didn't have all that stuff back then they just said you don't care you don't try you know under chiva you know if you can't you'd work hard either okay but i was i was always depressed and i wasn't just depressed i could depress anybody else i once had a guy in my shoes says to me if you have a bad mood share it with others and it it was i lived under a cloud it was it was i i could not be happy it was terrible terrible um you could argue whether it's nature versus nurture and i think it was both but but uh you know i was picked on as a kid i was bullied i had all these learning disabilities so i couldn't really succeed in school and i didn't know i didn't know about them at the time and everyone knew that i was smart so they couldn't figure out why i'm not succeeding in learning and anyway uh it was really very hard and i had to i remember i don't know why this made a keen decision on me somebody said to me in yeshiva one of my friends he says i kept trying to figure out why i was unhappy and he said to me okay okay you're unhappy now go on and live life i don't know why that made such an impression on me i kept waiting for someone to solve this problem that i was unhappy maybe if i go here maybe if i go there maybe if i do this maybe then i'll be happy and then i realized no no i'm i'm not going to be happy but that doesn't mean that i can't live my life kayla i was happy and i made an effort and i have to tell you i eventually overcame my disabilities and reading it wasn't until i was 30. i went around and asked a whole bunch of people who who had trouble with learning and things who had mastered this what should i do and they all told me the same thing learn a hundred blood gamora and hazard until you know it and you'll have a beat and that's what i did i sat in a basement by myself and i went line by line also i have a retentive problem it's one of my disabilities i can't remember things so like i would get to the bottom of the oven i forgot completely what i read this happened to me all the time i would read things and then just forget what i just read i had to read it again again and again and over and over again and i was reversing letters and i was it's just the mess it's just a mess all guys at the end of my add and i would just you know go in here there you go it was um it was challenging but after 40 duff i saw a major change and after 60 duff i felt like i had a beat now i'm not one of those people like my wife who takes one of those three page klee yuckers and goes like this okay here's what you say all i i can't do that and i'll never do that yeah because i'm i'm i'm always limping you know so uh uh it's it's a struggle for me but um [Music] so i sat down to do the same thing and i said i'm going to change my approach i'm going to make myself happy now i didn't realize at the time that this is exactly what the ghazal teach us simcha is a meda you can make yourself happy or you can make yourself miserable you have the ability to control what you choose to do a person can't say i can't help it not an animal you're not instinctual yes does it come more easily to certain people sure i know somebody uh he sent me once what's it like to get angry i've never gotten angry in my life and i said that infuriates me because i was born with a terrible anger probably used to have uh you know temper tantrums and stuff yeah it took me many years to try to get my anger under control because i used to get so upset yeah the chef not i can't say that i have a beat you can never say you have a beat but i i definitely have it uh you know under control but but the the depression i just had to work to change my attitude i would look in the mirror and make funny things i would tell jokes over to myself i still do by the way like people say uh why do you laugh at your own jokes i said because i really enjoy them i find them funny i don't know if anyone else does i don't even care because people know that uh i have reputation of funny and so people laugh even if they don't get the joke and i think that's tremendous violence someone told me when the audience wants and everybody was laughing and the guy says to his friend i don't get it he says neither do i that doesn't matter because they know that i'm funny so you know but i would work to to change my attitude to music i would listen to things that would and i would work to change my attitude now here's a little physiological um neurological uh phenomena if you think a particular thought and you go from that thought to another thought to another thought a few times i know how many times it is your brain creates a uh a shortcut like in a computer you know you push one key and it does like five or six different things because you programmed it as a shortcut your brain does the same thing so as soon as you start to think something your brain goes it's automatic you have to break the pattern you have to choose to think in a different way so metabolic number seven part of the office like the gra was doing in front of that mirror was i put a happy face on because that's what a kurdish borough who wants me to do and and it doesn't matter if i feel like it or not it makes a difference to people i was coming home once and somebody says to me david that's he knows an israeli israelis call me david americans call me david some people call me other things but uh you know hey but uh he says to me david when i see your smile it gives me a reason to live and i was i smiled i came home i told it over to to uh to a friend you know i said hey what this guy said to me you know i said i've seen my smile it doesn't give me a reason to live he says oh i guess he didn't hear so what he tried to kill himself a few days ago he cut doused himself with gasoline and they caught him just before he let the match so when he says he sees a smiling face and it gives him a reason to live he's being quite serious people ask me what the most effective tool is in here so uh so if i'm if i'm if i'm in a funnier form you know the most important thing is sincerity once you can fake that the rest is easy but the truth is the most effective tool is a sincere smile if you can give somebody a smile you can really you know people look at the smiling face and it makes them feel good it changes people's attitudes and you can do that you can change the way that you think you can change the way that people view the world through your smile yeah the cowboy caught them but in front of your office it doesn't matter whether you feel like it or not that's someone if you don't feel like it i never feel like getting up in the morning never i'm a night person you know the alarm goes off and and my wife says to me sometimes you know you don't hear yourself but like the alarm goes off and you start to whimper so what so the f1 button getting up in the morning no you don't always feel like doing everything that you're supposed to do but that's not uh that's not an excuse it's an amazing thing because when people see a smile it changes their attitude changes their approach to life it changes how they feel about themselves people smile back people feel better about themselves the common goal of themselves in front of your office means that it's it's not only the people that i like it's not only when i'm feeling happy it's a shita so i would to she remember moisture shapiro here in eric's show and he can be very harif it can be very very tough somebody said to him once uh when he was in the coil in uh stamford connecticut it was in the coil over there because his daughter was sick and he was getting treatments for her and uh this fella said to me i said to her marshall why are you so tough on me so he said there's a medrush that says that there's a malek who stands over every blade of grass [Music] and hits it with a stick and tells it to grow you see the way that you grow is getting hit with a stick it was very tough so i thought wow he's so careful he says no he's nothing like he used to be ever since his daughter died the one that he went to america to get treatments for ever since his daughter died he's not the same person he's always meant she's broken so that's what makes his story so incredible he was he was this is what everyone says he was just broken he's at the leviaya of his daughter and he has stormed the gates of heaven to try to save his during his life and he's coming back from the kura bent over in pain and he notices somebody out of the corner of his eye and he stands up puts in a smile puts him a smile and he speaks to him for a few minutes and goes back into the car and someone said rabbi what was that he says he's a hussein who's getting married tonight i didn't want him to think i wasn't happy so i could focus on my own pain this is how i feel or i could say i want to reach out to this person i want to touch this person's life that's more important when we say your uh faces or should surround that means that just like you're not allowed to put an obstacle which should surround him if your face isn't pleasant i'm not saying you need a big smile smile may not always be the most pleasant face depends on the person but it should be a pleasant face that when someone looks at it it makes them feel good and welcome and positive when you take that approach then you can change the world you must change the world with a smile and so the biggest word in the english language is smiles remember seeing assignments that said it's the only thing you can give and still keep is a smile and so uh what can i tell you we're coming out of a difficult time obviously and so you can make a choice and say i'm going to i don't feel like it i don't feel like it but the terror jew doesn't have that option toriju says what does a kurdish borough who want from me is the altar of the verdict used to say i never asked whether or not i could do something i asked whether or not something needed to be done and i knew how coach baruch who would give me the kayak to do it and that's a brief introduction to the to the subject of having a nice pleasant face letting people see yeah i want to see people with a miserable one happy terrible look good morning what's good about it it just sucks all the good feeling out of the room but uh a person comes in with a smile and a pleasant look we know people like this yeah somebody said to me once michelle come to the door what do you give money to the ones who are nice the ones have a smile it's not even the cause we tend to give to people and people tend to give more when they see a smile yeah so hashem even though we're going through trying times in difficult times all of us should really make an effort to put that smile on our face and that's it for this week if you want to find out more about the show you can go to my website at riolovsky.com you can comment on this uh episode you can send an email you can sponsor an episode and that's it for this week i'm deborah dolowski and this is the robert yolovski show