Rabbi Simcha Barnett - 48 Ways to Successful Living, Part 4

uh david is that my friend david moss look at that how are you doing rabbi i'm sorry for joining latest david you're not late you're early am i no you're right on time oh i thought it i thought it said 12 15. no 12 30. oh okay wow oh so that's terrific how you been i am good oh i think uh last week the other night was was really great i did you uh get good feedback very good feedback yeah my my room was a little uh technical we had some technical issues but i think most people jamie was in my room he didn't get in i don't know he didn't get into the your room i don't know how why what i was with rodanna from from my guest for barkov yeah it was actually interesting because i put you on the room with mark nevi and that didn't uh it didn't work out either i guess it's okay i know joe joe dana and um actually it was good i you know she did a nice job she did a nice job and i kind of like you know like i she was trying to get some participation so i ought to look good yeah we couldn't i couldn't i couldn't get everybody the module i couldn't figure out how to do the screen share and then also someone was talking in the middle with their husband and they must have been away from the thing the phone they didn't realize and they were just we couldn't stop it because it wasn't i couldn't mute them so you know we have to figure out some of those technicals but i think overall it's a good program you know 200 more than 200 people were on the line yeah i thought it was very very very well done and listen for the first time i think whatever glitches you saw they were minimal yeah i think you're right so all good any event i see i i uh your office basement there you see golf clubs it's good those aren't real golf clubs but you know really well they're like kind of like uh they're like antique golf clubs i don't know okay i inherited him from my mother-in-law when she moved okay you know but uh yeah you know it's it's a working office now yeah i uh i i got this uh i was last week i was you know this is permanent so i last week i uh i said i can't function with this inkjet printer anymore and scanner was like fussy and you had to get it out you got a laser a nicer one huh so i said you know what this is going to be for a year so i i i said i i got this real like like like i would have in the office and lauren says what is that because it's big but um i said already it's like it's making my life better so anyway yeah so anyway everything good your boys are good yeah you know they're coming dead now they're like coming back now you know they kind of like uh just got two boys back the last two days so um it'll be nice to have them for shabbos right and then uh one of them stays one of them goes you know it's a lot it's very in and out you know with my boys over the summer okay so but you know i'm glad they're busy that's the important thing it's not so much better than what they were you know doing before it's it's tough you got to keep them busy and you know it's uh it's not easy on them at all no no so you know i went riding we'll start in a minute but i went riding uh sunday yeah an hour and um a monday my my calf like had that calf problem and it just sort of sort of tweaked it again somehow but it was healed you know but it was like same pain same place it didn't crunch up like it'd been before but that was a little bit after i did yeah i've been stretching it you know i don't know so what do we have on the agenda today so there's a 48 way called mina taleif bina talev it's the fourth of the 48 ways and most of the ways we had before the first one i think was study constantly thinking about worlds about studying finding hashem that we had arranged things on your lips say them out power of speech we talked about um [Music] i forget there was another one one more i'm not blanking and this is a so the interesting thing about being about is the word lave means heart and be not be not means understand understanding of the heart that's the the um literal translation of the term and it's interesting because the lathe in judaism means a few different things it's not so clear what it means and it's not like it means in english usually english when you're talking about someone's heart i think most people are talking about their emotions a person thinks that that's the that's the we even say that expression the seat of the emotions that the hearts the seed of the emotions but in judaism it's not exactly that jesus is not exactly that if you look at the goodness huh well now that's interesting that that is that that's interesting because good sort of almost like a very emotional thing also but it also is an intellectual thing right it has a good as an idea but it's an idea that has a feeling to it right you say good you feel there's a warmth when you to that particular word you know what i mean like it's like a tweener almost that's really the point is that is that heart is not just the emotions the heart is also a pseudonym in torah literature for the mind actually for the mind like it says in the first the first brah we say in the morning the birth and the birth it says blessed are you the lord our god that you gave the heart [Music] understanding the same word to distinguish between day and night that's the first blessing we say in the morning blessings now the art school translates it as heart lessectomy but the commentators say leseki also means rooster one way to understand this blessing is you gave the rooster the ability to distinguish between day and night right now the interesting thing about the rooster is that the roots are distinguishes right so this idea of beena and what you're trying to do with your lathe is you're trying to distinguish between two different things to get at the truth and i think that's often what that's what this is gonna be about it's gonna be about trying to clarify and to purify the heart okay not a simple thing now before we say that is that it's interesting because if you ask a person to point like who they are like point to the essence of who they are a lot of times they just point they point to the heart you point here because it's this is thinking and it's a torah concept the mystical concept the torah the heart is the center of a human being it's that which he can which is the middle of a human being and it's at his core like that the spiritual the physical center and it is kind of like physically centered it's really the spiritual center of who a person is the torah actually they ask you what what letter of the hebrew letter does it start with what the torah you know the letter very famous verse the first verse in torah veracious bhara loki starts with the base voracious in the beginning okay and it actually ends the torah actually ends yester el it entered the word israel and the last letter is islamic okay vomiting base is leif and the rabbis say that ephesus is saying a whole taurus to purify your heart a whole torah all the myths all the commandments it's there from moment to base from beginning to end to clarify and purify a person's heart but you mean you you still mean the heart that you still mean as your as your mind well i want to now combine it because i really think it's more than the mind it's more the emotions i think it's a combination it's the mind your an emotional connection to the mind and it's also i would say your will and that's the probably the best definition roxone in hebrew means will if you think of your will the depth of what you really want who you really are where do you picture that your will yeah your heart it's the essence of it really is this essence of this thing called the heart the rut zone now what's a will the will is a combination of it's not pure emotion but it's not it's not pure intellect it's really a combination of these two things you know will will is like very strong word you know it's not a cold unemotional term but it's also not just an emotional term it's like a deep sense of a connection i think on the the mind and on the heart together now it's really a good thing imagine a person has his heart and his mind tightly lined up with no confusion with no nothing in between nothing in the armor well then right but then you're you're then you really operating at the max efficiency of of spiritual and physicality in this world yes that's the goal that is the goal in other words there's a there's a statement there's a statement of um rabbis that says nothing stands before human will nothing in other words nothing can get away if a person really is connected you just said with the head and the heart clear with no no jinx he's like a hot knife and butter that's like when you get uh when you have a when you're at work and you're really in your zone and there's no confusion look it's like your hot knife your butter you go through times in life when you are that way but we also go with a lot of times we're not that way right right the way that's the idea of life to be at that point that's the idea of this thing is trying to purify our heart and getting true get in touch with that red zone one more thing i'll just mention before we go how do you do it is that um two things actually on the in the confessional on yom kippur one of the the things we confess is we confess over confusion of the heart that we i leave ourselves that we leave ourselves too often in that state okay now it's interesting because you know when al hates our we take our fist then we we clap our chest over the heart that's where we're hitting why so a person in hebrew is adam alef right and it's it's two parts over there have you heard this before there's dom the dollar dome you know that word in hebrew means blood dam is flesh and blood and the aleph always stands for god you know the gematria the numerology of aleph is the first letters one so it's like obvious and aloof means the chief so it always stands for god like right that's god so you have adam is a compilation of godliness standing for the aleph and dom the flesh and blood and they're kind of like it you know so that's you by hitting your chest you're really just acknowledging that you you weren't in sync at that moment and this is what happened and what got you in trouble what you got in trouble was the flesh and blood side that's what really happened meaning you didn't fuse them together they all from the top you separated them and that's dom got got in your way that's like that's kind of the backdrop so i have two there are two ways we can work on trying to get more in touch now what is hinted at in the in the expression [Music] is one of those is a aspect of intelligence the aspect of you know like chabad you know what stands for it's an acronym right is actually an acronym you know that right so it's an acronym for bina the last one is like fully connected knowledge like adam adam the biblical knowledge like to fully know somebody and bina is the middle one mina means discernment being it means pulling something from something else taking something apart i mean you have this confusion where you have this thing that's amorphous bina is the the human faculty of actually bringing it into component parts and bina also the words mean bona bona means builder so you have to somehow break break things apart sometimes before you can put them all back together and build them now it's interesting i haven't worked this part out maybe you could help me but it said that women have an extra dose of bena of this idea and it's like it's basically it helps you go dig deeper i think into more like a like a what's a person really motivated by internally they have this idea of being and sometimes they call it women's intuition like go from what's on the surface to what's really down below that's basically called by by women okay so two ways two ways we could kind of get it this little bit um and one way is to clarify confusion so let's just take a random you know situation you're like you're in a meeting right a person's in a meeting with their boss and the boss says something a little snarky to the to the employee right that he that he takes offense to so the employer makes a comment the the employee gets you know i would say he feels an emotion emotions probably anger or embarrassment or whatever the emotion was right it's like anger says what he says the employee feels anger and then what does the employee do boss makes comment he feels anger what is the boss what can what can the employee do well sometimes the employee might just shut down or the employee might rise above and try to you know i guess uh you know try to work through the situation you know that he's going through or he might he might also say he might lay might lash out he might let you out also they could do a lot of things we don't know what he's going to do right but if i asked you they'd say he lashed out so the boss said starkid comment ploy got mad he lashed out so if i asked you why if yes the employee why did you lash out at your boss what does he say i don't embarrass me or he you know i don't know um obviously obviously they'll say what caused you to lash out what do you think i i i lost you something what he would say to the boss no if you if you were out in the situation you're like you're trying to get him to understand what's underneath this whole thing and you say to him yes scott why did you snap back and snap at the boss he'll say he insulted me didn't you see that he insulted me step a is insult step b is emotion step c is retort action emotion reaction so we'll tell you so if he didn't insult me i wouldn't have stopped at right right he's missing one very very important thing which is decisive you know what he's missing the missing link in that equation is there's one more step between a boss saying his snarky comment and him feeling angry but what was the boss trying to what was the bush trying to say obviously someone imperial i don't really care in other words has his own analysis to deal with but he says a comment snarky comment guy feels mad lashes out what's in between is that is thought is that the guy had thought about what this comment means he interpreted that comment in certain give you another example save the guy employee same example but the employee it's thin wall thin walls of the company and he's next to his boss and he just heard that the boss's best friend passed away by forbid before the before the staff meeting and it comes at the staff meeting the boss says snarky comment well then he has better understanding that he is he doesn't even feel angry probably he feels pity he doesn't snap back right right so that's just illustrating that what was real what was going on was he had thoughts in his mind which were i would say invisible bit really i would say they were under the surface i would say they weren't really he wasn't really aware of them what was really going on underneath which caused him to react the way he reacted so thought is the missing link here now why why do i think this is so significant because most human beings go through their whole lives in this pattern they go and they get up they get a parking ticket and they're angry because they got the parking ticket and they you know chew out their son when he gets in the car i can't believe i gotta you made me pick you up you forgot your water bottle and i got a parking ticket um you know they come home and their dinner's not ready or or whatever the case might be and they get frustrated right and basically they have someone does an action someone something happens they have an emotion and then they have a reaction and they don't realize so what do they do they try to try to manage their lives to get rid of the problems like if only i could get rid of this boss i would be fine if only my kids wouldn't be so forgetful that i have to run to the the school all the time we wouldn't have this cantankerous relationship um if my wife would just be competent like i am and i'm responsible for my side of the street if she was responsible for her thigh in the street so i'm trying to work on her and it hurt me a little better some people work on it by divorcing them like people try to manage their ground because they think what's causing their their emotional state is their situation that's like ubiquitous well what i what i've learned in life through maturity is you know i've had situations like that and where i would kind of retreat you know but now i usually like throw it right back at the person since i'm trying to better understand you know what what you just said and i throw it back on them to kind of clarify because i don't want to be in this head trash area with regard to it well that's a smart that's a smart way to do it but but you're but what what what that's a very good point but most people it's so fast it happens so fast is that they have an emotional reaction what if it's not let's see what if it's not so blatant like that like this blatant i said something what if it's that you know you're in traffic you're in traffic and you get upset you get agitated you get you know nervous you're anxious you have a meeting to go to whoever the case might be so if i ask you doug david why are you anxious he said i have a meeting and i mean i'm in traffic you know so so i would just point out that what causes your anxious emotion is your anxious thoughts it's your thoughts on what it's going to mean being caught in traffic i then there might be a range of thoughts how dare this world be set up that cymbal barnett's in traffic right now i have important things to import people to save how is it possible i could get it get frustrated i could say i'm gonna lose my job i've been late the last five times this week to my office i'm gonna lose my dog there it's a myriad of things that might be causing the emotion but what happens is that people just get they're victims of the emotion and they never really deal with the fact that it's their thinking which is decisive give you know one more example everybody has children and different people that tweak them a little bit you know that other people they don't tweak and some people they know i think some people when i see you when i see jamie i might i smile right away it's like you have this effect on me like i just feel good so but but so how did that happen that it's obviously i have a i have a thought process which is puts you in a box it makes me feel good right there's some people i'll see oh my gosh my thought process is the other way around i remember one of my kids is a little from me a little difficult like that and i find him sometimes annoying and i i realize though i'm in a really good space like whatever whatever reason you know you're right on the proverbial right side of the bed right a guy kid will make a comment which typically would i would find annoying and now i would find it endearing almost like oh it's interesting you know like it wasn't annoying so when you said i thought about it i realized you know it was that my thinking changed it wasn't the kid now it could also be if you're in a better space the bother right or the husband that really does like make an influence on your environments that could actually take another person up so he might not be as annoying when you're you have a little bit of light coming out of you that's that's the truth i can't i can't deny that as well but what are the ways to get at you have a good point to try not to personalize and then say what do you mean by that but see what you're doing is you're that's a very good technique it's short-circuiting the almost instantaneous action emotion that the situation caused a very smart technique i don't know if you figured out yourself someone told you but it's a technique but it's because i i feel like i i when stuff like that happens i feel as though i must be missing something here and i just want to try to clarify and put it back on that person to just be a little bit more direct but again that was a direct direct shot over the pal sometimes it's much more subtle than that meaning you might be in the room without the kid and the kids are not irritating to you and there's no direct you're not saying clare you're not clarifying the comment you're just feeling something and you're thinking you know what i'm feeling this my son doesn't have his act together he's like if he would just get his act together i would be much better or if my wife would keep being late everywhere we go we're late we're just late and she's and it's like if she would just stop being late i would feel much better right and and and so sometimes that technique of stopping and asking isn't relevant but what i'm saying is always relevant meaning you have an emotion it's a barometer it's a barometer that you have thinking over there so if you stop for a moment and you disconnect like you disconnected with the technique of what do you mean by that but there's another way to disconnect it's like disconnect from trying to disconnect from the emotion in the moment and just kind of like sit and then often you'll get an insight what's really going on in my mind right now that's really causing my reality is that's really the point situations never cause reality minds cause reality and this idea of bina talib is look into it a little bit unless you start getting into the thought process and you start evaluating the thought process is that does that make sense why should i feel that way like the boss insults me you know he's always um he's over i'm not standing up for myself like that once right but then you have to say well what's the insecurity in me like you know i understand for myself that's a problem my father used to tell me i also get together for myself so when you start going back and drilling down into the thought you actually come to revelations about why you feel the way you feel a lot of times you're like it's an old tape and you can realize you know what i don't have to think that way anymore i can get an insight that can kind of evaporate that kind of thinking and then it's not my boss anymore because really it's not him to begin with it's me like if you figured your boss was an idiot like you know what he's an idiot he's got a problem he's an arrogant son or whatever i make a good living i don't care i don't know i couldn't really care less what he says my job like you said before is just i want to get my clients i want to make my money i really couldn't care if i have that attitude about my boss it would like bounce off me it would just bounce a quarter bouncing off the plexiglass i wouldn't it wouldn't hit me at all except for the fact that something in me that's insecure and susceptible backed by his comment now hashem often time will put us in that situation because he wants us to learn something yes please i wish i could go back in time and deal with his boss again but the way he used to work was he liked to get you he liked to rattle you that's uncomfortable right he liked that he did that on purpose and that's how he managed and i used to say like you know to my assistant bob should say bob's on the phone whatever i'd say all right tell him i'm in a meeting even if i wasn't because i needed 15 minutes to prepare for him you know but that's how he liked to manage uh and i i i really did not like him uh but i think i i would have asked him if i was and where i am now i would say because there would be like say 10 metrics right and nine were great one was always bad he would always go right and i would just say bob are you is your expectation for me to have all 10 metrics right all the time because nobody's going to have them all right right and let him say no david uh that's not possible right right right right you know i'm not even talking about you know the guy could objectively be a jerk and have his own issues like i don't really care about that the issue is like i wonder how you were feeling about that all the time see that i hate it you're carrying an emotional burden you see that's the point you see you were carrying an emotional burden because there was something in your head how you interpreted it is to filter into like other things other things and that's that's what i'm talking about right now is like think about it and dig in beena dig in and separate out the other things and then a lot of them are just things that wow that was when i was 10 years old that doesn't apply anymore and i can really purify and get it out right but but when we don't do that we just stay in this sort of haze of emotionality we don't really enjoy we don't really aren't as productive really knowing how we take them we can't access our true that knife and butter thing because we just got that confusion imagine that all that stuff's out of here i could be more my knife through butter because i'm lined up a little bit more well well the point i'm get i'm guessing that the point of this is to be able to recognize these things and put them where they're supposed to be and so you can you know so you can eliminate all of that stuff but there's an ad so there's two things like you're just saying now there's like awareness you first need to know where this is going on like a lot of if it's if a lot of this is very fast and very kind of emotional so emotion to me is that by it's a early warning signal that there's something going on in your in your mind your thoughts and the way you think about life and this way is really telling you let's figure it out you know uh weinberg was very interested in really working out like his first question he would ask people is what are you living for that's a tough question and that's a question that that he would ask a 22 23 year old kid at college and they probably never even heard it before never what do you mean what are you living for have fun whatever they never really thought about it and he would talk about the binding of isaac and he would say that when god told avraham don't kill your son what the deep lesson was to that story is you need to know what you're ready to die for not because i want you to die for it because i want you to live for it but if you don't know what you're willing to buy for you never really know what you're willing to live for or what life's about because that's the essence of the story he says if you don't figure that out you're just playing with monopoly money because it's really an amazing comment all the things that bother you really wouldn't bother you because well no see you're absolutely right if you were big it's like the big rocks that that thing the jar of life with the big rocks right and then the small rocks if you had the big rocks in line which comes from the idea of what are you living for what's all about then you could really start filtering out the noise yeah so he would say he would go through the analytical process like you would say you know you got to know what you're living for you got to know why you would go to college you'd say why are you going to college right so you would say the guy would say to get a degree says why do you want to get into me because i want to get a good job says why do you want to get a good job because i got to go to graduates i got to finally go to pay for graduate school when i got to graduate school because i got to pay back my student loans what am i going to pack your student loans i got to go to college like it's like a circular you don't even know what you're doing why you're doing and i always put it kind of like this is like most of us are like born on a treadmill and we're born into a certain set of this is what you do you need to start running but we never really evaluate why we're running where we're running maybe it makes more sense to take a car maybe it makes sense not to run at all and think for a little while and that'll help me with my next my next marathon or my next running operation and we don't do that we just kind of get set on this treadmill and i always look at this as and pharaoh didn't give the jews time to think that was his main strategy don't give them time to think don't give them time to sit get into their heart evaluate who they are get rid of the confusion because then if they think they're gonna overthrow me if they think i'm in trouble that's what this really is thing is about let's start saying things in my life you know my relationships uh you know someone start thinking about them if they pick out a piece of paper if you have a situation with your son or your wife's like write out like what are all the positive things here what are the negative things why do i think this is going on like to think about it don't run away from that and it's if a person's not uh used to it it's like could be a little um painful because any thinking is pain is somewhat can be sometimes meaningful but really you can making tremendous strides just sitting and thinking and then the other ad the next element is hashem also helps you when a person signifies i really want to know and understand what this is about it helps well if you particularly if you ask him for insight i've almost never asked really asked and focused where i didn't get some type of real insight about something i don't ask enough right well on that note i i sometimes i um something will happen mostly with work but other personal things as well and like i'll always pause because if because i don't have like either i i sometimes i need to find a path to resolution or i need to have better understanding or you know and you know if i pause and i think about it and maybe come back to it and sometimes i ask for help too you know sometimes i'll all of a sudden we'll just and i'll have the answer and there was no there's another there's another element you're adding that i see i see from you which i could learn from and i think a lot of people could you you actually have a sense of humility value being the the fact the pause means you know what i might not not know i might not know everything here because if i if i didn't have humility i wouldn't pause i would just act i would just react i know better than you all do i know what's going on you can't tell me anything but you have a very nice sense of humility which allows you to pause i don't think everybody does i'm afraid of myself i'm afraid of you know like whatever then something you know okay oh you know what so having the saying the wrong thing or you know what but it's a good it's a good attribute because it basically allows you to pause how many people do you know never pause they're so sure of themselves and rightly or wrongly right and it gets him into a lot of trouble well i didn't come up with this rabbi you know so you know a rabbi you know helped me you know like work things listen the fact to take it to heart and to do it just pause that i'm just saying that the more humility someone has that helps them be able to like you know do this type of thing you know the more short person is that's like you know they just stuck in the they'll never get out of the old ways you know the last thing that brad weinberg would say is that everybody at their core has a few free will struggles that is their their personal battles if he calls it that he called it the volcano roiling inside of us there's a couple of things that could three to five three to six things that can set us off whatever whatever it happens to be he says a person needs to know what those struggles are it's a struggle between the body and the soul and that for every person is different someone might have a free will struggle about anger frustration someone might have a struggle about you know food and and alcohol someone might have to struggle about being really impatient one might have struggled about being a doormat not sticking up for myself whatever and because what's gonna what's gonna happen is free will struggles that we tend to have god's gonna send messengers in your life to tweak that those things to help you grow and get stronger well with free will everything is about a choice you know you you you come to like the course roads in any situation and you have a choice how what which way do you want to go with this and you know when you feel as if you have the choice versus somebody imposing something on you it changes the whole dynamic of everything and um i remember i was being shortchanged in something professionally and i was getting something but i still wasn't getting everything and um somebody told me that uh you know when you when you're squeezing olives to make olive oil yeah you get the first press is the best but the second press still has value right and a lot of times i made the choice you know what i'm okay with the second press you know i'm choosing the second press because i don't want to give up what i have to give up to get the first press right right and everything in life if you look at it like okay i have a choice here and sometimes you don't know what what you have to think about it and you can't always think you have time to think but everything hashem is giving us opportunities to make decisions all the time sometimes bad sometimes good sometimes it's a horror kind of like you gotta put in check because you have a choice to make so um i feel but it's important to know sometimes we don't realize our the things he brings to us they fall in a couple of areas until we work on them and work on ourselves to get it right it's like groundhog's day keeps coming right but when you get it right that means you're in uh somewhat in sync and yeah you're at a higher level yeah and yeah you know that's when it becomes like automatic you know when you think then you you know you have glimpses of being a sad dick but you really went up there but like these people that are like true sonics they don't even think it's just all like white matter it's like right right right but that's all right listen this is a very important thing and to get in touch with really ruts on your heart it makes for a very powerful person because the more we can get rid of the confusion and be very in touch with the heart and the mind we're very powerful nothing stands in front of human will so it'd be very it'd be a nicer zone to occupy more often really well we should we should both have more moments prayers that we're both in the rest of us the same way listen dave good to see you i gotta run um thanks for being on the point okay