Destroy your fear of rejection and follow your dream.

[Music] some of them welcome to practical spirituality here in Asia tour in the old city of jerusalem overlooking the western wall dreams dreams what are your dreams what does it take to achieve them you might have thought I was going to talk about dreaming today which is actually a subject I speak a lot on but I wasn't going to talk about that what I was going to talk about was is what I'm talking about is is your actual dreams in your life what are you dreaming you know when I think about when I think about young children they have dreams about life and what they could be and they they're they you know there's no end to the possibilities that they have there's great possibility for children and we and we say that to them off and you know you can be anything you want you know when you grow up maybe they don't say that in the observant community but the rest of the world does you know you can you know they're just it's like I see it as like the center with like a thousand arrows pointing off of the center where it could go in any direction and and what happens then is is that it it's slowly you know obviously you have to learn to figure out what it is you do want like where you're gonna actually point to because if you don't point to something you you know if you try to point to everything you'll you'll wind up with nothing so you do have to narrow it down but but often it gets narrowed down to other people's dreams not your own you know it gets narrowed down to dreams you were influenced toward instead of the dreams that you might have had and so and so what happens is that we're not really dreaming our dream but we're doing some dream that was given to us by someone else some some someone else's and make a broth of both on top do not close so I'd like to talk a little bit about the mechanics of what would possibly take away our dreams so the it's mostly what stops us is the fear of rejection and failure that stopped us from our dreams because the fear of rejection and the fear of failure these two fears rejection and failure are are inevitable if you live your dream meaning if you were to actually pursue your dream in your life not everyone's gonna be so excited not everyone's gonna be so happy about it I mean think about a fundraiser who's got a caller huh he's got to call hundred people for his cause and his cause is you know right now I'm helping some guy who has 1,200 special needs kids living on-site in his organ in his you know institution and so he's arriving in Toronto in in a few hours to fundraise there and you might think this table for two you might think that that it's you know like special needs like wouldn't everyone like that like special needs kids to be helped and the answer is no yeah everyone would like that but how many people are gonna get behind it and the answer is certain types of people and there will be those people but everyone else is going to be a rejection meaning everyone else is gonna give a hundred and eighty dollars to his organization but right now the deficits two million and so one hundred and eighty dollars as a rejection end of failure although you know you can build off 180 bucks over a period of time you know like you could but I don't think they have that kind of time so but it's fine because all they're looking for is out of the hundred people he'll talk to in Toronto he just needs two or three and two or three get behind him introduce him to the right people he's done he's done with the whole task but how many rejections will he have to suffer till he gets there and and the chance of failure are also very high now rejection and failure are the most scary things in the world because rejection of failure are triggers for other types of voices inside of us so what does rejection and failure trigger so rejection can trigger unwanted unloved unacceptable you know unwanted unloved unacceptable you know etc I like a million other ones for failure can trigger incapable dumb not good enough etc and a bunch more after that so so rejection and failure are our our fears that trigger deep pain inside of us very deep pain inside of us and and so what happens is whatever your dreams might be in your life like things you'd like to accomplish if you want to actually accomplish them you have to break through rejection of failure you're gonna have to break through it because a lot of people are gonna reject a lot of people and it's going to fail multiple times cuz the price for success is failure you have to fail a lot of times to get to success price for success is failure very few people are willing to pay that price most people taste failure and they spit it out quickly and move in another direction but successful people chew on the fat of failure they chew on the fat of failure and learn all its lessons I was once in putting my guitar in the first class on an ll flight and I said to the nice stewardess who put my guitar there I said to her would you say there's a lot of competition at the top and she said you had a lot of competition and I said well that's interesting you say that because there's only six seats in first class there's 20 in business they're all basically empty it was likely because they're still in the lounge and you know they're called last to the plane and then I said look at the back of the plane the back of the plane look like a jungle people were alike I mean there was our almost a fist fight breaking out as we spoke over you know positioning in the overhead compartment and a bunch of other people fighting over seats and stuff and and one person had reclined into the legs of the person behind them when the plane still hadn't even taken off but he thought it was time to recline anyway there was like total mayhem all going on at once which is why I thought of it because I looked down there before I even spoke to the stewardess about this and noticed like like this plane was about to like erupt in an all-out riot and and I said well if you look at this plane it looks like all the competitions at the bottom there's very little competition at the top and she thought about that for a moment she said yeah that's an interesting thought and the reason is is because very few people in humanity are willing to as I said before chew on the fad of failure and go fail like it says in in the Facebook headquarters they have signs up you know to motivate the workers there they have signs up there and in Facebook that say let's say say one of the signs up says fail hard fail hard as opposed to I don't know what it would be a try-hard I don't know what it was playing on maybe was playing on try hard but it was saying fail hard because failure is the push back that you're doing something you understand like until some things failed you don't know that you did anything yet felt failing is the indicator that you've that something's getting done here and the fact that you failed means that you pushed up against you pushed up enough against the world that it failed and until you failed you have no idea where you are geographically and the same is true about rejection same is true about rejection in that in that till you get a proper rejection how do you know where the edge of your social interaction is how do you know where the edge of that is I remember many years ago many years ago I was doing this class and you know I had this live feed camera up and and I was teaching and I forget can't remember exactly the circumstances but it was it I don't know I think I think maybe what happened one day was no I was I think I saw some other public speaker saying stuff that was really provocative and but on point but really provocative and on point and I thought to myself gee I'm really holding back I'm nowhere near the edge here I'm nowhere near the edge I'm playing safe in my as a teacher I play safe and you can understand it obviously being part of the Orthodox world you know that like maybe you should play it safe you know after all there's there's a there's a constant critic involved in being part of the black cattitude community you know where there's like you would think like you got to be careful just say you know because you know you could really get some some negative pushback from that and so I decided you know what I'll do I'll try it I'll try just saying what should be said rather than what maybe would be acceptable by everyone and I'll stop being so you know so vanilla this many years ago there's over a decade ago and and I said okay let's go and I started just saying the truth I started just speaking the truth and I'll just say the truth and we'll see how it how it pushes back and I you know in a way I'm kind of not practicing what I preach because because he'd never pushed back but I didn't push harder maybe I should be pushing harder but I my commitment was to say the truth and I really you know I say the truth and the and so but it never pushed back and then I got kind of embarrassed for my career before that my vanilla career of like did I even say anything those years like what it was anything said so important you know but with you know constantly looking over my shoulder basically ten years ago I took my rearview mirror off the windshield and I just threw it out the window and I put the pedal to the metal and that has made all the difference in my career in my listenership and it's I think it's very refreshing for a lot of people and in I hope I'm not exposing too many people but that would be obviously the feedback I'd get if people felt exposed they generally attack and and that's almost it's only you know I get trollee once a year maybe but you know trolls you just you just send him the following message you say you say I put myself out publicly exposing myself and therefore my wife and kids every single day live and if you can't send an email with your name and phone number on it your real name and phone number on it from a real email address consider this our last communication that's it they go away never come back so you're really not supposed to answer a troll but I figured that answer is the strong answer so I so and that's my answer it's that have the courage to engage with me because I'm engaging with the world and you know like how dare you send me an anonymous message with an attack in it anyway but that's the most pushback I ever got when I'm basically saying ladies and gentlemen is this start pushing start pushing and when you push you get to your dreams and when you get to your dreams you sleep well at night you know why you know why you sleep well because if you live your dreams long enough you start getting feedback and feedbacks very important for human beings we need feedback not necessarily for our ego you know like feel better that people said hey that was great you know oh that really meant a lot to me it's not just for that that helps especially when you're in a low mood to hear good feedback about something you'd like to hear anything good in low mood that's why you should get rid of your low mood clothing you should be wearing you if you're in a low mood like wear outfit you'd wear to a wedding that day we're now for you with so that you're in a low mood right it's not gonna be a great day but everyone you meet just says you just look terrific today Wow where are you going in yours of course you're just in a little mood in and there but it'd be nice to have someone till you look terrific all day long in a low mood you know that'd be a good thing but instead what do people do they put on a hoodie and yes you know something baggy and just gonna mope around all day another hint for low moods by the way is is that you want to do all the things that you said you do in your life in a low mood day have you ever noticed when you're in a low mood you drop the things you do bad idea the only thing you have in your life is the stuff you do and then your state of being while you're doing it so if your state of being is really low what's left if meaning you don't have a state of being what's left the things you do but what do people do they drop the things they do in a low mood really bad idea and that's a good way to get your low moods to stick longer so when it alone would you dress for success you do the things you'd said you'd do I mean things are committed to it you do them not a good day and not to show up to work that is the day to show up to work for sure and the and the last thing is that you do not click on any thoughts that day all your horribly dark are your horrible dark thinking comes without analysis no clicking on the headlines you just let it scroll by my thoughts are a scrolling marquee and just scrolling by no going in there to analyze situations you're not fixing a thing that day no fixing nothing and if you follow this advice you'll be doing much better since I'm on and I might as well finish it a little extra caffeine in a low mood day only on the fog lifter in the morning but bump it up a little bit and any other mind mind-altering substances like for example having one alcoholic beverage would be a good idea one alcoholic beverage might also shift things you want to also get cardiovascular activity or even weight lifting is fine and and of course you're gonna have to force yourself to do any of these things because in low mood you have no motivation a little cardiovascular activity would be good for you help other people because you're a lost cause so that's a good day to work on go help someone who has a life because you don't on a low mood day you have no life on that day and there was something else to do and that's enough for now back to our picture now now when you push up against rejection and failure when you push up against them by pursuing your dreams and obviously you got to figure out what your dreams are because you know I really believe that every one of you had a dream when you were younger like what you could do all of you have that dream now you probably don't know what it is anymore because because what happened is let's say like picture yourself laying down in the Sahara Desert you're laying down on like a sand dune and you're just chillin on the sand dune and that represents your dream and it's the shape of your body because there you are laying down on this engine that's the dream and what happened was there was a rejection and failure possibility rejection of failure sandstorm that hit and so now there's zero visibilities who thank God you brought a little pair of goggles and a straw to point in the opposite direction of the sin just to breathe and after a while you know the sands covering you and covering you uncovering you and coming here so now there's the shape your body but it's sand but then now that it's starting to get filled in between the legs around the arms around the head and after a while it's gone and that's how so maybe I meet so many adults who have no idea what they're here to contribute so many adults and that's a really really painful thing that's a really painful thing to not know what you're here to contribute and it's it's frustrating it's scary it's very scary because you know your life's going on you're not sure what you're here to contribute or maybe you don't know it all and it can lead to also a long-term painful and perhaps depression because one of the keys to you know general well-being is meaning in life and what could bring more meaning in life than the meaning your life represents then though than the life that you mean like what did you mean when you die like what are they gonna say what did it mean that you were alive so it totally changed the way you think of the words meaning in life because meaning in life is can be a nebulous kind of you know get meaning in life you know maybe discover something meaningful and and then you'll have more meaning in life but this is more this meaning in your life meaning that your life had meaning think about that that's really important that your life had meaning that you having walked this earth mid difference in a unique way that was that was in consonance with your apps with your actual essence and say again that your your having been on this earth that the earth was different and touched by the fact that you were here and that difference you made was was was in consonants consonants as opposed the dissonance sorry about the fancy word but it was in in in concert with your very essence and when you live that way there's a buzzy type of vibration that causes it to be received well meaning after a reject because for example if you find that as an adult you'll have friends and family that I'll try to push you away from it they'll be scared for you that you should do such things so you'll have to deal with some level of rejection and failure but but in general it will come with a vibrational connectivity with others that it'll be well-received it will succeed meaning it will succeed so strongly that you'll be really unstoppable where people people can't help but say yes to that in which you're contributing I mean how cool would that be and if you catch that if you can find it and you can then you can live it what will happen eventually is you're getting a lot of feedback now we're back to the ego is that I don't mean the kind of feedback that helps on low mood days and then we did that all parentheses on low mood days you know I meant the kind of feedback that has fed back to you that the meaning that you've discovered that your life represents is truly the one why because it's getting fed back to you there's feedback feedback can come in the form of thank you from gratitude and people that you've touched feedback often comes in the form monetarily hey people were willing to pay something for this and it could be just a business you created but like that's your calling and you were able to do that and then take the money of that business and do good things with that money but but the fact that someone paid you for something that you created is a great feedback it it's it's speaking volumes about your contribution and adding volumes to meaning and once you're hitting the level of feedback which is in other words as a stamp that you've hit you've struck gold on your meaning in life once you're getting that feedback so then you sleep well at night you sleep well because your life's meaningful you sleep well you wake up well you wake up motivated you're back out there and you're making that difference again now I'd like to share with you some something very interesting raise your hand if you're afraid of death let's try that again you guys weren't ready for a raise your hand moment okay I'm gonna say that again just everyone loosen up shoulders first because we're all been seeing you this whole time like this okay but I want a real honest answer and everyone's got a vote okay no one's like allowed to not vote raise your hand honestly if on the scale of 1 to 10 you're somewhere between 1 and 10 afraid of death okay so of the I don't know how many people are in here but let's say of 20 20 of you 25 of you there's there were about 3 of you didn't raise your hand okay no I'd like to share with you something amazing and that is that that people who have discovered their meaning of what they're here for lose their fear of death and people who have not discovered their meaning in their life here have a fear of death usually higher than one and closer towards 10 now you may say that makes total sense because you know if I haven't found my meaning in life so then dying would be a bummer so that would make some sense but what yeah that is the nihilist approach the nihilist approach I don't know if you've heard there's like a whole night with there's a there's kind of this atheist leaning towards left-wing party you know and those are all the identity politics people and everything in the and there but there's also left-wing nihilists that that um sorry left-wing atheists that it often leads to nihilism because life becomes meaningless at that point and and sadly it does lead to it does lead to you know who cares if I die because I'm just an or just random molecules bumping into each other and you know like who cares if I die but what's scary about that is that it could also lead to who cares if if a couple million people died because I championed some sensational value that we've created and you know people always know everyone's always lulled to sleep by the left-wing because they're so peaceful that we think that they could never hurt anybody but but more than more than Adolf Hitler the Nazis more than the Nazis the the Stalinists the the Communists of Soviet Russia I think they killed almost double the people and they were left-wing you know atheist nihilists who you know they generally get behind they get behind values in an excited kind of heroic way they feel you know I don't know if you've noticed those who follow things like today they they get really excited behind their causes and and whatever it is whatever right they feel like they got a chain they're always talking rights as opposed to responsibility which would be a much better discussion because rights and generally responsibility falls on you rights fall and everyone else you start championing rights so that becomes everyone else's problem you champion responsibility that's gonna fall on you get a better thing to be championing this responsibility which is what the Torah says because the Torah says that hartland quite the opposite it says that each one of us has a soul that is of God and and because of that so there that's going to lead to my sense of a responsibility and that will be my focus much more than rice you know if why everyone else has to protect my rights you know it's rather I what how can I be responsible and when I'm speaking in subtle terms but if the person who is best at explaining this is Jordan Peterson EOTech articulates the difference between rights and responsibilities and mazing me and he's got a lot of good good good classes on those subjects and anyway but you're right from a nihilistic atheist perspective you know death shouldn't be a big deal but here's the thing someone who is actually living the dream someone who's found their meaning and now they're living their meaning should not be afraid it should be afraid of death because everything they've done is going to be lost and the answer is no for the following two reasons one is once you've found your purpose of life dying's not so scary because because you know you're doing what you came to do and so dying is okay you know like you did it and now you're dying doing it this is why I always say that the that you know like 30 years from now when all these you know the black hat Israel called the 4ad community the black hat community will be the eighteen-year-olds 30 years from now there won't be other eighteen-year-olds because just during even now not 30 years from now 18 years from now the births that are that are happening in the hospitals this hour while we're speaking there's lots of birds so the majority of those births are from the black hat community so 18 years from now they will be the majority of the country and the majority of 18 year olds now you could still populate the army with seculars rings I can't imagine they'll put up with that anyone but you know you could I suppose you could take a minority of I've bent the eighteen-year-old population and make them the army but no one's gonna stand for that 18 years from now but 30 years from now forget about it that's who the army will be 30 years from then it will be the community from the black cat community but the thing is is that is that they will be amazing fighters because they'll die doing the purpose and when you have a purpose you don't mind dying it's just something about knowing your purpose that dying is less scary and if you're defending Israel and what you believe in the deepest depths of your heart is that what we do here as the Jewish people in our sacred land you know doing our ancestral heritage in our ancestral lands that if that's your purpose so fighting the army you're cool with dying there and so you're gonna fight in a different way than a secular Israeli who's stands to lose his dreams which are very different than it than the Torah Jew the Torah Jews dreams are to serve God which could be fighting in the army and that's will be serving God if that's what you're doing in and whereas the whereas the secular Israeli even though he loves his country and he would defend it but he defends it nationalistic aliy quite like someone might defend any other country obviously our history's a little more intense and and you know we went through the Holocaust and like he doesn't want he wants to prevent more dying Jews obviously so it's more than just fighting for Russia but it's quite similar to a Russian fighting for Russia and but the thing is is every moment on the battlefield is a potential sacrifice of a car he dreamt of driving of a house he dreamt of owning of a of a trip to South America and they loved to go to South America to India after the army it's also at the expense you know meaning he's he his time in the battlefield is is scary because he could lose the things that he was kind of dreaming about and and in fact biblically biblically we had a Cohen that we had a co him you know the priest class of Israel they're all the people from the tribe of Navy and tribal AV split into the Levites and the Kohanim anyone you know last name Cohen's from there or Katz's Cohen Civic they which means righteous or holy Cohen and the so there was a Cohen whose job was to walk around the camps of the you know before battle when they were gonna go to battle so they would walk around the cams and actually sniff out scared people you weren't allowed to fight if you were scared of dying like you imagine removing every soldier who was scared of dying from from the what would happen if today we took the Israeli army removed everyone who was scared of dying but the tour is teaching us a principle and that principle is that principle is that that scared of dying means you're unworthy on a battlefield you're not worth having it out there scared of dying is not gonna be good for us you know I mean imagine imagine you're you're in the battlefield you're scary we would try not to let anyone see and you look at the guy next to a nice he's like that what's gonna happen to you when you're you were already on the edge of that yeah you're going there too I mean you're just gonna you're just gonna go right into that same fear that that guy's in you know you were just almost there you were holding on for life for dear life you look to your right the guy is shaken you looked your left you know he's like he's making in his pants you know and you're the guy in the middle who was on the verge of both you're gone you're just gone and so tor tells us so you can't be afraid knowing it to battle and so this cocaine would go around the cans the battle cancer and he would find these guys and they even had three principal fears and that was maybe you'll miss out on something if you're afraid you're gonna miss out on something you're out of here and those three were you were engaged so you're already like you know you're you don't want to miss your wedding you know some other guys gonna marry the girl you're engaged that'd be lame so you're not going to be the best soldier you planted a vineyard and you have yet to reap you've built a house and you've let yet to live to have lived in it you know you're not going to be enjoying being a soldier in battle not that anyone should enjoy it but you're not gonna be a very good soldier having not even lived in the house you built and by the way if anyone missed those three categories the last category and this is where he had to sniff good was anyone who's afraid at all no there's something amazing that when you look in the Talmud and you remember where this says by the way I think it's a Makos isn't where is it oh it's in soda yeah and so that that here's the crazy part that if you if when you click on the word afraid that's we're discussing someone afraid to go to bow when you click on the word afraid guess what the Talmud says you know they're afraid of they're afraid that I'm Russia Shana it was they got the blessing that they live you know cuz Russian it's decided who will live and who will die throughout the year they're afraid that in Russia Shana you know it said they would live which is good so they're on the battlefield they're gonna live except they're afraid that maybe they had done something wrong this year since Russia Shana maybe they had done something wrong meaning maybe they had broken one of the 55,000 laws one of them and has lost his protection from above maybe in lost his protection because he had done one thing wrong in the 50 we counted fifty five thousand laws in the Rambam he had done he had blown one of the fifty five thousand which he probably did true before but maybe he feels he didn't do enough chula for now what's the obvious implication who's fighting who fights we already said whoever fights has to be someone who's not afraid whatsoever of death meaning this is the meaning this is the meaning the meaning is serving God in the image serving God by protecting who is realism what Israel doesn't it's in it's in estriol heritage on its ancestral lands protecting that is the Mitzvah and mitzvahs are the serving of God and that's what he's there to do and there's no fear of missing out on nothing because that is what we're here to do is those mitzvahs and that's the Mitzvahed hand but now we've added a whole other category you've never done anything wrong you've done nothing wrong what do you call somebody has done nothing wrong no meaning meaning he's been doing he's just really careful with Jewish law yeah it's called exotic meaning to be in the Israeli army you have to be a total sounded you have to be a total complete sodding and if you did something wrong you you fixed it you know you did two shoe which may include you know as you brought up little chefs alert to the base and Meg does for an accidental breaking of Shabbos so you'd have to bring the Sheep and go through a whole process to shoo them but you go to the battle having nothing on your slate between you and God now could you get anything more backwards than the current situation here in Israel you get a more backward situation of who fights for us you know the only one who could possibly fight for us would be God through these soldiers but it's exam the polar opposite of what Torah says is the Israeli Defense Force it's the polar opposite of the Israeli Defense Forces that's what Taurus is in Taurus prophecy prophecies from God that means it's true it's real it's lasting it's the real deal and we are living the exact polar opposite of that and the funny thing is the observant Jews don't want to go and send their kids the army which is kind of funny but it's not that funny you know why because they'd be happy to send their kids to the army happy to send them if they would hand over the keys of the army to a particular rabbi his name is Rahim Kazuki if they would hand the keys over to the rabbi and let the rabbi I am take care of business from now on of the entire army he runs everything he runs the Torah study programs going on he runs the kashrut lever he runs the he his jobs to make sure that all these holy Torah scholars are are in a non mixed gendered military which is the way military should be because half your population should not see certain things so that they can raise children to be holy and pure and if he handed the keys over to rope high him so then we would get busy but where the keys are right now it's not a good protection for those children from the families that have literally spent centuries millennia living and dying for the values that would be ripped out of a very protected 18 year old kid who's so protected these kids are like they're like you know sensitive pure kids and they need to be protected and they in was the whole discussion about this the karadian going to the army is like I've only been speaking about it now for ten minutes but why can't the world have this ten minute discussion it's so simple to understand you could be the most secular with freedom should go the army person in the world and hear the last ten minutes what I said and said you know what it's more complicated than that isn't it it's much more complicated than that maybe we have to rethink these things rather than just spout off our our party lines and bleeding heart feelings about about you know this thing and the subject of the army in conclusion after two major digressions live your dreams push up against rejection and failure till the feedbacks enough that you can really make a huge difference in your life and make a difference in the lives of others get that feedback sleep well and be a really happy person Shalom everyone you