The Power of Positive Thinking in Torah & Psychological Perspective - Rabbi Daniel Schonbuch

[Music] each week we answer your questions about marriage therapy counseling any questions you have at relationships psychology in the Torah and tonight we're continuing our series on positive thinking based upon a new book I wrote called think good will be good and I wanted to focus more on the positive thinking the power of it what it means matura perspective and a psychological perspective I believe that we're always a hair's breadth from positive thinking it's really remarkable a person can switch within a second from negative to positive thinking I look at it as kind of a switch I would like people to maybe even turn on their own switch click on your positive thinking switch whenever necessary because really there's such a fine line separating these two realities we could live in a world of tremendous sadness of tremendous darkness or within a second was it an expression terrify and we change and things could be good for us it's that powerful it's it's a it's a remarkable change and I'd like people to work on that experience and to integrate in their life to turn on that positivity switch and how does it happen I'll give you an example about how I treat anxiety an example I give to my clients when they come in anxiety depression is a matter of perspective one day you walk out of the house and a dog runs up to you and it's going to bite you right so what do you do you react with tremendous power right you either fight the dog or you run away from the dog or you do both or you freeze it's a third option in psychology this is known as a fight-or-flight mechanism some of you have heard of this before why do we have this fight-or-flight mechanism cutters bar who gave us this tremendous power that if we didn't have it we would not survive what is the fight-or-flight mechanism you're driving an icy highway it's 2:00 in the morning this is the snow the sleet you getting your a truck you know the trucks blowing you a Rhett you know I'm just traveling for Montreal you know these big trucks they kind of sway you back and forth and the truck in front of you slams on the brakes you back to him you slam on the brakes you don't even think I'm now going to slam on the brake right a dogs gonna come up to invite you the jumps up roof do you think there's a dog about to bite me I better move out of the way you go like this now it's even faster than I mention you for the it's an instantaneous almost impulsive reaction that happens literally at the speed of electricity that we have no control over we're just programmed to protect ourselves when we're in danger that is the fight-or-flight mechanism so in actuality the fight-or-flight mechanism is a powerful tool to help us live without our fight-or-flight mechanism we couldn't we couldn't survive more than a few hours and then on planet Earth so that's it there's a dog there but what if you're walking down the street one day or you're sitting in your room and your heart starts pounding fast you start sweating and getting nervous but there's no dog there what's that called it's called an anxiety attack but there's no dog so what are you scared about so what's creating these feelings of anxiety or even depression it's not the dog what is it it's your mind your mind actually has more powerful than the dog the mind is more powerful than the truck stopping in front of you when it's icy on the highway I have proof of it and when I beat when I work with people have anxiety disorders people with OCD you know what OCD is obsessive compulsive this work people 2% of the population as OCD obsessive compulsive disorder what is the classical OCD somebody washes her hands every five minutes right the constantly washing their hands another OCD is you're checking your stove some people think the gas is on the stove they check it one so it's normal to check your stove don't stop checking your stove but once or twice I was barbecuing today so I checked is it turned off that's not OCD but I'm gonna check 50 times if it's really off the word is really then I've rented into OCD so people with OCD come to me with excessive hand-washing checking through numbers in there at all there's hundreds and hundreds of OCD they asked me the questions so when is it not an OCD how about that for a question how do you know it's on OCD maybe there's something to fear someone one of my clients told me even somebody who's paranoid has real enemies they told me so how do you know so here's the answer a wonderful psychologist actually I met once Maureen Wagner Pinto was her name she's a big expert in treating children anxiety she wrote a book called I think it's called fear no more and in it she has a two columns of fear healthy fear versus anxiety what's the difference dude fear anxiety she says fear is time-limited I'm scared right now and the dogs gonna bite me I'm not gonna be scared two months from now with dog biting me if there's no dog there correct that's normal fear a dog will bite you for a few seconds it could be painful you get badly injured of course you know you want to avoid this local if it only lasts for a few seconds the car slamming on you know you're slamming the brakes to protect yourself from the crash only lasts for a few seconds and it's over mush and anxiety could last for days weeks months and years you could worry about something for years and years and years and years so anxiety is limited in time excuse me fear is limited and time anxiety is timeless fear is another difference fear is mobilizing right when I'm scared about something real fear is I do something the dogs in a bite the cars in the crash I react immediately its mobilizing I mobilize to do something I'm act what is fear and anxiety and see what is anxiety it's paralyzing so I asked my clients I have a rule if you're thinking about something more than a minute it's probably OCD you can think about it for a minute then you have to move on of course if it's not an impending physical danger but just a thought process more than a minute or so of course these are my own Ct patients more than a minute you can tell yourself it's not me it's my OCD or it's not me it's my anxiety after a minute or so you're ruminating about a thought too long if the rumination the repetition of thought is not helping you do anything you're in a state of paralysis or into a state of anxiety this is so important to understand is that what separates somebody who doesn't have anxiety from somebody does have anxiety are the thoughts that they're thinking about if you think about one thing you think positively if you think about another thing or another way to quickly think negatively you can switch from negative to positive however very quickly as long as you understand as you long as you actually catch yourself the important key is to learn how to catch yourself to push that stop button to push that pause button on your thought process to be able to step back and to learn and to think about how you're thinking at that moment will be the difference between feeling anxiety or not feeling anxiety or feeling depression and not feeling a depression it's the ability to actually watch one's thoughts and to ask myself am I thinking negative thoughts am i thinking positive thoughts I also tell people all the time it doesn't cost you anything to think about things ending well it's free so you might as well try it it doesn't hurt you try it next time I'm thinking about something negatively more than a minute two minutes five minutes eminence an hour two days what will it hurt will it hurt it all will it cost me anything to think about things positively and look at the difference at what will happen to you if you're thinking about things negatively we know the physiological and emotional impact of negative thinking I mean all of the studies tell us the same thing how destructive it is for your body we know people that have a lot of anxious thoughts for longer periods of time they have a lot of adrenaline in their body they also have a lot of cortisol and cortisol is another hormone that kicks in we have prolonged anxiety it constructs your your veins and your arteries constricts your arteries and veins it raises blood pressure it causes stress on different parts of the body after prolonged period of time people that have anxiety tend to have our depression often a physiological complaints they have back aches they have stomachaches they have headaches they have muscle tension and these are things which are real symptoms which are caused by a large amount of continuous negative thinking however what is the benefit and these are studies that are coming out of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester and Mayo Clinic that are telling us scientifically that if a person works on more positive thinking they can have an increased life span lower rates of depression lower resistance against the common cold and other diseases because we know that if your cortisol's are flooding floating in your body all the time and your Adrenaline's up all the time it tends to reduce your immune system your immune system it can be compromised by your thoughts so positive thinking is something which could help you overcome the common cold better physiological and psychological well-being reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease better coping skills during hardships and times of stress and researchers has also found that for every point that that that optimism increased risk of early death decreased by 19% that was a dramatic study this is when the Mayo Clinic is not something I just wrote about but real science is coming out that we have to be able to work on our thoughts not just from our emotions but also for our physiological well-being so it's incredibly parallel where you can think and that thinking could change in a simple second if you just ask myself the question ask yourself the question am i thinking negatively am i thinking positively how can I think about the situation differently so in my book I gave about seven different steps or exercises we're going to do some of them tonight how to increase your positive thinking and your positive thoughts so let's let's let's talk about some of them and also welcome your input if you have found other ways of changing your thought patterns we're looking at things differently to change your thoughts and to change your feelings so one of them is to increase the use of positive words I'd like you to make a journal and I usually do this when I teach in parenting classes but count how many negative words versus how many positive words you're using with your children make a list and look at the ratios now the ratios 1 2 1 1 negative 4 1 positive are they hopefully 4 2 1 4 positive 4 negative but look at the word that's what I'm teaching parenting parenting but just look at the words that you use to describe your life words are incredibly powerful 1 I understand the power of Lucian are I never fully got graphs the power of lush and hora how incredibly parently just give me an example perhaps you know this but I've experiences two things recently you haven't met somebody and somebody says something about that person right it's so powerful we don't even know words may be more powerful than weapons to destroy somebody's life if if you if somebody says you he's really wealthy and he walks in the room how do you feel he may be wealthy he may not be wealthy I don't know you're sure gonna react differently when he says something to you he's a really unfriendly person or she's really unfriendly could you imagine what the power of a word can do you can kill I mean that that's what the soffits I'm talks about and it's a new era solution he taught us a for HUF it's time he talked about the destructiveness of our words are so incredibly powerful so let's just apply that to positivity negativity a word used to describe let me give you a perfect example there was a woman who was coming to me from one of her children it was you know very difficult kid and just twenty eight year old mother and she called her kid a bratty and hutzpah dick and I advised her to replace those descriptions of her son with youthful vibrant and energetic simple right I just did this instinctively I wasn't even trying to do it I was giving a lecture and I at the time we have a dark chemistry was also she was too and somebody said it said hard raising a two-year-old and I said you know some people called the terrible twos I call the terrific twos how would you relate to your child if they're having going through the terrific twos versus the terrible twos doesn't your attitude change if they're going through they're terrible to as well their brats and they're impossible and they're gonna catch I want this mine mine mine mine mine whatever they can say it to and it's mine I don't want to share and you know they're gonna throw their ice cream up turn it upside down they're going to pull somebody's hair whatever they're going to do that's it then they're terrible what if they're terrific too is what if my perception of that same phenomenon behavior is a child you know striving to learn about his or her environment and it's a bit difficult a time a person learning how to negotiate their power with the world around them correct me that's right but but this is this is how I look at something how I just use one word from bratty too vibrant too energetic what Spitak too youthful can change my perception just one word can do that and think about your own thoughts how do you talk about people how do you view life in situations what what are the amount of negative words you use versus one of the amount of positive words you use I asked you to make a journal to just take a look by the way my wife is a behavioral she works with autistic kids she's very into like charting everything writing everything down to see when you just write something down you'll see a behavioral changes according life and she's correct just write down some you start noticing how many negative words used just notice how many pot you'll start changing because you don't want to be in the negative ratio right no one wants to be there just note down how many words make it make a list or your phone but here are some words I like you to to try to use more of this just a few of them but you can go on the internet and ISM there's lists of hundreds of pause the word sizing abundant I love the word abundance abundance is the most beautiful word psychologically to me because abundance means somebody who's you know an endless source of energy they're abundant they're giving to other people agreeable appreciative astounding beautiful calm caring connected enjoyable happy harmonious good grateful joyful optimistic perfect there's a very famous therapist Pia melody she has an expression perfectly imperfect have it that one peaceful positive remarkable resilient sparkling think of the word sparkling wonderful youthful you see these small words that you could insert into your vocabulary can make it actually very big difference and how you feel about things how you identify people around you she's so depressed - she's she's working through things so he's taking her time to work through something that's you see that it's a remarkable shift words can bring life or bring the opposite why not choose to use words which bring the positive in your life there is a psychology which I write about later on called solution-focused therapy let me talk about that for a few minutes solution-focused therapy was begun probably around 30 years ago by a to two major therapists who believed that problems exist because the language we use around those problems it's how we talk is either what we call problem talk or solution talk and one of the they have some tremendous techniques to change and I want to give you a technique now if you could use this for yourselves or help other people with this the answer is that like this that I don't really know what's going to help somebody but the beautiful thing about solution-focused therapy is that the person themselves usually knows what the answer is and their problems well let me give you an example so somebody says to you they come into therapy oh I'm really depressed okay so I have a choice I could spend time talking about their depression let's talk about depression how does it feel to be depressed why do you why are you depressed what are some of your symptoms of depression and I know what they are ready they're coming to me they're probably gonna tell me sadness fatigue exhaustion constant worry a feeling of life lifelessness right and I could spend a lot of time talking about those feelings of sadness and depression but here's another question again asset one of the times when you're not depressed wow that's really powerful and they're gonna tell me the answer to the depression if I if they say to me well I'm not depressed when I'm talking with friends my good friends okay that's one way or if they tell me I'm not depressed when I exercise more I feel better that's interesting oh so there's times you're not depressed when else you not depress the you see the whole discussion I'm having with them right now I'm not only helping them focus on the solution I'm ending the sense of powerlessness because you understand what I just had something today we're dealing with this with this young woman but what underlies most of depression and most of anxiety there's a tremendously deep sense of powerlessness what is depression depression is I can't do anything to change my current situation therefore I shut down I push everything aside I withdraw into myself I put in the shell that's what my clients described in is depressive States I'm in the shell things are very dark there's no way out but ultimately what they're experiencing is a deep sense of powerlessness nothing I can do is going to change my life or change the world around me however in solution-focused therapy we only talk about solutions when you not depressed oh so now you're not depressed when you're talking to friends and you're not depressed or you're less depressed when you're exercising or you know you're depressed because you don't study enough your test you're not doing well enough but when you get a tutor and you get a little help and you start setting a little bit more you feel a little less depressed so let's talk about those things so what I'm doing with you is I'm empowering you to find solutions for what you're going through so it's not now just about to press talk it's about positive talk solution that's the difference between how we talk to a client in positive psychology is it's just about their negative symptom ology or is it a bad positive solution I'm I guarantee everyone here the client that walks into an office where I'm talking only positive solutions with them looking for how to make changes in that they know these changes already they usually walk out feeling a lot better than if I just focus on how terrible the depression is of course we talk about their depression we also focus on the solution there's another great great technique in solution focused therapy it's called the miracle question we're a legend so some people come in to you for therapy and they're so miserable they don't know what to do you can just tell you can tell they don't have a solution or they don't know what the solution would be even if it happened to them so the we ask them something called the miracle question it's a great technique to ask people if I could change everything in your life right now another question if you went to sleep right now and you woke up and all of your problems were solved everything you're worried about was solved what would it be like what would be happening differently in your life what would you be doing right so people would say well if I wasn't depressed well I'd be talking to my friends more I wasn't depressed I go to work more if I wasn't depressed I would be exercising more okay so then the question is what can you do now out of the solutions that you just gave me what little things can you do now will help you live as if you're no longer in a state of depression and start doing a little of those things every day a little bit at a time so you see you could take the worst scenario and say what if it was different how would it be different what would you be differently and then suggest people continue to those things which they already know are going to actually help them in that's something called solution focus sorry but it's all based upon how could I look at things positively as opposed to negatively number to view life from a broader perspective ask yourself this question if you want to be more positive how can I look at things differently how can I change the situation I know if I mentioned this here as once giving a support group to men with bipolar disorder and depression and he says that every day he wakes up and he writes five things he's great he has gratitude toward know towards God five things and he shared it with the group and that day he said he woke up and it was raining and overcast and it was dark outside he was thinking the whole day what possible think and I think about positively about a rainy day that's dark and miserable outside it's hard to drive on the road and he thought about and he realized there's sometimes when you drive and you get blinded by the Sun right what does that happen the when the seasons change when it's for summer sometimes winter he realized that when it's cloudy outside that he's not gonna be blinded when he's driving it's gonna be easier to drive for this person so that just that little positivity changed a little bit enough that he began to feel a little happier rebbe nachman of breslov gave a beautiful Torah to describe how this could happen to everyone and he quoted some enigmatic difficult passage into hilum and it says like this ode murat vane russia the heat burn anta Elma komova and i know a little bit more and there's no badness meditate on his place and he's no longer there what is Rebbe Nachman say that means he says that every person has a point of goodness every human being it's called the pintel ahead we call it that little spark that spark of goodness and the person but a person's who's depressed or anxious isn't focusing on their good parts are they what are they usually focusing on their negative parts she said no it's not true Oh Dena a little bit every person in Russia there's a place which is not bad in Russia there's no richest there so he'd bone onto ailment como meditate on that good place help a person meditate on their goodness on their positive qualities I know they can't do that right I know they always make mistakes in that way but what did they do right that's positive psychology we don't focus on the negative what's wrong we also focus on what's right about what they do and we increase the positive he says a little bit more there's no bad point the NA no he is no longer there meaning is no longer feeling bad it's a beautiful Torah you have to help a person focus on the good points I'm a adjunct professor at an online university and I decided that with my students instead of marking them negatively which is University you know we teach university level you have to be a bit rigorous with your students because you want to prepare them I teach on the bachelors level for a masters or PhD perhaps if they're going through they can't get through my class writing well they're not gonna be able to get to the next level so I had professors at University we're very tough on me tough on marking me there's two things professors I mean I do look out for when I teach one our citations and two of references that in the act any University role the most important things you can note I'm in the arts not in the sciences but even the sciences of course what does that mean if if a person were do you really get in trouble working you can fail in university if you start stealing things plagiarizing from sources that are not yours you have to tell your students they love you no googling and copying and pasting you can do that but put quotation marks around it number one and put a citation on it came from you know Greenberg 1972 and put a reference on the bottom what book you got it from okay so I'm a bit of a stickler with that but my teachers were very very tough on me and it made me into a better writer however I decided cuz I practiced positive psychology never to say negative work to my students University maybe that's why they like my class and I only give them positive reinforcement and I have to tell you I've taken students a lot of my students are coming from your Shiva backgrounds and weak skills and instead of me berating them about their negative finding sales I say you did a great job here's how you can make it even better I never say anything negative and I have to tell you I've seen wonderful things in my class over the last nine to twelve months I've seen them improve the writing I say if you can't write and if you're having difficulty writing here's where you could make it better here's a source online Purdue owl Purdue University has a great site about reference and citations I want you to go there and but you can do even better on this mark the next time if you do avian say I've seen absolutely what I'm really seeing this I was testing it if I just stay really positive I've seen over and over again positive reinforcement really really works probably for most people so therefore it is extremely important to view things from a positive broader perspective wherever you may be always look at things from much larger perspective we never know in life really until we only see this at special occasions should a theme or a wondrous occasion where you see it says that the should've has cash you could create yum soup right and I understand why now and it's hard it's really hard but then you just the ecology are who working his way through life through people until the right couple they emerged together and we spend so much time this type of up in this resume and that person and this family and that family and somehow they meet some things about summer okay and it's miraculous but a car's poor who always had his hand and that shoulda always as he has in every little thing in the universe we just don't see the auto Shemin things and then for we live our lives as if there's no God Hospital even for a few moments then we sink into a sense of depression and anxiety we have to re-enter a cottage barkal by doing so we see there's a bigger perspective in life we develop our muna we see things from a much bigger and broader perspective and therefore we can change ourselves from a negative negative thought process to a very positive thought process number three is to practice positive affirmations if you accept my theory that you have to use positive words more frequently as I've done in my classes for example if you like from a greater perspective one us two also think about oneself in more positive ways and use more positive affirmations at the root of most depression or anxiety are negative associations with ourselves a very famous therapist Aaron Beck the founder of cognitive behavioral therapy very much disagreed with Freud on this topic Sigmund Freud who was the founder of modern psychology and psychiatry claimed that the reason people get depressed is because they're angry so he believed that repressed anger emerges later as depression so Aaron Beck who lived many years later who was a student of the school of Freud and lived there in the time of Freud and he was a real Freudian trained psychiatrist went out to prove that this was indeed correct Freud his master said that everybody who's depressed is really angry so he went and he interviewed hundreds if not thousands of patients in hospitals and in clinics who were depressed he wanted to find out are you really angry you know what he found out it's not true most people were depressed or not angry however he said most people are depressed have negative thoughts about themselves and he created cognitive behavioral therapy this is very very powerful he says that there are three things which a depressed or anxiety ridden person believes about themselves one is I'm worthless two is I'm helpless and three is I'm unlovable worthlessness powerlessness or being unlovable now of course there's hundreds words that describe people's negative thoughts about themselves I'm defective I'm not good enough I'm a failure but those are corollaries you have your avos and you have your told us your avos are their worthlessness helplessness well billion all the hundreds of other statements about oneself or in one of those three camps in fact he says that a person who's depressed or anxious has up to three you could have all three of these negative and I've met people have all these three negative they felt worthless powerless and unlovable all at the same time and it's all about their self perception weird a self perception grow from usually from earlier childhood experiences they could have experienced abuse before they feel they're defective in fact many people who suffer from perfectionism for a perfect example a lot of us suffer breakfast we're really suffering from terrible lack of self-worth what is the perfectionist do the perfectionist has to deeply overcome and overcompensate for lack of low low self esteem so they have to be perfect in everything they do if so many cases that people have come to a perfectionist and they're all suffering from a terrible sense of low self esteem so it's very important to start changing when self beliefs working on what do I truly believe about myself and to be honest with yourself do I have a negative self belief or a positive belief but again one can change in one second one's perception of oneself if one works and is aware of it I'm thinking negatively about myself can I think positively so here are some nice positive affirmations about the self I am unique I am the child of my parent in heaven who longs after me and loves me like his most precious treasure could you imagine if you think of yourself as a treasure that a cutters bark who put in this world and he looks after a treasure can you imagine if you just meditate for a moment I'm sure many people have a jewelry box right you look at you open your jewelry box and you you're protecting what you want anybody to steal your jewelry box you want to make sure it's in order the kids don't get their hands on the jewelry box it's something you pull out that represents a special moment your life and a gift or an engagement or wedding from something very precious is your jewelry box take how much you love I don't mean in a gosh missed acquaintance how much you enjoy that jewelry that you have that's the way college bar who looks at every Jew every Jew is a pearl it's funny because I was just in just in my raw will get a department store and have the the the jewel of them every month is connected to a jewel right a different type of stone what's that different gem you that's a beautiful answer it's it's an individual thing a stone represents something to do with the unique individual let's say I don't know if these are fictitious I don't think something terrible which stone for which person but we understand that their stones would represent different feelings and stones represent certain connections or certain types of individuality cottage bar who looks at every single Jew as a unique stone something very precious imagine if you meditated on that and told yourself I'm a unique pearl or a diamonds at a college bar put into the world and I have a mission to accomplish I'm a good person who deserves to be loved I am I totally accept and embrace myself as I am how many of you accept yourself as you are well and of course we should always want to do more of course you have to do more mitzvot of course you have to learn more Torah of course it was a moral acid all these things are important but do I stop and accept myself Who I am I suggest you try to do that my soul is a precious diamond that can shine light outwards towards others fulfilling a commandment or doing an act of kindness draws me closer to God how about this one my very existence gives pleasure to the one above like a child who gives his parents pleasure just by being born think about that I give my father in heaven tremendous pleasure my wife told me that one of her rib am an artist from many years ago said and only says because he's a big rub and said this we're diving to a Shem it's like we're going blah blah blah blah blah blah blah what did he mean he said Hashem loves your two fellows even if they're not perfect just as you love your child because goo goo goo goo bla bla bla bla bla oh isn't that Oh what I'm so beautiful oh my god he spoke he spoke up isn't he cute is it wow he's so smart he's so smart Hashem loves us like we love a little child trying to speak and if we only would appreciate you only become aware if you only affirms what's really going on the universe our lifes would be totally different we go from the negative to the positive although I make mistakes they're simply external blemishes which cover up my ultimate goodness that's inherent within me what about instead of being depressed which is the Sutton trying to stop me doing more mitzvahs but imagine for a second that I looked at my V wrote my varus is just being blemishes Wow that's powerful when I tell somebody who has terrible addictions that he's not so bad or she's not so bad they're only external blemishes you can go away you could still change in life that's so powerful one of the most terrible things about addiction or depression for that matter is this just all this negative self-talk this negative reinforcement and I'm bad I'm very bad and I can never be good what a horrible thought process which paralyzes the person that they can't even overcome what they're going through because they put themselves in type of emotional prison at that moment but imagine if you understood that at the various people do ultimately or just blemishes external blemishes and they could be wiped away they can be cleaned up a little bit and if they are I can just you know when a diamond is in the earth it's a very famous of acidic and the diamond is in the earth you ever seen a diamond harvested from the ground what does a diamond look like when you find in the ground anyway no black dirty tarnished ragged dangerous to pick up looks like it's sharp you don't want to touch a diamond right but what do we have to do with a diamond you just have to you have to polish it sand it down polish it and eventually you can cut it obviously to break it down to small but that diamond then this piece of dirt that's what I called thought there's an expression they call people omnia arts and the Baal Shem Tov said oh and AMA Haaretz what is AMA arts and a person of a nation from the land Haaretz that's what they're called it's a negative things on the arts this is what's found in the ground diamonds and pearls and they're dirty so Wow and I'm arts you brush it off you give them self affirmations that they're really good that they're just blemished they're having a hard time okay I even tell I have this technique with couples that I see or people that are depressed I say I know they want to be married of course it's a non abusive marriage and it could work but they're depressed or anger wow you guys are you could be you could be so good you look I see it I see things could be great you know what that does for if they go oh I mean they're fighting and fighting fighting I said I think things to be really good what Wow that's thank you they really are terrified that things aren't really good so the fighting and fighting sometimes you can just change just a little little bit it changes everything and a little self perception from the negative to the positive I'll give you a very powerful one I don't know if I mentioned before I picked up a book by a guy named dr. Bernie Siegel Bernie Siegel was a doctor is a doctor deals with mock Allah and pain and he changes the language of the disease so somebody sets them they had mock Allah it's a death sentence he says no you're masculine it's a challenge just think about what that means and he believes that the negative associations people have with illnesses make their own is worse not this is not magic of course not magical thinking but he says for a person that is told it's a death sentence they become hopeless how's it gonna help them no no no he says it's a challenge let's see see what happens fight it divided with everything you have fight for your life he says it's the key but it's how you look at something can change it that's a self affirmation try them on yourself so be more positive and how about affirmations about other people right so let's look at some positive ones instead of being disappointed in people all the time let's try to look at them differently how about this one God you like this one to God not other people takes care of all my needs and no one can take away something which God does not want me to have so they really can't hurt me the only impediment that separates me from another person is our bodies and not our souls which are one you know there's a mitzvah Hoffler aha como ha so it's asking the tanya how could you love somebody as much as yourself can you do that can you love anybody maybe we could with our children right but beside who could you love as much as you love yourself I don't know if it's possible I mean as much as I want to eat every day and take care of my bodily needs and be in an air-conditioned room and live in a house and I would love somebody as much as I love myself so the answer is you can only do that is if you realize the other person is yourself what does that mean that we all have we all have this common father cut his bark low he all gave us one soul from him he's the father of all the souls so if I look at another person and I can't love them because I'm not seeing them they're not really myself I'm only looking at their external at their body so to speak they've got they're at their physical self but I have to look at the Jew of Jews spiritual self that one saw that we both have from the same father so therefore loving my neighbor as myself is possible because I'm really loving myself when I'm loving another person that's the only thing that separates us is our perception of who they are I haven't I have abundant love and desire to share goodness in love with other people isn't that a power empowering statement imagine you got up in the morning you said I have abundant love and desire remember there were two bun that I like I have abundant love and desire to share goodness and love with other people imagine if that was your attitude I'll tell you a true story howdy young Hasidic fella came to me with terrible social anxiety terrible sort of and he had he very let's say disturbed father as a child parents were divorced and very hard time he'd have panic attacks panic attacks every time he walked into a wedding but this is real stuff what was he fearful of he's fearful that people associated him with his father father was not a healthy emotionally healthy person so every time you walk into a crowd of people I guess with no extended family or friends of friends of friends and community he believed that he was being judged as if it was he was his father I mean panic attacks you couldn't speak you sort shaking so I asked him and this is what empowered him I asked him instead of thinking what you can get from other people at the wedding think of what you could give to other people the way it really helped him I said what's the purpose of going to the wedding the purpose is the Samaritan McCullough that's what you're there for you're not there to hobnob with your cousin you're not there to show up and somebody's dressed up with certain jewelry and whatever in a certain way and really talking about you you're there for one reason you're there to give the hot on vittala happiness understand how incredibly powerful that is if you are giving to others it doesn't matter so much if they give to you if you and there's an expression halakha if if something is polite a surface is giving out something and capping pelea it can't absorb something in culture as long as it's giving out it can't take in it's the same concept if I affirm myself to be somebody who has abundant goodness to share with people it is incredibly empowering psychologically life is about me giving or not giving whether I get or not I can't force that other person to give me you know we have no control of other people in this world I know who who's gonna be friendly to me in the morning I don't know you know if I'm gonna cut off on the street I don't know if people like me at a wedding I know people say oh please sit down next to me or everybody ignores me I have no control but I do have control if I see myself as a giver if I see myself as being abundant to be kind to other people to show people a saver punning me a phone or to be Miss America thank Allah if I see myself as abundant with a purpose unless vulnerable to feeling depressed or anxious the bottom line is that one needs to tell himself they just may not be capable of loving me and it's a hard thing to realize in life and it's true at times I mean one of my options emotionally I could suffer if if I live my life codependent Lee just based upon how others respond to me they're always in control the locus of control is always that side of myself I'm quite vulnerable if it's just people like me don't like me you know and there's some people life you're just not gonna like you including family members in-laws who knows they might not like you but it would be much healthier psychologically to understand they just might not be capable of giving love just changes our whole perception going back to changing perceptions of people terrible twos become the terrific twos the the cold withdrawn in law becomes a person they're capable of loving it's all that perception how we label how we use words how we rate to them differently I'll just we'll do more next week just a few more things how about affirmations about life every moment in place is the right moment and place for me to be wow we're always wanting to be somewhere else and have something else and this is not good enough but what if I thought for and watch how fast it can change I'm so worried about getting something or buying something or whatever I'm worried and upset and I'm angry what if I is in one second can change that every moment in place is the right moment a place for me to be everything's okay now I fully trust God he will give me everything I need in its proper time everything that God does is for the good Colt Mondavi drachma and latavia rebbi akiva gum Zulu tava this too is for good everything is working together for me right now guiding me to the right destination what if you saw life is that you're not you haven't arrived if you're always moving towards the destination someone once told me when I was a much younger guy working in difficult jobs in my 20s she said to me look at your job as an educational opportunity you're learning about life you're learning about people you're learning about politics and power don't think you're so big you have to figure it all out and be on top of no no you're a state of learning so stay in the state of learning I accept God's plan for me he will show me step by step what I need to do they'll show me the way is gradually and finally God gave me the power to overcome all potential roadblocks in my life if it gave me a roadblock he gave me ability to overcome it so these are just just a few techniques which can change our thinking simply from the negative and all it takes is one simple concept to go from negative to positive so I suggest you increase self affirmations affirmations about others use more positive words just to finish off just as an exercise imagine I said the word kindness ten times in a row slowly all right I said the word abundant abundant or what about the word joyful I just I mean I hope you shouldn't say this out loud people think you're crazy but just save yourself joyful joyful just think about positive words and see just in the seconds how it can just change the energy from depression anxiety toward giving happiness and hopeless hopefulness and empowerment that is the key towards thinking good [Music] [Applause]