Rabbi Daniel Lapin: Creativity and Making Money

now let's talk about our ability to be creative because after all that is integral to making money money making money is an act of incredible creativity where does it come from and in in different parts of this program we deal with the nature of money and we teach you exactly what money is all about but right now I'm focusing on enhancing the characteristics that we have within ourselves for the purpose of making money and to do that I want to ask you a very simple question identical twins identical twins have identical DNA that's a reality that's why so many strange parallelisms are found among identical twins pods they take through life very often turn out to be the same they're wonderful studies about twins separated at birth who are then tracked later on through life and how they're so similar and their makeup is so based on their identical qualities that it's not surprising that similar things happen to them so here's my question identical twins born to Luo boys or to little girls got have got to be both the same right that's what identical means they look the same and and indeed they share the identical DNA here's my question do identical twins have the same fingerprints or does each twin have his or her own fingerprints think about it for a moment if you're gonna say that each has their own separate fingerprints you are going to have to explain to me where does the genetic information come from to provide a separate set of fingerprints because they may have the identical genetic data see the problem therefore one would naturally yes that identical prints have the same fingerprints why wouldn't they the problem is that they don't the problem is that identical twins identical in every respect have separate fingerprints astounding would you like to know how that happens well as a matter of fact so would almost every doctor and biology researcher in the whole world everybody would like to know how that happens it's very unclear excepting that in ancient Jewish wisdom there is actually some teaching on that topic you know what it is that we human beings are distinguished from one another by our creative ability we were each created in the image of God what is God's main characteristic he is the creator and therefore when he creates us in His image what we do is we become creators as well and our ability to create is characterized by our fingers our fingers our if you like the symbols or our creativity the fingers our ability to move all our fingers in a way that's quite unique among all creatures on the planet our ability to use tools and build things quite unique and therefore fingers serve as a metaphor for human creativity and therefore it is on our fingers that our mark of uniqueness is to be found because we're created in the image of a unique God therefore we must be unique to in what way our ability to create each and every one of us has our own unique extraordinary ability to create and rather remarkable and the important thing to realize is that therefore fingerprints should really be thought of as soul prints they should be thought of as more spiritual than physical although there are physical characteristics on our bodies their appearance in a sense is spiritual in other words if we were to clone two babies so as the two babies grew up with identical genetic characteristics just like twins we wouldn't expect them to have the same soul we'd expect them to have the same body so physically it is possible to have identical people spiritually each and every one of us is utterly and completely unique and our uniqueness is characterized chiefly within our ability to create now what is one of the most important tools that we use and that we have in order to create the answer is our imagination embedded deep within our hearts and in our souls is our ability to imagine things that don't exist and to conceive of things that don't exist and to imagine problems and solutions to those problems solutions that don't yet exist and if you think about it almost every instance of somebody creating a profitable way of serving other people with goods or with services use their imagination to conceive of a solution to an existing problem now when it comes to AI imaginations I would like to now provide you with a very important tip and I'm not gonna say this is easy the temptation is overwhelming and it's something I'm well aware of I do not keep a television at home for this very reason I will admit however that when I'm traveling and I'm on the road and I check into a hotel room I have to exercise considerable willpower not to turn on the television its enormous ly appealing and it's even at the end of the day when I'm getting ready to retire for the night the a Shinto shall we say I'll just watch half an hour of television before falling asleep very strong I do try and avoid it and I strongly recommend you do as well reason do you remember the young mother who probably went to the same mothering school as my mother you don't matter used to tell you that you must read books not watch television remember that mother's all over that always said watch television no read books reason is because when you read a book remember I told you that information is coming in through your ears when you read a book your imagination gets to work imagining the circumstances the book is describing and every time you read a book you are exercising your imagination muscle every time you watch television you are at refining that imagination muscle because what television does it's a little bit like being in zero gravity you know that astronauts after any extended period in space come back with weakened bones and muscles reason is because they're not going through the normal daily exercise of ordinary life each and every one of us every time you walk up and down stairs you're exercising against gravity every time you sit down and stand up you're exercising against gravity every time you pick up something and walk it across the room you're exercising against gravity in outer space none of that happens there is no gravity since you are not using that muscle it begins to weaken it begins to atrophy your bones begin to lose calcium it's kind of not really very healthy is it but the similarity to that is watching too much television perhaps watching any television to be perfectly honest what that is doing to you is it's saying we don't need your imagination muscle we're going to provide the whole scenario you don't have to imagine anything at all and don't be surprised if after a period of time of watching television your imagination muscle begins to atrophy begins to be weaker and it's hard to notice at first but after a period of time particularly you will notice particularly with young people who've spent an awful lot of their youth watching television their capacity to imagine is drew it really needs to be worked on and redeveloped because in order to create in in economic terms you absolutely need a vibrant living effective imagination and that is something that we really need to be aware of we do need to diminish the the destructive effects of television or movies for that matter and so seriously part of the program for developing yourself and that's what we're talking about this we're discussing essentially a workout program to make your body more effective at money-making making sure that you strengthen your imagination is one of those ways now I spoke a little bit earlier about another spiritual characteristic which is immensely valuable if you are hiring somebody you'd be looking for this characteristic if somebody were hiring you they'd want to know you've got this characteristic what is it it's a characteristic of optimism incredibly important so important in fact that MetLife the insurance company did a famous study back in the 80s famous study easily found information on this where you know as you know MetLife would hire thousands of agents every year and it was very costly process because the dropout rate was very high people who thought they would be able to sell insurance and as time went by were not good at it became discouraged and left and MetLife used to always test for academic records they used to hire people with good college degrees they used to hire people with experience in sales and they were persuaded by a group of researchers to try and identify applicants who possessed optimism and they tried to design tests and they came up with some tests which at least gave you a chance of spotting optimism and what they said to MetLife was divide this year's intake of new agents into half half of them higher according to your old criteria whatever you used to use half of them forget your old criteria forget academic degrees forget sales experience focus only on optimism and higher for optimism well you won't be surprised to hear that the success rate and the retention rate and the the rate at which the applicants and the and the agents prospered was three or four times higher much much higher among those who exhibited optimism that among those who cared the conventional characteristics from that day to this MetLife and other insurance companies surreptitiously sometimes openly at other times are measuring for optimism because they've recognized that in business optimism is one of the most valuable attributes optimism is spiritual so you need to work on your optimism now it's very difficult because I know as well as you do that there are times you just start up in the middle in the beginning of the day and you're feeling down and you're just feeling gloomy and you just feel nothing's gonna go right it and sure enough when you go into situations with that mindset guess what happens nothing does go out never works well and so if you at that point could take a tablet and optimism tablet wouldn't you do it would you love there to be some optimism tablet so is that the next phone call you made you just sound itself too mystic and you used such optimism that you in fact brought about the desired result I mean you'd pay almost anything for an optimism tablet wouldn't you well I have the optimism tablet for you remember I told you everything we're talking about is spiritual and if they're spiritual then scripture and ancient Jewish wisdom has the answer that is an answer that Jews have used for centuries in under all kinds of circumstances to prosper one of the most important principles and timeless truths that Jews have employed effectively is the ability to be optimistic all the time or almost all the time sometimes you can't so what is the optimism tablet the optimism tablet is gratitude that's right expression of gratitude the University of California in Sacramento in Davis actually did some important work on the role of gratitude of on the role of gratitude being the key to optimism and so when I read that research I was unbelievable ancient Jewish wisdom knew this 2,000 years ago already and now it's being understood finally everybody's getting this the key to optimism is gratitude and something that I am going to now commend seriously to your attention is to have a private journal you know you're going to be using it for a number of different purposes but this is a journal that at the start of every day you gain to take for yourself ten minutes at most maybe five minutes it's really easy to do get yourself somewhere private don't do it while you're driving certainly not while you've got any radio or television on just put yourself in a quiet room put the date down and write down five things for which you are profoundly grateful and you know what however difficult your life is at any particular moment I bet that if you took five minutes you would come up with five things that you can honestly say I am deeply grateful for those things these five you cannot imagine how effective that is in shaping your entire day and the study from the University of California Davis I was alluding to and actually identified the extent to which people's health mood effectiveness at work all skyrocketed if they started the they doing that which ancient Jewish wisdom has been recommending for 2,000 years start your day not by thinking that by writing down five things for which you are grateful tomorrow morning try and think of five other things and it doesn't matter if you can't if there is some overlap you know if you can think of three new things and you have two things from yesterday that's fine but the act of thinking about them and committing them to paper is immensely powerful when you change something from a fault into a reality by putting down the idea everything changes often explain to people that a business plan that you think about in your mind will never produce investors a business plan in your mind will never result in a brick and mortar operation a thought you just have in your mind will never turn into an internet business there's magic in putting ideas down on paper and I want you to have a little notebook totally private that you have with you at all times I would recommend this as look I love high tech I think smartphones are wonderful computers are absolutely terrific there's great software they're really useful software out there Evernote is is a great example and I'm sure as I'm talking many of you who are software savvy are saying to yourselves ah great you know what I can put it down on it on my Evernote I can put it down on my Microsoft OneNote please don't I'm a big enthusiast of that kind of software but use a pen and paper for the things we're talking about okay quiet I assure you that within 30 days you are going to see enormous difference 30 days your mood changes your optimism muscle builds and you become a much more optimistic person which overflows effectively into everything you do just wait and see I also told you that something else a few minutes ago and I explained that among the characteristics you would look for if you are hiring somebody and the characteristics that someone hiring you would look to see you had was the ability to fluently articulate your thoughts and your ideas very very important right think about it as I said your mouth is probably your most important money-making organ in your whole body your brain obviously is important as well your mouth is vital it's crucial because it is with your mouth that you are able to communicate an idea so at your mouth you can persuade somebody to your way of thinking it's with your mouth that you can affect a sale or a transaction communicating effectively is very very important it's part of getting to know yourself as part of identifying the characteristics that are vital for your financial success and augmenting them and so we need to spend a moment or two clarifying how you can increase your ability to articulate here it is again the idea is simple the execution takes willpower here is the principle it sounds so simple I I laugh when I give this advice this is among the most powerful advice it's among the most powerful permanent principals in ancient Jewish wisdom here it is if you want to triple quadruple multiply your fluency and your ability to express yourself by Ken what you need to do is read aloud from a good book now I'd recommend the good book but it doesn't really matter as long as it is not rubbish as long as you're not reading out of People magazine or so please choose a good book and there really are lots of resources on the internet for advice and recommendations on good books it's got to be something that it's not too flowery and not to literary so that the words are words that are far from anything you would tend to use ordinarily in your communication at the same time it mustn't be below your level it mustn't be at a childish level there's a lot of stuff available out there here's what you need to do for a minimum of twenty minutes a time ideally thirty minutes of time three times a week so ideally for about an hour and a half a week but not in one sitting in three separate settings three twenty to thirty minutes sessions read aloud now if you're fortunate enough to have a spouse who enjoys being read to and many do by the way you're home free it's it's so much nicer to read aloud to somebody than to yourself because you feel a little ridiculous reading aloud if there's nobody there so reading aloud to somebody it's great if you haven't have children children even even teenagers you'd be astounded if you choose the right book you'd be astounded how eager they are to hear you reading around to them and I'm not even gonna talk right now about the beneficial effects this has on parent-child relationships or on husband wife wife husband relationships that separate right now all I'm talking about is the magical transformation when your own ears hear your own lips and tongue enunciated and articulating words on a regular basis your vocabulary expands your ability to use those words expand and again I have to tell you somewhere between four to six weeks keep this up if you keep this up for four to six weeks you'll keep it going off to that because you will see the magical transformation now people don't do this people plunk themselves down in front of the television and it's a total waste of time first of all it's time that could be used really productively in in your business and number two you're destroying your imagination take some of that time and use it to read aloud either to yourself or to somebody else that doesn't matter easier to somebody else but read aloud you will be astounded at what happens to your ability to communicate

Channel: Rabbi Daniel Lapin

Views: 344,028

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Length: 21min 35sec (1295 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 03 2015