Rabbi Daniel Lapin: Get to Know Yourself

hi I'm Rabbi Daniel lapen and we need to get to work right away on the third commandment get to know yourself now look what am I talking about think about this for a moment there are certain characteristics that we have as human beings uh we are either male or female now here's the interesting thing according to ancient Jewish wisdom we have a physical parallel for every spiritual reality so for instance the spiritual reality of males is a an aggressive jutting masculinity that is part of who men are females tend to to be more modest what do I mean by more modest well I can assure you there is no men's clothing cataly that ever uses the word modesty but if you look at a woman's clothing catalog you will see there's something called a modesty panel or they'll say lined for modesty that word modesty only applies to women it doesn't apply to men not surprisingly the way the good Lord created us is with men's sexual organs visible and U and and extremely uh aggressive if you like in uh in in in a sexual mode women sexual organs are completely concealed modest if you like an example of this parallelism between the physical and the spiritual in how we're created but that could just be a coincidence right so let's look at another one or two examples so that any reasonable person would have to conclude that yes indeed there is this physical spiritual parallelism between people our spiritual reality is echoed by our physical bodies give you another example look um how do we get the most balanced information through our eyes or through our ears well think about it for a moment do you have possessions that you purchased and that you don't use well if you're like most people you not only have possessions that you don't actually need or use but a lot of people have actually rented storage units you know those storage units where they have like mini garages they're usually located in undesirable places like under power lines and things like that well you go along there and you rent a storage facility what do people put in those storage facilities I'll tell you they put in things that they don't need things they bought and they don't need we all do now simple question do we acquire things that we don't need uh with our as a result of input from our eyes or our ears here's a clue Home Shopping Network is on television it's not on radio here's another clue paper print cataloges heavy on pictures light on Words the picture cells put another way uh do any of you know a male who got into a bad relationship with the wrong woman I think we can all think of people like that when that happens does that happen because of their eyes or the men's ears was it after a lengthy telephone call that they became infatuated with the woman I don't think so it's usually as a result of seeing her bottom line is our eyes mislead our ears are far more reliable as a form of information when one looks at uh at a television picture and uh one sees a victim of a war and the television picture homes in on on an a woman cradling her dead infant who has been killed by some uh bombing activity or terrorist activity at that point any normal sensitive human being loses the capacity to analyze and evaluate what actually is happening geopolitically in that part of the world all we do is we have this emotional link between our eyes and our hearts our eyes see a woman cradling her dead infant Nothing Else Matters we just overflow with feeling and compassion and we're no no longer able to evaluate the situation candidly and analytically and intellectually when we receive information through our ears either through radio or through words I should point out that when you read a newspaper uh you're actually getting information through your ears not through your eyes eyes are pictures ears are words you can receive those words either directly through your ear by means of of sound or alternatively by by reading words and it is the ear part of our brains that converts those words into meaning interestingly enough where did the good Lord Place our balance mechanism well I'll tell you put it in in in in in a sense in the most least likely Place uh whether you believe we were created by God or whether you believe we were evolved over a lengthy period of time from primitive protoplasm in in some uned materialistic process it really doesn't matter bottom line is that you would have to agree that the logical place to put our balance mechanism that which makes sure we know when we're upright that which feels when we're losing our balance and makes us move our feet or shift our body to compensate that we stay upright on our feet that mechanism should have been in our shoulders why well for two reasons one is we get wide spatial separation and so you get better discrimination hips would work okay too uh the second reason is that um our shoulders don't move so much the worst place to put our balance mechanism is in our heads as a matter of fact our balance mechanism is found in our ears it makes no sense because we're constantly moving our heads all the time right and every time we do that why don't you think you're falling over because there is the equivalent of literally millions of lines of software code in our brains that says wait a second the head's moving this is not the body falling over no correction needed but if our balance mechanism was in our shoulders we wouldn't need that evolutionally speaking it would be the logical place for it to be and yet the way I see it is that the good Lord placed our balance mechanism right in our ears to teach us something and that is that a balanced perspective on things is optim obtained through the ears not Through The Eyes how about the eyes well here's an interesting thing the image that our lenses cost on the retina at the back of our eyes is upside down isn't that weird I mean why would it be that hard to have a compound lens which would cast the image right way up so why don't we walk around feeling we're upside down again vast quantities of software equivalent in our brains which invert the IM and put it right way up the proof of this by the way is if you put on glasses that invert the image for a day or two you you you feel you know queasy and uncomfortable and everything's upside down after about two days wearing these glasses your mind adjusts your your software in your brain makes you realize everything's really right way up from then onwards everything is normal take off the glasses and now you're back to an upside down World another 2 days you get used to it but why do we have an upside down image on our retina in order to make the point that yes what we see through our eyes is not a reliable reality our eyes are too connected to our emotions and it's all too easy to get an inverted image of reality an upside down view of reality and so we learn to trust our ears more than we trust our eyes very often in order to concentrate when somebody is telling us a complicated sequence of events most involuntarily many people sort of shut their eyes and because they're blocking out visual input so they can focus on the information coming in through the ears very important very significant and it reveals this reality that we human beings are created Body and Soul physical and spiritual now what has this got to do with your earning power what has this got to do with increasing your capacity to generate Revenue well we've got to recognize that we have physical characteristics and we also have spiritual characteristics and I want to explain spiritual does not mean religious it has nothing to do with God it doesn't even mean virtuous there's bad spiritual there's good spiritual spiritual means things that cannot be measured in a laboratory that's all that spiritual means physical means things that can be measured in a laboratory and what we're going to be looking at is this basic principle that our most important money-making characteristics are spiritual not physical and that is unless you happen to be a swimsuit model uh in my case I got turned down for a job uh that I applied for um as a swimsuit model and to this day I'm absolutely confirmed uh and and convinced that it was on account of anti-Semitism I must tell you but anybody who is earning their living other than because they have beautiful bodies is using spiritual characteristics not physical characteristics what are our physical characteristics color of our skin uh whether we have a lot of hair on our head or no hair at all uh whether uh we are male or female uh whether we are tall or short whether we are slender or or Stout all of these are physical characteristics what are spiritual characteristics honesty Integrity here's an important one optimism there is no way to measure optimism is there really very difficult how do you measure someone's honesty or Integrity in in real terms I mean other than actually presenting them with real life Temptation how do you measure that these are spiritual things they are extremely difficult to measure in a laboratory whereas all the physical characteristics I told you about our height our weight our skin color our gender these I think are really easy to measure but our honesty our integrity our optimism our resourcefulness our ability to have perseverance and tenacity the ability to pick ourselves up after we've been knocked down again and again and again and pick up and pick up the phone one more time or knock on one more door or do one more job these are all spiritual qualities now if you just think about it for a moment um if you are hiring somebody to do something really important for your company and we'll talk in a little while about your company and um and you think to yourself now unless as I say unless you are hiring somebody specifically for their bodily characteristics overwhelmingly in the enormous majority of all economic activity out there you are hiring people because of their spiritual qualities you don't really care if they're tall or short or black or white or male or female or uh or it it doesn't matter what does matter is ability Integrity honesty optimism terribly important how about cheerfulness do you really want to have somebody in your office who is a walking black cloud oozing misery and spreading Gloom wherever they go do you want that well that's a spiritual characteristic ability to persevere all Spirit creativity how about uh fluency and ability to articulate isn't that important as a matter of fact it's actually hard to think of a more important organ for making money than our mouths they say they speak of the gift of the gab right well that's a trivial way of speaking about something terribly profound your ability to express yourself in a fluent and articulate manner these are all spiritual characteristics they're not physical characteristics at all and so in order to get to know yourself what we're dealing with here is learning how to identify the characteristics that are valuable to us in a money-making mode and to identify those characteristics which are less important to us in a money-making mode perhaps not important at all perhaps negative and to attenuate those qualities that are negative and to augment and strengthen all of those activities uh that are in fact uh powerful and significant uh for our um uh ability to create and uh produce real wealth 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 uh 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 right identical twins have identical DNA that's a reality that's why so many strange parallelisms are found among identical twins paths they take through life very often turn out to be the same they wonderful studies about twins separated at Birth who are then tracked later on through life and how they're so similar and they're 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 two little boys or two little girls got to 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 going to 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 cuz they they have the identical genetic data see the problem therefore one would naturally guess that identical twins 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 like to know how that happens it's very unclear accepting 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 are if you like the symbols of 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 too in what way our ability to create each and every one of us has our own unique extraordinary ability to create which is rather remarkable and um 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 they are physical characteristics on our bodies their appearance in a sense is spiritual in other words if we were to clone um two babies so is that two babies grow 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 our imaginations I would like to now provide you with a very important tip and I'm not going to say this is easy the Temptation is overwhelming and it it's something I'm 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 it's enormously appealing and it's even at at the end of the day when I'm getting ready to retire for the night the temptation to shall we say oh 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 your mother who probably went to the same mothering school as my mother your mother used to tell you that you must read books not watch television do you remember that mothers all over that always said watch television no read books reasoning 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 atrophying 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 um 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 uh 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 dramatically diminished and it really needs to be worked on and redeveloped because in order to create uh in in economic terms you absolutely need a a vibrant living effective imagination and that is something that we really need to be aware of we do need to diminish the uh the uh uh destructive effects of television or movies for that matter and so seriously uh part of the program for developing yourself and that's what we're talking about this we're discussing essentially a a workout program to make your body more effective at moneymaking Mak 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 were 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 the characteristic of optimism incredibly important so important in fact that mattlife the insurance company did a famous study back in the 80s famous study easily found information on this where H you know as you know MetLife would hire thousands of Agents every year and it was a very costly process because the dropout rate was very high uh people who thought they would be able to sell insurance and this time went by were not good at it became discouraged and left and medlife used to always test uh for um academic record they used to hire people with good college degrees they used to hire people um with exper experience in sales and they were persuaded by a group of researchers to try and um uh 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 Met Life was divide this year's intake of new um uh agents into half half of them hire 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 hire for optimism well you won't be surprised to hear that the success rate and the retention rate and the uh 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 than among those who had the conventional characteristics uh 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 I know as well as you do that there are times you just start up in the middle of in the the beginning of the day and you're feeling down and you're just feeling gloomy and you just feel nothing's going to go right and sure enough when you go into situations with that mindset guess what happens nothing does go right never works well and so if you at that point could take a tablet an optimism tablet wouldn't you do it wouldn't you love there to be some optimism tablet so that the next phone call you made you just sounded so optimistic and you oozed 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 um 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 uh the University of California in Sacramento uh 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 thought 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 um something that I am going to now commend seriously to your attention is to have a private Journal 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're going to take for yourself 10 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 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 Ravis I was alluding to um actually identified the uh extent to which People's Health mood uh effectiveness at work all skyrocketed if they started the day doing that which ancient Jewish wisdom has been recommending for 2,000 years start your day not by thinking but 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 thought into a reality by putting down the idea Everything Changes I often uh explain to people that um 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 uh 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 I I love high-tech I I I think smartphones are wonderful computers are absolutely terrific there's great software out there really useful software out there um 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 on uh my ever note or I can put it down on my Microsoft One Note 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 try it 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 more optimistic person which overflows effectively into everything you do just wait and see I also told you 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 said your mouth is probably your most important moneymaking 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 it's with your mouth you can persuade somebody to your way of thinking it's with your mouth that you can effect a sale or a transaction communicating effectively is very very important it's part of getting to know yourself it's 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 I laugh when I give this advice this is among the most powerful advice it's among the most powerful permanent principles in ancient Jewish wisdom here it is if you want to Triple quadruple multiply your fluency and your ability to express yourself by 10 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 or or choose a good book and uh there really are lots of resources on the internet for advice and recommendations on good books it's got to be something that is not too flowery and not too literary so is that the words are uh 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 20 minutes a time ideally 30 minutes A Time three times a week so ideally for about an hour and a half a week but not in one sitting in three separate sittings three 20 to 30 minute sessions read aloud now if you're fortunate enough to have a spouse who enjoys being r 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 cuz you feel a little ridiculous reading aloud uh if there's nobody there so reading aloud to somebody it's great if you happen to have children uh 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 aloud to them and I'm not even going to talk right now about the benefit icial effects this has on parent child relationships or on husband wife wife husband relationships that's separate right now all I'm talking about is the magical transformation when your own ears hear your own lips and tongue enunciating 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 after 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 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 it doesn't matter easier to somebody else but read aloud you will be astounded at what happens to your ability to communicate are you ready for the next Point sit back you and I both know horrible people who've done well in business we do however what we don't always recognize is that that is the exception not the norm the norm is that business goes better when you are a better person that is the reality very often the sheer ugliness and horribleness of certain people who prosper and who do well makes us tend to think that somehow if you are a very selfish person if you think of no body else if you're a rude and aggressive personality that somehow that's how you're going to do well in business it's not true it is true that there are Exceptions there are people who are horrible people and who prosper and do well but it's not it's not the majority of the millions of successful business professionals the overwhelming majority succeed when they are better human beings when they are good people that is how it works now here's the important thing I'm not a particularly good tennis player but what I do know is that anybody can be taught to be a good tennis player without necessarily being a nice person I know that you can be taught to be a fine musician regardless of your character I know that you can be taught to be an actor and not be a particularly nice person you can be taught to be a racing car driver and as long as you have the talent you can be pretty good at it and you don't have to be a nice person as a matter of fact you can be a horrible person and it's not going to impact your ability to play tennis or drive a race car or uh anything at all like that however in business in business it really is different you dramatically increase your odds yes there are a few exceptional cases of not trusty people who become successful but that's not the majority if you want to increase your likelihood of really prospering of building Financial abundance into your life business is unique it requires you to become a better person if you think about it it's almost obvious you barely need me to explain it right because what's really happening is that um people all of us choose to do business with with individuals whom we know whom we like and whom we trust and uh in another commandment I speak about expanding your network of human connectedness getting to know a lot of people letting a lot of people get to know you but the next part is having those people like you and people cannot be Bamboozled all the time people like you if you are a genuinely good person and so what we're speaking about here please understand this is not morality this is not religion this is economics we're talking about it so happens that there is a very important conjunction between business and decency a conjunction which is not found in other areas at all it is found in business and it's important to realize that with very few exceptions no matter what you are doing or planning on doing or or no matter what your imagination is going to lead you into doing you are going to be in business you might say to me well wait a say you know what I'm I'm not in business I am a skilled plumber you might say I'm a skilled lawyer I'm a skilled auto mechanic I don't have to be in business my skills and my abilities will be enough and will do it for me I'm a doctor I'm a skilled doctor I I went to a good medical school I graduated at the top of my class take your ideas of business away I don't need those well the world is full of lawyers and doctors and plumbers and auto mechanics who are starving no matter how good they are think about it for a moment do you really know which Medical School your doctor went to I don't think so do you know where about in his class or her class your doctor graduated I don't think so as a matter of fact you don't even know that your doctor actually went to medical school oh yes there are documents up on the wall of his office or her office uh but how long do you think it would take me to create such a document leave me alone with a computer and a software program and a printer I'll give you as many documents as you like how do you know that your doctor ever went to medical school how do you know that your doctor is good and skilled I'll tell you how only because of his business abilities not because of his medical abilities because of his ability to build his reputation his AB to connect bedside manner they speak about for doctors they don't teach that in medical school that's part of business training when a doctor fills you with a sense of confidence and a sense of hope and a sense of optimism about your condition you feel good about that doctor and that's what makes that doctor get a lot of patience the same is true in whatever area you're in and so I want you to start thinking of yourself as being in business as a matter of fact I want you to start thinking of yourself as a company you might call yourself you Inc or me incorporated and recognize that you are a corporation you may just be one person or you may have a family your family is part of your board of directors and we'll speak about how to involve them and include them in your business but you've got to recognize that no matter what area you are currently or will be choosing to build up your Revenue with you are going to be in business you are going to be a business professional and you are going to use the principles that we are discussing to make yourself into a better and more effective you in order to more effectively generate Revenue going to move to the next point which is that um in English we have a word Calamity disastrous right something horrible uh we have a similar word calumny which means something ignoble and unpleasant and bad those two words have the same eological origin in English c l m Calamity calumny same word now that word cln derives from the Lord's language in the Hebrew language those three letters stand for body emotions brain C stands for body in Hebrew and I'm not going to go into the details right now but C stands for body L stands for emotions and m stands for brain now when we reverse those three letters and we have mlc that word means royalty or King aristocracy so in Hebrew mik mlc means royalty aristocracy highly successful CLM calm stands for disaster Calamity embarrassment mortification hopeless disaster what's going on here remember I told you CLM body emotions brain mlc brain emotions body here is the point we have to train ourselves to be driven and motivated primarily by our brains secondarily by our emotions and only thirdly by our bodies that is the road to aristocracy success royalty that's the road upwards when we motivate ourselves on account of our brains telling us this is what we should be doing our emotions say oh I I i' really love to do this our brains say you may love to do that but it's not what you should be doing now our bodies exerise an urgent pull for our bodily uh appetites food drink Sex human beings that are driven primarily by Body secondarily by emotions and only finally by brain that road leads to Calamity when we are driven and motivated and forced ourselves to make our decisions according to brain first emotion secondly and body third we are on the road to enormous success that is a fundamental principle in ancient Jewish wisdom that pops right out of the Hebrew language and something that has always played a vital role in Jewish financial success and it's something that you need to incorporate into your entire self selfhood into you Incorporated the person you are the organization maybe it's an organization of one person but you are a business professional and in order to be a business professional you've got to train yourself to start asking yourself every time am I about to do what I'm about to do because my body is calling me to do it you know eat one more chocolatey clar after I've already eaten seven it's going to not only mess up your weight and your exercise program it's going to fill you with a sense of indulgence and even self-loathing because when we yield to our body we end up feeling less good about ourselves when we overcome the core of our body by means of our heads and our intellects we feel good about ourselves that's part of the secret try it begin to implement it it's a vitally important tool now I need to give you some of the Practical tips and tools for enabling yourself to regulate your conduct your behavior and your actions on the basis of brain emotions body rather than body emotions brain and in order to do that it's valuable to understand that our emotions can be controlled now a lot of times we grow up thinking to ourselves I can't help what I feel I feel what I feel I can't help that nothing could be a bigger lie than that controlling how we feel is one of the big secrets to success let me explain what I'm talking about you know it is um interesting the eighth commandment is Thou shalt not steal mustn't steal anything and so if we've been commanded not to steal why do we need the tenth commandment which says do not covet don't desire things that belong to other people who does it hurt if I think about if I fantasize about owning things that you've got if I fantasize about coveting and Desiring things I don't have who does that hurt as long as I'm not stealing you would have thought really God would only have given us nine Commandments we don't need the 10th one do you know what the purpose of the 10th one is the 10th one is essentially saying learn to control your emotions you want to know who it hurts to cover stuff you want to know who it hurts to fantasize about things you now if you steal something that hurts two people that hurts the person from whom you stole it also hurts you it makes you of a lesser person deep in your heart you think less of yourself that is very destructive because if you think less of you it's inevitable that other people around you will start thinking less of you as well you don't necessarily communicate that mechanism you don't exactly know what's doing it but on a subtle level and you know how often you form a first impression of somebody and if somebody afterward says well did you like that person yeah I really like that person well what about him did you like sometimes it's hard to say or you know what I just didn't really like that but really you just saw him for half a minute why why wouldn't you like him it's terribly terribly subtle it's a spiritual communication it's a soul to soul communication very often if people have a self-loathing if people have a low moral opinion of themselves if people feel indulgent and unworthy somehow that communicates itself in a very subtle and incomprehensible way the person sees them and it just doesn't feel good so when we're speaking about becoming a better person it's a genuine process because when you are a better person you beam not a self-c complacency not a smugness um not selfesteem I don't think we're talking about self-esteem at all we're talking about somebody who feels okay with his moral reality and that beams out effectively to other people in your world as well and so understanding that Desiring things that we don't have is destructive only to you in this case only to you fantasizing about um other women than my wife who does that harm my wife doesn't even know I'm doing it harms me on some deep level it makes me less satisfied with my marriage it is destructive and so the tenth commandment says human beings guess what you have the ability to control your emotions and when you control your emotions when you have the ability to control how you feel about something it's immensely powerful now think about this for a moment controlling emotions how do we do that have you noticed how very hard it is to begin a DI have you noticed how very hard it is to be in an exercise regimen to work out regularly what happens after you've been doing it for a few days what happens after you start running first few days you run you puffing and huffing and panting after a few days you suddenly hit a high whether you're exercising whether you're dieting you your feelings about it start changing right somebody wants to give up smoking the first few days first few weeks are very difficult and as time goes goes by it gets easier and easier doesn't it you are changing your feelings you are changing your emotions by what by actions and that is a very important biblical principle we're able to change the way we feel by how we act very important think of fear how often does Fear hold us back this is part of who we are right the good Lord created the emotion of fear it can be incredibly destructive it can paralyze you and sometimes the fear is is irrational but it can stop you meeting your destiny it can stop you moving ahead to accomplish everything you're capable of doing so what do you do about fear it's it's a destructive emotion and your reaction might be you know what I can't help how I feel I just feel frightened right now well wait a second it's very important to know how to modify it because because it is not only destructive to you it also is contagious this is why it is that in scripture Moses and also later on Gideon took people who were frightened and excluded them they didn't allow them as to be part of the army because they're not effective people who frightened are not effective and therefore we have to learn how to modify this to make it go away the answer is our actions modify our feelings now a lot of people automatically think oh well you know what I act according to my feelings to some extent that is true but to a far greater extent our feelings follow our actions do you know who the most uh uh passionate anti-smoking people are folks who've given up smoking that action which is a massive action of breaking a habit and no longer smoking that that action is so powerful it changes your emotions dramatically and you now become somebody who feels passionately against smoking and it drives other people nut sometimes but you can barely help yourself because when you act in a strong and powerful way your emotions and your feelings fall into line and so how do we govern fear it's very simple we start acting as if we have no fear at all we Act fearlessly that by the way is what courage is all about courage doesn't mean somebody who has no fear courage is somebody who knows how to manage their fear and when you are embarking on a new Financial Enterprise when you are commencing a program a stepbystep program that is going to dramatically transform your financial destiny there are going to be times of profound fear there is no question about it there will be and I will explain more about it down the road in the program but you're going to feel fear and so we're going to have to know effectively how to deal with it whenever it strikes and it can strike unexpectedly it can strike suddenly doesn't matter when fear strikes the first thing you have to do is identify what it is that you are fearful of doing and then you have to force yourself to do it and maybe you're going to just take a small step maybe you're going to just do a small part of it but the amazing thing is that we can literally dissolve fear out of our Consciousness by actions that suggest we have no fear to begin with that is an enormously effective tool for dealing with fear which is an everpresent enemy now that's not the only everpresent enemy that we're going to have to learn how to overcome in this particular command commandment another one is the tendency of entropy now what is entropy second verse of the Book of Genesis and the Earth was turbulent and chaotic well why do we need to be told that and then the very next sentence is God created light and everything began to straighten out what was happening before that there we have the principle of entropy now in a nutshell have you ever noticed that your desk if it's anything like mine becomes messy and then you tidy it up you do this gigantic big tidy up and you're so proud of it your desk is clean everything is ordered everything is filed and what happens a few weeks later you'll look at it and when did this happen or how about if if you happen to have children particularly teenagers you tidy up their room you make them tidy their room you come back a week later and it's absolutely turbulent and chaotic right right how come it never goes in the other direction or put it this way let's imagine you put a car a Buick or a Toyota in a field and we set up surveillance equipment and we just watch it for shall we say 200 years what will we find lying in the field at the end of 200 years a pile of rust some crumbly rubber some broken glass that's what we'll see there okay fine let's now try another experiment let's put rust broken glass and rubber in a field how long do we have to watch it before it reconstitutes into a car never happens right why it really is actually a big mystery it doesn't strike us as a mystery because we're so used to this being a part of life that we don't realize how bizarre it is that things tend to automatically become more messy more destructive more broken automatically and it takes enormous human energy to con convert iron into a car or a messy desk into a neat desk or a messy room into a neat room this is a reality of life it's called the principle of entropy and it's laid out very clearly in physics it's laid out very clearly in ancient Jewish wisdom in physics it's seen mostly in a physical context that's why it's called physics in terms of the car but um in uh uh in in ancient Jewish wisdom it's presented in spiritual terms that there is a tendency towards the destructiveness rather than the constructiveness a tendency towards chaos rather than a tendency towards order put very directly what this means to your life and to mine is that any attempt you make to improve your life any attempt you make to lose weight become healthier any attempt you make to create more wealth any attempt you make to educate yourself or to acquire more training all of these things experience what we call spiritual gravity something that pulls you in the reverse Direction something that says oh come on you know just have that one big meal it doesn't matter it doesn't matter you're trying to lose weight you're trying to be on a diet you have the spiritual gravity pulling you away and um and you know you're supposed to go to a a class tonight oh you know what come on says a part of you stay home and watch television instead you need an evening of relaxation we have this destructive pull inside each and every one of us the form of spiritual gravity that's pulling us in the opposite direction to which our heads our minds our brains are telling us we need to go and it's very important to recognize this because it is destructive it's damaging and it can absolutely s sabotage everything you are setting out to do you've got to recognize the enemy here if you like and that is the tendency towards what we call spiritual gravity or entropy the tendency to obstruct the progress you desire obstruct your attempts to better and improve yourself and we've got to recognize that in order to combat this and ultimately defeat it you have to recognize two pots within ourselves ancient Jewish wisdom presents it as the boss and the servant or sometimes the horse and the rider what happens if we let the horse decide where it's going to go doesn't work out too well the rider has to tell the horse what happens if the boss yields authority to somebody who's subservient does doesn't necessarily go to well cuz the whole job of the boss is to have the road map in his mind to know where we're going so it is we've got to recognize that each and every one of us is actually made up of two parts the one part which is the part that if you like is the head which is the part that says this is where I know we have to go and then we've got the other part of us the emotion in the body that's pulling us in the opposite direction things we are drawn to either emotionally or physically which invariably are opposite to the to the direction we know we really have to go the direction in which we want to go the direction in which we will achieve the goals that we have set for ourselves and so once you recognize that you are made up of these two parts so that you can identify exactly what you're experiencing when you feel this pull when you can almost hear the destructive voice in your ear is seducing you along the path opposite to what you know you want to achieve you know what it is you identify it and identifying the enemy is halfway towards defeating it

Channel: Rabbi Daniel Lapin

Views: 190,517

Keywords: rabbi daniel lapin, ancient jewish wisdom, jewish wisdom

Id: eeYGNrVBff0

Length: 61min 9sec (3669 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 04 2015