Episode 214 - We Keep Blaming The Stick When We Should Look For The One Holding It

Ever catch yourself praising your “skill” after a win and blaming someone else after a loss? We’ve been there too. Today we pull back the curtain on why the nearest cause is rarely the real cause, and how that shift changes trust, gratitude, and the way we carry success and failure. Using a dog-and-stick image you won’t forget, we explore how our minds fixate on what’s in front of us and miss the hand behind it.

We walk through concrete examples—profit in business, a gift from a friend, a painful setback—to show how visible events are often just tools in a longer chain. Like a king who works through envoys, deeper causes move through intermediaries: people, timing, systems, even our own words. Sometimes we are the instrument for someone else’s breakthrough, and other times we’re the hard lesson they needed. That doesn’t excuse harm; it calls for stronger responsibility and sharper self-reflection. And when we carry joy to others, it’s a chance to practise humility and gratitude for being chosen as the channel.

Along the way we unpack a tough bias: humans feel losses twice as strongly as gains. That imbalance can lock us into loops of rumination, resentment, and shallow meaning-making. By tracing outcomes back to the ultimate cause rather than worshipping proximity, we calm the noise, restore perspective, and build trust that withstands volatility. Practically, it means thanking people fully while directing deepest gratitude to the source behind them, owning our choices without collapsing under randomness, and refusing the myth of coincidence.

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Chapters

• 0:16 Setting The Stage For Trust
• 0:43 The Obstacle: Mistaking Immediate Causes
• 1:02 Profit, Gifts, And Misplaced Credit
• 2:28 The Stick And The Dog
• 3:11 A World Designed To Mislead
• 4:18 Chains Of Cause And The King Analogy
• 5:31 Becoming A Tool For Good Or Harm
• 6:52 No Coincidence And Curated Events
• 7:32 Trust The Ultimate Cause
• 8:17 Sensitivity To Loss Versus Gain
• 9:58 Gratitude To People And To Hashem
• 10:29 Closing And Listener Actions

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:16

Hello and welcome to the Trust Factor Podcast, the only podcast that guarantees your success when you implement its divine age old teachings. We are inching closer to the end of the book, my friends, which means the end of season one of the Trust Factor Podcast. I'm excited, still trying to figure out what we're gonna do to commemorate that day. Can't just be a regular day. When I figure it out, I'll let you know. In the meantime, let's get to the end. Right now, we are on the third specific factor that is an obstacle in between us and our Creator. This is one of the things that stops us from being able to have a relationship with him. And what is it? It's a little bit vague and difficult to understand in the beginning, but I'll explain it. He says a person's tendency to focus on the most direct causes of his benefit or harm, which he sees, and to attach value to those causes and forget that Hashem is the true cause. Give you an example. If one's business generates a healthy profit, what does he say? He gives himself a pat on the back. It must be my skillful management. I'm the one that did this. Look at me, everybody. That's the reason I brought about this gain. Likewise, if one receives a gift from another individual, he feels that that individual's goodwill is what brought him the benefit. He doesn't see Hashem's hand in any of these things. My business succeeded, that's because of me. The guy gave me a gift, that's because of that guy. Nothing to do with Hashem. There's no, it doesn't even enter into his mind. If, on the other hand, one suffers a loss, he blames it on a failure of his business model. And if he endures an injury, he tends to blame it on the negligence of the one who caused it. It's always a third party, it's always a random variable or a variable that could have been controlled. They don't tend to see Hashem's handiwork. If this is you, my friend, it's going to be very difficult for you to generate or to build or to maintain a relationship with your creator. In each case, he looks at the immediate cause and attributes the result to that cause because it is the one he sees in front of him. Think about this, guys. When you take a stick and you hit a dog with it, what does the dog do? Most dogs will go after the stick. They won't go after the person who is wielding the stick. That's a dog. We are human beings. We are so much smarter than that. And yet we have a tendency to put blame or attribute success to the very thing that is right in front of us. We don't stop to look what's behind it. That's where the smart money is. You want to become successful, you want to look at the bigger picture, you want to look at what's happening in the background, the thing that isn't so obvious. That takes us back to this concept that we said earlier, which is Olam Hasheker, Alma Dashikra, like the Gemara says, we're living in a world that the creator of said world calls a world of lies. It's designed that way. It's designed to make you think that it is that thing that is right in front of you that is so obvious that that must be the cause of the good or the bad in your life. When in fact, it has nothing to do with that. And what he says over here is that one who thinks this way does not realize that the closer the causes are in that chain of cause and effect to the one affected by them, the less power they actually have to benefit or harm him. In other words, that stick, because it's the thing, the very thing that is so close to your success or your failure that you could attribute that success or failure to it, that stick has nothing to do. It is the furthest thing away from what actually is the real reason. Although he was indeed affected by something, such as a business or a generous benefactor or a negligent person, the cause that he sees was merely a tool that Hashem used for carrying out his decree. If that tool were not there, Hashem would have helped or harmed him through a different method. Very simple, not difficult to understand. Conversely, the further the causes are in that chain of cause and effect from the person affected by them, the more capable they are of benefiting or harming him in a significant and evident way. Over here he gives an example. And the example is of a king. He says, If a king wants to inflict punishment on one of his subjects, he doesn't inflict it himself. He has people who work for him. He has his representatives, and each representative takes care of a different area. So if he wants to punish an individual or reward an individual, he doesn't do it himself. Very few people step in front of the king, even if you're coming to get a reward. Most of the time there are intermediaries. There are people who serve the king, and it is their job to be able to inflict the good or the bad on behalf of the king. It's the same thing over here. God doesn't come down and inflict the pain or give the reward. He has people in place to be able to do these things. And sometimes those people are us, believe it or not. Sometimes we are the tool in God's hands. You don't even realize why you said something or why you behaved in a certain way or why certain things worked out the way that they did. You have no idea because it's out of your character. And now you understand sometimes you are being utilized by Hashem to do certain things, to say certain things, good or bad, to other individuals. Now, that doesn't mean that you take a ride on this, right? That doesn't give you carte blanche over here to say, wait a second, no, no, no, now I know why I behave badly, right? Because if you were put in a situation where you were the tool for negative, you were the tool that impacted somebody in a bad way, put them down, made them feel bad, that means that you had to do that as a form of punishment for you as well, my friend. You were deserving of that. That's not a good thing. So you have to do some self-introspection and understand why he chose you for that mission. Conversely, if you were the bearer of good news, if you were the one who came to deliver the news that made somebody feel good and lifted them up and gave them strength or gave them clarity or gave them simple joy and happiness, and it came through you, then you merit it to be able to have that. And you have to be grateful that you merited that. Nothing is coincidental, my friends. We're living in a world where they want you to believe that everything is coincidental. And I'm here to tell you, and the Torah is here to tell you, that there is no such thing as coincidence in this world. Absolutely everything that happens, even on a microscopic level, where you cannot see it, and there are trillions of transactions every second of every day that happen even on a microscopic level, that are all perfectly curated and crafted for our benefit. Yet we run around thinking that there is such a thing as coincidence. It makes absolutely no sense, my friends. Based on that example, it should be clear to you that whatever specific causes have little or much power to help the person on the receiving end depends on their closeness to or distance from the recipient. The closer the cause is to a person, the less power it has, and the more distant a cause is, the more power it has. Thus, it is sensible to trust and rely upon only upon the creator, who, as the ultimate cause in the chain of cause and effect, is the most remote from the recipients. He should be trusted by all due to his powerful control over their benefit and harm, as we explained above, focusing on the immediate causes of events is a detriment to trust. If we are foolish enough as to look at the events that are right in front of us and think that this is the cause of why I am suffering, then you are going to spend the rest of your life trying to understand why you're suffering. You will never understand it. It will eat away at you very slowly. You won't understand why people treat you a certain way, why certain things always happen to you. You will always and forever be wondering what you've done to deserve this. Not necessarily also for the bad, also for the good. You won't understand why these windfalls are coming your way. You won't understand why certain things just worked out for you. Most times we don't reflect on those nearly as much as the bad, because like I've said before, we are programmed to be more sensitive, twice as sensitive to be more precise, to the negative things that happen to us as we are to the positive events that happen in our life. So if we're sitting and thinking about the positive, we are thinking twice as hard about the negative. You'll remember, I told you in finance, as an investment advisor, if I lost a client$50,000 in a legitimate investment, I would have to earn him$100,000 back just to break even. Just for him to be able to have the same level of faith and trust in me that he did before I lost him the$50,000. I need to generate$100,000 in returns. Give him his$50,000 back plus an additional$50,000 in order to be back to par with that individual because we are twice as sensitive to the negative as we are to the positive. Remember, the positive and the negative, my friends, it's not the thing that is right in front of you. It is always the thing that is behind the thing that is right in front of you. When you recognize that, you won't lash out at the individual in front of you, you won't overly thank the individual in front of you. Doesn't mean you're not supposed to. Of course you are. Somebody does good for you, thank them. Recognize it, have gratitude. Number one important thing in the world is gratitude. But recognize you give gratitude to the individuals in front of you. But the main gratitude, the real gratitude, goes to Hashem who is behind that individual. Thank you for spending time with us on the Trust Factor Podcast. If you've heard something today that moved you, save this episode and share it with someone who might need to hear it. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss upcoming conversations that challenge, empower, and uplift. And if you're on social media, connect with us. Leave your thoughts, drop a quote that resonated with you. Hashtag the TrustFactor Podcast. Until next time, keep growing in your trust and keep living with purpose. I'm Jesse Revivo, and this has been the Trust Factor Podcast. Thanks for listening.