Episode 125 - Stop Negotiating With God Like You're Searching For Parking Spots

Worry has a way of disguising itself as responsibility, especially when you’re buried in work pressure, taxes, and money stress. We talk about how to cut through that fog and see the deeper truth: when you truly trust the Creator, the ground under your feet stops shifting, and anxiety loses its grip. Using the mindset of a small child who trusts a parent to provide, we explore what it means to live with emunah that’s felt, not just stated. 

Shavuot sets the stage, because it commemorates the giving of the Torah and the Ten Commandments, the moment that defines everything that comes after. We reflect on a powerful teaching from Pirkei Avot through Rabbi Meir about learning Torah for its own sake, and what that kind of learning produces: humility, fairness, strength, and the ability to guide others. From there we break down five practical conditions for giving advice, including the hard requirement of having no vested interest, and why a Torah-shaped mindset offers stability when man made rules keep changing. 

Then we get personal and practical about debt and financial hardship. Instead of treating prayer like a transaction where we only ask for cash, health, or quick fixes, we push for a different daily request: “Give me emunah.” That single shift reframes stress, strengthens decision making, and helps you build a calmer, more purposeful life through consistent Torah study. If this resonates, subscribe, share it with someone who feels overwhelmed, and leave a review so more people can find the conversation.

Transcript

Seeing Past The Fog Of Life

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When you're in the fog of bosses, when you're in the fog of taxes, when you're in the fog of all the million different things that just add noise to your life and distract you from what's important, it's so difficult to see through it, to cut through it and see who's really running the show. But when you do, when you know that there is a creator who runs the show, just like a five-year-old looks at his father and says, My father opens up the skies and lets the sun out in the morning. If you feel that way about your creator, you simply don't have any worries. You live a life that is completely 100% worry-free. The trust factor is a ticket to a better life. The trust factor shows you how to get through the life.

Shavuot And Why Torah Matters

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It is one of our major holidays. But again, like I said the other day, so many people, secular Jews, have no idea that this holiday even exists. Never mind what we do to commemorate it and to celebrate it. All the mitzhs that are associated with it, which is really the primary one, is learning Torah, because this is the holiday that commemorates the giving of the Torah. This is when we got to Mount Sinai, and this is when we heard God's voice booming, and we were given the Ten Commandments. Two of them came from his own mouth. This is a game changer. This is the holiday of holidays. Everything comes after this. And so the fact that it doesn't have blessing with it is really mind-boggling. I wish somebody had a really good explanation for it. I haven't heard a good explanation today. I'm sure one exists. So let's finish off because today, tonight, being Shavuot means this is going to be our last time studying Pirkeavot for the year. Hopefully, God willing, next year we'll be doing this. We'll be into season three, and we'll be able to get back into Pirka Vot. So we're going to finish this one off with this unbelievable quote that we heard before, that is just, it's a really long quote, and there's so much to unpack. And it's what Rabbi Mayer said, which said that somebody who studies Torah for the sake of Torah merits so many amazing things in this world. And we went through the maybe I should read it again just to remind everybody. Rabbi Mayer said, anybody who studies Torah for its own sake merits many things. What are they? Before he gets into it, he says, furthermore, the creation of the entire world is worthwhile for his sake alone. We talked about that yesterday. I gave you a completely different take on that. He's called a friend and beloved to Hashem. He loves God. He loves his creatures, his creation. He gladdens God. He gladdens God's creatures. The Torah clothes him in humility and the fear of God. It makes him fit to be righteous, devout, fair, and faithful. Just think about that. Righteous alone is enough, right? Just to say that you're learning Torah for the sake of Torah makes you a righteous individual. It piles it on. Righteous, devout, fair, and faithful. It moves him away from sin and draws him near to merit. That's all we're all here for. From him, people enjoy counsel and wisdom, like I said, with regards to the Chazonish, who was giving doctors advice. World-renowned doctors were coming to this person who was not a doctor, but a student of the Torah. They were coming to him for advice. They come to him for wisdom, understanding, and strength, as it says, minor counsel and wisdom. He says the Torah gives him kingship and dominion and analytical judgment. Judges, all of us, we're all judges to a certain degree. But if you're in that profession, this is how you grow. This is how you become top of your game as a judge. The secrets of the Torah are revealed to him. Who wouldn't want that? He becomes a steadily strengthening fountain and like an unceasing river. You can't stomp a river that's flowing. He becomes modest, patient, and forgiving of insult to himself. The Torah makes him great and exalts him above all things. It's an unbelievable statement. I mean, all of Pirkeha Volt, in my mind, is captured, is encapsulated in that one statement. It's a huge statement. We could talk about it for a lifetime, I'm sure. But let's get into what it says with regards to, and this is where we'll finish, that it gives somebody kingship and dominion and analytical judgment,

Five Rules For Giving Advice

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and that the secrets of the Torah are revealed to him. It says over here that Rabbi El Khanan Washaman wrote, five conditions are necessary for giving advice. Five conditions that need to be met, that things that you need to have. If somebody's going to come and seek advice out from you and you're going to give counsel, number one, intelligence. I mean, it almost goes without saying. You have to have intelligence specifically on the subject matter at hand in order to be able to give advice on it. Number two, lack of a vested interest in the issue. If you have any connection to the issue, then you are biased. And I don't care how much that is, even an iota, one drop of interest that you think you would prefer to see a certain outcome, don't judge. Don't give advice. It's not your place. It's not going to be fair. So you have to remove yourself from the equation entirely. Number three, a general sense of fairness, without which one cannot think clearly. You have to have a general fairness about you. You have to want to see and a desire inside of you to make sure that it is a fair outcome, that no matter who stands before you, the litigant or the defendant, that they will both walk away feeling as if there was a fair outcome. Your job is not to find favor with one or the other, it's to find favor with both by making sure that your judgment resonates with them because you're coming from a fair position. That's number three. Number four, a mindset totally and exclusively shaped by Torah. If you're not, then you're flawed. If you go to a secular court like we have today in the world that most of us live with, then you have to understand that their judgment is generally flawed. Why? Because man, anything man-made is going to be constantly moving, constantly morphing, constantly evolving. And you might be mistaken to think that that's perfectly normal. What's wrong with that, Jesse? We're growing. Humanity is advancing. We're moving forward. We should be moving forward. Our laws should be growing with us. And if that's the way you think, you haven't studied Torah enough. Understand that the difference between man-made laws and wisdom versus divine laws and divine wisdom is that very thing. It doesn't change with the times. Human beings have always had two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, flesh, blood, bones. We've always had the same nishadmas, the same souls. We are the same people. And as you've seen, I've given you examples throughout history that go back thousands of years. Humanity doesn't change. We are the same people at our core, and we have the same desires and the same commitments and responsibilities and the same evil inclination. It's all the same. Yes, when it comes to technology and advancements and the things that surround us, we need giants in Torah in every generation to be able to tell us how do we deal with these things from a Torah perspective? Because the world is changing, it's growing, absolutely. But at the core of judgment, of decision making, human beings are exactly the same people. When you change the rules as we go, when the rules become a moving target, you end up with confusion. People don't know what to do. What's the law today? Is it the same as it was yesterday or last year or 10 years ago? We don't know. And at the same time, you know what they tell you? When you get a speeding ticket or when you get a moving violation and you go to court and you say to the judge, but I didn't know. I have no idea. Why? Why didn't you know? I've been driving for 25, 35, 40 years. I didn't know I couldn't do X. And why didn't you know? Because the law recently changed. And you're not sitting and wondering and reading from all of the publications that these politicians put out every day to figure out what's new and exciting. Sorry, I'm too busy to follow, you know, their flipping and flopping. Do you know what the judge's answer to you is going to be? Ignorance is no excuse. It's not enough of an excuse to say you didn't know. You have an obligation to know. How am I supposed to know when you're changing it like the weather? It doesn't make any sense. The law of humanity needs to remain solid and intact, just like divine wisdom. So that was number four. Number five is you need divine assistance in rendering the proper advice. And he says over here, and we'll end with that, it says that if a judge had the opportunity to speak to a shen with, if God came down to you and whispered in your ear, Do you want me to tell you how to decide what the right decision is? Anyone would jump and say, Yes, please, tell me. You're God. If anybody knows, you know. Well, that's available. He's available. How? You're not going to have a conversation with him, but you'll be able to read his Torah. Open up his Torah and read because he put in his Torah all of him. It all reflects who he is and how he makes decisions and how he wants us to make decisions. So if you want to know what God would do, read his Torah. Okay, my friends, that wraps it up for Pirkeavok for this year. And tonight, like I said, it's Shavuot. So if you haven't found that synagogue yet, go out and find it. Tonight is all night learning. Get some rest in a little bit before the holiday. If you can sleep for a few hours in the afternoon, it'll help you to get through an all-night learning session. They're amazing. They're filled with all kinds of treats and snacks and cakes and all kinds of cheesecakes and amazing things to help keep you awake and lots of coffee. But you're surrounded with people who are staying up all night and when you walk back in the morning and you're full of Torah. There's no better feeling in the world. Let's get

Debt, Worry, And Real Emunah

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into it. In the book, The Garden of Amunna, we were talking about debt. Somebody who finds himself drowning in debt and needs to work on their Amuna. Rav Arush gives an example and he says, A young man complained to me about financial difficulties. I told him to pray to the creator and request from Hashem that he should give him Amuna. And the young man protested. He said, What do you mean? I've got Amuna. I have nothing wrong. There's nothing wrong with my Amuna. He didn't hear me. My problem is not my Amuna, it's that I'm drowning in debt. I've got all this debt from when I was in school. And now as a married man, I've got all this new debt. I've got to take on providing for my family. I've got all this debt I need to manage, and I can't manage you. He said to him, Your ears should hear what your lips are saying. He says, in the same breath that you say you have amuna, you also say that you have worries too. It doesn't go together. If you haven't picked up on this by now, my friends, you've missed it. The whole idea of amuna, the whole concept of building it and asking for Hashem when you pray, don't ask him, give me money. Don't ask him, give me health. That's not what you should be focusing on. Your primary request, your consistent request at all times is to say, give me emuna. If somebody happens to, God forbid, find themselves sick, then yeah, focus more on the health component and talk about that with your creator. But at the end and at the beginning of every one of those prayer sessions, that hit bodidud, that conversation with your creator, it should start and stop with, I need emuna, because it's only amuna that will help me to live a worry-free life. Only with Amuna. Without it, I'm going to suffer at every single turn. And if I'm only asking for money when I need it, or health when I need it, or children when I need them, or a spouse when I need it, whatever you ask for, if you're asking for it only when you need it, then it becomes a transactional relationship. And we've said the other day, that's not a healthy relationship. That's not one that is based in love. That's not one that has any depth to it. It is completely surface. As long as somebody else can come along and fill that void and provide for you what it is that you're looking for, then suddenly you don't need him anymore. You know the old joke about the guy driving around in Manhattan looking for a parking spot because he's late to a meeting and he's crying out to Hishem, please find me the parking spot. I'll start to keep Shabbat. If you just give me that parking spot, I promise from now on, I'll start keeping Shabbat. And as he says that, somebody pulls out. And as soon as that guy pulls out, he sees a parking spot and says, Scrap that, Hashem, never mind, I got this. And he pulls in. It's the same idea. If the doctor comes to you and says, I've got your solution, I've got your cure, you don't need a sham. If the boss comes to you and says, I've got a promotion for you, now I'm doubling your salary, you're on Easy Street, you don't need a shame. That's a transactional relationship. You do not want that. That's why you don't want to ask for health and you don't want to ask for money and you don't want to ask for children. It's okay to ask, but it has to be before or after you ask for a MUNA. If you have a MUNA, then you don't have worries. A person who believes that the creator gives him his livelihood simply does not worry. Have you ever seen a three-year-old worried? It doesn't exist. A toddler doesn't have a worry. Daddy is responsible for making a living. He trusts his father completely. By the same token, he should trust his father in heaven while concentrating on your own task in life. You do you and let Hashem do his job without worry, because it's Hashem's job to provide for you, and he will surely do so. Three-year-olds and five-year-olds do not worry where their next meal is coming from. They don't worry about disease. They don't worry about partners, they don't worry about friends, they don't worry about any of those things. Everything comes to them when they need it, as they need it. And if it doesn't, they move on. They understand that everything is perfect, that they have a father and a mother who's there to take care of them, that those parents will do whatever it takes to provide the meal, to get them clothed, to keep the roof over their head. A five-year-old doesn't worry that the father's not going to be able to pay the mortgage. He's got full faith in the parent to be able to do what he's supposed to do. If we just conducted ourselves like that, that we understood that Hashem has all the power in the world to do the things that we need him to do and that he wants to do them and that we don't question it, then we can go about our lives in a happy way. Guys, I'm talking to myself also over here. It's so difficult when you're in the fog of business, when you're in the fog of bosses, when you're in the fog of taxes, when you're in the fog of all the million different things that just add noise to your life and distract you from what's important, it's so difficult to see through it, to cut through it and see who's really running the show. But when you do, when you know that there is a creator who runs the show, just like a five-year-old looks at his father and says, My father opens up the skies and lets the sun out in the morning. If you feel that way about your creator, you simply don't have any worries. You live a life that is completely 100% worry-free. How do you get there? What's the start? What's the first step?

Make Torah Learning Non Negotiable

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If everything I'm telling you right now is alien to you and you want to get there because it sounds enticing, pick up the Torah, find a teacher, get a Rebbe, and sit and learn every single day. Not once in a while, not just on Shavuat, not just on holidays, not just on Shabbat. Every single day. It says, Ased, Tola tcha keva, the malakticha, aai. You should make your Torah learning firm, concrete, set in stone. I know every day between this time and that time in the morning and this time and that time at night, I learn. Everything else in my life revolves around my learning. My work, my friends, my business life. Everything that I do revolves around my Torah learning. Today we live in a life where it's the exact opposite. First, let me go to work. First, let me earn what I need to earn. Let me pay my bills. Let me take care of everything. Let me put out all the fires in my life. And then, if I have a little bit of time left, maybe I'll squeeze in five minutes of Torah study. We got it backwards, my friends. In the old days, our sages who worked for a living, the ones who wrote the Gemara, they all had jobs, day jobs. They went to their jobs, whatever it was, blacksmithing, shoemaking, and they opened up their stores and they produced what they needed to produce for their day's bread. And then they locked up and they went to learn Torah. That's it. Leave money on the table for the next guy to be able to make his daily bread. Today it's the exact opposite. We will sleep in the office if we can. We will start a hundred businesses if we can. We will invest in the entire stock market if we could. And then and only then, if we're left with any time, good luck. Then maybe I'll sit down and learn for a few minutes. We've got it backwards. It's time for a paradigm shift. It's time to turn reality on its head.

Share, Subscribe, And Keep Growing

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That's the purpose of this podcast. That's the reason why you're listening. Share it, my friends. Let everybody know that we shouldn't follow the masses because sometimes the M is silent. I heard that one on social media. Kind of liked it. Anyways, we will speak again, God willing, on Sunday. 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.