TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Stop Talking About Your Health Issues—Nobody Cares. & What’s More…
Date: 10/16/22 Length: 34:22
Daniel Lapin 0:00
Greetings to all you happy warriors. And thank you very much indeed for being with me today. And I'm particularly grateful because I know that I've been, sadly, negligent over the last two weeks, we haven't posted a new show over the last two weeks, and I've been traveling and just been a number of different pressures on me. And so, reluctantly, I can assure you, I was not able to devote the kind of time that is needed in order to make it worth your while to be part of the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show. As you know, I take your time as seriously as I do my own. And the very last thing I would want to do is run the risk of having you waste your time here on The Rabbi Daniel Lapin show in a way that did not deliver value for the time that you invest. So here we are with me, your rabbi, as usual, revealing how the world or rarely works. And what I wanted to spend a few minutes on is the question of balance. I'm talking specifically about how useful it is to build your life on the foundation of the five principle F's: faith, family, finances, friendship, and physical fitness. And the advantage of one of the many advantages I should say, of the five F system is this. You see, maintaining balance in life is very important. Now, it is not important for a child's beach ball floating in a swimming pool. In those conditions, there is no right way the red sector could be up to the blue sector could be up, the wind could blow it or rotate the ball, it doesn't matter. But we are as human beings with our finite lives from which we want to extract every possible maximum benefit. maintaining balance is very important. And one of the principal rules of maintaining balance is that if the foundation is narrower than the mass above it, its natural inclination will be to fall, it would be said to be not in balance. So for instance, if we take a child's spinning top, and we inverted, so we try to stand it up on its point, not surprisingly, it'll topple over, unless we get it spinning rapidly, in which case, the gyroscopic effect will keep it upright. But ordinarily, something with a broad base and a point prefers to stand upright. So if I spread my legs and stand that way, even if the wind is blowing, or I'm on the deck of a rolling and pitching small sailboat, I stand a better chance of retaining balance, because I'm keeping the foundation I'm keeping my base broader than I am, in fact, my legs are further apart than my shoulders are. And that gives me at least a chance of retaining my balance, at least in this direction. When it comes to forward and aft, well, that's a little different. And so I constantly have to move my legs around, in order to keep that one leg outside the tendency in the direction in which I'm tending to fall. And so, in general, the narrower the base, the more difficult it is to retain balance, if you try to stand on one leg, for instance, harder than standing on two, because we the pot that is above the leg is broader than the point on which we're trying to stand one leg itself, you get the idea, right. And so if we can make the foundation of our lives broad, then it's a lot easier to retain balance. So for instance, let's say for instance, that somebody says, You know what, nothing is more important than my family. My family is the ultimate everything, nothing else. You're now placing all your life trying to obtain a balance based on a very narrow thing, only on family. And so very difficult questions arise. You say? Well,
Daniel Lapin 4:38
my family is more important than anything. So does that mean you should not spend any time on creating wealth? Isn't that also it well, I've got to try and fit that into my family. And, and so you have to stretch to try and fit well fitness. Yes, my family wants to see me stay healthy. So you try to do that. At the end, you find yourself toppling in various directions because you don't have the firm, broad foundation on which to base things. And so it is that a, you know, a one-legged stool. If you imagine that some I've seen people at sporting events sometimes have something they sort of lean against, and they fit themselves into it. But it's just a stick with the point. And they have to keep their legs wide apart, in order to sort of create the equivalent of a three-legged stool, their two legs and the one leg of this monopod if you like, and then you've also got a three-legged stool, a three-legged stool can work. And now if you sit on a high three-legged stool at the kitchen counter, shall we say, and you rock it a little bit, you'll find to your surprise, or perhaps not so surprising that it topples fairly easily. Because in the final analysis, the base is a relatively small triangle. So you say fine, we'll switch to a four-legged chair, much better, much more stable, because now most of your weight lies within the square or the rectangle described by the way, the four legs touch the floor. And now how about if you go not from four, but you go to five legs, a bigger chair, even with five even stronger and even better, and those five legs are the five F. So when we structure our lives on these five F's, we find that it is easy to perceive right away when you are going out of balance, which is very hard to do, if there is no reference point if you are just a beach ball. But here with five, I might look and say wait a sec, looking at this last week, I have spent too much time and too much energy doing one of the five apps and I've left two or three or maybe four of the others a little bit neglected. And it's a lot easier to have the five F's themselves serving not only as your guide, and not only as the legs of your existence, but also as the balance indicator of when it is you might be going out of balance. And I I focus on the question of how many linkages are there? Well, here we've got five F's, you know, call them F one, F two, or three, or four or five, and now lay them out on the circumference of a circle. And if you're interested in doing it accurately, well, they should be 72 degrees apart, because five times 72 is 360, which is the number of degrees in one complete circle. And now what you want to do is draw a line connecting each of the five F's to each of the other four. Now, first of all, each five F is connected to the one on either side or the two on both sides by an arc of the circle on which they rest. And that means that you now have to draw several straight lines linking them to the other two. Well, when you finish doing that, how many lines will you have? In other words, if you've got five F's, how many links do you have linking the each of the five F's to each of the others. And so if we want to make sure that we understand that, shall we say family is linked, not just to finance but it's linked to finance and fitness family is also linked to friendship and to faith? Well, there we have four links. And then we go to fitness. And then we start drawing links between fitness and each of the other four, but we discover one of those already drawn in because we did it with family. And so you'll need fewer, and so on and so on as you work your way through it's worthwhile exercise. And we'll see if you end up with the right answer of how many links there really are. But one of those links is finance and fitness. So the link that ties, fitness, physical health, everything that falls under the heading of physical health, to finance and how do we fill that in? What does that actually mean? What does it stand for?
Daniel Lapin 9:38
And my goodness, I hope the wind here is not making this hard for you to hear me I sincerely hope so. I should have put a wind sock on the microphone, I suppose. Anyway, I hope it's okay. And that I'm not making this hard for you. And so, in what way is fitness impacted by fine Then send in what way? Is finance impacted by fitness? And, again, I'm going to leave you to fill that in a little bit. But I'll give you some starting points. How does finance affect fitness? Well, first of all, if you are able to devote a few dollars certain amount of money to your physical health, well, it means you might eat healthily, because you can afford to buy good quality food that is natural and, and without too much sugar. And without too much, whatever, whatever you decide, is necessary for your level of health. Again, if you're not stressed financially, you can do that. Here's another area, you're able to get medical attention when needed, you know, sometimes medical attention is able to be covered by some kind of insurance payment. But sometimes the the doctor you may want to see may well say to you look, you know, what I don't I then go with the insurance is too much of a hassle dealing with a government, it's too much of a hassle dealing with insurance companies. I'm a concierge doctor, here's the deal, I'll be happy to take care of you. Here's what it'll cost. It's great to be able to say, alright, terrific, let me write you a check, or do you want a credit card? In other words, the dollars help enormously to convert problems into expenses. And expenses are much easier to deal with than problems provided you actually have the finances. So if your interest is physical fitness, and you say, Well, I'm gonna spend eight hours a day, the eight best hours of the day I'm gonna spend in the gym. And I'd say to you, Well, what about your finances? What about your business? What about your income? Listen, it's not important to me as my fitness, I've got to devote the best part of the day to fitness. Well, you discover, and this is an extreme example, of course, but you quickly see that this doesn't work all that well. And there are other ways as well, in which fitness is impacted by finance, if you're able to take care of your physical fitness, without worrying, you know, if, let's say you decide you do have to, maybe you want to run or jog three times a week, and to know that you can do that without damaging your without losing your job or without getting fired. How wonderful is that. And so just being able to think about your fitness, to be able to deal with anything that impacts your health, to be able to pay for it when it's necessary to pay for it to be able to do it without any worries. And without any concerns. It's a fantastic thing. And, and it's really important to realize that, as important as I think that physical fitness is, it's helped by finance. So time and energy that I spend on building up my finances is not taken away from my physical fitness, it's actually added in, it actually helps. It's counterintuitive, because I would tend to think, well, you know, I've got to be exercising, and I've got to be working out and I've got to be running, that's what I got to be doing. I got to be eating healthy food. Fine, that's true. But all of that is facilitated by you simultaneously, making sure that your financial revenue side of things is also in balance. And so it's not hard to see, as I'm sure you'll agree that as important as we consider our physical health to be being able to also, at the same time be developing our finances, it's a wonderful thing. And that way, when you are working on your business affairs, you say to yourself, you know what, I'm not neglecting my physic my physical fitness, this is actually part of what I'm doing now is going to enable me to make sure that physical fitness is taken into account as well. Maybe there are times where you need a break, maybe you have to take a few days off from working and just devoted to recovering physical agility. You know, maybe maybe you you weren't well for a period and and you sort of spent a certain amount of time in bed while you when you recovered you back to normal. You may want to spend two or three days really focusing on getting your physical agility back again, again, being able to do that with the financial side in balance is hugely important. How about the other way around?
Daniel Lapin 14:37
In what way is my financial side helped by my fitness side? Well, this is quite interesting. Your financial well-being is very much a function of your human connectivity. And I've spoken about this before, it doesn't matter what you do to serve your fellow human beings in exchange for which you receive their payment. It doesn't matter what you do. But you will be more successful, the more there are people who know you, like you, and trust you, that's hugely important. And so being able to connect with people is of fundamental importance in your finances. What's that got to do with fitness? Well, I'll tell you, people, and I'm sorry to say we're all subject to this, we all tend to be drawn to physical vitality. And we all tend to be a little, I'm going to use the word frightened, maybe put off, maybe, as for some people as strong as repelled by in an extreme physical frailty, and an even illness. This is one of the reasons that people who had serious illnesses tell me that there are good friends that have been friends of theirs for many, many years. And when they took seriously ill, they don't hear from those friends, like weeks go by before those friends contacted them. And I remember years ago, actually, two people, I knew both very well. And when one person told me, you know, I can't believe this, so and so has not come to visit me. I've been in bed for two months. Now. He hasn't come near me. And I've actually reached out to the other person. I said, Listen, I'm sure you have a good reason for this. But we're all mutual friends. And you know that one of our mutual friends is ill and has been ill for a while. And so I wanted to just tell you, and I'm sure you know what you're doing, and I'm sure you have a good reason for it. But I just want to tell you that he's beginning to feel a little bit hurt about the fact that you haven't been in touch at all, is he's beginning to worry. Did he? Cause do something to cause resentment on your part, but he just can't understand why are you staying away? Why are you staying remote from him. And the person said to me, he said, I feel terrible, I'm gonna take care of it, I'm gonna really contact him and go and see him this week. But I think there's something in me, I'm just don't like being near sick people. And as I understand, that is perfectly natural and perfectly normal. Obviously, it is our job as children of God to overcome that, we've got to be just like God is; God reaches out and helps us when we're down and out. We've got to be able to do the same, even though it's not comfortable for us. And so when I say that, your fitness helps your finances, the way it does is that when you exude physical health and vitality, it's hugely attractive. And it makes it easier for you to have more people who know you and who like you and trust you, it gives you an opportunity to connect people who just look frail, and look sickly, and are just exuding this kind of sad condition, they find it very hard to connect, because people move away, people want to get away from it. Now, something very worthwhile stressing is that we're living in a culture at the present time. And I'm recording this in the year 2022. And I mentioned that because there are many things that I taped 10 years ago that people still write to me about. And sometimes conditions have changed. Something that was very true 10 years ago is a lot less true today. And so people say, well, they don't pay attention to when it was recorded. They listened to what I say. And then they write to me, they go to our website, Rabbi Daniel lapin.com. And, or they go to WWE happy warriors.com. And they write in, and I have to write back and say, Hey, you write it doesn't apply anymore. I wouldn't say that today. But I did say it 10 years ago. So 2022 It's worthwhile noting that in the current culture in a number of countries around the world are being a victim is high status. And the more areas in which you can claim victimhood, the higher your status. And so in that context, it is very possible that somebody might say to themselves, well, you know, I want to have high status. I want to be able to be looked at warmly by lots of people. So I've got to be a victim. And so I am going to be very open about how sick I am and how down I am, and I have depression and I have traumatic stress disorder, and I have so many things wrong with me. And they think that this idea of victimhood is enduring and reliable. And therefore by making themselves so much of a victim, well, now they really are going to win lots of friends. It doesn't work that way. That's not how the world really works. That's right. It is. Because the way the world really works is we are attracted to vitality and good health and, yeah, people being in good shape. victimhood is a lie. It doesn't work, it doesn't do any good whatsoever. And so I would strongly recommend that to be the case so much. So by the way, that I do urge you never to succumb to the temptation to talk about your health.
Daniel Lapin 20:44
People do it. And it's unattractive. And it does you no good at all. What am I talking about? Somehow or another, it gets going, you sit with people, and somebody starts talking about their doctor or their therapist. And then the next person chimes in and says, Well, you won't believe what happened to me with my doctor, and somebody else's? Well, I just got diagnosed with A, B, or C. And look what happened. I gotta tell you what happened when I went to the hospital. And people are just to look, let me just tell you, when somebody meets you in the eye, how are you? That is not an invitation to begin listing your lamentable catalogue of ailments, nobody really wants to know. And the second problem with it is that it emphasizes the animalistic biological side of us, instead of the spiritual side. You see, what I mean is, yeah, our bodies may be sick, our bodies can get frail our bodies, but not our hearts, not our souls, not our minds. And the important thing is to retain emphasis on that. And we do that, by the way we communicate, we do that by keeping a smile on our face. We do that by being friendly towards people, we do that by expressing interest in people's lives. And yes, if somebody else starts launching into a diatribe about his doctor, and is ill, that's fine. So be sympathetic, and listen, but never fall into the temptation, and never succumb to the temptation of responding with a sum. You know, people do that with jokes, right? Somebody tells a joke, and you're busy thinking about the joke, you could tell in response, forget it, don't go down that path, and certainly not with things that emphasize your body. You we do far better emphasizing our soul, our minds our hearts, than we do by emphasizing our bodies. And when we talk about our medical conditions, all you're doing is you're saying to people now, you know, can't really rely on that person. And that's true, there's a little part of you that says, Well, you know, they're weak and frail and sickly. And all they do is talk about how sick they are, when they probably are just fine. But the message conveyed subtly and spiritually to the listener is, well, you know, probably I shouldn't count on me may not even be around much longer. So this is, it's really a valuable thing. Not only is it good in for our finances for us to be physically healthy. And not only is it good for us to be seen to be taking care of our physical health, you know, you never want to say let's say you're in a business meeting, let's say you're in a meeting with somebody who might possibly become a business associate, and the person who by the way, you know, do you realize you've got to stay in your eye? Or do you realize you whatever? And you say, yeah, I really need to get it taken care of. That's a really bad thing. Much better said, Yep, I've got it taken care of a doctor says they'll be gone in a day or two. Terrific. But saying, Oh, I really must take care of it suggests to the onlooker. And they may not even be consciously aware of it, but subtly, it's leaving a mark on their soul. That you neglect your fitness, you're just not taking care of your fitness, well, somebody has not taken care of his health, how can I possibly count on him to take care of my needs? That's how these things work. I can't stress enough that even on an unlikely bridge, such as between fitness and finance, that bridge is actually a very strong one and a very important one and one that you really do want to keep going. Know that you can impact your finances positively by taking care of your fitness, and know that you can impact your fitness positively by taking care of your finances. Yes, those two really do go together. So I wanted to leave you with those points and there are others by the way, you can start thinking about other ways in which having your finances in good shape makes your physical health better, and how having your physical health in good shape makes your finances better as well. And you will find many other examples to that. And I didn't have time to talk about today. And,
Daniel Lapin 25:04
and these are things that really can benefit your life, if you think consciously about implementing them, and making sure you remain balanced on all the five legs of one's life, these five apps, and how many such bridges are there? I asked you that at the beginning of the show today? The answer is they're 10. And again, it's a mathematical formula. How many ways can you join ABCD and E, you've got five things, a, a, you know, well, we won't count that but A, B, A, C, A, D, E. And now B will be can go be able, we've just done that with a, we said A, B, so we don't have to be a, but we do B, C, B, D, B, E, and you will see if you play around with us with a pen and paper, you'll see there's a mathematical pattern, and you will end up seeing there's a formula for it even. But even by trial and error, you'll find that the five F's mean that there are 10 bridges to take care of. And some of them are very obvious like family and finances is really easy. You know, how about faith and friendship? But what does my social life have to do with faith? Well, I'm sure you can see that. And again, in due course, I will issue more and more material, making this clear says that you can make the five F project a fundamental part of how you design your life and how you run your life, for the good not only of you, but also of everybody important in your life. So my apologies, I'm really sorry that I let you down in terms of a posting a show last week and the week before. You know, what I tell myself in those situations is that those of you who are devoted and committed to the ancient Jewish wisdom, that's a part of the rabbi Daniel Lapin show will know that there are so many shows already done hundreds that you can go back and listen to earlier ones. That's what I tell myself. So even though I don't have a new one out, if you were to go back, I guarantee you'll find ones that you haven't listened to, you may have to go back a little while you'll find ones you haven't listened to. And what's more, you will also find ones that you may have listened to a number of years ago, but that you are not ready to hear that at that point, you are not yet able to deal with it. But now you really are. And so reviewing some older shows well worth it and and I think you'll discover that the overwhelming majority of the Rabbi Daniel Lapin shows are not time sensitive, very, very few of them are applicable only to a particular period. Most of them address things that are as true about your life and mine today as they will be in 10 years time. And as they were 10 years ago, in the majority of cases, that is very much true. So I hope it brings you value and brings you benefit, or be sure to let me know well, you you can go on the website we happy warriors.com. And you can let me know what you think there. You can also go on to RabbiDanielLapin.com. And take a look around and see what is there. I don't know if you've already got yourself a set of the Financial Prosperity Collection. That's 10 or 10. video audio lessons about finances, it's me teaching directly to you on a video. And it's 10 separate lessons very much worthwhile the price of admission I can I can tell you that. Far too many people have had their financial lives dramatically transformed. For me to doubt its effectiveness. A great deal of work obviously went into creating it. But it's still worthwhile for me and wonderful for me to hear the validations that come and
Daniel Lapin 29:11
just got a letter from a Nancy, I won't tell you who she is. But her first name is Nancy. And she said something that is the most poignant comment I get from happy warriors around the world. And it's perhaps the most common comment I get, I still find it fascinating to read every time somebody writes it. And that is, I wish I knew these principles and these laws for living. When I was 20 when I was 25. I would have made far fewer mistakes than I actually did. It's poignant and sad. But at the same time, it's a real thing. And so to whatever extent you're able to get a younger person to into some of us, and to help them get to a point where they're able to realistically evaluate and assess the decisions they are making in life now, which can never be, you know, no do-overs on that, the decisions you make when you're 22, when you're 25, you don't get those decisions, you get others, and many of them are contingent on the kind of decisions you made back when you were 22. And so, I, whenever I have the opportunity, and I am in a conversation with a person in their 20s or 30s. And, and I feel that the conversation has some traction, I raise questions, you know, tell me, what are your thoughts on this aspect of it? Have you given any consideration to this part of it, I'm talking to a young man at the moment, he is in his early 30s, he's not married, and he's going about it wrong. He is not understanding certain basic things about the male-female relationship, as the great designer laid it out. And he's not understanding why it is that many of his friends, if not all of them are already married and happily settled and building families. And he is having trouble doing just that. And I'm introducing him to some of these principles, I have to go very carefully because there's a certain amount of cognitive dissonance. It's very, very difficult. He has been impacted by the popular culture. I'll give you an example. Just one of many, many different areas we're working on, is I said to him that this girl he is dating at the moment, firstly, he's not courting is dating. And I said to him, that I asked him certain questions. And he confirmed that my suppositions were right. And I said, She is waiting for you to show leadership. And he said, Well, if I do that, then I'm not showing her respect, I have to show that I respect her opinion as much as my own. And I said, that's very different from what I'm saying, I'm talking about exhibiting leadership that you know what you want, and that what you really should be saying to her is, look, this is where I am, this is where I'm going. You're either on board, or this isn't for you. But if you're not willing to show that masculine strength, it can't possibly, I just wanted to give you a bit of an example of the conversations we're having. Not every younger person welcomes it, and I don't insert it or injected in any way. But I always start off with questions. Why with questions, because that's something I learned from the serpent in the Garden of Eden. And that is, if you want to get started in a conversation with somebody, the way to go is questions just because the serpent did it doesn't mean it's wrong thing to do, happens to be a very effective thing to do. The serpent used it obviously, for very bad purpose in the book of Genesis, in the Garden of Eden. But in our approach, you know, whether a man sees a woman at a church event walks up to her and says, Oh, are you a member of the church? She has to answer. And this is something every man grows up knowing and understanding that when you start with that question, you have a conversation going, and that's what I do here. I don't want you to say would you like to know what ancient Jewish wisdom has to say about this? Or the other thing? No, that's not the way to do it. It's always with a question. So my question to you is, did you enjoy today's show? I sincerely hope that you did. And I very much appreciate your being with us today. Thanks so much. And don't forget, be a visitor at the website Rabbi Daniel lapin.com. And again, accept my apologies, I will try to make sure that interruptions to our weekly release schedule are few and far between.
Daniel Lapin 34:06
I'm Rabbi Daniel Lapin, and I wish you a week of great progress with your family and with your finance, with your faith with your friendships and with your fitness. Onwards and upwards.
