Jason Wasser, LMFT: How To Build A Home With Your Friends

So, sorry, sorry if this is in the way. So the topic tonight is building a home with your friends. So your first question is, with what type of friend, right? So the last week's Torah, last couple weeks of the Torah readings have been all about leaving Egypt, going through the desert, leaving Egypt, the Ten Commandments, all that good stuff. You get across to the other side, right? What's the first thing that happens after that? We go from this amazing, amazing freedom. What's the first thing we do after we have our freedom?

Complain.

We complain. What else? Oh, did you say we eat? Did you say we eat? Oh, okay. Well, we eat too, right? Because that's kind of what our thing is, apparently. We eat and we complain. But we go from this like— yeah, yeah. Can you imagine how burnt everybody got? Like, like all the Jews back then were probably like so white from it, right? Actually, they were in the sun, so I wonder if— no, because there was— yeah, yeah, they were in the sun. That's true, that's true, but they still probably burnt easily. So yeah, so anyway, so for this beautiful narrative, right, everything is a beautiful story, the Exodus story, right, that we were growing up learning for Passover, and then all of a sudden we get into these nitty-gritty hardcore laws that are all about building the Tabernacle, the tent, the covenant, where the Ark was supposed to be built. So the first question right off the bat is, why are we going from this really juicy, beautiful cool story to laws. Like, it's just like an about-face U-turn out of nowhere. So why, why would that even make sense? So curious of thoughts right off the bat, what your best hypothesis is, what your best guess is, why, right? The whole big— we're in the middle of the Exodus story.

What's correct to do, what's not, how to be.

Okay.

Why God chose us.

I like that.

Good.

What else? Oh no, that's what I was thinking, like a fresh new start, fresh beginning. Yeah. Different, like, new orientation. Sure. So I'll add a little twist. We were in the desert for how many years?

40.

Right, for good behavior.

Right?

40 years. And then all of a sudden we have these exquisite detailed laws on something that's not even permanent. It's not even—

right?

Because the goal was to get to Jerusalem, right? That whole thing. The Temple wasn't even built yet, all this stuff. But we have this wandering Temple. But all the details went into something that we're literally breaking down, moving, putting back together. Breaking down, moving. So again, why so ridiculously particular all of a sudden? So that's one thought I want to let marinate. Everything was temporary, and everything didn't really take place into permanency until we ended up in Jerusalem. So this book right now that we're in is the book of Exodus, but all the laws, all the details comes on much later in like Leviticus, which is like the laws of like what we're supposed to do when you make sacrifices and prayer and all these things. So that really, what we're being told right now, really belongs much later in the Bible. So again, why is this like weaving in of these minute details and not later on in other things? So on top of that, from the time they're in Egypt, we talked about the complaints a second ago, right? They get to the Dead Sea, what's the first thing they say? Oh my God, we're gonna die. How are we gonna get through this? And then they get to the other side, like, oh my God, the Egyptians are going to catch up to us. And then they—

huh?

Right, because it was still open. And then, right, the Egyptians were going through it, so they're like, oh my God, why isn't the Dead Sea closing? Red Sea, whatever. The Red Sea. Right, sorry, the Red Sea. Red Sea. Sorry, sorry, guys. Red Sea. Red Sea. It became the Dead Sea when the Close on the Egyptians. Right? So question number 2: are we genetically predisposed to being a people that complain?

Why?

So are people have strong opinions and we complain a lot? Because I'm hearing some strong opinions over there. Right? What do you think? Yeah? Oh, that thing. Yeah, maybe. Okay, I like that. Mike? Um, I don't know, maybe because it's just human nature to complain. The negatives, not positives. Yeah, so it's possible. I like that, I like that. And we're going to get into a scientific perspective on that in a second. I'll back that up.

Why?

Because again, we can go with this, like, other people cope. Do they complain about everything? Like, do you have to complain to cope psychologically? We can get into this, into a very deep psychological conversation. Do we need to complain to learn how to cope? Okay. And then? Okay. So let's put it into two different contexts. Number one, our brain is four times as likely to focus on negative than it is to focus on positive because we have three parts of our brain. You have the reptilian brain, which is your oldest part of your brain. That's the part of your brain that's for autonomic nervous system. It's your breathing, your heart rate, reproduction, things that are survival instinct, right? So that part of your brain is looking out to make sure that you're gonna stay safe. Then you have your mammalian brain, which is your emotions, but it's also memory. So something that happened 5 years ago is gonna feel the same way when you think about it as it does when you think about today. It's gonna feel the same as it did 5 years ago. That's what— that sends those signals in that part of our brain, mammalian brain. And our neocortex is our rational brain. You know, you're sitting in K-Space right now. It's about 5, 10 minutes to 9. You know that you're trying to keep yourself awake without a double espresso shot, right? You know consciously what's happening intellectually. You know, you're sitting at a table. Those things, right? That's rational brain. But if those three parts of your brain are not in sync, you're going to have this kind of fight or flight inconsistencies going on in your life. So the part about us complaining goes back to survival instinct. We were just going through the most ridiculous trials of survival. So I'm wondering, I'm not sure if it's true, but I'm wondering if because of that they weren't able to activate the other aspects of their brain because there was no rational things going on in their life. They were slaves and no stability. They didn't know what was going to happen. All of a sudden, all these miracles started happening, completely irrational, right? How the hell does all these things happen out of the blue when after X amount of 400 years of slavery, right? 600, 400, 600 years of slavery, All of a sudden these miracles started to happen. Completely not rational, completely not neocortex brain. And then they have less than a day to pack up their stuff and leave, wander through the desert for 40 years, get to the Dead Sea, Red Sea. Egyptians are still coming and chasing after them. Sorry, 40 years was after that. And then, and then, and also the sea closes and they complain, complain, complain, complain. No matter what. So here's what it actually said. The Jews complained so much, they said to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Did we not say to you in Egypt, 'Leave us alone, let us serve as Egyptians'? Better that we serve as Egyptians and die with some dignity than go into the desert and die by ourselves. It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die there." That's like the world's biggest— like, no gratitude. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

So what would your definition of anxiety be? Anxiety, um, I guess being scared, thinking about all the what-ifs, or the possibilities, or the fears of the future. And usually anxiety starts because of one, um, Right, so the catastrophizing, right? So, so you gave multiple different good descriptions of anxiety. The way I would say it in a simple way is that when you're worrying about something that hasn't yet happened in the future, that's anxiety. And when you're stuck about something that happens in the past, that's more of a sadness, depressional paradigm, right? It hasn't happened yet. One part of aspect of anxiety is catastrophizing. What's the worst-case scenario? And you just go from 0 to 60. Right to that. So I wonder, that's a really interesting point, right? Were they so— because they were so beaten down, there was no stability, there was nothing to look forward. They didn't know what to expect. They were just saying, we're going to go to a land of freedom that God promised us, right? But where was God for the last amount of 100 years, 200 years, 300 years? And then we have to wander through the desert and all these people have to die who were slaves so we can get that slave mentality out of us. And so yeah, that makes, that makes sense. What do you think? Yeah, so far. All right, so after they crossed the Dead Sea, they continued to complain. First about the lack of water, then the water was bitter, then lack of food, and then lack of water again. Then there was Revelation of Sinai, the only time in history God ever appeared to the people as a nation, apparently. Or they thought that it was gonna be, right? The manna. Every day the food would disappear, right? All that stuff. And then it would show up, right? It would disappear at the end of the day and they'd be like, no, it's going to show. Take only what you need. And then on Shabbat, take a double portion. And then what would happen? They would double up, they would triple up, and then it would turn into mold. Whatever they didn't need would turn into mold. So they got what they needed. But so if you had like, if you needed this much, if you needed this much for Shabbat for your family and you took 2 plates, all of this would be like turned into mold and like gross, whatever. This would still be okay. Because the trust factor wasn't yet there with them. So the gratitude, the being able to relax into something very much like what you were saying. So you had all these things, but then God appeared to them, like only revelation that we know about in history.

Right?

It's like better than J.Lo coming down that pole at the Super Bowl. Mass revelation.

Right?

That was how many millions of people saw that? That many same amount of people saw, right, at Mount Sinai. And then what's the first thing they did right after that? Big mega massive urban music festival meets ultra music festival. Crazy on Matrix 2nd, right, in Zion party with the golden calf. They went from that right into the golden calf. God's revealing ourselves, God himself to us. And then we screwed up by creating this golden calf. How the hell did that happen? Like, where are we thinking? What are we doing? What doubt, what anxiety, what worry? So the response to that was God said the following: "Let them build something together." So what do you think that means? Before going forward. Why would God say, after all those complaints, after I took you out of Egypt, I killed the Egyptians after you— forget the 10 plagues, right? That's already done— then I protected you in the desert, the clouds of glory, food every day, protected you from all the people that would attack you, give you revelation, right? Appear to you before Mount Sinai, give you the Ten Commandments, Then you go and build a golden calf. To screw, right? This whole idol worship thing again. And then God's response was, I'm going to make you guys build something together.

Why?

After the golden calf? Yeah. Because I remember not everybody contributed. Not everybody went in, right? And we found out that the people who did it ended up dying for, right, the punishment. But why would then God say, let us build something? I want you all to build something together. Why was that God's therapeutic response to this? Teamwork makes the dream work. Yeah. Rise and grind. Right. Okay. Teamwork makes the dream work. What do you think?

Okay.

Okay. Okay, so when things are more in their hands, they have control over it, they're able to feel some type of like grounding because of that. Okay, like it, I like it. Who's getting killed after that? No, no, no, that's the golden calf. Now this is the response after the golden calf. Golden calf happened, now God's response to that is I'm going to make you all build something together.

Huh?

Well, why would that first be the response? I'll tell you what they built in a second. Okay. Pura vida. Okay, collective. So groupthink, collective reflection. All right, so the thing that they were commanded to build was the Tabernacle. So that immediate command transformed them. And apparently it says that during that entire time, no one complained. Everybody contributed. Not only did they contribute, but they over-contributed what they needed to give. So no complaints, contributed, not only contributed, over-contributed. Maybe they didn't have a reason to complain. Yeah, like they contributed so much Moses had to beg them to stop. So what was the difference between, right, stop complaining, stop complaining, to guys, enough, you've done enough? How did that shift and pivot so fast? Maybe they didn't have a sense of direction. From the beginning, and after that, they built something together. Now they knew they had this direction, like, we do this versus just like, we're here, what do we do? Right, right. So when you do like group build, team building exercises, what are some of the things that they try to challenge you to do when you're doing these group team building exercises?

Huh?

Yep, what else? We're still waiting for your answer. So the idea that they brought so much was this idea of creating a paradigm shift. Until then, the Jews were dependent on God and Moses and Aaron to do things for them. But once they were commanded I'm going to make you do this together. Now all of a sudden they had to go from dependency to empowerment. Now you got to take involvement, investment. Now you got to put some skin in the game. We didn't even get to circumcisions yet, right? But you got to put some skin in the game. Not only— and then not only did they just show up, but they went over in abundance. Once they were asked to commit to something, to actually do something, they didn't just like toe the line. They went all in. And then even more so. So we have this really radical psychological shift just by God saying, I'm going to make you step up. I'm going to make you take ownership, take accountability for that. So right off the bat, we have a psychological shift. And this can go into a really multiple-hour conversation right here, one without going to anything further. How do you go from dependency from lack, from complaint to empowerment by shaking hands with Mike Molina. Okay. Yeah. So in the concept of these Israelites, did they do what they were capable of doing? Because they didn't know what they were capable of doing because they've never done this before.

Right?

So, yes, you're right. And I want to challenge you to think differently about this. They were challenged to do something that they were never asked to do before in their life. They're asked to do something that no one in the universe has ever been done before in their life. In fact, the last time that people took it upon themselves to build something pre the Golden Calf was within the second or third parsha of the Torah reading, which was the Tower of Babel. And what happened then? Because— because they were doing it for themselves. They weren't doing it for God. They were doing it for ego. They were doing it for selfishness. They were doing it for, "I'm better, I'm smarter, I speak more than you, I know more than you, I'm gonna talk more." It was a power trip. This was God saying, "I'm gonna make you all work together to come into a unity, to have a shared mind, shared mindset, groupthink," like you were saying before, to create a community. So what was the theme of the class? The topic of tonight's class was How to build a home with your friend. So it's literally not about building a house. It's not building a home. It's about how do you build a community of empowered people who are shared ideas, who are trying to create something and co-create something together for something much bigger than themselves. And the only way to do that, as we start going into the deeper steps now, is a concept of Dependency versus empowerment. Stop bitching and moaning. Stop complaining. Stop crying about it. No one's gonna fix it for you anymore. We're looking out for you, but step up, grab the tools, and jump in. We'll take whatever you got. You can design art?

Great.

You can cook?

Great.

You can dig ditches?

Great.

You can pick your nose?

Great.

We'll take it. Just go all in. Minus the picking the nose part, probably. But, you know, maybe a 2-year-old kid, right? What can they do? So what are you thinking right now based on all that so far? Think about like something in your own process, right? Where is there something in your own process that you've been needing to go from a place of dependency to a place of empowerment? Where you're relying on someone else to fix it for you? Anything in your life, whatever it may be. What's one thing in your life that you're waiting for someone else to fix for you that if you just decide to take that first step, it might actually change? Do you have something? Huh? Okay, beautiful. So what's the first step?

Yeah.

The second part is way more important than the first part. Do you know why? It's action. You can philosophize about it all you want, but unless you do something about it, it ain't shite, as they say in Yiddish. Right? So I like the second part. Have a plan? Do you have a plan? Do you have a trainer? Do you have a date that you're setting it by? Do you have a goal? Do you have how many times a week it's gonna take? That's part of the accountability. That's part of the action steps. It's not just show up. Yeah, but it's really interesting 'cause last week we were talking about this idea of exponential growth. And I'm a big fan of this concept of the 10x rule. That whatever you think you have to do, plan to do 10 times bigger because if you set it up, let's say you wanna make $1,000. Aim for 10 because you'll change your thinking about how to solve the problem and you'll come about it with new ways of thinking about it. You may not hit the 10, but you might hit 4. But if you aim to only hit 1, you may not hit the 1, you may only hit 600. And it's just as easy to hit the 10 as it is to hit the 1,000 because you're going to put in effort no matter what. But you might put in a— but your way you think about it is is gonna change. Does that make sense? So there's a great book called The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone. So it's big, it's like total mindset shift. So if you're thinking it's gonna take you 10 weeks to lose that weight, multiply that by 10. Or multiply the amount of workouts you need to do in that timeframe by 10. So you're saying like, I'm giving myself 8 weeks and I'm only gonna work out 4 times a week? No, no, no, no, no. You gotta multiply that. Not 8, you don't have to do 40 workouts, but, right? But you might wanna multiply your time that you're in the gym. You might wanna multiply the amount of, right? 'Cause it's better to aim for a larger goal and fall short of it than it is to aim for a lower goal and then fall short of that. And I'll just add this one little other component. When you set a goal, why do we, what's the first thought that typically comes to mind when we set a goal? What's the first thing that we usually think about when we're setting it? We're about to write it down. What's that first negative thought that might come up? I'm sorry, I don't know what else. Yeah, that's usually it. What else? Oh, that's too big. Let me back it back a little bit. So we always set a goal a little bit shy of where our anxiety starts provoking us. Our fear starts provoking us. But no change of any drastic measure will ever happen in your life if you do that. You're playing it safe. You're only doing that which you've always done from the same energy and the same thought process of what you've always tried to solve it from. You know, the goal is to have new problems in a year from now. If you have the same problems that you've had a year ago, the Jews had the same problem for 400 years, 600 years in the and the all this complaining they actually were looking at, they should have said, we love the fact that we have all these new worries. At least we knew where we were getting food in the desert, right? In Egypt. Now we don't know we're going to get— oh, this is good. You want to have that next new fear. So my guess is for all of us, including myself, Is there something in your life that you can think of right now that you've been holding on to and hanging on to that you have been thinking about for the last 2, 3, 4 years that hasn't changed? That if you solved it from a 10x thinking would actually go away and then you would actually have to think about a much bigger problem than that? Okay.

Yeah.

For me, it's a higher tax bracket. I don't want to have to pay more taxes. I don't want to. But then I can think about a different way. I just have to get more write-offs for my business, which means I can then do more trainings unless the tax code changes. Well, yeah, yeah, we're not going to get into that. But as of today, as of 2020. Right, right. So it's like I'm gonna earn more, but I'm gonna lose more unless you think about it. But I— but if I think about it a different way, by people outside of me who know more than I do, a personal trainer, a dietitian, a therapist, a coach, whatever, right? Secret Service, whatever it may be, right? The big thing is like this group effort was about working towards a goal together that was much bigger than what they thought. Originally. So every crisis previously was dealt by Moses. It was all miracles. Things were done for them. They were in a state of dependency. And once that was broken by God saying, "Hey, build this. Get involved." All of a sudden that was broken. New mindset. New shift. So here's this pondering idea. The idea was that for them to grow from this like baby nation, right, they were, you just, you know, I joke that like, I don't know why everybody's complaining about what's going on in America. It's going through its awkward puberty stage right now. No one thinks about what America's gonna be like 300, 400 years from now, 'cause we don't have the foresight. We're running 5Ks, we're not running marathons. I'm not concerned for the next 50 years. This is a science experiment right now. It's 202 years old. Change years old. It's puberty. And we're freaking out about what's going to happen. We're not thinking about the long term.

Right?

But yet, we're so afraid, like the Jews were going through the scenario that nothing's gonna happen. So the idea of like moving us from a state of this baby new community, the Israelites, the people of Israel, in order for them to grow up and man up, for lack of better words, they had to create a state of empowerment, a state of partnership. And that was that first major step for that to happen. So really, God's saying, or the message is so far, is in order for you to grow up, in order for you to truly be an adult, you got to build something for yourself. You got to stop relying on everybody else. I love that Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary Vee, I don't know if you see him on social media, Russian Jewish immigrant family came over. They lived in an apartment that was probably like half the size of our kitchen over there. And please come on in. Family started working in a wine store, then dad got a wine store. Then after college, he started working the wine store, started using YouTube to build up the wine business, helped his family grow it into a multimillion-dollar business. Now he has a multimillion-dollar social media marketing company in New York. And he has this thing where he's talking to like young professionals, the millennials, about, "I hate it. My parents aren't letting me do this. My parents aren't letting me do that. They're telling me how I should live my life." And his first question is to them, "How did you get here to my event today?" "I took Uber." "Who's paying for your Uber?" "My parents." Then shut the fuck up. If you're still taking a dollar from your parents, you have no right to complain about anything they say to you. If you're still living in their house, you have no right to complain about anything they say to you. Who do you think you are? It's that simple. It's a very binary thing. Obviously there are circumstances, obviously in different scenarios, But on that perspective, you want to be an adult? Go build something. Go find 6 other people, live in a house with 6, 7, 8 other people, have your freedom, come and go as you please, make your own food, go pay your own bills, pay your rent. Oh no, no, no one wants to do that. They just want to complain. They're ruining my life. Someone's ruining my— sorry if I'm touching a nerve for somebody here. Like, damn, why'd I have to come to this class? But if you want to become a partner in something, you got to put some skin in the game. That was the whole idea of circumcision, literally putting some skin in the game. You want to be in a partnership with me? You got to do it. You want to build a covenant? The Ark of the Covenant, the tabernacle, what's called the covenant, the contract. We need you to contribute. Grow the hell up. We're not going to fix it. We're not going to wipe your butts anymore. So this is like a really hardcore Torah portion. It's very psychologically deep. Thoughts, questions, comments so far? 'Cause this is hitting some of you. Why so?

I mean, 'cause you're right. We complain a lot. Like, for example, me. I have a little bro here.

Yeah.

So annoying. And I hate it. So I'm like, Dad, I need to move out. Can you buy me a house? He was like, go buy you somewhere else. What do you mean?

Yeah.

He was like, no, I need a house.

Okay. I don't know you, right? But I said, who do you think you are to demand a house?

Yeah, yeah.

What, what, wait, what? Right. Right, like, where are we like entitled to anything?

Yeah, anything.

You're entitled to breathe, that's about it. And to travel unencumbered throughout our, throughout our country. That's it. That's really the two main things according to the Constitution. Unmolested throughout the state, throughout our country. That's really what the, what it says. Nothing else. Everything else you got to build and do and create yourself. So really, it's so interesting now as I'm thinking about this. This is the anti-entitlement Torah reading. This is the grow the fuck up Torah reading. Stop bitching and moaning Torah reading. Or as Dr.— the famous psychologist Dr. Ice Cube used to say, check yourself before you wreck yourself. Keep going. Or is there trigger— there's trigger warnings ahead. So really, the whole point of this is that at the end of the day, this is actually coming from a loving place. God wasn't punishing. God was saying, I want you to finally be my partner. I want you to do this with me. I want you to co-create with me. I want you to have your hand in this handiwork. I want you. I want you. I created you. But I don't want you to see yourself as the created. I also want you to see yourself as the partners in this process. It's a big paradigm shift. It's like, when do parents finally hopefully start to see their children as partners in life? When you get a job and when the check comes, you put it out and let them yell at you, "We're not letting you pay," and you say, "No, I finally got it. This one's on me." They hate it? But they've been waiting for that. G-d hated the fact that he had to be so, but that's what was needed. It's a little tough love, right? So it's really interesting. So in the Talmud, in the tractate Shabbat, it says that the sages— I'm sorry, in Brachot, in the above, it says Don't call them your children, but call them your builders. Don't call them your children, call them your builders. Massive shift to go from children who are dependent to partners, to builders in this. So you have to become a builder if you want to grow from childhood to adulthood. And Now, with all these little intrinsic laws, the tabernacle, and do this and do that, and don't do this and don't do that, and eat this and don't eat that, and marry this and don't marry that, right? This was God's call to responsibility. Can you handle this? Are you willing to be responsible for your own outcomes? Are you willing to be a leader? No longer relying on Moses to be your leader, on anybody else to step up and be a leader. Are you willing to step up and be a leader? Don't rely, become a partner. Don't wait for someone to ask you to step up, proactively step up. I had a— this weekend was Leemood Miami, which is like the Jewish TED Talks. It's been around before TED Talks existed. Yeah. So it was 350, 400 people. Every hour there were 6 classes going on. And one of the people that came in, you can— his name is Lionel Mittelpunkt, and he lives in Israel, and his whole thing is about inspiring young professionals.

Do—

being Jewish means doing. Jewish, but the doing part. So I have a great— I interviewed him yesterday at my office. I wasn't able to go to his class because I was running around as He's part of one of the committee programming people, but he came to my office. We spent like 5 hours together yesterday and we had almost an hour and 45-minute podcast interview that's on YouTube. And we talked about all this concept of like when they talk about the next generation of Jewish leaders to young professionals. So they're basically saying when you're 50, 60 years old, you'll be the leaders. When we die and we don't have money anymore to give, you have to finally step up. When we relinquish our power, old white Jews. Jewish dudes, then you can become leaders. And he said, no, that, that's a dead, archaic belief. When they were training us in high school and youth group and college at Hillel and Chabad on campus to be future leaders, it already started then. We are already not being future Jewish leaders, we are being leaders at that point. And that's our secret responsibility from that point, to go into adulthood already being leaders. It's not waiting for someone to say, "Oh, we're still gonna train you. We're gonna call you the next gen or young professionals." No, no, you are professionals. If you are 21 and up, everybody's at this table is 21 and up, sorry, it's your turn. Step up.

Once a year?

What, Le Mood? In Miami, yeah, they have them all over the world, but in Miami, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where have you been my whole life, guys? Seriously. So God doesn't really want us to be dependent on him. The whole thing about the mitzvot, right? So now let's take this into like a real practical nitty-gritty on a different level, not psychological, but, but religious spirituality. Why did God create the mitzvot? Did he create it for us to be dependent on him?

No.

Okay. I like it. Times it by 613. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And for who? For who? Do we need the Torah to be positive? We do? Really? How many non-Jews do you know that are positive? How many non-Jews do you know that are super positive? They don't, but it's not the Torah. So do we need the Torah? Does humanity need the Torah to be positive? We got Tony Robbins, we got Oprah, we got Ellen DeGeneres, right? We got, we got, we got Queen B. Do we need, do we need the Torah to be positive? No. So, so I'm going to challenge you on that with love. Torah is not about to be positive. We don't need— go to freaking Tony Robbins seminar if you want to learn how to be positive. Is it? I don't know, you tell me. What do you believe? A way of living? Yeah, for who? Hmm, I don't know. You don't sound so convinced about that. Put some conviction into this. Whoever chooses to take that. Yeah, so today— I'm a therapist, and today in one of my sessions with one of my couples, one of them said— kept calling out the other person about what they need to do. Can you guess which gender it was? Yeah. And I said to her, "You sound great, but those rules that you've decided only apply to you because it's your emotional reality, your experiences, your choices. They don't apply to anybody else." So you can't put that on anybody else, what you think applies to you. So when someone challenges me— a few weeks ago at a Shabbat dinner, someone challenged me about why I don't do something. I said, well, what you've chosen to do only applies to you because you've chosen to do it, and what you've chosen to do doesn't mean that it applies to me. But what's the difference here as a Jewish nation when we receive the commandments? We collectively chose something. We collectively chose something together. There wasn't what's in it for me. There was you command us and we will do. You tell us and we got it. Or when you say jump, we'll say how high. I just— you're probably the only person who got that. Maybe. What are you thinking? You're pondering something deep.

I agree, but not completely.

Good, challenge me.

You already like gave me the tabla. What am I gonna do, go back to Egypt?

Yeah, you could. You're a free human being.

No, I'm in the middle of the desert.

And why not? Yes, you do. You have free choice.

I don't believe all of them wanted to do it and like they took it on themselves. No. Of course there was someone who had done it, for sure.

Okay, so if you're— and I, and I'll, I'll, so I'll agree with you, cuz I do agree with you. But what happens when you're around other people that are putting their intentions into the right things? Yeah, well, the group— and she's a good person, so I don't know, just matter, but you know, debatable. Just debatable. That's enough. So you're talking about groupthink, right? That's the whole positive psychology. So here's the two paradigms. You are the conglomerate of the 5 people that you spend your most, most of your time with. You are the sum parts. You are the sum representation of the 5 people that you spend most of your time with. Here's the other side of the coin. In every one of those group of 5 people, one of those is going to be the biggest loser in that group. They're going to be pulling the least amount of weight. Whoever that is in that group, that's that person. Gary Vee. Right. If you don't know, it's you, number one, for sure. You're right.

You're right.

If you don't know who it is, it's you. But if you do know who it is and you don't kick that person out and bring someone else in who's better, what's eventually going to start happening? If you ain't going forward, or what they say, what was that movie, Talladega Nights? If you ain't number one, you're number— if you ain't first, you're last. Negative, right? All of a sudden things are gonna start seeping in. Now, you can as a team uplift, but if that person is now overpowering, then you have a different issue, right? But this idea of groupthink, this idea of getting— the idea is we're gonna fix that by putting you guys on a team activity, of having a group buy-in. Once there's a group buy-in, Even if you might have doubts, once you get involved in it, once you get invested and you see the benefit of it and it feels good, what's gonna happen? You're more likely to drop resistance around it and you're gonna start thinking. Have you ever had a food that you thought you didn't like at first and then the more you had it? For me, it was sushi. The first time I had it, I thought it was disgusting. I'm like, what the hell? And do you know why it was? 'Cause it was a cone roll with the sushi at a wedding in Los Angeles. Thought it was the most vile thing. For 8 years, 10 years, I didn't have sushi. 'Cause that's what I thought sushi was, a nori roll with whatever, and a thing sticking out of it. That's sushi? That's the big deal that everybody's talking about? In LA, of all places, right? The home mecca of— right, isn't that where sushi's from? LA, originally? Now, put some spicy tuna in front of me, that's it. 50 rolls. I'll bang that out in 20 minutes because what I thought was sushi wasn't sushi, it was a type of sushi. Same thing with avocado. When I first thought, like, oh, that's gross and lumpy, it looks weird, but now some fresh good avocado, not that packaged crap, but the real good fresh right out thing, I'll eat it right out of that.

Avocados in Florida are not—

no, not the Florida avocados, the Hass avocados, not those big gross green ones. I that have no flavor. But the real— yeah, the Mexican ones. Right, right. From the other side of the wall. Moshe? Moshe's not here. No, he doesn't want anybody to be Mexican.

So fantastic.

It's fine with me. Keep coming. So I'm down with you guys. So, so if you flip a few books of the Bible away, No, there is a guy, Moshe, who we all love, but he is like very politically to the other side. But we all love him. So a few chapters later, the concept of like it is easy to live a life of dependency. It is easy to, right, to rely on everybody. But the real thing is, right, it says that my power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me. Which comes a lot later on in Deuteronomy, Devarim, the last book of the Bible. But the Jewish view of human condition is that everything we achieve should be due to our own efforts, but equally and essentially the result of God's blessing. You shall be blessed if you toil with your own hands. So there's a worldwide international networking group called BNI. They're pretty much, I think, 70 different countries around the world. Dr. Ivan Misner, the founder, of it has a motto, and the motto is, "Givers gain." Gain. Givers gain. So what does that mean? Givers gain. Okay. Yeah.

Helping other people.

Yeah, so then tie that back into the Tabernacle. They were asked to give, and not only once they decided to give, they overgave. That was the first major project that Israelites undertook together. Not only that, it involved generosity and it involved skill, right? We talked about the labouring, but it gave them a chance to give back to God a very tiny little bit of what God has done for them the last X amount of years. Gratitude, thankfulness. Talk about mindset and mindfulness and gratitude talk and all that law of attraction and positivity and positive psychology. How do you solve suffering? How do you solve By finding things to be thankful, to have gratitude for.

Yeah, being in Egypt, that moment, I'm thinking like, well, I've been a slave for 400 years, now you're gonna help me? Now you want me to do things for you? Well, I've been asleep for 100 years, that was okay.

So why didn't God just go from having them be slaves, snap God's fingers as if put them in Mount Sinai. Why do they have to go through this whole process? Do you cook? Do you enjoy cooking?

I don't know.

But when you have tried to make something and it comes out really good, do you take pride in it? And If it just showed up to you and it was— do you think it's going to taste as good? So the effort is part of the deliciousness of it, right? So now ask your question again.

I mean, they were slaves for 400 years.

No one helped them. No one helped them.

They didn't really help. They were slaves for 400 years.

Why? Why though? Why were they slaves for 400 years? Because they complained. Because they didn't believe. Because their thought process didn't line up with what God was ready to give them. They weren't vessels for it yet. So take this into the law of attraction psychological paradigm. You can't get differently than that than that which you believe. Nothing in your life will show up differently than that which you believe. So if the Jews didn't believe anything but "I will always be a slave," okay, if that's what you believe, that's what you're gonna get. So the first step of change is believing that there's something different that's capable and positive out there. And I know it's 100% right because there's another therapist at the table and she'll agree with me. So sorry, I outed you. Right? What's the first step? What are some of the parts of change? Gotta believe it. Change you can believe in. Right, Benissa? You want it? You want it? Yeah, well, it's also the idea of like, if you really go into nitty-gritty law of attraction— law of attraction is not about thinking about something and it manifesting. It's actually what's the feeling like when you already have it without it actually being there yet. So for example, imagine in front of you there's a lemon. Okay, so I want everybody to like actually concentrate on this. You don't have to close your eyes. You can close your eyes. You don't need my permission to tell you what to do. Stop it. Picture a lemon. If you want to close your eyes, close your eyes. If you want to keep them open, keep them open. If you don't want to do this, don't do it. Free will, kids. Okay, I want you to take that lemon. I want you to take an imaginary knife. Don't cut yourself. And I want you to slice it. I want you to slice a wedge off, okay? I want you to pick up that wedge, and I want you to literally do this. Pick up the wedge, squeeze that wedge into your mouth. What are you noticing happening? What are you tasting? Okay, what are you getting? You getting— anybody getting this in the back of the jaw?

Where the hell's the lemon?

There's nothing there, kids. It's called physiology, muscle memory, mammalian brain memory, right? We're talking about that before, sending signals about something that's not even there. So the trick is can you envision and feel and get that sensory orientation to something that hasn't happened yet as if it's happening right now is when you create yourself to be a vessel for that to finally show up, for you to be in receptive mode for that to happen. So my challenge to you is that the Jews weren't able to do that while they were still in the desert, that they needed these little miracles to start happening for them to start saying, oh, wait a second, if this keeps up, And our oppressors are now getting beaten up instead of us getting beaten up. And Moses is now saying, hey guys, in a little bit we might actually leave. You might actually no longer be slaves. Now all of a sudden, their reptilian brain, their fight or flight brain, is going to start changing too. And now all of a sudden, action happened.

They're leaving.

Now they know, holy crap, we're leaving. We're in the desert. Something's happening. That's neocortex. That's rational brain. So now all three parts of their brain are syncing up to a new experience, to a new reality. What happened? Old muscle memory kicked in. They built— they went back into doubt and anxiety mode. They built the golden calf. What's that expression? We don't— we don't happen to make the same mistake once or twice in our life. We tend to make the same mistake about 30, 40, 50 times. Yeah, right? Never going to date that type of person again. Hahaha, yeah. In case the people on the video want to know who that was. No. Just joking. So you guys got that so far from that psychological perspective? Can you see how you do that in your own life? How you're creating a negative manifestation of what you don't want and you get into the feeling around it and you ruminate on it and you spend— but it can just take the same amount of effort doing the opposite of that to create something new. But what's the first step to doing it? Go do something.

Move.

Get off your butt. I don't care what it is. Do something. Do anything differently. Don't think about losing weight. Just go to the gym. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about how much you're gonna lose. Just go to the gym. Go feel good about going. Go on a date. Even though the last one sucked. Still gotta do it. The next one might not suck. If you're like, "Ah, I'm going on this, they're all gonna be whatever, they're all gold diggers," or they're all douchebags or whatever, right? They only want one thing. Well, if you believe that, do you think you're gonna get anything differently? But if you wanna co-create something with someone, if you wanna find a partner, You got to find someone who's equal-minded. So you're going to attract equal-minded. God's saying, if you want to be empowered, buy into my belief, buy into my mission for you. Put some skin in the game. Go do some work. How are you? So it was this the reason why the title of tonight's topic was How to Build a Home with Your Friends. Find a shared meaningful idea and do it together. Everybody show up, everybody put some energy into it. And this is really where the leadership started to shift and change, where Moses kind of had to back out a little bit and start letting people to step up. And that concept in In Kabbalistic terms, when God created the world, there was the concept of Tzimtzum, that God had to restrict Godself from the universe so there could be space within God for the universe to exist within God's reality. It's not like God's out there and we're here. This is a whole different class that we can give another time. I'm like, that we exist within God reality. We're not— God's not out there and God created this other thing outside of God. We actually exist within God reality. We're literally— it's like, you know, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. It's like we're from Ghostbusters. Like we're inside, like we're in the middle of that. Like, you know, like it's not It's not separate out there. If the leader— so there's a great quote: If the leader is good, the people will say, "The leader is good. They did it." But if the leader is great, they'll say, "We did it together ourselves." Sorek? If the leader is good, the people will say the leader did it. If the leader is great, they'll say we did it ourselves. So now we have a much more political idea. This is the distinction between state and society. The state represents what's done for us by government, laws, courts, taxation, public spending, military, police, safety, right? Your salary. Society is what we do for one another. State is what's done for us for the greater good of everybody, but society is what we choose to do for each other. Charities, organizations, volunteer welfare organization. And Judaism, it seems, has a preference for society rather than state because it recognizes that what we do for others, not what others do, or what God does for us, that transforms us. Hence the mitzvot. So according According to this author, he says, "I believe the Jewish formula is small state, big society." We have to have the grounding, we have to have the central rules, but you got to do stuff. How much of our Jewish community stuff is not about— that's why we have a Jewish community center, that's why we have J-Space, and we have other organizations. You don't have to be here and do anything religiously ritualistic, except for eat. And according to Yossi, make Jewish babies. Lots of Jewish babies. So we'll wrap it up with this: when a central power, even when God, does everything for you, it creates a state of arrested development, not TV show. You're stuck. You're held— we talked about it like 20 minutes ago, right? How— who do you think you are if you complain about anything that your parents say to you if you're still taking a single dollar from them? It's arrested development. You have no right. Go build something. Go suffer. Go struggle. Go toil. Go Go move in with 5 other friends. Not in Brickell, not in Las Olas, not in— go move to Little Haiti or Little Havana or Opa-locka or Carroll City and go figure it out. But don't complain if someone is giving you a handout, especially if it's your parents. Especially if it's God. So when you have that, when someone is still doing something for you, there's a part of you that's held back. Now, there's a difference between asking for help and expecting people fixing it and solving it for you. We can get into that conversation in a minute if you want. But two very different spaces. It's the power of vulnerability versus the power of entitlement. Right? How to fish. Right, or you give them a fishing pole, right? So people complain instead of acting. They give way to— that gives way to despair and depression. I got nothing to do. Can't do anything about it. My hands are held. Not capable of doing it myself. Woe is me.

Whoa.

I'm glad there's like 1 or 2 people who eventually get my references. I could do it better though.

Whoa.

No? From? That was good. Where's that from?

There you go.

From where? From where? Blossom. Joey Lawrence. Mayim Bialik. Her first. Big Bang Theory, Mayim Bialik.

Yeah, yeah.

So when this leader in this case is missing, they do foolish things, right? What happened when Moses disappeared?

After?

They made the golden calf. Because there wasn't enough empowerment. It was, "We're waiting for him to do it. We got nothing to do. We got idle hands." So one solution. Make people co-architects of your own destiny. Who are you partnering with? Who are you partnering with in friends? Who are you partnering with socially? Who are you partnering with spiritually? Who are you partnering with business-wise? One of my clients, I'm like, young professional, we're now in session number 3 or 4, and I'm like, dude, I need you to come back with this list of core values. And if you know me at all, you know, like the one thing that I always talk about, if you've been to any of my classes before, core values, core values, core values. If you tell me your core values, I can help you get whatever you want in your life. If you don't know your core values, you're SOL. You can be all over the place. So after 3 sessions with this person, like, I don't— you tell me what you want, but like, how am I gonna help you get there? He's like, is this really the answer? Challenged me, which I love. Is this really the answer? Yes. So I gave him my business's core values and we went through it. I said, from the weeks that you've known me, have I done anything outside of this? And we broke it down. I did the explanation, the definition, and broke it down word by word. It's like, nope, this is pretty much it. I choose to live my business and make my business based on those select core values, whatever it is. It's like, well, what happens if someone comes in that doesn't? I'm like, I don't take them. I kick them out. If someone doesn't want to do mind-body integrative medicine along with their therapy, they're probably not gonna be the right kind for me. So I'm not gonna try to see them with my hand held behind my back because they're making that constriction on me. I'm not willing to let that happen. Let them go to another practice. It's core values. I want to be in partnership with people who want to be in like-minded partnership with me. And I can't bitch and moan if I choose not to ask them those questions and let them into my practice, and then we get nowhere. That's on me, not on them. Right? So you have to be a co-architect of your destiny. You have to build something together with someone.

Shh.

You have to create a team. You have to know that you're not helpless. You have to believe you're not helpless. That you have to be responsible and you have to be collaborative, but you have to be accountable. So the idea of hiring a personal trainer— are you more likely to lose weight by yourself or with a personal trainer? 100% with the personal trainer. It's accountability. It's someone else outside of you holding you accountable to a goal that you want. A dream without— I'm sorry, a plan without action steps, or a vision Without a plan is just a dream. So Genesis begins, right, this book of Genesis, Bereshit, begins with God creating the universe as a home for human beings. And then it ends, this Exodus ends, with human beings creating the Mishkan as a home for God. So this principle, this is the basic principle of Judaism, that we're called on to build a home with God, to be co-creators with God. That leaders do not do the work on behalf of the people. They teach people how to do the work themselves. Think about any good business. Starbucks. All of the most amazing stories about what happened in Starbucks. Do you know where the Frappuccino came from? So I just interviewed Howard Behar. I know you weren't here before. So Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks, Howard Behar, was the international president— first the North American president, then their international president. So I just interviewed him for my podcast, and he tells a story that one of the baristas in one of the stores saw that one of the other coffee shops around the corner, people were leaving there when they only had like 30, 40 stores in North America or whatever it was, were going to another coffee shop because they're making iced café drinks. So the barista called up the office and said, "All right, next time I come around, we'll talk about it," whatever. So he went to the store and was like, "Listen, here's what's going on." And before he got there, the barista, she made him 2 or 3 versions of what she was doing in the store with her own initiative and selling it to customers in a Starbucks when it wasn't even on a menu. That's what this whole idea of like the secret menu, if you ask for something outright, they'll make it, right? There's all these hidden Starbucks menus. Yeah, I know, right? Just rocked your world. There's more than a pumpkin spice latte. So, not right. Not only did she tell him about it, but she came prepared. She was not only came prepared, she was already making it for customers who asked. Wasn't even on the menu. Take ownership, take initiative. Try this, it's pretty good. So they set up a meeting a few weeks later. Brought her into corporate with whatever leadership, with Howard Schultz. We're not an iced coffee business. We're not an iced coffee business. We're not a whipped coffee business. It's just not what we do. It's not our brand. Okay, fine. Meets then Howard Behar, still meets with the person, says, "Keep going. Keep track of the numbers." Every week the numbers exponentially grew. 6 months later they went back again, said, "Here's the numbers when we met, here's the numbers now." Fought for it. And fought for it and fought for it. And they put it into that store. And then it grew. And then they put it into another store. And that grew. And then they put it into another store. And that grew. To a $6 billion line item now called the Frappuccinos because one barista took the initiative.

Is she a millionaire now? Hmm? Is she a millionaire now?

She still works for corporate, I think. But that's that, right? A leader says, okay, let's do it. I got your back. The leaders do not work on behalf of the people. They teach people how to do the work themselves. And it's not what God does for us, but what we do for God, right? This is where God wants us to become a partner and to create. This is why this topic was how to build a home with your friends. How to co-create, how to find the right people, how to do with the right people, how to be with the right people.