You Winning Life Podcast with guest Lionel Mitelpunkt: The Next Generation of Leadership Is Now.

Hey everybody, welcome back. So I am sitting here in my office. This is the first live in-house podcast episode, and I'm really excited to have Lionel Middlepunkt, who just came in from Israel. He was here this weekend for LiMud Miami, which is— the best way to describe that would be, um, the Jewish TED Talks, but got started before TED Talks even existed, about 20-something years ago. I think it's been in existence at this point.

Yeah, it's been around and been replicated quite vastly and quite well. Yeah, which is great.

So we have met, um, over the weekend, even though we were in touch before, um, thanks to me going through our list of people that I want to be like, I want to be in touch with that person and get them on my podcast, and not having to do it remotely, which is kind of cool. So, um, as of now, of the many things that he's doing, he's the co-founder and director of content for 248, which is a global network of Jewish doers. And his major passion is helping people become aligned with their purpose and potential while working with individuals and organizations all over the world, helping them on adapting change and telling their stories in authentic ways while using technology and other tools to help make those changes happen. So Lionel, super excited to be hanging out with you for the next— Same here.

Our conversations are really lifting in each episode, so—

Well, the shame is like we couldn't have been tracking the last couple hours of our conversations. We just came back from lunch. The amount of topics that we've tackled, probably most of the backgrounds.

And that we're quite similar on many, most of them.

Having grown up in very different places, but similar cultures, but similar backgrounds. We were just talking about our family's Holocaust, a little bit of our Holocaust stories of who survived and which sides of our families didn't have to go through the Holocaust. But our passion of being part of the community and helping people be empowered, finding their home. Is a big part of what we're doing. So before we get into what you're doing now, um, growing up in Israel, being born in Israel, you know, there's probably a lot of people— I know we do have a few listeners who are in Israel, but for people who have maybe never met someone who is Israeli or has a stigma or stereotype of an Israeli, um, let's just share a little bit about what that's been like for you growing up there, you know, being a young professional, but even before that, the army, all those different things. That the average person may not know about?

I was born in '87, July of '87. Um, I always say if you want to understand the politics of Israel and the surrounding, come during July and August and you'll understand why everyone wants to kill each other. Um, so it's more hot and humid than South Florida and, and crazy and aggressive and yes. So I was born in that year, was the year of the first Intifada, the first Palestinian uprising. I was born after, but it was— growing up in Israel is intertwined with politics, aggression, violence, oppression of all kinds. And I'm not going on either side because I understand both sides, and it's just a goddamn reality that we're living in. You know, as a kid fearing terror attacks and understanding what that even is, years later to connect with Pakistani friends over the fact that we've both lost friends for terror attacks. So when I was in 9th grade, someone from from my class was killed, and that just changed the course of everything. And you learn a lot about empathy and how to pick up your friends in those kind of moments. And I come from a family of— my dad's a psychiatrist, my mom was a psychologist, and, um, kind of at the age of 14, 15, having to say to your friend, "Cry it all out," or like, "Stop crying," and enter intertwined. It was, it was, it was that. But at the same time, life is beautiful. Like, Israel is beautiful. I always say I wish to be a tourist in Israel. Um, I'm not. I understand Hebrew, and that, that's a challenge. Um, but coming to such a beautiful place with so much history, with the best food you can find, with so many people of all kinds, and like going to the beach and then going to the forest and then going to the desert and festivals and dancing and art and Like there's everything and religion for every kind. And so it's super interesting. With that, I was a very politically involved kid. Um, the murder of Yitzhak Rabin impacted me tremendously. It was a day, November 4th, '95. My parents went to be in the crowd calling for peace. And I, as a kid, have suffered all kinds of terror attacks, and that was just the time. Um, I told him I don't want to go because I felt something bad is going to happen, and I thought of a terror attack. I never imagined something like that, but to be at home knowing that news before my parents, watching this, knowing that they're there, not completely understanding what is this violence that happening, but having lost my grandfather around the same time, those two kind of intertwined for me. And it's very sad to see where Israel is at today. I'm suffering the reality of our society. I've fought for social justice. I've lived— I say I've done everything you can do on the road trip. I've lived on the street for a month. I had my apartment there, I had an office there. I, I know that, that street from so many different places. And being an educator and an artist in Israel and just trying to survive living in Israel, being a student, being— it's, it's a very difficult place, and, and yet it's a loving, innovative, super upbeat place. Very social, very amicable, very in-your-face and honest and truth. Like, so when you were introducing me, I'm kind of— I'm not the stereotypical Israeli. I don't look the part, I don't speak the part, but I am ingrained with that. I was in the Scouts, which is a youth movement in Israel, a little different than in other places. So I was getting my leadership training when I was 14, 15 years old, and that's where I know how to stand in front of a crowd to this day. Um, so that, and then serving on a service community year with kids who came from Russia and two Bedouins that one of them speaks Russian, and it's like all kinds of crazy. And a few months back, I asked my dad, my dad, My dad and my mom are from Argentina originally, and they made Aliyah, they ascended to Israel, immigrated. And I asked my dad, "How are you feeling with everything? Are you happy that you came here and built your life here?" And he said that he is happy because we didn't go through the same struggles that he had. Like, no one called me a dirty Jew. In the locker rooms. We didn't have locker rooms, but that's not because of that that I wasn't called that. Someone did call me a hard, uh, hot-blooded Argentinian. So there is some of that, but we are in a place where when times get tough, we kind of get together.

Um, so all those labels go out the door in those circumstances where there's a war or terrorist attacks or a community need?

It used to.

It used to. So do you think there's something that's changing?

Yes.

And do you think it's globally, for lack of a better term, within the whole entire country, or do you think it's segmented by region or by community?

No, it's part of populist, nationalist, and liberal left-wing.

So the separations that you're seeing there very much would mirror what's going on here in America.

Very much so, um, in America and other places of the world, for sure. Um, it was a very sad day, the day that Hamas announced that they're going to fire missiles at 8 o'clock and deliver it on the promise. I was with my cousin, we were stepping out to the staircase, and I always laugh that in Israel when you get a coworking space, you also get shelter as part of the amenities.

Um, and for people who don't know what that actually means, every building in Israel actually has to legally have built into it a bomb shelter.

Yeah, or, or fortified staircase. You need to know where you're running when alarms go off, and alarms do go off.

And just for the sake of understanding the context of time, depending on where you are in the country, because the entire country is about the size of like New Jersey/Rhode Island, right? But in some places you have 30 seconds or less, or less as you're getting closer to the borders.

And as you go more inland, you might have a minute, a minute and a half. Mind you, there is Iron Dome, right, which might take it off in midair. And this technological magic that's happening. So one of the problems now in Israel is that people hear the alarms and go out to look at how Iron Dome is destroying things.

But if it makes it through Iron Dome, then even though—

even if it gets it in midair, you have shrapnel, you have shreds falling from the sky. You should still be in a safe space, right?

Uh, so instead of the fireworks, you're actually might get get hurt and injured. So, right. Yeah.

Um, I just want to say one very important comment at this step. This is not everyday life in Israel. It can happen every day, but it happens rarely. Going back to the issue of where we are at right now, it was a very sad day when Hamas announced, delivered on the promise, we were going into our shelters at the same time there was a protest, right-wing and left-wing going at each other, and seeing the right-wing collecting memorabilia of how they used aggressiveness and force, like literally taking poles and hitting people and going around in their black shirts and grabbing them and being very proud of that. I went by and I didn't know that had happened. I wanted to see this McKay Gallery at Abima, beautiful place. And I was like told, we're closed. There was a whole like riot right now. I went to a cafe where my, uh, my roommate at the time was working and she was very upset. She said this guy came in very upset and then someone stood up and said, offering him water. And the guy took the glass and broke it on and wanted to punch the other guy just because he was sitting in a leftist Tel Aviv cafe. I was just about to go to my first Muslim-Jewish conference the following week, and I was heartbroken because I didn't know what's happening. And I knew for a fact that if I was sitting in that cafe 'No matter what my opinion is, because of the way I look, I might have gotten that punch.' So my dad says, 'I'm happy and proud that you're not going through the same struggles,' yet we are in a very problematic place.

It's so interesting because in every community, as I see, and even in every family dynamic, dynamic or every situation, right? Everything mirrors everything. And our communities are microcosms of our homes, and our homes are microcosms of our beliefs and our experiences and our traumas. That we may be looking at it from a perspective where it may seem so extreme on both sides, that there's all of this conflict that's going on now, and we can say, because we're going through it now, it seems like it's so much worse than the previous generation had it. But everything in context makes sense, right? So we can't necessarily say like on a scale of 1 to 10, it's better or worse than what they went through because less resources, more resources, whatever it may be. But to flip the other side of the coin of the struggles that every society is going through, whether it's America or Israel is going through, the counterbalance of the beauty. You were saying, right, we were talking about nature before for a few minutes, for a second, but just the beauty of the people, the beauty of what's happening. I think we a lot of times forget— I know like there's a big thing in our world with entrepreneurship and just business is the idea of these millennials who are just like crappy workers who are not going to do anything, they're selfish, they're entitled, they're this, they're that, right? And then you can go to another population and come up with all of these complaints. And you— when we're looking at complaints, we're never looking at the positives because we're looking to find something wrong. And I know one of the things that you're doing with your— one, with your mission as a whole, but specifically with 248, and, and when you're speaking, is helping people find their own beauty and bringing it out. To the world, right? Their purpose, their potential, their passion. And because of that, it sounds to me through our conversations, that will start changing those experiences that you just told me about at the café, at the coffee shop, where maybe one day those won't happen anymore, or maybe there'll be a dialogue instead of an argument, or maybe there'll be something new that will happen because of it. But I'm wondering, right, I want to really allow people to hear the flip side of the coin as well. We're always going to have struggles. There's always going to be challenges. I don't think any of these things are ever going to go anywhere throughout history. I think there's always going to be some type of conflict. We're humans, right? Humans are conflicted, right?

Having a utopia is the most boring thing I can think of, right? Like going to anyone, being able to ask for anything and receiving that, that's boring. Humanity cannot survive on a state like that.

There's no growth there. There's no progress. Pressure, but we do survive. Humans are created in pressure cookers. Our entire life is a pressure cooker. So I very much agree with you on that. And I think because of all of that allows us to see what we, the people like you and I and other people who are similar-minded to say there's something bigger, better, and more worthwhile.

So I want to stop on one word that you're using.

Yeah.

And that's people.

Yeah.

And we said we're not going to go too deep into the Jewish world. Conversation, what I term the Jewishverse. But just like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we have our own universe. We have the Jewniverse. But you're using people, and coming from a family that speaks 3 different languages, semantics are very important. And in different languages, words have different meanings. In our context, people is a) the individuals that we're talking about, people is everyone, humanity, and people is our people, right?

Your tribe.

Yeah, for us it's the Jewish people, right? And not your other, um, cultures slash religions, ethnicities. Have that sense. And it was very interesting. First name dropping of content that I'm going to do: HBO's LeBron: The Shot. The first episode where Jon Stewart was there, there was a conversation about African-American culture and African-Americans as people taking care of each other, just like the Jews are doing. They were like having the conversation of, look at the Jews, how they care for each other even though they—

even though we may disagree on so many things.

Right. But they're like, they're people. And they were saying we African Americans don't necessarily have that. That's our strength. And that is why I work. I was very blessed because as an Israeli, I got the opportunity with the Jewish Agency to become a Jewish agent. I was Israeli. You were asking about Israeli experience. I was Israeli till the age of 21. After I finished the army and came to a summer camp in upstate New York, Young Judea Sprout Lake, where I saw my people. I knew that I have a people because my family always spoke about the community in Argentina. Now I got to meet my people, and I see kids that don't speak Hebrew but know all the blessings. I didn't know any of them. And I realized that there is a people. That's why we call it Jewish peoplehood, which is a term that doesn't sound good in Hebrew, amiut yehudit. And it's not being done in Israel enough. That's why we started the Jewish Peoplehood Coalition a year ago, to bring our organizations and establishments and enthusiasts All of that. Now I believe, yes, Israelis can see, but as Avraham once told me, Israelis forgot that we're Israelis by the merit and virtue of being Jewish. We're having a struggle between democratic and Jewish state. We don't know what Jewish is. Because the people that are talking Judaism have made it so political in Israel to the point that you're either religious or don't want to have anything in common with that.

Now, so that split has become a much wider chasm than— because when I lived in Israel, I was there '96 to '98. For 2 years. Then I went back in the summer of 2001, right before Sbarro's Pizza bombing. I was about 4 blocks away when it happened. I had a friend who survived, Benny Freeman, from— who was in a frat from, uh, Eretz Israel. He was coming to America to work here for the year, and it was the week before he was coming to America. He's like, ah, let me go. My last, uh—

that's a very Israel experience, or Jewish experience related with Israel. We all know someone Who's been through a terror attack.

Either has passed in a terror attack or thank God has survived. But I knew then, the community, it's funny, like anywhere in, you go anywhere and communities and neighborhoods are divided up by whatever they're divided up by. But if you were to look at it on a map of like the communities in Israel, like just say Jerusalem alone, like you could have like 4 blocks, that's this little niche of, right? You cross the street and it's this niche, but then you go one block left, it's another niche, right? Everything is so inter— there's like invisible boundaries in a way.

But I can also experience—

but I, but you can, as an outsider, I wonder, because I'm an outsider, right? I was a tourist, even though I've been there multiple times and I lived there for extended periods of times, but I'm still not an Israeli. I'm not living there as a citizen. I'm wondering if like what I'm trying to say is that I still have a way of seeing the unity above it all, versus someone who grows up in that society, who lives in that society, who feels the pressure cooker of the society, might see it and feel it and experiencing it differently.

Again, I'm not your average Israeli. I'm very unique in my experiences, my voice, what the way that I'm bringing my experience.

Yeah.

And I'm very much in my present state of where I am with, with everything. It's very hard for me to say, but I feel that Israel and Israelis, we're like a wounded animal. We all suffer, we all hurt, and we do not let anyone come near us. And each faction or each other doesn't realize is that we are the other.

And the other might have the part of the healing that needs to take place to help that.

Israel is a place that needs a lot of— the world in general. Hebrew is a beautiful language, very strong and powerful. Powerful when I'm with my partner. I ended up finding a Hebrew-speaking Israeli partner, and a lot of the things that I want to— when I want to be real, I have to say in Hebrew. A lot of the time we'll speak English because both of us had foreign experiences and very much are multicultural. The user experience of speaking Hebrew is you do not understand You don't understand me and let me explain to you why you are so deeply wrong. And we forgot how to listen.

Does that come from sadness though? What's like, what do you think the root is like on a psychological level? Because we're going to take this in a moment and go really macro as this plays out in what we're doing in the world. But the trait of— we're known as a stiff-necked people. That's the Hebrew translation you can give us. But stiff-necked really means stubborn, because we have our way of doing things. I think everybody's stubborn in their own way, but particularly our people who have gone through tragedy and suffering decade after decade, generation after generation, generation, culture after culture, gets stuck in a certain way of doing things for survival.

Yes, but for the past 70-some years, we are not that anymore. We are the majority. We have a country, a strong country, and we did not adapt to be strong.

So the mindset didn't shift?

No. Israel is still ingrained with fear. Like, if a religious person comes to my secular area, it's like, no, we won't let any religion come close. That's just sad because that's our history. And on the other hand, bring it in a way that I'm able to absorb, and let's connect it. Buddhism and Islam. Islam and Judaism share so much in common, and Christianity, and every religion basically says the same. So at 248, we believe that being Jewish is doing Jewish. How did we come up with that? First of all, Chuck Ratner, who is the chairman president of the board of executives of the Jewish Agency, has said it, but we developed that. That's Putting more content into an excellent tagline. Israelis are doers. We know how to do. Tachlis, practical. There is a saying that Yoni Bloch once said. He's a startupist. He said an investor once told him, if you want something done, you can get the Chinese who will do it rapidly and will need finances for that. You can get the Americans who will do it by the book them and might make it great. And if you want the impossible done, get the Israelis. They'll make the impossible. And whatever— no money, no budget, no people, no— they can get it done. They're right up there. And a lot of Israelis are saying, I'm not interested in the Jewish part, but I'm happy to learn how to do better, and I have my ideas and I want to execute. And these are the Israelis that that the moment that they come here or any other Jewish community abroad, we all return as Jews. Because we are sold on a story that is so different, and we're told that antisemitism— we don't experience antisemitism in Israel. I didn't go to a Jewish school, or did not go to a Jewish school. I went to a public a non-religious public school.

But it was percentage-wise, how much Jewish?

100%, right? And we celebrate all holidays, but we take many times Judaism out of the fridge for holidays and put it back in the fridge. Now there is in that chasm— so my first, uh, shlichut, delegation emissary, was in 2009, and it's right about that time that more of our millennial generation, led by other people, an older crowd, created frameworks for us to learn more about Judaism and really get into the text or into Jewish peoplehood. This program of sending Israelis to summer camps, it's just grown Growing by the year, I was sent as the last part of my army, uh, to do this. So I was in this, um, I finished the army 3 months earlier to go and serve my people in a different way. The fact that you've been in this industry as well, I'm a Jewish professional currently, you're a Jewish professional as well. The fact that we can be professionals in our people.

Yeah.

I don't know of many other people that have that outside of clergy.

Most people can't.

And clergy is religion, right?

But in their—

I'm talking, I'm, I'm a cultural ambassador. That, that's what I do. I get more than I give. I have people all over the world that will welcome me into their home just because I'm Israeli.

And you're walking Falafel ball.

Yes, I'm the wandering Jew, but I'm wandering between people's very nice houses who are very much welcoming for me. So that's one diaspora that I have. The other diaspora, that same summer of 2009, I went to Burning Man right after, and that's my second diaspora. The Muslim Jewish Conference just opened it, so I do have a dream of getting to places that I can't and having that interfaith work and finding the people that are suffering a lot and bringing a lot of those two worlds, the Burning Man world and my Muslim friends who were willing to come meet Jews. I'm bringing a lot of that into what we're doing and weaving networks and opening and trying to do innovative things. The first hijab-wearing religious Muslim person, woman, I met was Maryam, who was at the time the co-president of the Muslim Jewish Conference. And we're sitting in Vienna outside of a synagogue, all going in, a bunch of Jews and Muslims, and she has the most beautiful smile, and we talk about social innovation. Cause she's the co-founder of the Social Innovation Lab in Lahore University. So we talk about 3D printing for people with needs and do coding for kids and like this world that she and I would live together. And that was the, that was the catalyst and kind of one of those meetings that helped me come up with the term endemism. Manifesto for Generation Cloud. So I believe that usually when we speak about generation, we speak sociology-wise, like born between this and this. We are born in a unique time in, in life, and I believe that we're all connected through the sky and we all live under the same sky. Now that's going to change. We already have people in the space station. Elon Musk and SpaceX want to take us to Mars or any other place.

Stuff that we couldn't, that we had to wait for other people to do, we can now do ourselves with the right—

Everything that used to be science fiction is now science fact.

Right. Yeah.

Or it could be.

Well, if you think about the iWatch, which is not even the world's greatest technological— the battery sucks compared to other companies. But if you grew up being a Dick Tracy fan, and that originally, especially that movie, the Tracy movie that came out, whatever, in the '80s or in the early '90s with, right? That's an iWatch. Like, it's just like 2017 into 2021, all this stuff finally became real. And like, yeah. And then Elon Musk and whoever else is being involved in this.

I'm obsessed with VR.

Right.

And now we are at times where VR is actually a thing.

This is reality. This is no longer where the next generation, when we're talking about the, I was talking to another one of our buddies where it's the, when we were told one day we're gonna become the leaders of tomorrow, that's where we're already, that's, we're already past that timeframe.

This is a whole topic. Right. That I would love to get into. My problem with institutions and establishments at the moment, I see it in the Jewish world, but it's happening all across nonprofits, organizations, businesses, everything.

Yeah.

There's still the talk of next gen. We are present gen. We are here. We are not getting to make decisions that will make us the leaders de facto just because there's current leadership and we are not balancing that. Yeah. How could it be? That all president, uh, candidates, like the legit, are over 70.

Yeah, right, right. And the ones that were younger are already done, pretty much. Yeah.

Now look at El Salvador, where there's a new president, 38-year-old, who is just doing things radically different. Going to the UN stage, taking pictures and calling out everyone of this is going to get further than a lot of the important work that you're doing because you're not using the right tools.

Well, in America, I think we're such an archaic— even though we're so young, where it— I joke with people when I'm especially when I'm doing speaking, we're talking politics, and I say you have to realize that America is going through a really awkward puberty stage right now. It's a really awkward, pimply, you know, broken, like voices cracking. We're figuring it out, but this two-party system, we have to figure out the communication styles, we have to figure out where does technology fit into all of this, right? We're so new, but yet like you look at these countries who maybe don't have all of these limitations, like maybe like, even though there's, they're not as first world as me might be, but they maybe have less structure to allow that to step up.

Oh, the problem there is grassroots gangs are controlling, um, he's able to get in power. Um, he's a, he's a billionaire, he's a successful businessman, and he's willing to give some of that up and put himself in a lot of danger to correct the country that he lives in.

Now, knowing that he might, God forbid, get assassinated in this process. Yeah, on a second-by-second basis.

Very much so, right? Knowing that he might not succeed, knowing that there's a lot of people wanting him to fail, all of that. But truth of the matter is, he chose to go in and he runs the top, and he's in a system that he could win. Yeah, I would say that So yes, young, scrappy, and hungry is a mentality more than anything. I had to put that Hamilton phrase somewhere in this conversation because that's where Israelis and Americans are very much alike. Young, scrappy, hungry. We want more, like the dream. But that's not the world we live in. Generation Cloud comes and says, we live under the same sky. It's not about— my friends many times tell me I live in a post-nation world in my head, but that's where we're going. Look at Africa creating an African passport. Is it working? Not yet. Is that what should happen? Yes.

Give it 20 years.

Look at Europe.

Do you think we're too short-sighted? I know we had this conversation a little bit at lunch, but we didn't take it so deep where I'm always looking at things of like, like Like I said a few minutes ago, America is 200 and change years old. I'm not going to be around for it, but I'm not so worried about America 500 years from now. Because America 500 years from now, we may have obviously boundaries and borders, but again, as a global society with the radical technological advances, with delegation, community outreach, all these things, it's not going to be— my community is no longer this building or the 5 square miles around my office. I have a client in Alaska. That's the other— the furthest opposite distance in this country.

Taking us back to VR, right? Because that is the vision of Facebook with VR. They're looking at remote work. They're looking at how can a person in the other side of the world who has to be taking care of their family member or someone loved can still work at Facebook offices wherever that office is. And if it it could be in virtual reality and we all go at the time that corresponds to us, then we can do it. Do I think, do I understand the people that see it as a grim reality? Yes, for sure. Which is everything what we discussed about my vision of and what needs to happen on everyday life because that's what matters. We are not looking at everyday life, so we're not nearsighted enough to understand that. Even as an Israeli, the Iranian deal is not my worry. I worry about other things. I want to be healthy, like I have my health issues. I have my family, I have my friends, I have the things that I love and pursuing my passions. I get into gaming, like we don't have much hobbies in Israel. There's a lot of everyday missing because we're constantly looking at that, are we gonna be annihilated? Yes. And it's a paranoia by now. There are people who are taking care of this. We need to do it better.

But let the experts take care of that. And I have this conversation all the time. I think I want to hit on this just for a second is unless you are an absolute complete expert, and we were talking about this during lunch about when you're trying to create an organization, you can't do it all. You can't be Superman or Superwoman. And there's no point. And I hear this people all the time. The best example is when I was at, um, this incredible conference, Podcast Movement. This gentleman created this organization. It's grown exponentially. It was literally like a rock festival for podcasts. It was incredible. I thought it was gonna be like this, whatever, like workshops and lectures. It was awesome. And how many people that I met there, they're like, "You have someone editing your podcast?" And I'm like, "Yeah, and my video, and my social media clips, and everything." And they're like, "Oh, I do it all myself." I'm like, well, how much time do you spend? Like, well, each episode takes me about 8 hours for the audio. 8 hours. 8 hours for me to, to do that. If I was giving up 8 hours of my work to do that, would cost me twice as much as what I'm spending per month on the 4 or 5 episodes that I'm getting everything for. And this concept of How do you stay in your lane to know what your purpose and potential is? Leverage out everything else because if you can be making this amount at this per hour, you can pay someone else that does something that you need them to do at this point, you're still walking away with found money.

And they're living their purpose and online.

Right, and this goes back I think right to the 248 to what you and I have been talking about with potential and purpose and businesses and communities and cultures. And not— you can't be a jack of all trades because we end up with nothing in our hand. And a lot of us have many interests. You and I have so many interests and so many curiosities and so many, um, wonderments of what's going on. And we can only do so much in this lifetime. And then we can get— like, we were playing, being playful before about entrepreneurial ADD, right? And whether it's entrepreneurship ADD or Life ADD or hobby ADD or dating ADD, right? Whatever, whatever context we want to put it in. And then I want to challenge people who are listening to this to say like, if it's not gonna help you get to your potential, let someone else who's already an expert in that handle it. Doesn't mean don't be curious about it. Doesn't mean don't ask questions.

I want to bring in a different industry that we're both involved in and passionate about, and that's the health industry. What's the healthiest version of doing something? That's what I'm asking. The healthiest version of doing me, is that me editing the video?

Right, it might be if that's really what you feel authentically.

Is that healthy for me to invest the money in someone else editing? We're talking about entrepreneurship, uh, Reid Hoffman says that you need to be involved with the touchpoint, that like an entrepreneur at first needs to, or should be in all the touchpoints. Mhm. Once you figured out the touchpoint, let it go and go to the next thing as a founder, as the person with the vision.

So you got to touch it and see that it's real and healthy, and you just like soil in a farm, but it also has to align, which I take it all the way back to the real crux of everything is, does it align with your core values? Does this align with who you authentically are and the mission statement, your brand, your representation that you want to put out into the world? I want to take it up to that.

But I want to challenge, and this is the most Jewish thing we're doing, we're now debating, My core values might be not healthy.

Well, if you're getting the outcome of toxicity— if not you, but the, the you in general is getting things that are constantly showing up in your life where you're not getting what you want, where you're surrounded by toxic people, toxic environments, toxic habits, your health isn't well, your relationships aren't well, your financial stability is not well, shit's just not working for for you.

But shit's not working for us as a humanity.

But that goes back to what's the crux of that. There's the difference between symptoms and causes. My posit is that the cause, and based on who I really have been studying and learning from over the last couple years, is that if you at least start with re-identifying, and this is the workshop that I gave at Ugly Mood was, do you make values-based decision-making for everything you do? And you have a set of values that guides you, yes or no, binary, to help align you with who you truly are, to help you get truly what you want, deserve, need, and hypothetically speaking, should be doing in the world. So if you're not aligned, if our world is not aligned with core values, well, number one, I can't tell what someone else's core— but what their what your core values should be. I can't tell you what your core values are. I can help poke and prod and push to make sure that you really got them as a new friend of yours and as somebody who genuinely cares about you. Or if I'm seeing as a rearview mirror, I'm like, "Dude, I know this isn't showing up for you the way I think it could show up for you. I'm going to challenge you on that in a loving way." But to go into someone else's community and just tell them how to do it, it's As much as I might be on one side politically, I love watching truly authentic people on the other side of the political coin. And hearing how they present things. It's always the difference between politic and policy.

I was once asked, why do I do what I do?

Why do you do what you do?

Because I care. And what I care about is helping other people care. And what you're saying is the reason why I say that. When you care deeply about something that— of yours, you will take the time of day to listen to someone on the complete opposite side, as long as it's not hurting you physically, let's say that at least, to understand how you can care better for yourself and what you care for.

Well, isn't it that that helped me help you?

A friend of mine once challenged me for like, but you're so altruistic, and I was like, man, it makes my life easier if someone else does. That, uh, there's two reasons why I am like that. One, if you're better, I'm better, and I want to always be better. I need to make sure that I'm good. So you want to call that ego, call it, but I never— I'm— I wake up with myself, I go to sleep with myself, and as long as they live, this is who I have and how I have it. I need to make sure. Now that's very Jewish because imen ani limili ve imen ilatz mimani. If there isn't me for myself, then who am I? And if I'm only for myself, what am I for?

But isn't that the dance, right? It's, it's how do you identify? What's that, um, that, that Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, this Hasidic master, um, from the 1800s, for those who aren't familiar with the context, he used to say that you should carry a note in your pocket, two notes, and one note in each pocket at all times. Right? You know this one. And in one note it says, you should write down, "I'm nothing but dust and ashes." And in the other note, you should write and put it in the other pocket, "The whole world was created for me." And the truest challenge of living is at what time of what day do you pull out which note to remind yourself.

And that's the gam vagam that we were talking about.

That's the this and that.

This and that. So I say that we used to live in a world of or, this or that, and we live in a world of this and that.

Or the both/and theory. But in Hebrew, just to be playful for a second, what does the word or mean?

Light.

So are you trying to find, and I'm I'm trying to be really, really playful with this. Are you trying to find the light in the differences? Are you trying to find the light in both sides of the conversation and allow people to see that there isn't a one way of doing it?

The problem is we are building walls. That orb became a wall. Now mind you, there's a crack in everything. That's how light comes in. But it's very hard to see when you're putting walls between you and another person. So even with virtual reality, you're putting a wall in your presence, in your present space, but you're opening up to other people that many times you'll be able to interact very differently because I don't know if the other person— what type of other. What I know is that we're both in something that we can enjoy.

But you can say the same way about a car. You get— you put yourself in a car which protects you from the elements around you. Now, even if it's a sunroof, right, it still has a windshield because you can't drive 50, 60 miles an hour without the wind coming at you. So you have to protect yourself in some way. And then you have your light beams which only go out, I don't know, I don't know how many feet or how many, right, yards or how many meters, but you can only see as far as you go. But you need to put yourself in a protective experience in order to get to a different location.

And many people put themselves in unprotected because we're too tired, because we're— and because anything—

and then they can't go anywhere.

And because anything can happen. Yeah, if you have a stroke, that—

then you're done.

You're gonna take yourself— but I want to take it to the other side of the car and, and to this Generation Cloud concept. People that are taking Lyft Share or Uber Share. So first of all, the driver is a person person. He's not a Tidal driver, right? In most cases. And if you're sharing the ride with people, I've been in rides where I exchanged phone numbers, Facebooks with both the driver, the people sitting next to me. But most of them, they're walled. Many times the person won't even say hello.

Of course. It's no different than riding in an elevator. What's the first thing people do? Look right down or pull out their phone.

Yeah.

But I've had that same experience. I remember I was in Jersey about a year ago and I got picked up and going to the airport and it was a Muslim immigrant who told me his story within the 20 minutes that we had. Amazing guy. We gave each other, exchanged emails subsequently and we're in touch, but he was going into jail. To teach people spirituality. It wasn't even necessarily for, for Muslims in jail, but he was working through an organization just to teach and to be a support system for the community and for the outside, and helping them with mindset and psychology.

And he said the only other persons that were coming in doing something like that were from the Jewish community, and There aren't many Jews in the jail system.

But there's organized, right? But there's, right. But going in as an organization to help, but it wasn't, and they, and neither of them were working just with the Jews. It was the Muslims and the Jews who were working with our people, but also being willing to be present.

Because if I'm only for myself, then who am I? Right. And my problem is the Jews that forgot that. Yeah.

And I'll take it even bigger as a therapist sitting on this couch. Right, as I sit across over there where the camera is, and my families or my couples or my kids or whoever will sit here and here. But they forget that too, that the person— I always love joking with my couples and I say, you've been together for, let's say, 10 years, but before that you were together for 9 years and you said yes to another year. And before that you were together for 8 and you said yes to another year. But let's take it all the way back to day 2. You said yes to date 3, and then you said yes to date 10, and to engagement, and to marriage, and to kid 1, and whatever. And now you're blaming them? But you said yes the whole entire way to keep allowing what's— right? You kept— you didn't solve that, and now you're trying to blame them for the problem?

The best way that I found to— for that is the work of Byron Katie.

The work.

The work.

Yep.

Right, right.

It's pretty good if you call it the, right? You're the, the word, right?

And that, yeah, right.

Those questions are so powerful. They're up there, they're up there in a folder.

That's the work that needs to happen. And if you can't smack yourself across the face for the things that you are doing, then you are not seeing it. And that's, and that's a lot of my problem with humanity today. Today. And I will say again, this concept of the other, how easy it is to forget that I am the other. Now, my life experience, again, I don't look like most Israelis. I don't have an Israeli name. I was always the other within my society. When I go to other places, I could be the Israeli, the Jew, the male, the—

The South American, Latin American, right? You can be anything. You can be wherever you want. Right, right.

But I also put myself in those circumstances where I am seeing the other. Problem in Israel, going back to that, is that our immigration laws do not bring multiculturalism to Israel. When Israelis travel, they don't see other. Like, they will go—

and I'm, again, I'm generalizing when I say there is a significant culture of staying within your own community or finding other people from your community in those locations.

And those who start to open up to other communities are kind of looked wrongly. Yeah. And this is where my politics can be right, but my policy would be to open up to everyone because everyone is so much fun. And we don't allow ourselves to really walk this world now. You're saying about the sickness of the world, this version of capitalism is not doing us any good. And, and about the isolated version of capitalism, the intrinsically individual, well, generational wealth, systemic, geographically bound capitalists, okay? Because it's taking from here and moving it there, and it's not distributing it. And the problem is our pyramids are already as sharp-tipped as it gets, which is why people like you and I and others— where we need to steal the bases. This is the only way we're gonna win this game. We need to curved tunnels within these mountains that are created and reach each other. And it's— we can blame everything else, but I'd rather stick to creating the way that it could be. But we really also, as mostly as individuals, need We need to go back to ourself. And you were talking about values, and this is probably going to get me emotional, but my mom has been sick for the past 10 years. She's in a circumstance— she has PSP, um, which is an evil cousin of dementia and Parkinson's, mostly Parkinson's. So she's somewhat conscious. My grandmother and grandfather also had their own things. My grandmother survived for 14 years with that. I come from a family of survivors. She survived Auschwitz, she survived the Holocaust. My mom's value was not to get to this position. And she is. So my mom is living an everyday life where she's not living by her values. And the value of the whole health system that we live in, and humanity's perception that life should go on no matter what, when we know that we're hurting the planet that we're living in, we're hurting each other in the way.

Yet where's the humanity in that?

Exactly right. So I think values come Like, there's a lot of the value conversation, but we need to get back to what humanity means. Being human is not necessarily going to work because most of the works that we have now are not going to be there in 20 years. The way we drive our cars is being changed as we speak. And what we're forgetting is how to communicate with each other. Now, I do believe that we're being polarized as a natural process to find the new middle ground, whether it's the gender-sex conversation or whether it's health, right?

Whatever construct. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, whether it's politics, like, same, we were talking about this right wing, left wing, you could be right on this and left on that and right and left, don't even think, right, you can be both and, and none of it at all is exact, right, right, I don't, yeah, I know I'm not right, it's just what I know right now, and we see that everything, and again, this goes, I go to health because we see that this is one world. Look at the virus, the coronavirus. I hope that by the time people— someone listens to it and they're like, oh, that's all news, that's SARS, like that. Oh, SARS, where did it pull that from? Yeah, but we have to deal with it together. There's no other way. And I've seen people— I travel a lot— I've seen people treat Asian people or look at Asian people in a very racist way because they're blaming them for this, because they're afraid of them not knowing them. And that Asian-looking person might have never been in Asia a day in their life. We are not adapting to to the world that we live in now, and definitely not for the world that is coming to us.

But I think that is as it has been throughout the ages, right? And it's just going to keep showing up in new different ways because of unconscious bias, of fear. Our job is obviously to be proactive. Our job, meaning you and I and the other people who, who are listening to this and people who are like-minded, is to call that proactively and say, have you thought this way? Someone asked, what's the difference between— I love this concept— what's the difference between a crazy person and a non-crazy person? We both think the same thoughts. You and I get cut off in traffic, we both are like, I'm gonna kill that motherfucker, but we don't do it, right? So we all have these unconscious biased thoughts. The question is, is how proactive are we? How much are we putting bringing them on the table to discuss? How much are we now saying, I have these thoughts, let me go talk to somebody in that community, in that culture, in that background about, hey, I have questions. I love it. Like, I had a Mormon client that came in and I'm like, dude, I've been so fascinated with your religion. I watched Big Love. I know 99% of it's probably not so accurate. I'm sure there's a segment of society where it does portray pretty accurate. I know that's not your world, but I have so many questions. Are there— as a therapist, right? Can you bring me? What books can you bring me so I can be the best therapist for you? Oh my God, the grin on his face was so happy. He brought me the Book of Mormon. He brought me this beautiful, beautiful book of their temples that as they were being built all around the world. And, and he brought me— and I have it here— it's a couple, a relationship marital guidebook, their couples counseling handbook from there. From the church.

So great.

Now if I have any questions on that, now I know where to go, right?

So I want to make the comparison, and you know this, um, I really believe in this theory or model of content diet. I think that we are very familiar with nutrition diet and the health benefits that they bring or destructions that they build they bring. And I believe that the content that we consume is no less. And in this story that you're telling me, what I hear is you sat down to share a meal, you broke bread.

Yeah, metaphorically.

Yeah, because imagine it's gluten-free bread, but yeah, imagine a vegan going to a restaurant with a carnivore. Right, right. And I've— and, and we know of couples that someone is changing.

They're mixed marriages, right?

Yeah, right, right. This is more of the world, but, but I will claim that this comes closer to home. This is— this starts dealing with what are my values, but more so than that, how do I live my everyday life? Because that That's literally what we do. I watch the news constantly. Do I bring that into conversation with my partner? If I'm, if I'm reading a good book, should my partner read it or not? Some of them, yes. I, I enjoy gaming. Does that mean my— yes and no.

But we need to be contradict— but you can't have contradictory. You might— you don't have to have exactly— this is where I want to maybe niche us a little a little bit deeper. You don't have to have the exact same verbatim values. They just have to be either enhancing of each other, but they can't be contradicting each other.

Depends on where and which. We know of couples that politically are—

Right, but at the end of the day, both sides still want the same thing for humanity. They want it to be better. They want it to be healthier. They want it to be more civil, more just. How they get about doing it are two very different philosophies. I'm not talking about the pol— again, the politic versus policy.

Right. Right.

So if you go back to the fundamental basis of it, and that's why like I have a buddy of mine, a bunch of buddies of mine, I have one in Atlanta, and he is like super Republican, but our conversations are never about the name-calling and the pol— it's really about tell me where you're coming from. And how you arrived at that decision. Walk me through your steps and the underpinning of your philosophy and the underpinning of your decision-making process and how it makes sense to you and what will be the results of that.

Going back again to care, right? What you're doing actively in that, by asking that question, is you care for your own cause and you care for him. I want him to get that.

'Cause if it's— 'cause I don't know if I'm more right. I'm not aiming to be more right. But if he truly authentic— and I believe him to be an authentic person because he's a friend. If he's— if I believe in him as an authentic person, at the end of the day, how can he be wrong? Now, I would hope that I'm also truly an authentic person and how can I be wrong? And we might want different things, but therefore there's there's no, right, to go back to yin and yang, right? This and that are both right.

Yin and yang.

Yeah, yin and yang. We both need that. I need him to be a better person. I need me to be a better person. And we can serve each other versus another friend of mine here who all he does is just poke the bear about politics. And every time I'm like, dude, I love you so much. Can we talk about anything else but politics? Can we talk about baseball? Can we talk about culture? Can we talk about travel? I know you love traveling. I know you love cars. "Can we talk about anything else but politics?" "Okay, okay." The same thing next week. Dude, every time. I'm like— and I know he's a really good person, but he's so myopic in his thing that it's annoying and frustrating, and his reputation precedes him now because of that.

So there is the concept of flexibility, which is interesting. There is a book called Flexagility about The Jewish People by Gideon Greenstein, and he talks about the fact that we survived as the Jewish people because we're flexible and rigid, very intertwined in a way that works. Someone that doesn't know how to be flexible and move around with other people— so I say there's 3 things that are always true and right Breath, movement, and water. They all come to care for the systems that build us all. Biologically, we're not very different. Neither us nor animals.

We all need all three, right? Each of us need all three.

And we need to know when to move. If I feel stuck and I can't move, then I won't breathe. And I need water to either be in or bring into me because that's life. And we live in a world where people are not getting—

So are you saying that the people who are that stuck are gonna become so firmly planted to the place that they're in, that A, they're not evolving, but two, without— they're not going to be metaphorically giving themselves water. They're not giving themselves breath. There's no growth. There's— they're eventually going to be— they're going to wither away.

Sir Ken Robinson identifies three types of people. Okay, the moving, movable, and immovable. And he says the moving should keep on moving and work with the movable people. And if a person is immovable, we shouldn't work with them unless they become movable. The moment they become movable, they, they're people we can work with. Right. But the immovable people are not going to last.

Yeah. So they're basically destroying themselves, but without realizing it by blaming everybody else for their stuff. Again, why aren't you? Right. And it's funny because in my practice, and I just had this whole conversation with my my new associate, um, where I have a client who's kind of dictating how I should work with them. And I wrote them back and I called them out on it. But the theory is that you have 3 types of people. This is in therapy, but even more so in any type of business. You have the 3 types of people that will always show up. You have the visitor, the complainant, and the consumer, right? The visitor is, I'm all here because they're making me come here. You have the complainant is, fix them. And the consumer is, I'm here, what do I got to do? Let's go all in. Right? So, I've been working with a family where the kid is for sure the visitor, because he thinks nothing is wrong. You have a mom who is maybe, maybe a consumer, and you have the dad who is pointing the finger, "Fix him. I'll pick him up in an hour." and I broke them and I said, I can't, that's not how I work and I can't work that way.

Yeah. So, and, and this is where I believe in content diet. Yeah. As a, as a therapeutic methodology. I'll send you the podcasts. You don't like the sound of this one, I'll send you another one.

There's, yeah, we're gonna put this in the show notes for everybody. So if you will have this, this diet of all these possible resources for you guys to check out.

And I'm, I'm interested in finding a platform where we can share different diets that we're doing. So for example, one of the things that worked for me in my relationship is the Five Languages of Love.

One of my favorites.

And I really did not know how to bring all of that, and that book just did it.

Yeah. Yeah.

We are having completely different conversations before and after because my partner now accepts me. —With my partner.

—Based on your love language, right? That's the misnomer that everybody— I really want people to hear this because this is so cool that you're talking on this. We weren't even planning on going there. People love other people the way that they organically need to be loved and they give out to the world what they organically feel like they need in return, but they're unconscious about it. Whatever she was doing and you were doing was your own natural way of doing it. And therefore you fly over each other. I had a couple years ago, my old office, they were sitting right here. Husband was sitting where you were, wife was sitting where I am. And he's like, I do everything for her. I show her love in so many, right? And she's like, he don't do shit. That's pretty much what it was. So I mapped it out. I brought up my whiteboard and I'm standing right over there and I wrote out the 5 love languages. And I explain each one, right? Acts of service, words of affirmation, receiving gifts, physical touch, and quality time. And he's like, I do all of those. And she's like, no, he doesn't. And I'm like, what are you talking about? So I had them do which one is theirs, and hers was whatever. And then if you do the actual test, it has like a little bit of a number, and you can have like your two highest or very close to number, and then there could be a big drop in numbers. So between like whatever, but her highest was like so differently numbered. Like it was so high. And then after that, everything else dropped. So I'm like, okay, well, what's, if you divide 5, 100% divided by 5, it's 20% each. So if he was only, he said he was doing all of those, but he was only doing all of those 1 out of every 5 times. So he was really only doing 20 and he was only hitting her highest love language, right? Right. 20% of the time. But when he was doing the other ones, she didn't even recognize those as love languages because they were so far away from her highest priority that they didn't matter to her. Right. So it wasn't that he was doing— she can notice the rotation. Oh, he's doing that. No, no, no, no. 80% of the time he ain't doing crap for me. And that was, and that was such a big aha. Two sessions later, they were done with therapy just from that.

And I want to invite every listener to think of a circumstance when there's other people, whether it's work, relationship, family, politics, spirituality, health. And if you have an open communication channel— the problem is when we put up our walls and don't have communication. That's why I believe in nonviolent communication. In Hebrew, I love the name because it's communication that brings you closer.

To draw close. Yeah.

So what aspect, the one thing that the other person could do if the other person is willing to really listen? And the best, one of the best TED Talks that I have on my inspiration, I have a content diet offering in generationcloud.org, the inspirations page. There is the, um, if you want to help someone shut up and listen TED Talk. The other person is really willing to shut up and listen to the one thing that you can change. So let's say preparing for a meeting. For me, that's the one thing— come prepared. Know what I'm talking about. Like if I've sent you the email or just know that.

Be a good Boy Scout, be prepared.

Not about everything.

Just this, this little nugget.

What I have contributed already. Inform, not even prepare, inform yourself. That's the one thing in a work context. Social context can be any other thing. But again, it goes to care. What is it that I can do that will show you that I care about what is important for you?

Do you know what I think is why people aren't doing that? And I'm taking that, I'm stealing this directly out of entrepreneurship. Incentivization. There's not enough of an incentivization. And this goes all the way back as we finish the conversation to the first things that you were saying of the us versus them, the separation mentality, the conflict, the we're not going to get along, we're not going to agree, there's no incentive. We don't see the incentive, we don't feel the incentive.

There's no incentive and there's no vision. Right. Had we had the time to sit down and entertain how fun would it be, how wonderful would it be, how good our life could be if we just went out for dinner, if we just had this meeting in a different set and setting.

Try something new.

Try something, right? Being Jewish is doing Jewish comes from do something, but draw this to your identity. And mind you, my dream is to bring this 248 program to being Muslim is doing Muslim, being Irish is doing Irish, being male is being—

Being human is doing human. That's really on the macro sense. Well, what you were talking about is the folk song and biblical, right? He named to the Mena'im, right? How great is it for brothers and sisters to be sitting together as one, together, doing together as one.

And we live in a world that one doesn't exist anymore. Right. There is no one of anything.

So— Well, I'm not saying one as in I have to be like you, you have to be like me. I'm saying sharing. There's a difference between sharing space and creating space. And I think that's the— I think that's the next step, the next conversation for us to have and for us to continue having, right? Is we have to be done with sharing space, tolerating space. Now it's co-creating space. You do you, me do you, right? Whatever it is. But can we do that together, right? We were talking about organizations that build on the same property together, together that may have different agendas, but they still have things underlying in commonality, right?

I'm going back to the time and age that we're being so polarized because we each as an individual need to figure out what is my one. We will then be able to come and create not wealth but commonwealth. Yeah. When we are all feeling that we are the oppressed, we fear from what's gonna happen to us, we have no ground. We don't have positive, good soil to, to, to build from. And we need to understand that we are all hurting at the moment. No one is getting their way. And we will never get our way unless we realize that my way goes next side to his or her way. And they— we might— I need to find my people, and my people might not live next to me. My best friends don't live anywhere close to me, right? I live online. I have Zoom calls. My problem is my day-to-day, and where do I I go out, which cafe, the language that is being spoken around me, the aggressiveness. I miss multiculturalism, not in an entrepreneurship way, capitalist of like, what's your business, what's my business, let's exchange cards. No, I'm looking for something way more human. Yeah, the connection of just going and smiling to each other. We went to Australia with the seminars. And we're walking in a park with the mother of the family that me and my colleague were staying with. And we walk in the park and she says good morning to this other person walking by, and my colleague is like, "Do you know that person?" She said, "No, I was just being friendly." Where is that? Some of our initiatives at 248 include dinners within The same building neighbors. I was here in one of the buildings. There's a beautiful common space. No one's in it, right?

No one. No one is sitting outside in my common space. Well, first of all, it's hot out typically, but like there's no— but if they built an overhang, put a fan in there under the overhang, under— they have the beautiful, the beautiful gazebos out in the wind up in my courtyard. All I have to do is add a $150 overhang and an outdoor fan. See how much that space would be used?

And there's one thing that's missing— an invitation, right? I would do it. An invitation from whoever is the owner. And again, I'm going back to the fact that Israel—

someone's got to take initiative.

The owner needs to take ownership and responsibility, right? What is my response to the ability that I have. And if I have the ability of offering this space to other people and create personal wealth out of it, how am I being open and inviting and caring for other people so their day gets better?

So I'm cracking up because yesterday I had a meeting with, um, 3 people from BNI, the Business networking, right? The global business networking here in South Florida, their regional area. Um, and I've become, um, an acquaintance of Dr. Ivan Misner, the founder of it, through my business program in Dallas, because the guy who created my business program, Rick Sappia, who's on one of my earlier episodes, wrote a book with Dr. Misner called Who's in Your Room, which is kind of about core values and the doorman principle. And I don't have it carpet, whatever, red couch. So to get onto this red couch, you have to pass some qualifications. So I'm trying to figure out how to possibly either join a BNI chapter based on scheduling time or create a new one. And we're at a coffee shop which is owned by a childhood friend of mine in downtown Fort Lauderdale. I haven't seen him in years, and finally when I was leaving, he showed up and whatever. And there's a guy sitting at the table behind us house, totally tatted up, cracking up when I'm making comments. Not a part of our conversation at all. He walked by for one thing, and somehow he engaged in dialogue with me. And then whatever, then at the end of the conversation, he's like, "Before you leave, I need to talk to you." I'm like, "Of course." And I go over. I ended up talking to the guy for 45 minutes. We're having lunch next Monday. Because what did I do? In the middle of my conversation, I see this guy cracking up and I'm talking to these 3 other women and I'm like, you and I are going to be talking when I'm done. I just call them out straight like that. I'm like, I'm coming to you. And I have friends of mine who are like, I don't get it. Everywhere you go, you talk to people. And I'm the biggest introvert by default. At 5'2", growing up when I was younger, I was like the— I was so uncomfortable with my height and everything. Everything. And I'm still naturally probably an introvert, and, and I still have to— because I'm thinking, like, my perspective— we've talked about this off this conversation— of the people where I talked about going to that retreat, I'm like, I hope I fit in with all the other people who don't fit in. I never want someone else to feel like the way I felt in the past, the non-fitter-eners. And you and I have talked about creating a community of the people who feel like they don't fit in so they can community where they hopefully might, and realize that they do. I think that maybe might be the crux of all of these problems and challenges that we've been talking about from the beginning of this audio conversation, which is, where do I belong? Why? When? How can I stop seeing someone else as the person who's keeping me from belonging? That it's their fault in some way, shape, or form that I'm not fitting me in, or they're causing me to not fit in, they're causing me not to feel like I have value, and I put the blame on them versus taking accountability on me and start leveraging and having those conversations. All right, let's go out for a drink, let's go for a meal, let's go— what music do you want me to listen to? Give me your playlist, give me your podcast playlist, give me your—

right, maybe a mixtape. And be compassionate with the fact that maybe it's not the time for me to do it, or maybe I'm really not able to do it right now. Yet. Yet. Right now, again, every day is the time that we're living in. We live day by day, and we are called for presence. And the moments where we're happy or sad— I say I live in order to feel, whether I'm happy I'm happy or I'm sad, I allow myself to feel. Now I've found a lot of content supporting and allowing me to be so self-compassionate because the world is not gonna be this compassionate for me. And I—

but there are people in the world who will be. Only if you do what?

If I am self-compassionate for myself. Only if I realize realize that I live in my own body. I'm not gonna get another one. I could, for example, with my psoriasis, I should change my diet. I should. But if I constant right now, right, you're at where you're at. And in moments where I can't even type on my computer, then I say, I'm hurt. That's all I can do right now. I can hurt, I can take care of myself, I can communicate that with other people, I can be vulnerable. I can just be myself. This is who I am. And if I'm being myself, I'm doing myself, right? And the review—

I mean, sorry— and the result of that is what we call a good reputation. In other words, I'm not talking about like from a business sense, I'm talking about like that we become connectable, we become relatable.

There are the cases in society that are not relatable. Yeah, there are people who are not relatable, but they're not having these conversations like we are.

They're not allowing themselves that these conversations.

Or they can't, right? But there's someone there. There are people who are doing the good work. Humanity is a whole. In the grander scheme of things, we are good. The problem is that the good doesn't surface. The bad surface. The good doesn't get heard because the good is too busy with everyday life, being good for herself, for another person. There's no grandiose in being good. And if you get great in today's world, someone will pull the rug underneath you and pull the skeletons in your closet. And we all have them.

So do you put them out there first?

Hamilton did, right? Did it do him any good? I don't know. Well, he's got a play written about him. Yes, forgotten for 211 years and then brought up. We do not know how the turn of things is going to be, but we, we can be responsible and accountable for what we do. If we can, we can be compassionate compassionate for ourselves and others if we can. And being compassionate, meaning that realizing some days I can't be for others, or some days I can't be for myself, and I need to make that call to someone and say, I'm hurting, I'm in pain, I need you. And this is why my— you were asking me my vision, my passion. I want to create those spaces that will immune ourselves to becoming so much in pain and misery and suffering. And that immune system is called society and being together with other people. And we are a biological mechanism, even if we have different thoughts or needs, or we need to rebuild the and we need to do that in an everyday manner, locally and globally. We need to do it with the way that the world is ran today. We need new operating system to the technologies that we're using. We need to realize that some of these technologies, like driving, is not gonna be here, and we need to realize that some people want to drive. So how do we create everything to allow and work together? There is always going to be evil and bad. How do we immune ourselves? I— the more work I do within the health industry, I realized that there is no definition for health. And I'm driving this from many conversations with Dr. Shachar Ben-Ari, who practices wellness, and he introduced me to the work by Byron Katie. Healthy right now equals not sick, right?

Well, it's sick care, not healthcare. It's not wellness care.

My question is, what is health?

Optimal functioning. From the context of what you're talking about, there is— I'm not yet sick, or I'm borderline sick, right? The average— the standard American diet is the abbreviation SAD. It's sad. And when we were talking before about labs, looking at labs, uh, for blood tests from a functional perspective, the normal labs look at it from like you're functioning, but the average American in this country is on 3 to 5 medications, the average, sometimes way more. And they're doing that and they're being put on those medications based on the, the way that they look at the numbers of the labs. So functional medicine has said, we're going to tighten this up a little bit, we're going to move it a little bit to the left, a little bit to the right, based on our experience and research and what are symptomology, not looking at, not looking at symptoms but finding the causes as a more systemic perspective. And then we're going to look at, then we're going to treat you from that perspective— food, nutrition, exercise. And if we need medication, we'll do prescription medication as well, but can we heal it with food and nutrition and supplementation and stuff like that. Because what they're looking for is optimal functioning, not getting by functioning.

And this is where I'm challenging and I'm saying, what if that is the optimal version of me?

Dead? Yeah. Well, because there's a lack of what at that point? There's a lack of suffering. But there's also, are you able to do more of what you're capable of, of what you're able to do? Because how do you know when your mission's done?

It's God's plan. For sure. My mom's sickness has taught me more than anything. My mom has given me more than anything. She gave me life. There's— Right. That's— Right.

But that's not the only thing in her potential. That's not the gave the only thing in our potential.

No, and she gave me way more so than that. She gave me many, many things. But right now, within the constraints of world that we live in, within the concept of health system that preserves people alive, is that optimal?

And I can turn this around, context specifically to what's capable in that moment with the resources for Many people, yes, right? Again, it's all context of what are the boundaries in which you're looking at it.

In my mom's circumstances, most people do not live because they swallow wrong or something, and that develops into something else and they die. My mom is alive because she's being taken care of so well, and it's, it's draining. Again, The most painful thing about it is she had said many times she would have never wanted to get to this circumstance. What is the human conversation that we are having? How are we not killing ourselves to get something that who knows if it's going to be there, right? Yeah, we're paying pensions medical bills. But who said the pensions are going to be there? Who said that's the system? And, and again, we're challenging and we're saying about the other and everything. I've met people from all walks of life, all financial circumstances. Everyone has pains. How are we approaching that? I went to visit the the Hebrew Academy in Harlem, the Hebrew school, which is a charter school, nothing to do with the Jewish religion or culture. It's just, that's their charter. They study social-emotional learning. Beautiful. And that's the one thing that I don't know of any school in Israel that teaches social-emotional learning. How do we talk to each other? My first grade teacher, we had the blackboard, and above the blackboard she put a visual that just gave us the true lesson of life, which is Derech Eretz Kadmar Torah. Way of walking life, the way we treat each other, comes before the Torah, comes before the knowledge and what I know and what I think. Politics, policy. What kind of human am I?

How are you showing up?

And yeah, yeah. And I truly believe that's what we should— no one is teaching that, so we need to create those spaces. It's a school of Derek Heretzky.

It's the school of the teachings, the guides the path of being an upright, authentic, vulnerable, compassionate, playful, joyous human being.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the psychology of humans have not changed and will not change.

Our brains are the same. We have 3 parts of our brain, the triune brain, right? You have your neocortex, your rational brain, your mammalian brain, which is memory and emotions, and your reptilian brain, which is fight or flight, safety, reproduction, heart rate, breathing, survival.

That's it. Our psychology is not going to change. People who have tried psychedelics will tell you that. That's the truth. Like, you're either with the body and like suffering, or you're one with everything. Yeah. We need to start bridging that in our everyday life.

Well, you're getting to a whole different rabbit hole of how do we get past that, which is not the purpose of today's conversation. But yeah, I've had clients who've done psychedelics and they've healed tremendous amount of trauma and have seen things from a very different perspective. How do we do that on a day-to-day basis without having to go to that extreme to do something like that? I don't know. The conversations is a good way to start.

The other extreme, it is communication. Yeah. What we don't understand is that communication equals money. We are wasting money because we are lacking open, positive channels of communication. Yeah, people are sending texts. At the Muslim Jewish Conference back in 2014 when I went, the operation in Gaza, everyone's very challenged, upset, like pained, everything. We were being told very specifically, do not have these conversations over your keyboards and screens because it's way too easy and it's wrong. When you get here, we will create the atmosphere and the setting and we will support having exactly these conversations. And we do not— the Muslim Jewish Conference does not stray away from the most difficult conversations, but we create humanity first, and then we have those conversations. And we all leave that experience completely different than how we came in. And I'm not talking politics different. I have friends in the BDS movement. I have friends who are Orthodox. Either way, I'm still on my way of life. If anything, that's reinforced myself. We need more of that. It is not about our GTAs. It is not about our exams. It's not about our sports teams. The systems are flawed. Technologies are new. We— it's a singular moment. Every previous definition apart from human doesn't qualify anymore. How are we rebuilding this society to where we go in the morning or night if you're a night person, right? I'm, I'm waiting to see, and I would love to partner with the banks a bank that starts operating at night. A lot of my friends are night people. Yeah, because during the day— or the same bank just offer 24, and you will have more employees. Some will do the day shifts and have their day clients. Some will have the night shifts and have their night clients. Yeah, we need to understand that this is the world. Nothing that we were told will break the box.

You have to break the box. You have to break them all. This is community thing. Who's doing therapy at 3 AM in the morning? And the states, you have to be licensed in the state in which you're seeing therapy, right? Overseas might have different rules, but like, I can't legally see a client who's not a Florida resident in Texas. But if they're finishing work at 5 and it's 8 o'clock here, but they can't go to— so, right, if they want a therapist when they're done with work and they can't find anybody locally, well, Why can't they find someone who's, you know, maybe in LA who's still in their working hours, right? We have to break these rules and these molds in some way, shape, or form. This is a bigger, right? And again, you and I have an issue of rabbit holes because every single thing we're going to talk about is its own.

Too many open tabs, right?

Right. Too many open tabs and not enough RAM. But I think that maybe this is where we need to hold it, is that the conversations like this should be where? I want to inspire and challenge other people that if you can have conversations like you and I are having, where the beauty is it's going to be a never-ending conversation, that is what I really, truly, deeply am searching for. And I think a lot of other people out there as well. 'Cause it's not about getting somewhere. Because, like you said, your opinions haven't changed on certain things when you have that dialogue, right, in the Muslim-Israeli, Muslim-Jewish conference. I'm not here— right? And I think what I'm trying to say is the enrichment of knowing your experiences, enrichment of hearing your journey, the enrichment of of hearing what you've gone through, the trials and the tribulations and the successes and the things that are not even yet— have not even yet been created, is the hope conversation. But it's also the connection. It's also the— we met 48 hours ago in person with 350+ people around us running around from workshop to workshop to workshop to just get get a little bit of some extra, you know, spiritual Gatorade. And the amount of conversations that you and I and you and whoever else and me and whoever else can have like this is an infinite amount of tabs open. And I want people really to hear this, that this is what you and I are creating, what my podcast goal is and what I know your work is, is to to make this happen more and more often for other people out there. And I think that's the beauty of all of this. And our mission and our inspiration is to have more people doing what we're doing here out there.

And connect with each other.

And connect with each other. Yeah, 'cause this is, right, people are joking, like, in 48 hours, right, you guys pulled this off and you've talked about why didn't, like, blah, blah, blah, and it's now an hour and 38 minutes. Minutes into recording, only with a very limited Facebook interaction before that, right? But this is what it is. This is the real deal. Like, people, I want you to listen to this. Like, this is what human connection is. Yes, we have similar stuff in common. Yes, we have shared interest and share, but our views on so many things are very different.

But like, when you're open to the world You don't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might just get what you need. Amen. And Burning Man has showed that to me every time that I went. And when I was asked by a friend that worked at Burning Man, "Is Burning Man present in your life?" I said, "Every moment." Yeah. Every moment. I've met people who their parents passed away of— We just look to connect. It's community. For the title, winning life, for us to win, we gotta accept the loss. Like, I'm already sad that this conversation is ending and that I'm going back to Israel and time zones will be very difficult to bridge, but I know we'll continue our conversation. Making these connections is worth it. Entrepreneurship is a good excuse, but it's a symptom, as you say.

Well, it's also, it's a good excuse. I love that some of my newest closest friends have come from outside of the Jewish community. And I've, you know, as you and I both have friends that are not in the Jewish world, but some of my my newest closest friends over the last 3 years are not Jewish in any way, right? They're in Dallas and they're in Nashville, Tennessee, and they're very involved in either Christianity or they're just not, right? But our values are the same. Our goals for the world, our mission for the world is the same. Our connection that we want to connect with other people is the same. And we want that phrase, right? A rising tide raises all ships.

I want to add to that. Yeah. I recently heard the Creative Pep Talk podcast, really highly recommend.

All right, you guys gotta check that out.

Yeah, and he says there, find your super, and I want to add to that, find your geekdom. Yeah, I've connected to more people over virtual reality, Hamilton, and D&D in the past few months since I've allowed myself to become a kid and teenager again and find the passion to game. Yeah, I love it, right? I own it. I forgot how to play and I got back to gaming. My partner doesn't like it that much, but I, I love it. And I, I DJ. My dream was to DJ. I, by the way, I started DJing because I felt very uncomfortable on the dance floor because that connection doesn't necessarily work for me. But you can make—

you sure as hell can make other people dance.

But I can tell a good damn story when I'm DJing and enjoying my music and connect with people. My dream was to play Hamilton at Midburn, the Israeli Burning Man, and see if someone picks up on it. We ended up being like 5 people singing off, and this is incredible. And you know what's more incredible? That's coming to theaters worldwide in a year. Is? Yes, because Disney has filmed it with the original cast and it's going to be in cinemas all over the world. It's going to be pirated immediately. There's already bootleg versions. No one is stopping that because that connects us and it gives us shared language, which is the most important thing that we need to create. Entrepreneurship, capitalist conversation, if we look at the positive, it gives us that. 100%.

I went a few years ago to— my birthday is July 4th, so—

July 18th. So we're both Cancers.

So now this is explaining way more. So this is really the way it happens in the world. Like, this is like when you really connect to people, right? It's also energetic on so many levels. A buddy of mine, Matt, took me to— he's a big comic book guy— and he— Comic-Con, he here in Miami was on July 4th weekend. So I'm like, all right, whatever, it's July 4th morning, what the hell am I doing besides sleeping in? I'll go down with you to Miami to the convention center and go. And I can't remember who it was, like William Shatner, I don't know who, like the people that were coming to whatever. I think it's cool. I'm not like, oh my God, I have to go, but I think it's cool. I'm like, yeah, I'll go with you, whatever, tickets were $10. And I was walking around with him and we went into some seminars, into some workshops, and we just walked around and whatever. My aha of the day was exactly what you were just talking about. 20 years ago, pre-internet. So I graduated high school in '96, we had dial-up. This was just when AOL was just starting, but my email before the end of my senior year, my December 1995, so midway through my senior year, I went to USY, my university, youth group through my synagogue's international convention, which was in Toronto. And I just got email a month before that. And my email was my school library email that was 14 letters and digits at sephlin.library.miami.whatever. So I had that, I had to write it out on a— I first had to memorize that, two, I had to write it out for every single person I met from Toronto and from whatever on this paper that took me gave me 40 seconds to write out my email address before it was like, you know, Jason, whatever my thing was, MrJ78@aol.com. And, um, but I remember going back to walking around Comic-Con 3, 4 years ago and noticing that without the internet, how many of these people would not have the friend groups that they're running around with —how many of these people not only would not have a friend group but would have been living alone and not had now roommates? And how many people would not have met a significant other and they would have been romantically alone? And I realized that through this technology connection, the people who would have been alone and isolated and loners and, right, the nerds and the whatever that would have been the—in their world that an outcast of society because they're different in their own way and special and really awesome in their own way, would— didn't have other people to connect to and share their passions and their experiences with. The cosplay community is huge now, right? But these people, like, there's people who are now having relationships and feeling love, not just on a friendship level but on a romantic level, that 20, 30 years ago would not have happened if technology hasn't been allowing that.

It didn't exist. Have you seen the Flat Earth documentary?

I know about it, but no. But that's what you see, right? You only see a flat Earth, right?

Whatever politics and policy— no, these people are connecting because they— because I've shared— because this is what they're connecting over. If, if I may ask one thing of ourselves and the listeners, let's not diss ourselves, really. Let's be super kind to ourselves. None of us is perfect. Some of us are righteous, but we all have our flaws. So if you're communicating with people over VR or phone or That's fine. If you're into BDSM, find your people. Let your freak flag fly and be caring about it, for yourself and for others. If we go positive, things are good. My prophet is Bob Marley, and one of the reasons is because he says none of them can stop the time. Mhm. Let's do the best with it. Be kind to yourself and others and have fun while doing it. And become someone. The Israel Eurovision song a year ago was I Am Someone. Yeah, now that was very dramatic and everything. Let's drop the drama. Let's just be someone.

You gotta choose, you gotta choose that.

You gotta do the work. Yeah, you gotta figure out what's real and what's not and what— oh, you still have— what's the turnaround around this that is actually you? Figure out you being this. Be loyal to being you. Be kind and compassionate to be you. And let's meet. Yeah.

And if you guys want a really good TED Talk on it, Rick Sappio, my Jason Wasser, the business coach I alluded to before, has a TED Talk called Purpose 2.0. And he said, "You're ripping off the world if you don't figure out what your purpose is. You're stealing from humanity if you don't figure out what your purpose is." And I think that's such a powerful point to end with. So I want to congratulate you. Thank you for one, helping others by helping yourself. Figure out what your purpose is.

Not an easy task.

Not an easy task, as I'm still— I joke that I got 10 years on you, and I'm like, I'm maybe just beginning to start getting a handle on it, maybe, right? And I think part of these conversations is helping me be surrounded by people who, you know, maybe haven't figured out a step more than I do, or two steps more than I do. So I'm really being selfish in this endeavor because I'm like, these are the people I want to hang out with. Like, you know, it's not really for you guys out there, this is for me. So it's really for you guys.

Altruistic excellence. Right, exactly. Gamba gamba.

Gamba gamba, right, also and also. So yeah, so cool. So thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. And then obviously if people want to find you, where can they track you down?

Lionel Mittelpunkt, M-I-T-T-E-L-P-U-N-K-T. I'm just showing off that I learned it. Yeah, right, right.

It was 48 hours. I thought it was probably his last name.

lionelmittelpunkt.com, Lion Mitt on most social platforms. And then the 248? 248CAN.net. 248 Community Action Network. The partnership units initiative for young adults. This is what we do in the Jewish world, but if anyone wants to replicate it, we believe in easily created, easily replicated initiatives. If someone wants to bring this to your own community, please talk to me.

Wash and repeat. That's it. All right, brother. Thanks so much.