Defeating the self-distract mechanism.

Oh my gosh, we are live. Hello, good morning, Dr. Rachel. How are you? From Israel. Fantastic. I would love to join, I mean to thank you for joining us today all the way from Israel, 7 o'clock. I heard you just switched the clock over there also. 7 AM in the morning. I know we sleep too much, right?

We have to wake up. It's true.

You know what? It's true. It's really true. So I wanted to talk to you today. First of all, if our viewers don't remember, this is Dr. Yechiel Harari. He is an author and a speaker who have amazing record of 11 books plus a successful YouTube channel. Plus, he speaks all over the world in different events, English, Hebrew. If you ever wanted to get in touch with him, hitbonanut.com and through Facebook or Instagram and YouTube. So we're going to continue. Today, really wanted to talk to you about this idea that we have a self-destruction mechanism. And I wanted to elaborate more about what that means, how I know everybody has that. You know, I even know about myself. You know, I can be in a great diet, I can be really good for a few days, and then all of a sudden I know I'm not supposed to eat at night, I'm actually fasting, and something will, some kind of an urge will come in with just a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and then the next day I'm like, oh my gosh, what did I do? It's something, you know, everybody has that stuff. Yeah, it's unclear. It's like something literally taking over us and is telling us that we have to, you know, some kind of a self-destruct to something that our soul doesn't like, our body doesn't like. Yeah, and we're just doing it. We're just doing it. And sometimes, you know, I mean, they call it in psychology, there is adaptive behavior and maladaptive behavior, which means There's things that you do that actually helps you get ahead and connect, and things that you do that actually disconnect you and set you backwards. But we know from Hasidus, we know that there is a lot more depth into this. And I would love for you to elaborate a little bit more about this mechanism. Why are we doing this process?

Let's contemplate on two different levels. The first one, it's what's the phenomenon? What is happening? The second one, why is it happening to us? And the third thing, I think, which is the most important one, how can we overcome this mechanism, this pattern that we destroy to ourselves, self-destructive mechanism or patterns? And I think the first, let's contemplate a little bit what is happening to us. When I do not know that one thing is bad to me, that it's bad to me to eat unhealthy food, that it's not right if I'll talk in one way to my child and I will hurt my child. Before he's going to school, he's about to go to school and now I'm screaming on him and telling him, you do not behave in the right way and he will go out. I will know that and he will be smashed from within. Like he would go to school and it will be a person that it will be very hard for him to interact with other people because he will be full of anxiety and depression and why my parents screamed on me. Whenever you scream on your, we talked about it I think, when you scream on your child, he will always go inside, be closed, he will never say, okay, who is he, my parent, my father, I know, you are right, sorry, sorry, I won't do it again. Why? Because when somebody is angry on you, what is happening to you? You go backward and you say, okay, I don't want to be anymore. Because when I'm angry on something, or I'm like taking his liveliness, I'm saying, I don't want him to be alive in a way, in some kind of level, I want him not to be a part of this reality. No, you are not right, you don't have a place, you are always like that, you are always treating like that. So, this is not a problem when I do not know what is right and what is wrong. If I do not know, it's another problem. It's a problem that I'm sealed and concealed. I don't understand what is the right pattern, what is the right way. Self-destructive pattern is when I know, when I know that something is bad for me and still I choose it. I say to myself, I don't want to speak like that. I don't want to see those movies. I don't want to be in this interaction. I don't want to act like that. I don't want to choose this way. I don't want to speak like that. I know that if I speak like that to my wife, I will destroy the beautiful evening that we planned together. I know that, I know that, but still It's when the right money time comes, when the right minute comes, I can't overcome myself. I fall into the, I eat the bucket. Why? This is the second question. So we understand the phenomenon. The phenomenon is understanding, knowing. The Alter Rebbe, Rabbi Shneur Avraham of Liadi, called it timtum alef, when your heart is concealed, when your heart is like covered. Because you understand things, you are not dumb. You're not a dumb person. You understand how to act, how to interact. You understand, you know what is right and what is wrong. If you don't know what is right and what is wrong, it's another level of way to work on yourself. Because now you have to learn. And a lot of people, you know, they convince themselves what is right. And they are, you know, in the wrong place at all. Because the whole point of view on life is wrong. They see themselves in the wrong way. They see the way they act, they need to act in in the wrong way. This is not a problem. We are not speaking about this problem. Now that we know the problem, and the problem is the connection between the mind and the emotions. There is like a blockage, a barrier between the mind and the emotions. And in order to overcome these destructive patterns, we have to like to take out this barrier. Why? Because when I understand something, now we're asking why it happens to me. I understand something. So the problem is not with the mind. I understand what the way I should act. But the problem is in the emotions. Why the emotions say to— they now control my mind and they say to my mind, okay, I understood you. I know that too much alcohol is not healthy to me. But still, I have a desire. I have a craving. In the Jewish literature, this craving calls emotions, midot. They are like the powers that you have within. That their whole mission, their whole role is to connect you, to push you forward, to drive you. But now they control me. So this craving, this desire, this addiction. What is addiction? I know it's not right for me, but still I can't overcome it. Why? Because now the emotion that we call it, it's more than attributes that come from the soul and animates the body. And it's a very powerful one. It's too powerful. So the mind is is not strong enough to overcome, to navigate the emotion. This is the why. So again, let's get into the why. The why is my emotions now control me instead of me controlling my emotions. And my— and when my emotions controls me, it's very hard for me now to let my mind navigate my life. So that is the self-destructive pattern. And each one of us has his own Negative emotions, let's call it like that. A lot of people does not like the, when you suggest that you have negative emotions. Nothing is negative in me, but we have those emotions when they are too strong. When they are too strong, emotions, it's very important thing in our life. Without emotions, you don't have energy. You don't have, you know, enough that will push you forwards and connect you.

But, Yeah, like you said before, it's the engine, the emotions.

But now there is like a separation between the head, that it's like the driver, and the engine. The engine wants to go wherever it wants to go, and the head does not go follow this, and the emotions does not follow. The emotions want to control me. So the major problem, and I wanted to emphasize something very important, it's not like that it's like It happens only to me. It's an imminent, it's something very natural that we have in each one of us. It's like God created your soul with this self-destructive mechanism. And it's a very important thing to understand why, because if I do not understand like that, I start with self-accusation. Why it happened to me? Why I'm always like that? Why I always do not miss opportunities? I don't know how to catch fish. Things, how to do the right things, why I distracted. You put yourself and it's like a custom of now I am trying to overcome and to build myself and you do not try to build yourself and you do not try to learn how to fix something and you do not try to contemplate on what you did and to grow. No, because you start, you continue to put yourself in the middle and to think about what happened, what happened, what happened. It's very important before you go to the, you know, to the, how to solve this problem, how to, it will happen. But you should understand it's natural and it could happen again and again and again because it's something very imminent. It's not something that you inherit from your parents or from the way the place you lived. It's something that we have in our soul. It's an inner battle and it's a battle between the mind and the soul and the emotions. So the way to solve it, just one sentence, the way to solve it goes through weakening our emotions when they are so strong and bringing back the mind to navigate those emotions. That's the way to solve this problem. How we should do that? In a minute. Sorry. Okay.

You know, I notice a pattern with, at least with my self-destruction mechanism, is that every time I reach a certain goal or I'm right about to reach that goal, for example, you know, I think with the food is a good example because, you know, I'm trying to obviously working on losing weight like a lot of people that are overweight. And I'm trying to work on that and it's a specific struggle because with that, you know that literally, you know, you are, you know, very close, you reached a certain level, you almost about to reach your goal and then you get filled with like satisfaction, oh, you know what, I'm there, it's okay, a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit there. And it's just like saying, let me just take one cigarette, and then you're back smoking, you know. So it's like a trap, and it's always right when you are achieving already something. You made progress. You proved to yourself that you can do it. And you reach that point, and boom. And right there, you know, the cake or whatever, or whatever the temptation was, that kind of drags you down and sets you back.

Two points, two traps, as you said, that waiting for us Every day. The first one is that you do not understand the reality. You do not understand the way you need to act. The first time you don't know how you should navigate your emotions. You don't understand why self-accusation, why beating yourself is a bad thing, why you don't agree that eating the cake is bad for you. You know, you will find a lot of people that will say, I saw my uncle, he was 120 and he still called smoking. And my aunt, she is eating almost daily, you know, she is eating, you know, cakes and then she she is filming, she is healthy. And okay, with that, it's another, as you said at the beginning, it's another way to deal with them. But self-satisfaction, when you are satisfied, what happens to you? It's like you are not in the mood, it's like finishing a battle, thinking about, you finished the battle, you won. Now you think you won, and now you want, you love yourself a little bit, and you sit on the couch, and now the real battle starts. Because self-satisfaction say to yourself, I don't have any more reason to continue. I don't see the goal. I don't see my vision. I do not push myself. I do not continue in this road. It's like another never-ending, and it says from the beginning, you didn't adopt the right reason to win this diet problem, this health or eating issues. Why? Why? Because, When you are struggling, when you are struggling, it's like you have the cake and you have the will to eat cake and you want to eat cakes and that's what's in your mind and you have the will to be thin and healthy and you want to be thin and healthy and etc. and whatever and to look good and it's like you have two wills, you want this and you want this and now there is a never-ending battle between those wills. Whenever one will, whenever one will, conquer your body. It's like you see the cake, now I say I don't care about nothing. And the emotions, they have some kind of character that they want to be in the moment. They want to live in the moment. That means they are very existential. That means now when I want the cake, I don't care about nothing. They don't have logic. They don't have long-term thinking. When emotions control me, it's like the, you know, desire, sexual desires or other things. When this controls you, you don't care about nothing. You are ready to give up about your career, your diet, whatever, now you want that. It's like you become a kid because this is the only thing that controls you because your mind is too weak to navigate itself as we said at the beginning. So self-satisfaction is like you let yourself loose. You say, okay, the right reasons wasn't there from the beginning and what are the right reasons? The right reasons are not about how it should look like at the end. Or if I should win. It's about the thing that I'm connected to. And it means, in order to overcome any addiction, you have to get back in and to say to yourself, how do I want to really find my camera? It's a bit— I bought a very unique camera, but it makes so many problems. The Insta360, I think.

Right. It moves when you move, right?

Sorry? Yeah, it moves when you move. Yeah, but the camera moves with you. And so, if I fall in love with the feeling itself, and not with the way I want to see myself, and what pushed me, it's not the way I will look like. But now I'm falling in love with, I'm falling in love, I find the pleasure, I find the right, thing that will push me. The thing itself, eating good food, it's the thing itself I learn about it. I teach myself how to dislike cakes. It's like I work on my mind, so on Shabbos night, what I really want to eat, it's not the cake. It's not that I now spoil myself or now, you know, I now give myself something. Now you are allowed to eat the cake because the whole week you ate chasa or you ate vegetables. No, it's the other way around. Now, on Shabbos, the only thing I want to eat, it's the good food, because I fall in love with the good food. And I started working on myself. But let's get back to the self-destructive thing. It's like, always, in order to overcome the emotions, this is the right point. This is the main point that I want to speak about. To overcome, to weaken the emotion, what we have to do? The emotions want to feel. I want to be. When there is a cake, it's about me. I want this cake. Think about it. A minute later there will be no cake. A minute later there will be no desire. A minute later you will forget that you were so angry. A minute later you will see that there was nothing to be upset about, nothing to be excited about, nothing to be emotional about. You know, it's like you see a steak and now you— I must eat this thing. I must eat and then see it in the morning. It's like it's all— there is nothing real there. And it's nothing real there. It's nothing that really— The craving—

The body really doesn't want anything. The body is done, the body doesn't want— I think like we are built to fast, you know, because when we fast we have the most energy. We are most, you know, we feel more alive. And we are healthier, we look better, everything.

We have been talking about this in the other episode, but eating, it's not for the body only. The body needs the nutrition, but it's for the Soul. Because the soul has a life mission, and the life mission is to connect and to find unity and to uplift everything that you meet. One of the ways that we uplift reality is by interacting with it. One way of interaction is eating. Think about it, just an example that falls to my mind. There were, you know, usually a lot of protesters and anti-religious protesters came to Bnei Bak, which is a very religious place and yeah, what's going on in the area? The point is that they wanted, you know, the fellows from Dabak wanted to interact, to do good things, to show love and we are not fighters, we are friends, we are brothers. So what they did, they offered them what? Hugs? Not. They offered food and something to drink. So the way you interact, one way of interaction of finding unity, of discovering connection is eating together. I'll give it to you, what you'll say? Okay, let's fast together. He won't say let's fast together. He'll say, come eat. You want to invite some, because eating, it's a way of elevating relationship and life.

Exactly.

And exactly.

I wish, you know, I had the power to fast more, because this is what I like. It's the practice that I'm really getting into, you know. And this is like, it's a battle, because all of a sudden you like to indulge in the evenings, you know. You like to indulge. You like to maybe drink a little, make a smoothie at night, you know, whatever. And then all of a sudden you're fasting, fasting. And that's— I think that this is something that I have days that I'm successful, and the days that I am successful, I'm really proud of myself, you know. But some days I'm like, okay, whatever, I went to the gym, I'm gonna, you know, pick up a little bit more of the weight or whatever, just give myself excuses again. And like you said, it's really an emotional eating and I need to treat it in that way. And I love the example that you said that there is a disconnect between the head and the heart, between the logic and the emotion to just compensate on something, you know, that when you feel—

It's not about compensation. It's not about compensation.

I agree with you. Compensating. I don't understand why you're doing that. But I think it's not compensating.

It's not like, it's, I think the most important thing to overcome some kind of addiction or some kind of self-destructive patterns is to find more pleasure. Let's get into some advices. To find more pleasure, more pleasure in what, in the right way, in the not destructive way or through a trajectory in the way that you've chosen. You know, it's the right way. To find more pleasure in it than in the places that you fall down. Like, what I mean, if you struggle with yourself, never-ending struggle about to eat the cake or not, it's like an example, it's very hard, it's hard every day to be like that. But if you will find more pleasure, as you said before, in the healthy food, what will happen? And you will And you will derive, you will take, you will extract the pleasure from the unhealthy destructive pattern. You will tell yourself it's not pleasure to be in an angry place. It's not pleasure to eat unhealthy food. So this is the work. And how to do that, it's another thing. So, right.

But again, it's not even the bad foods because I was able to get only good foods that I know that are in my diet. These are good foods, right? But the thing is that when I put the stop on eating at a certain time, I said, okay, 6 o'clock, stop eating, 6 PM. So now, you know, all of a sudden it's like 11, 10, 11 AM, right before bedtime, and you feel that, ah, you know, something, you know, a little bit.

It's a very strong point. But then again, so Because why do we fast?

But again, the food that I ate, it was healthy food.

It was healthy food.

I didn't eat bad food. The only thing was that I ate it at the wrong time. I ate it at the wrong time. I broke my fast. And this is the thing, you know, so it's really not about the food. You can just overeat healthy food.

This is the same point. Why? Because falling in love with fasting, it's like to find the pleasure in fasting more than in eating at night. It doesn't matter what you eat. What do you mean? Sometimes when you know vipassana in the Indian culture, Indian religion, in the Buddhist religion, it's when you close everything, you don't speak. Now when you don't speak, you can listen. When I speak, it's hard for me to listen. When I am in the silence mode, I can listen to others, I can listen to the creation, I can listen to life, I can start to find a bit more connection to life. It's not all about me. When you stop eating, you start to listen to life and you start to follow life with this mode. Likes when somebody tells him or he tells himself, you are not allowed, you are forbidden, you have limitations. Nobody likes limitations. The soul wants to get out of the limitations to get back to a place that it's infinite. That's the real motivation of the soul. But when you put the— it's not a limitation when you choose, when you say to yourself, when I'm fasting and you find the pleasure and then there is a huge pleasure. You know, in Lama Khipurim, we are like fasting and the idea of fasting is finding the inner pleasure. It's to say to yourself, it's like think about love. There is love that it's all about eating together and drinking together and going to restaurants and all the relationship is around the food. And there is love, there are moments of love when you don't need food. You don't need restaurant. The relationship is so strong. Good connection. Connection is so strong, you say to yourself, I don't need to eat anything. Now let's talk, let's be together, let's just be together. So if you find the pleasure in fasting and you won't tell yourself, no, I'm not allowed, no, I'm not. If you tell yourself you're not allowed, you will eat. If you tell yourself, okay, I'm waiting for this minute, it's like, wow, it's like I don't even feel it. It's like, because it's so fun for me. Then you will feel something else, you will feel the connection to this fasting. So one advice is not struggling in a way, there is a struggle, there is a fight, but it's not struggling with the self-destructive pattern by telling yourself, oh, I'm bad, I'm bad. Try to find what is more pleasurable, what is more right, what makes you more happy, what's the pros In what? In the good patterns, in the patterns that you chose, because we said it's not in the mind. So it's like in food, in relationship, and think about it, how happy will be your wife, your friend, or whatever, when you will act in the right way, when you stop being bitter all day long. Think about it, and it will fill you more enthusiastic, enthusiasm to weaken the negative emotion.

Right. And yeah, I totally agree with you. I mean, it is a struggle. It is a war. It's just like the Alter Rebbe describes the war between the animal soul and the godly soul. And, you know, this is literally the godly soul trying to take over, but it kind of tricks you, you know. It comes from like, you know, like it's okay. You know, you give yourself permission to do things that don't really help you. And so let's think about a few steps.

First one, to understand what's the reason. And it's very certain, it's a natural one, it's an imminent one, you have it. It's like, and so the result, the first result that you have to extract out of this point, out of this understanding, it's that you should be happy when it happens. When you fall, when you break down, when you find yourself in a self-destructive pattern, instead of beating yourself, be happy. And it's extremely important. That's the exact words of the Alter Rebbe. He's saying, if it's a very natural inner battle that we have, it's something to be happy about. Why? Because in it, you find the purpose of your life. You think your purpose of your life is to build another startup, is to create or to build houses, and you find a lot of people that build, that did, but they're still not happy. Happiness and fulfilling yourself, it's about winning and understanding the inner battle and discovering the right emotions and to navigate the right harmonic way of animating the cell in the body. So it's one thing, it's like being happy that now I'm falling. Okay, I know that I can catch it. I have an opportunity to change myself. I have an opportunity to wake up differently this morning. Every day that you have, you have another opportunity to win the battle with the diet. And it's an opportunity to discover yourself. Not to be healthy, that's what we said at the beginning. Being healthy and being thin, it's important, but it's not the issue. The issue is revealing your real inner attributes, your real inner powers. That's the thing. And to be a better person, a better person that discovers unity with what he's doing, an harmonic, you know, power. So this is the second thing. But with being happy, it's not enough. You want being happy, you want When you are bitter, think about it, being sad, it's not, being happy is not a commandment, it's not an obligation not to be sad. It's like, you can be sad, nobody will tell you not to be sad, but everything comes from sadness or from bitterness, that I'm not okay. We said one thing is self-satisfaction and the other thing is bitterness and sadness and depression. When you go to the refrigerator, when you are in depression, and when you are saying, okay, I made it. I should always keep on the road that I have still what to do yet, and it's not me, it's the thing, but I'm happy this moment. I know I'm on the road, it's like I'm not beating myself, I'm not going into self-depression. So then identifying why, why do you fall down? What's the undesirable? What's the negative emotion that controls you now? And knows it, without knowing it, that I have a tendency to eat too much. I have this tendency when you know that, when you know the battle, and don't let play.

I was always blaming it on other things until I realized it's all about me.

But there is this point. This is the most important point. I see that our time is, we are running out of time, but it is the most important point. There is always this moment, the second that the emotion occurred in your mind and became, I don't know how you say it in Hebrew, the first thought. First thought in Hebrew is ir'ur, it's like the first thought that illuminates in your mind and it's this first thought, it comes from the emotion and it's illuminated in your thought and now when you let this thought their place, Now everything starts. Now it's about, you are about to fall. It's like the moment you saw the refrigerator and you said, maybe, and you let this maybe to control you and to, that's the moment you have to catch. You have to identify and say no, no maybe. Like there is this first thought that if you let it control you and continue running in your mind, then you will fall, you will get back smoking. So, the no should be so strong from—

You know the saying, you give it a finger, it takes the whole hand. You know, you give it a finger, it takes the whole hand. A little bit, just a finger, no, it pulls you all in.

Maybe just a little bit, maybe just— No, no, it's no. And it starts with the thoughts, because you cannot have interaction with your emotions Unless, let me rephrase it, your all interaction with your emotions comes in the thoughts. They occur in your thoughts. You can identify them in your thoughts. And there is this first thought. And if you let it play from you, see, that's the whole ads thing starts. You see an ad and it's like, oh, maybe I need it. Oh, maybe, oh, maybe, oh, and you go into this ad and then you start thinking about, maybe I need a new car, a new Tesla. But you don't need a new car, you don't need a Tesla. But you saw an ad. You have now a first thought, and it's not logic. Why? Because you didn't think about what you will get from the car and why you need the car. You saw the two models that are sitting in the car and the way the air is blowing and moving and whatever. Now you see this, and now the emotions control you. And you saw maybe the cake in some place, and you said to yourself, oh, it's like, it will be a right. What I'm trying to say, it's like identify the first minute that the thought occurs in your mind. Now control this minute and don't let it spread in your thoughts. Don't let it spread. No, it's no. The alternative is saying not no in one end, no in two ends. And the last thing, if it's very hard for you and the addictions control you, it's like let yourself break apart. Break apart in a way that I say to, I say, okay, I'm spreading my hands and I'm saying It's hard, it's hard, it's very hard for me. No, I need some mercy, I need some help, I need some, like, allow yourself to say it's hard and I want, you know, I want some more power in order to overcome it. And then it's like, okay, I said, okay, I broke one time, now I'm ready to another fight, now I'm ready to come back again. So what I'm trying to say, never lose up, never be in depression. If you want to stop smoking, you will fall 1 time, 2 times, 5 times, 20, 300 times, and in the 301st, you will succeed. So it's like, continue on fighting every day on those things that you ever dreamed to succeed in, on those non-destructive and the right way for you.

I know, I know, yeah. So, yeah, God willing, you know, we should make serious progress with intermittent fasting. And really, it should be a lifestyle. I think that, you know, you can develop a beautiful lifestyle because it's not fasting like in a religious way. You can still drink and have liquids, you know, so you can still be refreshed and feel refreshed. You know, you don't have to, you know, it's not like Yom Kippur or any other fasting that you're not drinking and eating, so you feel a little bit dried out. So definitely recommending that to all our listeners. Thank you so much for kind of breaking it down to a practical way, a practical manner. We should all be winners of that war against our mechanism, self-destruct mechanism, and completely, and thank God, you know, because of this podcast, we should all disassemble it once and for all and not have any more of that emotion that— Great, thank you very much, my friend.

Keep us— Thank you very much, all the best.

Thank you so much for joining us today. All the best.