Self Distract Mechanism - Dr Yehiel Harari and Uzi Moses - -Influencer Mindset

Oh my gosh, we are live! Hello, good morning, Dr. Uzi Moses PhD.

Hello, my friend, how are you?

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 they just switched the clock over there also.

Yeah.

7 AM in the morning.

We sleep too much, don't worry.

I know we sleep too much, right?

We sleep too much. We have to wake up ourselves.

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, hit bonanut.com and through Facebook or Instagram and YouTube. Thank you. We're going to continue Today, really wanted to talk to you about 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 could be on 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? Um, it's, you know, everything, it's unclear. It's like, it's like something literally taking over us, uh, and he's telling us that we have to, um, some kind of self-destruct to something we— our soul, like, yeah, yeah. And we're just doing it, we're just doing it. And sometimes, you know, call it in psychology, adaptive behavior and maladaptive behavior, which means 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. So, but, but we know from Hasidus, we know that there is a lot more depth into this. And, and, you know, I would love for you to elaborate a little bit more about this mechanism. Why are we doing this to ourselves?

Let's contemplate them through different levels. The first one is, 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 will go to school and he will be a person that it will be very hard for him to interact interact with other people, because it will be full of anxiety and depression. And, "Why my parents screamed at me?" Whenever you scream on your— we talked about it, I think. When you scream on your child, it will always go inside, be closed. It will never say, "Okay, who did it? 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'll 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, when 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 a dumb, you're not a dumb person. You understand how to act, how to interact, you understand, you can, you can, 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, of, of, yeah, 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 they all 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 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, Rev 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. 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, the powers that you have within, that their all mission, their all role is to connect you, to push you forward, to drive you. But now, they control me. So, this craving, this desire, this, and I cannot, 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 attribute that come from the Soul and animates the body. And it's, and it's 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 we suggest that you have negative emotions. Nothing is negative in me, but we have those emotions when they are too strong. When there 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, nothing that will push you forwards and connect you. But—

Like you said before, that's the engine, the emotions.

That's the engine, we talked about it. But now there is like a separation between the head, that it's like the driver, and the engine. The engine want to go wherever it want 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, 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, I miss opportunities, I don't know how to catch things, how to do the right things, why I distracted?

You beat yourself in the head.

You beat yourself and— 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. So 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 that 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 for 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, so I notice a pattern with 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, um, 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, um, and I'm trying to, uh, to work on that. And, and it's, it's a, it's a specific struggle because with that, you know, that literally, you know 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 back smoking, you know. So it's like a trap, and it's always right when you are 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 satisfaction, there are 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's 120 and he still calls it smoking. And my aunt, she's eating all day long, she's eating cakes and then she's thin and she's 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. Think about it. You finish 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 not a 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 a 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, you know, 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 a 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 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, it's too weak to navigate itself, as we said at the beginning. So self-satisfaction, it's like you let yourself loose. You say, okay, it's the right reasons, wasn't there from the beginning. And what are the right reasons? The right reasons are not about how I 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— oh, my camera, it's a bit— I bought a very unique camera, but it makes so many problems, the Insta— 30, 260, I think.

It moves when you move.

It was? Sorry?

It moves when you move.

Yeah, it moves with me, but, yeah, but sometimes it's too slow. And so, if I fall in love with the thing itself, and not with the way I want to see myself, and what push 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, 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 wants 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'll forget, you'll forget that you were so angry. A minute later you will see that there were nothing to be upset about, nothing to be in anxiety about, nothing to—

Exactly.

It's— You know, it's like, 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 doesn't want anything. Body is, doesn't want. I think like we are, we are built to fast, you know, because when we fast we have the most energy, we are most, more alive, and we, we are healthier, we look better, everything. We are in a better shape.

You know, it's— we should talk about it in another episode, but, 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 hitting. 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 Brak, which is a very religious place. Yeah, but the point is that they wanted, you know, the fellows from Dabak wanted to, you know, 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 being or finding unity or of discovering connection is eating together. If I visit you, what you'll say? Okay, let's fast together. You won't say let's fast together. You'll say come in. You won't invite someone because eating, it's a way of elevating relationship in life.

Exactly. And the power to fast more, because this is what I like, it's the practice that I'm really getting into. It's 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 at night, you know, whatever. And then all of a sudden you're fasting, fasting. And that's, um, I think this is something that I have days that I'm successful, and the days that I am, so I'm really proud of myself, you know. But there's some days I'm like, okay, whatever, I went to the gym, I'm gonna I'm gonna, you know, pick up a little bit more of the weight or whatever, myself excuses again. And like you said, 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 And when you eat, you feel like, you know, it's not about compensation.

It's not about compensation. I don't know why I'm doing that. I'm doing it. I think it's not compensation. It's not like it's, it's, 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, some advices. To find more pleasure, more pleasure in what, in the right way, in the not destructive way or to projectory in the way that you chose and you know it's the right way to find more pleasure in it than in the way, 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 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. Right.

But again, even the bad food, because I was able to get only good foods that I know that are in my, in my diet. These are good foods, right? But the thing is, stop on eating at a certain time. I said, okay, stop eating 6 PM. So now, you know, all of a sudden it's like 10, 11 AM, right by, right before bedtime. And you feel that, ah, you know, something, you know, a little bit, then it's, it's, it's a very strong point.

It's a very strong point. Why? Because why do we fast?

It was healthy foods. I didn't eat bad.

Yeah, but it's too much. Like, it's too much. I ate it at the wrong time.

At the wrong time. I broke my fast.

And, and this is the thing, you know, so it's, it's the same point about food.

It's you can just overeat.

It's 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. 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 not speak, you can listen. When I speak, it's hard for me to listen. When I'm in the silence mode, I can listen to others, I can listen to the creation, I can listen to life, I can, you know, 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. Nobody likes when somebody tells him or he tells himself, you are not allowed, you are forbid, you have limitation. 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 Yom Kippurim, we are like fasting, and the idea of fasting is finding the inner pleasure, is 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, the 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— 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'll 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, you know, bitter all day long. Think about it and it will fill you, fill you more enthusiastic, enthusiasm to weaken the negative emotion.

Yeah, I totally agree with you. I mean, it is a struggle, it is a worry, just like the alter-ego describes the animal soul and, and, you know, this is literally the godly soul trying to take over, but she's kind of tricks you, you know, like, like it's okay, you know, you give yourself permission to do things that don't really help you. And so, so how do we break that mechanism?

So let's think about a few steps. First one, to understand what's the reason, and it's very sudden, 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, 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 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 your 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 would find a lot of people that build, that did, but they're still not happy. Happiness and fulfilling yourself, it's about winning and standing the inner battle and discovering the right emotions and to navigate right harmonic way of animating the cell in the body. So, it's, it's one thing, it's, 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, to wake up differently this morning." I— every day that you have, you have another opportunity to win the battle with the diet. And, 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 discover unity with what he's doing, in 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, 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 say, tell you not to be sad. But everything come, comes from sadness, or from bitterness, that I'm not okay, and it's, we said one, one thing it's 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 said, "Okay, I made it." So you should always keep on, on the road, that I have still what to do, yet, 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, I'm not beating myself, I'm not going into self-depression. So, then identifying, identifying why, why do you fall down, why, what's the undesirable, what's the negative emotion that control 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 blaming it on other things until I realize it's all emotional. It's all about you, but there is this point. This is the most important point. I see that our time is, we are running out of time, but, but it's the most important point. There is always this moment, this 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, it's "ir'u," it's like a 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 it, you let this thought be a place, now everything starts. You're now, it's about, you are about to fall. It's like the moment you saw the refrigerator, 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 it 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. The smoking. So, the no should be so strong—

You give it a finger, it takes the whole hand, you know?

That's it, it's like maybe— It takes the whole hand. Maybe just that.

Pulls you all in.

That's it, that's it. Maybe just a little bit, maybe I just— No, no, it's no. And it starts with the thoughts, because you cannot, you cannot have interaction with your emotions, Unless you, let me rephrase it, your own interaction with your emotions comes with 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 to place and you see that, that's the whole ads thing starts. You see an ad and it's like, oh, maybe I need it. Oh, maybe, oh, maybe I'm going to this ad and then you start thinking about maybe I need a new car, new Tesla, but you don't need it. You don't need the Tesla. But you saw an ad, so that, like, 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 sitting in the car and the way the air is blowing, the wind and whatever. Now you see this, and now the emotions control you, and you say maybe the cake in You sit someplace and you say to yourself, "Oh, it's like, it will be alright." So, what I'm trying to say, it's, it's, it's like, identify the first minute that the thought occurs 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 other Rabbi 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. Now 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 one time, two times, five times, twenty, three hundred times, and in the hundred and one, you will succeed. So, it's like, continue on fighting every day on those things that you have a dream to succeed in. On those, non-destructive in the right way for you.

I know. Yeah. So yeah, God willing, you know, we should make serious progress with intermittent fasting. And really, it should not be— should be a lifestyle. I think that 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, be refreshed and feel refreshed. You know, you don't have to, you know, uh 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, uh, not have any more emotion.

Uh, great, great. Thank you very much, my friend. Thank you very much.

All the best today. All the best.