Episode 116 - 70 Years: Are You Using Your Limited Time Wisely?

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Ever feel like you're running on a hamster wheel, chasing money and success while time slips through your fingers? This episode of The Trust Factor tackles our complex relationship with time, money, and control—revealing why these pursuits often leave us exhausted and unfulfilled.

King Solomon wisely observed that we have just 70 useful years on this planet. At 50, I've experienced firsthand how quickly decades can vanish. Even during vacation or in retirement homes, time accelerates rather than slows. This reality check demands we examine what truly matters and how we allocate our precious hours.

The episode explores a powerful parable of a peasant experiencing a train for the first time. As the train naturally accelerates, he pounds on its walls, believing his actions are causing it to speed up—wasting energy when he could simply relax and enjoy the ride. This mirrors our modern existence perfectly. We attribute success to our careful planning and tireless efforts, failing to recognize a higher power at work.

Through personal stories from my factory experience, I share how stepping away from problems—even when they seem urgent—often leads to better solutions. Repeatedly, I've discovered that surrendering control and trusting in something greater results in more efficiency and peace than my anxious micromanagement ever could.

Ready to stop banging on the walls of your metaphorical train? This episode offers practical wisdom for living with greater trust, purpose, and contentment. Subscribe now and discover how relinquishing control might be the key to reclaiming your time and finding true fulfillment.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 0 (00:00):
Good morning everybody and welcome to the
Trust Factor.
I want to reiterate that thereare some technical difficulties.
I am away, I'm out of town,internet is sporadic and some
technical difficulties, soplease bear with me.
Volume might be coming througha little loud or a little low or
a little bit crunchy.
Whatever it may be Today's thelast day Hopefully I get to put
this one up.
We are continuing with thisconversation about people and

(00:23):
money.
We could talk about thisforever, because people chase
money forever.
You know, I was reflecting onthe fact that tomorrow's Friday,
that I've been away and I'mback in the office again
tomorrow, and the week goes byso quickly.
But I'm on vacation.
You would think that time goesby so slowly because I'm really
not being productive, butreality is it doesn't matter.

(00:44):
Because I'm really not beingproductive, but reality is it
doesn't matter.
You can visit somebody in anold age home and they will tell
you that time is flying soquickly, but they're sitting
there in a bed looking at thewall all day long.
Time still flies for them, myfriends, it's a reminder that we
blink on Sunday and it's Friday.
I blinked when I was 18.
I'm now 50.
The message, my friends, is thattime moves too quickly.

(01:08):
Before you know it, your end isnear.
King Solomon, the wisest of allmen, said the days of our lives
are 70 years.
We understand that to mean ouruseful lives are 70 years.
We have 70 years on this planetto be able to impact the proper
change that we were broughthere to implement.

(01:31):
We have 70 years, after whichwe are out of time.
Your useful life has basicallyrun out.
You're just living out yourdays.
After 70 years, he says, ifyou're strong, stronger mind and
stronger body, then he extendsthat to 80 years.
If you're strong and you'reexceptional, you may have

(01:52):
another 10 years, but for allintents and purposes it's 70
years.
My friends, I'm 50 already.
Time flies.
We do not have enough time todo all the things that we want
to do.
Procrastination is your numberone enemy, my friends.
Move forward on these ideas.
Don't delay.
Don't put them aside.
Don't just write them off asnice ideas that you're going to

(02:14):
forget about one day, or you'llmove on and deal with something
else, and life will get in theway.
Step up and make that change,my friends.
You're not going to get anymore time back.
It is your number one commodity.
Use it wisely, maximize it.
Don't live in fear, becausefear will slow you down and
bring you to a grinding halt.
Just move forward.

(02:35):
There are plenty of peoplearound you.
If you're being intellectuallyhonest with yourselves and you
see the Jewish community, theOrthodox Jewish community, and
you know people in thatcommunity and you find yourself
having conversations with them,seeing how they live, being an
observer, you will be.
And if you're honest withyourselves, you will confirm for
yourself that these people areholding on to something very

(02:56):
precious.
They are living a life of realmeaning and purpose.
Obviously, we have ourchallenges.
We are human beings.
At the end of the day, we havea bigger evil inclination than
people who are not religious.
We've said that before that thebigger you are and the more
you're trying to do the rightthing and you're trying to be
righteous, the more the evilinclination comes at you.

(03:16):
So if somebody is in thereligious community, know that
they are being challenged by agreater evil inclination than
you are.
If you are not religious andyet content, these people do not
fly off the handles Again.
There's always exceptions toevery rule, but by and large,
compared to non-religioussecular individuals, you find

(03:39):
that these people are much moreat ease, they are much better
put together, they have clarityon so many issues.
So the reality is there issomething there and it is great,
and if you go after it, youwill find it.
What I'm giving you over herethrough Abenu Bachia, are the
teachings, the common practicalexamples of how to make this a

(04:00):
reality in your life.
So please move forward on theseideas, my friends.
We all need money and to acertain extent we all chase it
at different times of our lives,sometimes more, sometimes less.
All chase it at different timesof our life, sometimes more,
sometimes less.
But it behooves us tounderstand our emotional
connection to it and tounderstand where it comes from,
and then we will start to live alife that is so much more

(04:24):
enjoyable than one who doesn'thave these ideas.
Let's move forward, and I thinkI'm going to give you an
example of that in the comingparagraphs.
It says sometimes you will findamong the money seekers someone
who has achieved his completefinancial goal by means of one
of the ways mentioned above Okay.
Or someone who achieved it byways of inheritance or some

(04:46):
similar effortless means.
Such a person may think thatthe means ie either his efforts
or the inheritance that he got,or wherever the money came from,
were needed in order to bringhim his financial success, and
that without these means hewould not have gained any of the
wealth that came to him.
He thus praises the meansinstead of the real cause, which

(05:09):
we all know to be God.
Another example, which I thinkis probably the best one, is
given by the art scroll overhere, and it says a peasant once
visited the big city for thefirst time, and they showed him
a train telling him that it wascapable of transporting
passengers much faster than thehorse and buggy that he was used
to.
He sat in the train and itpulled out of the station, but,

(05:32):
as is invariably the case, itproceeded slowly at first until
it could pick up steam.
Seeing that the train wasmoving slowly, the peasant
thought this train doesn't movefast at all.
So he got up and began bangingon the walls of the car, just as
he was so accustomed to doingto his horse.
The more he hit the walls, thefaster the train went.

(05:52):
So he thought the horse and thetrain are the same.
The proof was, in his efforts,that they yielded apparent
results, which namely were thatthe train moved faster.
In other words, he thought thatit was because he was banging
on the walls of this train thatthe train started to pick up
speed.
Little did he know that had hejust continued to sit in his

(06:15):
spot, he would have enjoyed thesame speed without the effort.
My friends, it might be hard foryou to connect to these ideas,
but they're very practical andthey're very simple.
Today we live in much moreadvanced times, so I'm sure you
can find a more time-appropriateexample, but this one fits the
bill perfectly.
How many times are we guilty ofdoing this very thing?

(06:35):
We think that it's our effort.
We chose the right stock, wemade the right decision, we
invested in the right business,we closed the right deal, we
hung around the right people andat the end of the day, it's
just like this individual.
He's thinking that he reallythinks that banging on the wall
of this train is making thething go faster because that's
what he's accustomed to, but hedoesn't realize that he's losing

(06:58):
out big time, that he'sexpending all of this effort
when he could actually just puthis feet up and relax.
You understand, that's what Ijust tried to explain to you at
the beginning of this podcast.
If you want to work hard.
You can work hard If you wantto break your back.
He will allow you to break yourback.

(07:19):
In fact, he will enable you, hewill put you in the
opportunities to break your back.
I've seen it in my life time andagain.
I'll remind you that I run afactory.
I'm supposed to run it from thefront of the office, but
oftentimes I find myself in theback fixing equipment, because
I'm a technically inclinedindividual.
That doesn't mean I want to beback there.

(07:40):
Believe me, my life is a loteasier when those machines are
doing what they're supposed todo.
But in my early days, when Ididn't know better, when I was
this guy who was banging on thewalls of the train, I was in the
back fixing equipment.
I was in the back maintainingequipment and God would say to

(08:00):
me oftentimes I would see thetest clear as day.
Give you a small example.
I would have mincha.
We would have afternoon prayersat two o'clock, not far away
from me, but I would get soengrossed in fixing a machine
that two o'clock would come andI would have a choice to either
sit and continue to repair themachine or break and go crazy.
Pray Menchah, do somethingmeaningful and then come back

(08:23):
and resume what I was doingbefore, every single time,
without fail.
My friends, I promise you, if Imade the decision to stick
around and fix that piece ofequipment, another piece of
equipment would break down.
I wouldn't be able to fix theone that I was working on.
There would be so many thingsthat would come at me.
I would get inundated because Iwas there.

(08:45):
My staff would come to me andtell me about all the other
things that they want me to lookat.
Invariably, it was the exactsame thing.
However, if I stopped and Ipulled myself away from the
machine and I went to pray, Iwould come back and I would find
nine times out of 10 that mystaff had already repaired the
machine, that they already knewwhat the problem was and I was

(09:09):
really just getting in their way, or that I would come back and
I would have thought to myselfon the way there or on the way
back of the thing that I wasmissing out on because I was
hyper-focused by being at thatmachine, and I would come back
and fix it in no time.
And I'm not talking about theexception, my friends, this is
every single time.

(09:29):
So today, when something likethis happens, I look up to the
heavens and I say Hashem, yougot this, you got this, and I
don't run to the back.
I wait and, unlike theindividual on the train, I stop
myself from going to the backand I allow time to pass,
because one of multiple thingswill happen Either my staff will

(09:50):
fix it or it will fix itself.
It will correct itself, or Iwill have had time to think
about what needs to happen so Ican go back there After I've
asked God for help, because Ialways do.
Every single time I come to FixA Machine, I say a little prayer
and that prayer helps me, likeyou would not believe, to make
sure that I get through itquickly, because he doesn't want

(10:11):
me back there, just like hedoesn't want the guy banging on
the walls to try and make thetrain go faster, because it's
foolish.
He doesn't want me back therewasting my time spinning my
wheels.
He could easily have it runningback there perfectly without my
interference.
My friends, it's a recipe foryou to enjoy your life.
You have to give up thatcontrol.

(10:33):
That is the hardest part.
We're living a life where we'rebeing told that we need to
maintain control or fear for ourlives.
It's foolish.
Give over control to the onewho loves you and is capable of
doing everything that you need,and more.
My friends, have an amazing day.
We'll chat again tomorrow.