How to become a SUPERSTAR! Motivational

1:28They're like, oh, kaparat avonot Hashem, what kind of sins have I made to have to give this tzedakah? Ah, ilano, ilano. A guy gets $18, he wants to kill himself. So yeah, it's good that he doesn't get angry. It's good that he's smart. It's good. But the fact that he's stingy means he has a little bit of nasty things on him. He has to fix it. A little bit of lichluch. so, but you have to use that one character trait and build on it. First and foremost, every one of us knows something that we're good at—something that people compliment us for. They say, "Oh yeah, you know, you're very creative. You are smart; you are this; you are that." You know, people always tend to tell you certain things, or you feel... About yourself. Listen, I may not be this, I may not be that, I may not be this, but I know that I am X. Whatever that is. Start learning about that middah. Start learning about that character trait and really start comparing yourself and where you are with this character trait to the ideal situation. You start learning that you're not as good as you think, first of all.

2:56But even more so, you can build on it. It's much easier to build on a foundation than on nothing. So start building on that. Start developing it. If you're extra funny, I don't necessarily recommend starting to learn jokes, but you get my point. Start learning how to use humor in a positive way that's going to improve people's lives, not just make fun of people. Start using your intellect to learn. holy things instead of Toevah Hashem. So build on the character trait that you have until you get to a point where you feel very, very confident that this is a character trait. You are as good as you can be. Then move on to the next one. Then move on to the next character trait that you know you're terrible in. You're a typical Israeli that gets angry as soon as you realize that your fly is open.

3:56As soon as your kid gets in the way of you leaving the house, you get angry. As soon as your wife says something and you can't hear it, you get angry. So, you have an anger problem. That's the one you have to work on next, my friend. Why? Because if we leave this world, chas v'shalom, without working on that mitzvah, we're going to show up to Shabbat and be identified as the idol worshiper from Boca Raton. You got angry every day. Every time you get angry, it's considered idol worship. You have a problem. So you have to start working on anger. How do I stop being angry? And it's very, very difficult, but you have to work on it, and so on and so forth. But the hiddush here is that Chazal are telling us, Rabbeinu Yonah and the Me'iri are telling us, that perfection in one area is preferable to partial success in multiple areas. Meaning, you perfect one middah, it's much better than you being decent at a bunch of them. Which is completely opposite to what I've ever learned in my life from self-help books and other things. They usually tell you, you should know a little bit about everything. A lot of people, I say many people, pretend like they're smart. How? First of all, they use big words. They don't really know what they mean, but they use big words.

5:27So sometimes what do they do to learn these big words? I've actually had employees like this and people that have come to my door, and they use these big words. I ask them, "What do you mean?" because I don't know, and they explain it to me. Sometimes I actually did know, or sometimes I'll just check, and it doesn't mean what they think. But what they do is, because they are trying to sound smart, they start learning from the dictionary. Instead of learning it from a book, they learn from the dictionary. It's not exactly the ideal way of learning. big words. You just learn big words that people use. Nonetheless, many people try to, or feel like they're even smart because they know a lot of different subjects, but only a little bit about many of them. So they can hold a conversation. This is actually very common amongst the current generation, the millennials. There's a wealth of information on the internet. Every millennial, every young kid You know, they spend 80% of their day on the internet, and they read a bunch of different things, so they feel like they know everything because they know a little bit about everything. They can hold a conversation for, you know, 15 minutes, an hour about anything. But if you ask them about any real skills they have, many of them don't possess any skill sets. You ask them if they can, you know, wake up and be at work by 8 o'clock in the morning, and many of them can't.

6:51So, it's better to think like the Torah. The Torah is telling you to first be a master of one, instead of being a jack of all trades. You have to be a master of one, excel in one major character trait. Why? Why this one character trait? Because of the whole concept and teaching that we got from Mount Sinai, which is... Once you have a character trait that's strong, that's the foundation that's going to encourage you to build another one. Because now that you've excelled in the midah (character trait) of dealing with money, you have zero desire for money. You care less. To you, it's purely paper. To you, it's purely a hammer, like a tool. Someone needs money. You don't negotiate. Just talk. This is what it is. Sounds fair. Fine. Good luck to you. Whatever I deserve, Hashem is going to give me. You're not wasting valuable Torah time negotiating with people. You're not wasting valuable Torah time searching to save three dollars.

8:05You know that whatever you deserve, Hashem is going to give you. And in reality, it's just money. The guy says he wants 400; you give him 400. Okay, so you can get it for 380. Okay, so you can get it for 420. But who cares? It's money. It's a tool. Okay, so I could smash the nail this way, or I could smash it that way. It's going to get there. Fine, let's just do it. Move on, move on, move on. It's just paper. It's not something you're connected to. You're not constantly thinking about it or talking about it. You're not making your life's decisions because money is such a big yetzer hara in your life. Oh, yeah, you want to have, you want to get tefillin? Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. Let's, I need tefillin. Okay, great. So I'll get you tefillin. Which one do you want? Oh, they cost money? Yeah, I mean, we're not really at a level where, you know, we get manna from shamayim or tefillin from shamayim. People make these. It takes a year to make a pair of tefillin. If you want to get decent tefillin, it's going to cost you some money. I don't know, a little bar mitzvah boy is going to buy a $400-$500 pair of tefillin. Someone who is a grown-up usually spends $1,000-$2,000 on a serious pair of tefillin. Do you want to get the bar mitzvah boy's $400 tefillin? Chazak u'baruch. But if you're 35 years old, you shouldn't really be getting a $400 pair of tefillin unless you absolutely have no money.

9:22But if you have a regular job, you make $60,000, $70,000 a year, you should spend a little bit more than $400 on tefillin. It's your direct line to Hashem. I mean, let's start thinking about it. It's not a beeper. You spend $800 on your phone without asking questions. You stand in line for a week to get the newest iPhone for $1,000. But Tefillin, oh, come on, $1,000? Do you have something cheaper? Yeah, I have something cheaper, but it's 30 years old, buddy. You made $150,000 last year. What's wrong with you? So, if money controls your life, you have a problem. You have a serious, serious problem. Somebody tells you, listen, we're raising money for some type of chesed, for kiruv, for helping people, for this, for sefer Torah, whatever it is. Oh, yeah, yeah, and you give $20 like you just gave your lung. What about the $400,000 portfolio you have? What, it's all in Google? Take $20, tweak a few thousand dollars out of it. You can't take the money with you.

10:33When you're so close to money, it'll be very hard for you to give it. Why? Because if you love money, you're never going to want to give it. No person in history that loved money was ever generous, at least not for the right reasons. So now, the next question should be, how do you explain all of these people that are rich? You know, they love money more than anybody because they still work even after they have a billion dollars. How do you explain that they give so much? It's a good question. The real answer is there's a benefit to give. There's a tax benefit to give. So, in essence, they either give it to the hospital as charity or to save the dolphins charity or something. Or to save a butterfly from being extinct. They either give it to them or they pay it to the IRS. So, might as well give it to the butterfly and look good in the media, like I'm a tzaddik.

11:36So, it's very important that once you've overcome this middah, once you've gotten to a point where you're no longer cheap, you're no longer angry, you're no longer whatever that middah is, you've excelled, you're a superstar in this middah, you've got a lot to work on because there are many middot, but you have one. that can serve as your foundation, both to get to the next level and to work on the next one. Plus, it serves as your foundation to stay close to Hashem in case, chas v'shalom, you fall in your teshuvah.