By adopting a philanthropic mindset, by just being charitable, that itself can lead
to well. That leads to great well because developing an emotional detachment for money
is almost job one and making good financial decisions. You're listening to Carrie Lutz's
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Well, uh, the next guest has been on in a while, but
we're really thrilled that he's with us now. He has a new book called
Rules to Live By My Monodes Guide to a Wonderful Life. Talking about the
Rabbi Jeffrey Katz Uh, Rabbi Cat's been a while, It's been years since
we spoke last. I'm really happy to have you on to talk about this
book. A monodes one of the key figures in Judaism. Uh, you
know, his wisdom been got a long time a medieval philosopher. His wisdom
still lives on, and we're fortunate to have you restate and encapsulate that wisdom.
What do you think if somebody didn't look at anything in the book,
they looked at one thing, what would be the best uh, what would
be the most crucial guidance that my mododies can offer to us who are living
You're living in a much different time. Technology, we've got, you know,
all these things going on, wars all over the place. I guess
that's not really different. We've always had wars all over but the world is
a much smaller place, you know Israel with what's going on there, but
the ability to go to different places in the world see different things. What
is the one key takeaway from my monodies that anybody could profit by? Almost
immediately yep, Kerrie, it's great to be here with you now. My
monities. He lived eight hundred years ago, but the principles he set out
are so universal and so eternal. They kind of work in every age.
That's why you know Jewish schools throughout the world, for example, as you
mentioned, they're boring over. My monodies work like NonStop at every major university
they're studying my monodies because he was kind of in both worlds. He was
in the physical world, he was the top doctor of his time, you
know, basically personal position to the King of Egypt more or less the Sultan
in Cairo. And also you know, one of the greatest religious philosophers and
really spiritualists who ever lived. So he really had it in both worlds.
And the advice that gives the fact that we're living in a in a different
era. The reason he still studied throughout the world is because his ideas are
still relevant. So you know, many of the rules here that I discussed
in the book Rules to live by are so basic and you know, we'll
see why. So you know, as an example, so one of my
monodies maxims. You know, he's famous for a lot of expressions that we
use all this tide. You like, give a man a fish, feed
him for a day, teach a man to fitch feed him for a lifetime.
That's timonities. Another one of his expressions is that, you know,
he points to the importance of the ability to make decisions. He says,
the risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision. Now
as a practical maxim That's an amazingly profound idea that he's pointing to. The
critical importance just in leading any kind of successful life having the ability and comfort
level to make decisions. Now, decisions are not always going to be right.
We're just human and my Mondoes is the first to recognize that. But
just the ability to make decisions, it's so important. And when you combine
those with a few other basic characteristics, like, for example, my mind
that he says, you know, lose with truth and right rather than win
with falsehood and wrong. So he points to another bathic quality, truthfulness.
Like I mean, in politics today, in the politics riveting the country into
two, it's mostly a function of the fact that you know, on both
sides of the aisle, people you know, politicians like telling you transparency is
not really the order of the day. You know in that field. You
know, all of the problem we have, the biggest problems we have,
how we're going to fund all these entitlements next generation. Nobody discusses them.
They pretend they don't eat this because there's a lack of transparency. It may
be good, you know, to fool people for the short term, but
what does that really say in terms of one's integrity and the basic whether people
really are going to want to deal with you. So so these basic character
traits he points to and talks about how we need to work on, like
the ability to be comfortable making decisions, being always truthful and trustworthy, being
reliable. If someone just has those characteristics, they've already set them those head
and shoulders apart all of their competition. I mean, among other things,
that any career, that person is going to skyrocket to the top of this
organization, almost regardless of his IQ, regardless of his guilt. That just
those basic traits of being to make decisions, being reliable, being a trustworthy
person, just those traits you bet yourself both far beyond your peers, that
you're going to skyrock in in almost every any business, any spear of yours,
personal or professional relationships with your family and friends. And that was true
when he lived all those years. Now it's true today and will probably always
be true. As example, so that the thing give him man of fish,
and you feed him for a day, teach him at a fish,
feed him for a lifetime. I heard an updated that give a man a
gun and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank and he
can rob the world. Oh that's a good one. That is that is
terrific. I wish I made it up, but so right, So we're
talking about integrity, true to oneself and true to others, and something that's
totally devoid from all of our institutions. All of our institutions, be they
the World Health Organization, the cbd C this, I should say, the
you know, the Infectious Disease Department. Everything seems to be corrupted, our
corporations corrupted the highest level. So how does the monodes wisdom help us deal
with that? Yeah? Well, again, one of my mond thees principles
is that let what's on your tongue be the same as what's in your heart
and on your mind. And that's also that goes to the basic trait of
truthfulness and reliability. And again it's going to be who are the kind of
people that other people are going to want to deal with, both personally and
professionally. You know, you take all these organizations, they're supposed to be
kind of nonprofit more or less organizations there for the good of humanity, kind
of like the idea of philanthropy, but in some ways they've turned those ideas
on their head and they've become you know, they've become anvenues of crony capital
and just cronyism generally working for the benefit, you know, not of everybody
philanthropy. You know my mom that he's talks a lot about charity and again
we talked about the event or teach a man to fish example, but there's
so much else to it, because you know, people think of philanthropy that
you become rich and then you go to philanthropy. Really, my mom and
the points out it's really the opposite is the process by adopting a philanthropic mindset,
by just being charitable, that itself can lead to well, that leads
to great well because developing an emotional detachment for money is almost job one in
making good financial decisions. If you're too emotionally tiught up with your money,
you will never be able to become, you know, a person of mean
because you have to spend money to make money. If you can't, if
you're too close to it, you'll never make good financial decisions. The top
virgeon will never operate on his own child because they know they're just too close
to the situation. They can't make good decisions. So basically, by adopting
a philanthropic mindset, even if you don't particularly have too much money, everyone
can give something some of the time, energy, whatever little means he has.
By adopting a philanthropic mindset and developing that emotional detachment for money, you're
really then off to the races, and you can make excellent financial decisions,
including a million other positives. You know, First of all, you get
involved in causes where you're donating your time and energy to you meet all kinds
of people. The network you wind up developing can wind up giving so many
opportunities you never could have dreamt about. By by participating in some kind of
worthwhile cause, you develop operational skills and managerial skills, You learn how to
operate a budget, all of the skills that businesses will die for. So
again, by by having a charitable mindset that itself more lead to affluence at
wealth rather than the other way around. So it was actually so fascinating how
that works in practice. Right, Okay, so tell us, I guess
you've worked with people on these principles and helped bring them into their lives.
Can you tell us some success stories here. Yeah, sure, one thing
I do want to mention Firsus. You know my monody spelled again. He
was great in the physical realm and man of science, but he was also
an amazing spiritualist, and he shows us how to develop a link to God.
And he is that that through the mind. By creating, by thinking
correct thoughts about God, you create a tunnel up from your mind up to
God. And it's through that tunnel that God also looks down on you and
provides for you and watches over you. It's through that tunnel that divine providence
occuras. God can give you ideas. In that way, there is a
divine overflow and overflowing abundance of ideas and wisdom and love that is emanating from
about at all time. But we have to tune ourselves. It's like a
radio. If you're not tuned properly, you're not going to pick up anything.
If you are tuned properly, you're going to pick up a lot.
And you pick up that tuning by removing the static. What's the static,
that's all the negative, the envy, the grudges, the reactivity, the
anger. You give up all that and then you will see the sine posts
that leads you to your best direction, and it becomes so clear to you
at that time. But the only way you can then see them, see
those sine posts that head for your life, is by first removing all of
that static and all of those distractions. You know, I might sell carry
I stumbled onto my Monomy's wisdom. I was a teenager and I was actually
going hope for one panth over and my father just dropped this book about my
Monody's on the dining room table. It was very typical of his strategy not
to tell me directly to read something, but he would just kind of leave
it, leave it lying around. And I kind of discovered that, and
I saw that the the the I mean, the earth shaking and profound wisdom
of that was really incredible. Really, you know, my monody has had
a very hard life. The first half of his life he was running away
from basically religious fanatic the almo Ads, which were an extremist Islamic sect,
to go over Spain when he was a boy. Though the first half of
his life he basically just was running through jungles through far Is, trying to
escape, you know, and half of his life, half of his writings
were done in those escapes, and he even says, you know, if
you be a little at first here, you should know that I'm I'm on
a boat with other people would try to run away. It's not the optimal
writing condition. So you see little Arris here. They're all lightful. Don't
think there're anyone else's ball, but you have to understand the circumstances them.
But he felt a need to write about these things and share his wisdom.
He said that if I don't share these things I've discovered and these ideas,
They're going to die with me, he said, And I'd be like I'm
denying someone is there her rightful inheritance? And he said, I don't want
to do that. I want people to have these this knowledge that they need
to be successful in these different areas. And in my own small way,
because I've spent my life working in this area and again teaching and instructing a
lot of people about this, I felt also a need to share these ideas
with people. You know, especially in this day and age, when you
know people seem to be abandoning wholesale. A lot of ideas that have worked
pretty well, some ideas have not it's good to replace those. But you
know, many ideas that work for people and for society, or ideas that
it took us hundreds of years, if not thousands of years to develop.
To think that we're going to throw them all away and come up replace them
entirely with a new set of ideas now, and that they're all going to
work. Great, I mean, the odds of that working are really zero.
So we do need to go back just some ideas from the past,
that's the great mud that are tried and true with that of worked, and
allow them to, you know, give us what we really deserve out of
life, and let them try our lives around. Yeah, well I can
see your point there. And you know, certain wisdom is universal and applies
now like it did thousands of years ago, and we see evidence of that
all around. All right, Well, hey, tell us where do we
find your book? How do we connect with you on the web? The
Rabbi cats great. Thanks, So the book is available everywhere. Rules to
Live by My Monoty's Guide to a Wonderful Life by Me by Jeffrey Kat available
on Amazon, Barnes, and Noble Target really everywhere books are sold and the
viewers go on Amazon, they can get into the book and get a lot
of information about me through with those links. All right, well, we
appreciate if you've got a question for Rabbi Cats or myself, shoot me an
email k El at Carrie LUTs dot com. Link in the show notes to
his site and to the Amazon bookseller page. And hey, when you're in
Financial Survival Network dot com, please sign up for your free newsletter Rabbi Cats.
Always a pleasure, Thanks so much, and great luck with the book.
Thank you so much, Carrie's great being here with you. Thanks for
listening to Carrie Lets's Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's trying times.
For the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now
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