Latest / Financial Survival Network / Harnessing Maimonides' Timeless Wisdom for Modern Success -- Rabbi Jeffrey Katz #6027
Transcript
- 0:00By adopting a philanthropic mindset, by just being charitable, that itself can lead
- 0:07to well. That leads to great well because developing an emotional detachment for money
- 0:13is almost job one and making good financial decisions. You're listening to Carrie Lutz's
- 0:18Financial Survival Network, where you get valuable information you just can't find anywhere else
- 0:24to thrive in today's trying times. You need the Financial Survival Network now more
- 0:30than ever. Go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com and get your free newsletter and
- 0:35gift. Financial Survival Network now more than ever. And welcome you are listening
- 0:46to and watching the Financial Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie Lutz.
- 0:50Well, uh, the next guest has been on in a while, but
- 0:55we're really thrilled that he's with us now. He has a new book called
- 1:00Rules to Live By My Monodes Guide to a Wonderful Life. Talking about the
- 1:07Rabbi Jeffrey Katz Uh, Rabbi Cat's been a while, It's been years since
- 1:12we spoke last. I'm really happy to have you on to talk about this
- 1:18book. A monodes one of the key figures in Judaism. Uh, you
- 1:25know, his wisdom been got a long time a medieval philosopher. His wisdom
- 1:30still lives on, and we're fortunate to have you restate and encapsulate that wisdom.
- 1:34What do you think if somebody didn't look at anything in the book,
- 1:38they looked at one thing, what would be the best uh, what would
- 1:45be the most crucial guidance that my mododies can offer to us who are living
- 1:51You're living in a much different time. Technology, we've got, you know,
- 1:57all these things going on, wars all over the place. I guess
- 2:00that's not really different. We've always had wars all over but the world is
- 2:05a much smaller place, you know Israel with what's going on there, but
- 2:08the ability to go to different places in the world see different things. What
- 2:14is the one key takeaway from my monodies that anybody could profit by? Almost
- 2:19immediately yep, Kerrie, it's great to be here with you now. My
- 2:23monities. He lived eight hundred years ago, but the principles he set out
- 2:27are so universal and so eternal. They kind of work in every age.
- 2:30That's why you know Jewish schools throughout the world, for example, as you
- 2:35mentioned, they're boring over. My monodies work like NonStop at every major university
- 2:42they're studying my monodies because he was kind of in both worlds. He was
- 2:46in the physical world, he was the top doctor of his time, you
- 2:49know, basically personal position to the King of Egypt more or less the Sultan
- 2:54in Cairo. And also you know, one of the greatest religious philosophers and
- 3:00really spiritualists who ever lived. So he really had it in both worlds.
- 3:07And the advice that gives the fact that we're living in a in a different
- 3:12era. The reason he still studied throughout the world is because his ideas are
- 3:15still relevant. So you know, many of the rules here that I discussed
- 3:20in the book Rules to live by are so basic and you know, we'll
- 3:23see why. So you know, as an example, so one of my
- 3:27monodies maxims. You know, he's famous for a lot of expressions that we
- 3:31use all this tide. You like, give a man a fish, feed
- 3:34him for a day, teach a man to fitch feed him for a lifetime.
- 3:37That's timonities. Another one of his expressions is that, you know,
- 3:42he points to the importance of the ability to make decisions. He says,
- 3:49the risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision. Now
- 3:55as a practical maxim That's an amazingly profound idea that he's pointing to. The
- 4:02critical importance just in leading any kind of successful life having the ability and comfort
- 4:10level to make decisions. Now, decisions are not always going to be right.
- 4:14We're just human and my Mondoes is the first to recognize that. But
- 4:17just the ability to make decisions, it's so important. And when you combine
- 4:23those with a few other basic characteristics, like, for example, my mind
- 4:29that he says, you know, lose with truth and right rather than win
- 4:33with falsehood and wrong. So he points to another bathic quality, truthfulness.
- 4:41Like I mean, in politics today, in the politics riveting the country into
- 4:46two, it's mostly a function of the fact that you know, on both
- 4:48sides of the aisle, people you know, politicians like telling you transparency is
- 4:55not really the order of the day. You know in that field. You
- 4:59know, all of the problem we have, the biggest problems we have,
- 5:00how we're going to fund all these entitlements next generation. Nobody discusses them.
- 5:06They pretend they don't eat this because there's a lack of transparency. It may
- 5:11be good, you know, to fool people for the short term, but
- 5:15what does that really say in terms of one's integrity and the basic whether people
- 5:19really are going to want to deal with you. So so these basic character
- 5:25traits he points to and talks about how we need to work on, like
- 5:30the ability to be comfortable making decisions, being always truthful and trustworthy, being
- 5:36reliable. If someone just has those characteristics, they've already set them those head
- 5:43and shoulders apart all of their competition. I mean, among other things,
- 5:46that any career, that person is going to skyrocket to the top of this
- 5:50organization, almost regardless of his IQ, regardless of his guilt. That just
- 5:57those basic traits of being to make decisions, being reliable, being a trustworthy
- 6:02person, just those traits you bet yourself both far beyond your peers, that
- 6:08you're going to skyrock in in almost every any business, any spear of yours,
- 6:13personal or professional relationships with your family and friends. And that was true
- 6:18when he lived all those years. Now it's true today and will probably always
- 6:23be true. As example, so that the thing give him man of fish,
- 6:28and you feed him for a day, teach him at a fish,
- 6:30feed him for a lifetime. I heard an updated that give a man a
- 6:33gun and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank and he
- 6:36can rob the world. Oh that's a good one. That is that is
- 6:41terrific. I wish I made it up, but so right, So we're
- 6:46talking about integrity, true to oneself and true to others, and something that's
- 6:51totally devoid from all of our institutions. All of our institutions, be they
- 6:58the World Health Organization, the cbd C this, I should say, the
- 7:03you know, the Infectious Disease Department. Everything seems to be corrupted, our
- 7:10corporations corrupted the highest level. So how does the monodes wisdom help us deal
- 7:16with that? Yeah? Well, again, one of my mond thees principles
- 7:21is that let what's on your tongue be the same as what's in your heart
- 7:26and on your mind. And that's also that goes to the basic trait of
- 7:30truthfulness and reliability. And again it's going to be who are the kind of
- 7:35people that other people are going to want to deal with, both personally and
- 7:40professionally. You know, you take all these organizations, they're supposed to be
- 7:44kind of nonprofit more or less organizations there for the good of humanity, kind
- 7:48of like the idea of philanthropy, but in some ways they've turned those ideas
- 7:54on their head and they've become you know, they've become anvenues of crony capital
- 8:00and just cronyism generally working for the benefit, you know, not of everybody
- 8:05philanthropy. You know my mom that he's talks a lot about charity and again
- 8:09we talked about the event or teach a man to fish example, but there's
- 8:13so much else to it, because you know, people think of philanthropy that
- 8:18you become rich and then you go to philanthropy. Really, my mom and
- 8:22the points out it's really the opposite is the process by adopting a philanthropic mindset,
- 8:28by just being charitable, that itself can lead to well, that leads
- 8:35to great well because developing an emotional detachment for money is almost job one in
- 8:41making good financial decisions. If you're too emotionally tiught up with your money,
- 8:46you will never be able to become, you know, a person of mean
- 8:50because you have to spend money to make money. If you can't, if
- 8:52you're too close to it, you'll never make good financial decisions. The top
- 8:56virgeon will never operate on his own child because they know they're just too close
- 9:01to the situation. They can't make good decisions. So basically, by adopting
- 9:07a philanthropic mindset, even if you don't particularly have too much money, everyone
- 9:11can give something some of the time, energy, whatever little means he has.
- 9:16By adopting a philanthropic mindset and developing that emotional detachment for money, you're
- 9:22really then off to the races, and you can make excellent financial decisions,
- 9:26including a million other positives. You know, First of all, you get
- 9:30involved in causes where you're donating your time and energy to you meet all kinds
- 9:35of people. The network you wind up developing can wind up giving so many
- 9:41opportunities you never could have dreamt about. By by participating in some kind of
- 9:46worthwhile cause, you develop operational skills and managerial skills, You learn how to
- 9:50operate a budget, all of the skills that businesses will die for. So
- 9:56again, by by having a charitable mindset that itself more lead to affluence at
- 10:03wealth rather than the other way around. So it was actually so fascinating how
- 10:07that works in practice. Right, Okay, so tell us, I guess
- 10:11you've worked with people on these principles and helped bring them into their lives.
- 10:18Can you tell us some success stories here. Yeah, sure, one thing
- 10:22I do want to mention Firsus. You know my monody spelled again. He
- 10:26was great in the physical realm and man of science, but he was also
- 10:31an amazing spiritualist, and he shows us how to develop a link to God.
- 10:35And he is that that through the mind. By creating, by thinking
- 10:41correct thoughts about God, you create a tunnel up from your mind up to
- 10:46God. And it's through that tunnel that God also looks down on you and
- 10:52provides for you and watches over you. It's through that tunnel that divine providence
- 10:58occuras. God can give you ideas. In that way, there is a
- 11:01divine overflow and overflowing abundance of ideas and wisdom and love that is emanating from
- 11:09about at all time. But we have to tune ourselves. It's like a
- 11:13radio. If you're not tuned properly, you're not going to pick up anything.
- 11:18If you are tuned properly, you're going to pick up a lot.
- 11:20And you pick up that tuning by removing the static. What's the static,
- 11:24that's all the negative, the envy, the grudges, the reactivity, the
- 11:31anger. You give up all that and then you will see the sine posts
- 11:35that leads you to your best direction, and it becomes so clear to you
- 11:39at that time. But the only way you can then see them, see
- 11:43those sine posts that head for your life, is by first removing all of
- 11:48that static and all of those distractions. You know, I might sell carry
- 11:52I stumbled onto my Monomy's wisdom. I was a teenager and I was actually
- 11:58going hope for one panth over and my father just dropped this book about my
- 12:03Monody's on the dining room table. It was very typical of his strategy not
- 12:07to tell me directly to read something, but he would just kind of leave
- 12:11it, leave it lying around. And I kind of discovered that, and
- 12:15I saw that the the the I mean, the earth shaking and profound wisdom
- 12:20of that was really incredible. Really, you know, my monody has had
- 12:24a very hard life. The first half of his life he was running away
- 12:28from basically religious fanatic the almo Ads, which were an extremist Islamic sect,
- 12:33to go over Spain when he was a boy. Though the first half of
- 12:37his life he basically just was running through jungles through far Is, trying to
- 12:43escape, you know, and half of his life, half of his writings
- 12:48were done in those escapes, and he even says, you know, if
- 12:50you be a little at first here, you should know that I'm I'm on
- 12:54a boat with other people would try to run away. It's not the optimal
- 12:58writing condition. So you see little Arris here. They're all lightful. Don't
- 13:01think there're anyone else's ball, but you have to understand the circumstances them.
- 13:07But he felt a need to write about these things and share his wisdom.
- 13:11He said that if I don't share these things I've discovered and these ideas,
- 13:16They're going to die with me, he said, And I'd be like I'm
- 13:18denying someone is there her rightful inheritance? And he said, I don't want
- 13:22to do that. I want people to have these this knowledge that they need
- 13:28to be successful in these different areas. And in my own small way,
- 13:31because I've spent my life working in this area and again teaching and instructing a
- 13:37lot of people about this, I felt also a need to share these ideas
- 13:41with people. You know, especially in this day and age, when you
- 13:45know people seem to be abandoning wholesale. A lot of ideas that have worked
- 13:50pretty well, some ideas have not it's good to replace those. But you
- 13:54know, many ideas that work for people and for society, or ideas that
- 13:58it took us hundreds of years, if not thousands of years to develop.
- 14:03To think that we're going to throw them all away and come up replace them
- 14:07entirely with a new set of ideas now, and that they're all going to
- 14:11work. Great, I mean, the odds of that working are really zero.
- 14:13So we do need to go back just some ideas from the past,
- 14:18that's the great mud that are tried and true with that of worked, and
- 14:20allow them to, you know, give us what we really deserve out of
- 14:24life, and let them try our lives around. Yeah, well I can
- 14:28see your point there. And you know, certain wisdom is universal and applies
- 14:35now like it did thousands of years ago, and we see evidence of that
- 14:41all around. All right, Well, hey, tell us where do we
- 14:43find your book? How do we connect with you on the web? The
- 14:46Rabbi cats great. Thanks, So the book is available everywhere. Rules to
- 14:50Live by My Monoty's Guide to a Wonderful Life by Me by Jeffrey Kat available
- 14:56on Amazon, Barnes, and Noble Target really everywhere books are sold and the
- 15:01viewers go on Amazon, they can get into the book and get a lot
- 15:05of information about me through with those links. All right, well, we
- 15:09appreciate if you've got a question for Rabbi Cats or myself, shoot me an
- 15:11email k El at Carrie LUTs dot com. Link in the show notes to
- 15:16his site and to the Amazon bookseller page. And hey, when you're in
- 15:22Financial Survival Network dot com, please sign up for your free newsletter Rabbi Cats.
- 15:28Always a pleasure, Thanks so much, and great luck with the book.
- 15:31Thank you so much, Carrie's great being here with you. Thanks for
- 15:33listening to Carrie Lets's Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's trying times.
- 15:41For the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now
- 15:46more than ever,