Dr Craig Goodman Three Laws For Better Life

hello my name is Dr Craig Goodman I'm here at H brute to speak to you about Torah and psychology and today I wanted to use um three laws as tools to help us to develop a better way of thinking and living um in every aspect of our life whether it's spiritual or economic um education family now there are several laws but let's start with the first three and these laws I was a bit inspired by um a man by the name of Brian Tracy he uh I basically he integrated these laws but they exist in a lot of places now the first law that we want to mention is the law of belief or as we would call it the law

of amuna now what's so important about this law now first of all it's the first law it's the most important law according to the uh priority you know the hierarchy number one the law of belief or law of imuna this entails everything that we think about what we believe is really a collection of thoughts and bits of information based on previous experiences based on things that we've heard or been told or learned based on our own premonition or or expectations and so on and so forth so belief is something that is although the the definition can be a bit vague when I believe in something I

believe in it because I have a reason to believe in those things or there's something that's important to me it's a collection of these thoughts let like for example if I believe that the people uh there are going to be people who are going to see this lecture then then hence I'm going to sit here and give this lecture because I believe that later on there may be some people that will want to hear it so based on my beliefs that in the past I've said things that were maybe a little bit interesting or I had something important to share and people were interested in hearing what I had to say So

based on those previous experiences I believe I have a amuna that this lecture will not be any different now obviously we don't have control over what happens uh in fact uh one time I heard a RAV um ask a kahal a a audience what is free choice and several people raised their hands and answered the free choice is really basically you decide what you're going to do in life or what what happens to you in life but it's not really true most of the most significant things the majority of the significant things that occur in our life are are not under our control usually we don't choose where we're

born uh we don't choose how we look or if we have certain limitations whether it be physical or mental all kinds of things that may happen around us I mean there may be a a natural disaster these are things that we don't have free choice about so if we don't have control over these things then what is free choice free choice is how we React to what happens in our life how do we accept those things in our life what do we do with them that's our free choice that's the choice that we have now let's go back to the law of belief the law of belief just like any other law it's for good and for bad

now if I believe in something good then that's what's going to happen if I believe in something bad that's what's going to happen so the law of belief says that everything you believe in with feeling becomes your reality now why do I add this aspect of feeling well it's very important if somebody can you know has a desire say they want to get a job or they want to succeed but in something so they keep saying it and repeating it over and over to themselves they keep thinking about it all the time but it may not really happen because underneath that person is does not have that feeling or that

as we say cavana that intention that intent that he has an intention in his for mind in his m in his regular thinking but in the thinking underneath that he may think something completely different so we have to be completely sure for example when someone goes to pray you go to a a SCH a temple you pray a bit canet and obviously you get mitzel points you get uh credit for praying with a minion you get credit for praying to Hashem of course it's valuable in the eyes of Hashem but if you pray without cavana without intent you simply just read the words it's obviously less uh powerful the prayer

it's less effective and that's really one of our challenges because we are creatures of habit and we constantly read these prayers over and over every day so we habitually start to read them and often times you could be reading the the prayer book looking through and saying the prayer even thinking what the prayer means but not really having not intending that very same moment you may be thinking about picking up the dry cleaning or what to buy uh you need to buy milk and eggs for the house so it's very important that we try to keep this in mind and that we know that if I don't try to get my

feelings involved which is really what we're talking about the kavana I don't feel the prayer I don't connect to it with my heart with My Soul then it's just somewhat empty words and that goes for anything so in terms of the law of belief I have to believe in these things that I want to happen in my life but I have to believe in them with feeling I can't just coldly say it to myself over and over and hope that it'll sink in eventually okay the second law is called the law of expectation or cpia in Hebrew now what does this law entail basically it's got two levels on the one hand much like the

law of belief I have to expect that what I believe or what I want to happen will happen Okay I expect it to come true or I expect it to or not come true and this is my belief and I expect this to happen but in addition to that as they say when we do aasem when we do uh when we follow hashem's will we have to work for it we have to do things to do Mitzvah you can't just sit around passively and not do anything right so we have to make an effort we have to go and do things so I have to expect myself to do those things that I want to do so what is the law of expectation saying that we have to

literally generate expectations from ourselves every day that will allow us to come closer to those goals and beliefs that we have and that means to just keep trying and keep trying and keep trying until you succeed but I have to expect myself to do everything in my power to achieve that the third law is the law of attraction okay now there's been a lot of things written about this law and several books that came out it was a very popular concept for last few years but the Torah long before all those places talked about it now let me give you a uh reference in a moment but first let me

explain what is the law of attraction basically the Law of Attraction says that we're like magnets we all have kind of a electromagnetic field or energy field around us and we all have our the fact that we're Spiritual Beings based on our thoughts and our desires we have the propensity or the ability to attract into our lives the things that we believe in and that we expect law one and law two so likewise if I believe in something or expect something good to happen then I'm going to attract that into my life life and on the reverse if I expect something bad to happen or I don't expect

something good to happen that also will be my reality in the end and I will expect it to or not to happen for good or for bad now the Law of Attraction means that we have the ability to pull in to attract people and events and things and occurrences into our lives that are parallel with what we think I gave several lectures about this and I talked about how the thoughts actually create Angels this is the marha from the gor in the tractate makot uh the 10th page we discussed that that the way the person wants to go he will be led but how will he be led by the thoughts that he has or the types

of thoughts that he has so if my thoughts are negative obviously I'm going to create negative things in my life whereas on the on the reverse if my thoughts are positive I'm going to bring in and attract positive things into my life that's very important now the the gamorra talks about these angels actually helping us creating these Angels by our thoughts every time we have a thought we create an angel so these angels are literally going out in front of us and opening doors and moving roadblocks and opening the way for us ping the way for what or what we don't want to do for good and for bad

now there's um in the gamorra in uh the third chapter in mued Katan in the tractate mo Katan it talks about a mother who loses a son now this mother was so sad and so depressed and so distraught from this uh passing of her son that she just cried and cried and cried and was miserable and I mean even after the the designated period of mour which is is we say the first three days is a period of intense mourning that we're supposed to cry we're supposed to let out all our feelings then the next four days it's a little less but it's also supposed to be intensive but we're supposed to lower at a

notch and then for 30 days and then for a year this is the process of mourning it's all happens systematic and and step by step but also we have to know that everything is from Hashem and when something happens a tragedy we may not understand why it happens or to what purpose but we have to try to accept it as I said said we have to are part of our free will we have to decide how we are going to respond to this particular event now if I choose to respond negatively if I think negatively if I believe in negative things I expect negative things obviously I'm going to track these negative things

into my life and if I don't if I think on the converse positive things I'm going to attract these positive things into my life now let's go back to this reference this mother was crying so much that not only one son died but another son died and then another and then another until all her son died and she was so distraught and so miserable that she herself eventually passed away now what are we supposed to learn from this gor Rashi says something very very important he says um what does that mean translated anyone who's attracted orra gets attracted to suffering s the suffering is attracted

to him he will that suffering He will draw that suffering to him that's what the gamor is saying that the more that I have sadness and negative thinking the more I draw that sadness and negative thinking into my life the more I am responsible I as a person have the responsibility and the power to change what I feel and what I think and when I say I I mean we all of us I'm speaking in the first person to give you an example but the verse the the converse is true if I have great happiness and great joy and great love then I have this incredible ability to draw these things to me to draw

positive experiences have you ever had an experience where you you learn something and suddenly you start seeing it everywhere or noticing it or you learned a a darar Torah a uh something in terms of uh a Torah uh a new thing in terms of your Torah learning and then suddenly you start to notice that everywhere you go or you start to see it in a lot of different places we are attracting that it's not only just because I'm now aware of it and I'm starting to pay attention to it but literally we are attracting these things into our lives so the more that I'm happy the more that I attract

positive things there there was a story my ra I have a a ra who was a Riva ra laser that every R he tells a story he tells a story about two uh neighbors that literally grew up next to one another they went to the same schools or yeshivot they went to the same col for learning for Torah learning they made the same salary they gave the same staka I mean everything was literally even Steven I mean they literally were the same all throughout their lives when they um after 120 years they went up to to the heavens one of them comes in and he had a great reception and he's got I mean until here of

of of of Merit and and and credit for what he's done the other friend had literally half of what he had and the friend came and started complaining he says hey what what's going on here how come he gets twice of the the reward as me and he started literally itemizing going down the list saying yeah I did everything I did we studied the same we did the same we gave the same Stu I mean everything was exactly the same and so the Angels they said to him you're right everything was the same the difference is that everything that he did and you did he did with great joy with Sim with happiness so

every time we do something obviously we're going to get credit for it or it's going to have some positive impact but all the more if we do it with kavana with intent with thought with belief and with love the more that we do that the more that we think positive and the more we have those that type of thinking it becomes a habit a good habit a positive habit of thinking positive of thinking in a way that I look to give other people joy as well that I can inspire people just by the way I think just by talking to someone I can we can all make an impact and share that that happiness even just by

smiling smiling is so important as uh r rati a very renowned speaker once said when you smile it's an act of kindness other people see this smile so we have to really try and look for the good look for the positive believe in good things and try to attract only Holiness and love and joy into our lives and try to do whatever we do with great joy and happiness because if not it's a waste and if you think about it this moment right now that's passing is the most valuable moment in the entire world because all the money and all the influence cannot bring that moment back once it's gone how how we

use that moment or every one of those moments or those Collective moments in our lives that's really up to us thank you and may you have only joy and positive thoughts thank you