TRANSCRIPT
*Transcripts are auto-generated and reviewed for accuracy, but there may be some errors in punctuation or words. Listen to the podcast at https://rabbidaniellapin.libsyn.com/ for clarification
The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Find And Destroy The Bad Idea Threatening Your Finances & Family
Date: 12/29/23 Length: 30:48
Daniel Lapin 0:00
Welcome to the Rabbi Daniel Lapin Show. Welcome each and every one of you happy warriors. Thank you for being part of the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show. And thank you for helping get the word around about the show. That is always appreciated. And here we focus on the things that you really care about. Things that have to do with the five F's, your family, which means all your intimate close relationships, your finances, everything to do with your money, your your friendships, your social, civic and political lives, your connections, that are not family and not financial, and your fitness, all things having to do with your health. And, and finally, everything having to do with faith, everything having to do with your relationship with the intangible world of the spiritual. That's what we focus on on the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show the things that really matter in your life, and the things that you as a discerning and wise, happy warrior, the things you realize, are important in your own life, I appreciate that. And we'd love it if you subscribe. So go ahead and take care of that. If you haven't already done it, do subscribe to the podcast, I'd appreciate that. And also, you might want to think about whether to become a happy warrior whether to formally join our community of happy warriors help to encourage others as they proceed on their journey, which is the same journey as yours, a journey onwards and upwards to improve all of the five F's at the same time. And so we definitely want you to think about joining us and becoming encouraged by others, as well as helping to encourage others, and you got to be happy warriors.com. That's right, we happy warriors.com. And that's who we are. So give that a shot. And here we are, I'm preparing this as we are very soon about to welcome the year 2024. And that means it's a time for awareness of the future awareness of ways in which we can change the coming year, the whole idea of New Year's resolutions, there's a lot to it, that whole idea of the passage of time being cyclical rather than linear. It's not just one long railway line stretching forth to the horizon. Now there's a cyclical quality to it. And so here the year comes back, if you like 12 lunar cycles, and or one rotation of the Earth around the moon coming back to the same position, you know, roughly 360 days in case of the Sun 365 In the case of the Moon 355. But whatever system you use, you recognize that the arrival of a new year, you know, you might be part of a culture that recognizes new yarn and other data altogether, it doesn't matter what else whenever you become aware that it is another year, the idea of a New Year's resolution is never far from mine, the realization that it is an opportunity to make next year better than this year, you know, how do we do it?
Daniel Lapin 3:44
Well, we've we've we've got to take certain actions. And in taking a certain action, I also mean sometimes that is in the negative sense, right? In, in the world of physics, for instance, we speak about acceleration, when I put my foot on the gas in my car goes from 40 miles an hour to 70 miles an hour. That is acceleration. When I press my foot on the brake, and the car now drops its speed from 70 miles an hour to 40 miles an hour. You could say it's deceleration. But you could also say it's negative acceleration. That you know, that's that's all it is. And so the same is exactly true over here. There are things that we need to do in order to make tomorrow better than yesterday. And they're also things we should stop doing. How long would it take you to think of three things that you should stop doing that your life would improve dramatically? If when 2024 kicks off for the whole year? 2024 You did not do these three things. Do you think you could make a list of three things that would make your life better if you refrain from doing them if you restrain yourself from doing them? Yeah, I know I could and likewise, can you think of three things that if you started doing would make your life better? Yeah. And invariably, they fall into the categories of the five F's. Invariably, they have something to do with finances, or fitness, or friendships or family or faith. And so yes, these are all things that we can easily and dramatically improve our lives. Here's one, and that is getting rid of bad ideas out of your life. Now, you know already that, I believe that whenever you hear words like research shows, experts say, studies reveal, scientists announce, you know that I encourage extreme skepticism, you know, run it by your own foolproof garbage detector. And, and when we don't do that, meticulously and diligently, we run the risk of allowing bad ideas into our lives. You know, sometimes you listen to a tune being played by an amateur group. And there's one musician who's just way off key. I think you'll agree that regardless of how well the others play, the piece is kind of ruined. All you hear are the discordant notes and the jarring dissonance. It might be only one mediocre musician out of, you know, perhaps six or seven virtuosos. But one is enough to demolish the efforts of many.
Daniel Lapin 6:51
Your business plan and operation of your business life are similar. I'm talking about the F of Finance, right? Regardless of how well you you do your work, and regardless of how well your associates do this, one bad idea can ruin the entire endeavor. You're trying to build a family, you're trying to make your your children grow correctly, you're trying to make your children be good to one another, and to respect you and your spouse, their parents. And you're, you're working hard on all of these things you really are trying, you let in one bad idea. And it can undo a lot of other work. Now, I'm talking not about letting bad people in, you know, if your children have a really bad friend that they're spending too much time with, or you have an associate in your financial life, or an employee, or a boss who's just toxic. Of course, that can ruin the entire endeavor. I mean, that's, that's obvious, I'm not talking about that. Because you know, you you know that already, what I wanted to tell you is something you may not know, which is the terrible danger of a bad idea. And when a bad idea infects one, or some or even all of your people, things are really, really not going to be good. Now, when I say all your people, I think that if you've been listening to the show for more than a week or two, you probably know that when I say your team, your people, you yourself are not only one of your people and one of your team. But in fact you are the most important person on your team. And I want to tell you something else as well about you. You're the only person on your team over whom you have most control. It goes without saying that guarding yourself against the infection of bad ideas is one of your most important tasks. Keeping bad ideas out of your heart, out of your soul out of your mind, is really one of the most important things as a happy warrior. And when you're doing that, you can help to keep bad ideas out of team members in your financial life and out of family members in your family life. Now, I just want to put aside something that some of you are perhaps thinking to yourself,
Daniel Lapin 9:43
I'm thinking some of you are saying to yourself, Come on, no worries. Ideas are ephemeral ideas or airy things without enough mass to impact the reality. is of my world. However, I gotta tell you, this is a common mistake. And it's made by probably most people, but happy warriors are not most people. Even only one bad idea is like pouring a little bit of acid into an exquisitely delicate and complicated mechanical watch movement. You know, they assemble those movements in high pressure containers, High pressure rooms that are completely without dust. They're completely without the tiniest airborne contaminant. And, and that's necessary in order for a mechanical watch movement to operate reliably. Nothing should get into, pour a tiny little bit of acid into it. And it's all done. That's all it takes to undo maybe the year long work of a team of dedicated and talented Swiss watchmakers. We don't think you know that as happy warriors. We don't think they've comparing bad ideas to a corrosive acid or to some dreadfully toxic pesticide like, say, paraquat dichloride is an exaggeration. Bad Ideas are as bad as a corrosive acid, or as bad as paraquat dichloride. Like any really bad idea, paraquat dichloride is fatal. And there's no known antidote as far as I know. So even a tiny drop of paraquat dichloride, in an otherwise excellent glass of Belgian beer, turns a celebration into a tragedy. That is just what bad ideas can do. The only difference is that they take a little longer to destroy, but the destruction they wreak is just as deadly. We do not exaggerate. When we insist that a bad idea fed into the bloodstream of a business or have a family can do the same damage to the business or the family as an air bubble injected into the bloodstream of, shall we say a fragile patient.
Daniel Lapin 12:38
You know, my father, and my late father, who's also my teacher, he taught me the Torah. He used to tell the following story. And I remember as as a boy, even though he told it to me more than once I enjoyed it every time. And I laughed hilariously at the word picture that it conjures up. But I'm going to tell it to you because it effectively illustrates somewhat of the danger of a bad idea to your life. When I heard these, the story from my father, I obviously had no idea that one day I would be privileged to be the father of six incredible girls. And I would encounter Shall I put my own share of real life instances of the story? What's the story? Well, apparently, a matchmaker, approached the girl's father, and began to extol the virtues of a certain young man. Oh, he's got a wonderful sense of humor. Oh, he's so good looking. Oh, he comes from a beautiful family. Oh, he passed all his examinations at school with good grades. The matchmaker described each attribute more lavishly than the previous. And then, just as the potential father in law was about to agree that the young couples should meet the matchmaker added, there's perhaps one small flaw I should mention. After all, nobody is perfect. So the girl's father waited expectantly for the matchmaker to continue. And he said, Yes, one small flaw. The young man is a little foolish. The prospective father in law who was I gotta tell you no fool at all, explained to the matchmaker that he was making a mistake in viewing this linearly in in seeing a line with these various attributes marked on the line. And so my father would say that the For the potential father in law said to the matchmaker look, you gave me a list of positive qualities. And at the end of the list was one negative quality, you think that we add up the five or six positive qualities, and we deduct the single negative quality, leaving us with what is still a nice positive number. And so really, you know, nobody's perfect, the boy has all these nice things about him. And he's a little bit of a fool, but everything else stands. And my father says no, doesn't work like that. In reality, the way the world really works, is we must place the positive qualities on the circumference of a circle. The negative quality in this case, being a fool, doesn't take its place on the circumference, but it should be put right in the middle of the circle. And now we join that attribute of foolishness, with a line to each of the positive qualities on the circumference. And then we must evaluate each link. How important are his good looks if he's also a fool? How important is success at school if he's a fool, school smarts, and perhaps native intelligence, are not much good when coupled with an utter lack of wisdom. In other words, foolishness. And so, the father in law demonstrated to the matchmaker that the one small flaw diminished each of the other positive qualities.
Daniel Lapin 16:40
Bad Ideas are almost always also foolish ideas. And here's the problem. This is a very real problem, my dear happy warriors. You see, acid will almost instantly destroy the miniature mechanical miracle of a wizard of a wrist chronometer. paraquat dichloride, almost instantly kills his victim. Bad Ideas can take a long time, sometimes years to inflict their ultimate destruction. And that makes them harder to spot harder to find an antidote hearted find a cure. Because it might be a long while before you even diagnose that you've been infected by a bad idea. Unlike if, you know, God forbid you drink some poison or something you'll know pretty quickly, there's a huge problem you got to deal with. But a bad idea has the opportunity to carry on inflicting harm, before people even realize that they have been severely damaged by the infection of a bad idea. Let me tell you about a case of a healthcare industry startup a little while ago that consulted me about recruiting, staffing, onboarding, and other human resource concerns. They had a problem. They reached out to me after a series of management mission statement meetings. And I'm always concerned when companies waste time bringing together top management in meetings, usually at some offsite bucolic location, and they gotta work out the corporate mission statement. Really, it's it's really not that hard to look at a corporate mission statement, I can promise you, it doesn't really need to be filled with poetic phraseology. It's pretty straightforward what the job of a corporation is. And everything else fits in with that, knowing how to do it to bring about the ultimate idea. But still, they had had a series of meetings to figure out the mission statement. And not only did they come up with a mission statement, they came up with a set of guiding principles for their health. Well, the medical industry started the guiding principle number four was one of the really bad ideas. And here's what they had. The highest paid employee should never be paid more than 10 times the salary of the lowest paid employee.
Daniel Lapin 19:31
So what happened is that they had some low level interns, starting position interns, you know, who were getting paid about $30,000 a year. And so their rule was that the CEO or the CFO or any of the top people could never be paid more than 300,000 a year and This mind you, when when this happened, and I was involved with them a few years ago, this was when CEOs of healthcare startups were being paid over a million dollars. So guess what happened? Not surprisingly, their chief financial officer quit, that Chief Executive Officer quit. And, and they hired some replacements who are happy to work at that point for less than 300,000. At that level, and you won't be horrified to hear that they were worse than useless. And so they had to fire them. And meanwhile, you know, there was--this took a while. I think, if I remember correctly, it was close to three years, from the time they adopted that principle of nobody gets paid more than 10 times the lowest paid salary. It was close to three years. From the time they adopted until the time they knocked on my door. And during that time, not surprisingly, they lost several senior executives, morale in the company plummeted, there was no leadership consistency, and revenue plummeted. I mean, profit not even to talk about even revenue plummeted. This one terrible idea, had nullified almost every other part of their business model, you know, which was in itself quite good. As a matter of fact, I will tell you that often. Okay. And I should point out that the founders, were a group of fervently religious business professionals and investors. And they wanted to sort of express their Bible values in their business. And I remember saying to the team, as we as we sat down on one of the first meetings, I said, Where on earth, did you get this idea that the highest paid executive should not be paid any more than 10 times the low? Now, where did that come from? And they said, Well, 10 is a very important number in the Bible. That's what they said. And I said, Okay, so what? you know, Says who 50 is also an important number in the Bible? Have you heard of the Jubilee Year? Why didn't you hit on 50. 7 is an important day seven days to creation, six days of work and a day of rest? Why didn't you come up with seven? Where did you get this from? And, my friends, sometimes, that is the genesis of really bad ideas. People pull them out of the air, and they fall in love with it. They really, I mean, they first looked at me as if I was the lunatic. They looked at me as if like, surely it's obvious to you that there should be a 10 times no more than 10 disparity between the pay wall? Okay? Well, I'll tell you that the very first thing I did was make them all read my book, business secrets from the Bible. It was like one of the very first things that I asked them to do, it took about a year for the little company to reach full recovery. And, and then they started doing quite well, but but this was just a good example of how a really bad idea impacted almost every other part of the business as well, there was, there was no way to overlook it, there was no way to fix things without fixing and getting rid of this basically bad idea.
Daniel Lapin 24:16
Now, one of the problems is, of course, that that the the really egregious examples of bad ideas tend to sweep through a population like a COVID virus. they colonize hearts and minds, until anybody who rejects the bad idea is made to feel like a pariah. What's more, those who reject the bad idea are likely to be canceled, or to suffer other even worse consequences of being shunned. So I want to I want to help you all recognize and rid yourself of bad ideas And I am not encouraging political activism. That's that's not what this show is about. And I just want to focus on bad ideas. And so even though some of these have political ramifications, because when you think about it, after all, politics is nothing more than the practical application of deeply held values and ideas. And when people pick up a really bad idea, they do feel attached to it, and they cling to it. And they even get angry at other people who don't buy into it. So just be careful, be very on the alert, when you hear ideas, advanced, and even find that those that you are pressured to accept those ideas. So because almost invariably, these bad ideas are going to damage your efforts, with your family with your finances. And we can, you know, take take one of them. For instance, let's let's look at at just one to start with, although I've given you enough information that you can really figure a lot of this yourself, I think, the idea that you should run your business with the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion as a fundamental guiding principle. In other words, what that means is that you mustn't necessarily hire the best person for the job you have. It means you must hire somebody who fits the right boxes, somebody who is part of the right identity groups. Now, again, you don't really need me to tell you what an awful idea that is, and how that can really damage your business. And you know, you can, if you read your papers, wherever in the world you live, you know if, if bad ideas haven't reached you, yet, they will very soon. And and this is just one example of a really bad idea. Yes. Everybody says, Oh, it helps. It helps us good for a business. But you need to ask yourself, like, Does that really make sense? Do you really think that people's gender or the color of their skin or that these are the really important things when you hire somebody, when everybody knows that you want to hire somebody have integrity and skills and ability, and communicative ability and perseverance and resourcefulness? Those are the things that really matter when you hire an associate onto your team. But we're told so vehemently, that the most important thing is diversity. No, it actually isn't. And you have to be aware of it.
Daniel Lapin 28:10
Now, again, if you work for a large company, you may find that you don't have any option on this, that higher up powers in the company have decreed just what sort of person you can hire. And that's fine, but you need to protect yourself by simply being aware of the consequences of that. Or you might be told that climate change compels you to take immediate short term losses to suffer damage inflicted on you or your company or your family. Because in the long run, it's going to save the planet. Again, you need to ask yourself whether this is a good idea, or a really bad idea. And if it is the latter, then you need to protect yourself, you need to be aware of the consequences of making important decisions on the basis of a really bad idea. And that really is one of the best ways of identifying bad ideas is to know that they always run up against reality, they always do. The trouble is that while they are taking their own sweet time to run up against reality, they are meanwhile hurting your finances and hurting your family. And so if there's any idea for 2024 that I will leave you with it's that it should be a year in which you build yourself, your team your family up to become resistant to the bad ideas that are becoming ever more prevalent and ever more popular in the a culture in which you live, becoming aware of bad ideas, learning how to spot them, how to identify them, how to know that they're bad ideas, and then how to defend yourself and your people, your family and your team and your financial people, defending yourself against the ghastly virus of bad ideas. And so we wish all of you happy warriors, a wonderful 2020 for a year in which you really do grow your family and your finances, your faith, your friendship, and your fitness. Until next week, God bless. I'm Rabbi Daniel Lapin.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
