TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Reach Your Destination: Think (and act) Strategically
Date: 12/05/25 Length: 00:29:08
Daniel Lapin 0:00
Greetings, Happy Warriors, and welcome to the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show, where I your rabbi, reveal how the world really works. And thank you so much for being part of the show, it's something I really appreciate, and I also thank you for becoming part of the Happy Warrior community. That is also a very beautiful thing, and it provides us with a sense of community, a sense of belonging and a deep appreciation for all of you who are part of that community, we also prepare a special bonus podcast exclusively for members of that community, and I have that ready and available for you. If you are a member of the community, it's on thinking about and reacting gratefully and appreciatively for some of the small things in life, such as hot water that comes when you do no more than turn on a faucet, which is really just a fantastically luxurious comfort. It's a great thing, certainly not been a very long time of human history that's been possible. At any rate, I talk about that and how it is that appreciation turns out to be a gateway to optimism and joy and hope, and it really does do that. If you've ever wondered why some people are more optimistic than other people see if they are people who somehow feel and articulate more gratitude and appreciation for the things in their lives, that is one of the surest ways. And I give you a specific tip about something to do every morning, but that's not for today, not for now. For now. I am talking about how to change your life, how to get to where you want to get by acting or thinking strategically and then acting strategically. What is the opposite of acting strategically? In order for us to understand what acting strategically really means What's the opposite? Well, the opposite is doing whatever you feel like today and then again tomorrow, and not having any overall plan. Now a lot of people do not have plans. Do not have designs, but they do have fantasies. A fantasy is not a plan. A fantasy is not a design. A fantasy is certainly not a strategy, and it's not even a tactic. And sadly enough, many people go through large parts of their lives, perhaps not all just living fantasy, like just doing what they feel like doing, getting up and doing what they have to do, and watching some screen time and getting some entertainment and no thought at all to what the goal is down the road. So it's interesting to ask people questions along these lines, I've been asking almost everybody I've met over the last few days, to what extent has your life come about to in what to what extent has your life played out? Kind of what you expected would do when you were 18 to 23 in those years? Because those are really the years when you really have to pretty much work out how you want things to start. Now the truth is that particularly people who have achieved something in their lives, almost nobody says their life has worked out the way they planned it. And the reason for that is that opportunities breed opportunities. And circumstances breed new circumstances, and adventures generate more adventures. So in a certain way, if your life did turn out just the way it planned or the way you thought about it when you were 18 or 19 or 20, it kind of could be a bit of a disappointment, because we have limited vision at 18 or 19 or 20, we have very restricted imagination. And the truth is that most likely for you, I would think, for any Happy Warrior, life has traveled down highways not even contemplated, let alone imagined, back in your early days, in your youth. So it's not at all a necessary thing to be able to say, Yeah, you know, my life works out pretty much the way I planned that would. Extraordinary. And as I say, I don't think necessarily good. But did you plan? Did you strategize for the first few years, like when you were 18, maybe you finished school? Did you say, okay, by the time I'm 23 I'd like to have this done now. How do I go about doing that? And then when you reach 23 turns out you aren't exactly where you thought you'd be. You may be on another track altogether. You may be further along than you thought. You may be lagging from where you anticipated, but it's time you re-navigate, you reset your goal, and you re-strategize. But a lot of people don't do that. And in fact, what happens is that, you know, if you think about imagine somebody wanting to, somebody's in Chicago in the United States, shall we say, and they want to get to New Orleans, although not sure why anyone want to go to New Orleans in the first place? But if you wanted to go to New Orleans and you're in Chicago, so you know, you'd have to sit down and say, okay, so between me and my destination is the whole state of Illinois and Kentucky and Arkansas and Missouri and Mississippi and Louisiana, and then we can reach at the end of Louisiana, we come to the coast, and there's New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi River. You say, Okay, so that is the journey. Now, how am I going to do it? Well, I think the two possibilities are to drive a car there, and the other is to take an airplane there. So you'd say, Okay, fine. If I were to take a car, it'll be a three day journey. You know, given the amount of driving I want to do each day, and is there opportunity cost to investing three days in a journey that could be done in three hours by airplane. And you make up your mind, and if you decide you want to do it by car, you first of all make sure, okay, in step one, I got to make sure my car is serviced. Tires are in good shape. Everything good ready for a long trip, gasoline, credit card in my pocket, whatever it is. I've got a pack. I've got a plan on where I'll be stopping in the way, or whether I'm just going to leave it to chance. Wherever I get to, I'll find a motel. And you, you make your plans, and then you know what date you're going to set out. You put down the date, and then at a certain point, you know, you set out, and you're on your way, and you get to Louisiana, you get to New Orleans, and you say, fantastic. You know, I've succeeded. I did exactly what I planned. I got to where I wanted to get, and there I am. And then, or you might well say, I want to do this by airplane. And is okay, fine. I've got to look at airfares. I've got to decide where the convenience is most important to me, or whether the cost of the ticket is most important to me, or the kind of the airline I want to fly. And you, you know, you set your priority, and then you look for a ticket, you choose your departure date, baggage, etc, and you get to your destination that is strategic thinking and non strategic thinking, fantasy thinking, by the way, there is such a thing called tactical thinking. Tactical thinking are the short steps that lead you in the direction of your grand strategy, of your direction. So tactical steps would have been looking up airline schedules or checking AAA maps for the best roads to take. Each of those is a tactical step. But the overall thing strategic thinking, the opposite is fantasy thinking and there are many people who have a vague idea. I sort of would kind of like to get to Louisiana, but, you know, they spend some days traveling eastwards towards Iowa and the East Coast, and then they go back. And now I got to go south to New Orleans, but then they end up going west, and they go to Wisconsin and onwards, and then I really wanted to get to Louisiana. So a lot of people live their lives that way, or to some extent, you know, I'm making it pretty extreme and pretty bad. But how about the changes that you could introduce in your life if you started thinking and acting strategically instead of happy, go lucky and.
Daniel Lapin 10:02
And I'll give you an idea of something I've been thinking about a lot lately. So in 1815, right, beginning of the 19th century, the Napoleonic wars were pretty much over. Napoleon was gone, and Europe was in chaos and a mess after all the years of fighting. I mean, Napoleon kept the European continent at war for a long time. Finally, it's over. So all the great powers and some lesser ones gather in Vienna for the Congress of Vienna, where they are going to lay out the details of a post war order. What's Europe going to look like? Who? You know, which powers are going to be absorbed into which powers and what's going to happen. And you know, it wasn't an afternoon meeting. It took a long time, but the result of that was extraordinarily if you think about it, nearly 100 years of pretty much peaceful living in Europe, 99 years, to be exact, because the Congress of Vienna was 20, it was 1815 and world war one broke out in 1914 so that was really a very good 100 year period of Peace. How did this happen? I think it happened because the Congress of Vienna was directed by very strategic thinking people. I'm thinking of the great German and Austrian thinker, Metternich and the Frenchman Talleyrand, and representing England for most of the conference was the Duke of Wellington, who had, of course, won the Battle of Waterloo a few years earlier. And these were not nobodies. These were very impressive people who understood time, they understood past and future as well as they understood the present. And they were not impulsive. They were statesmen. They were not looking at the next election. They were not watching over their shoulders in fear. They were not trying to protect their little, puny bailiwicks. No, these were actually really extraordinary people. And I don't know if you, if you have any interest at all in in history, there is, there's something to be learned from finding a pleasant, easy read book discussing that period, shall we say, you know, roughly 1800 to 1900 you know, take a look at the 19th century. It's very, very interesting reading, because you find impressive people, really impressive people playing a part on the stage of world politics. You know, I think he wasn't 19th century, but I think Henry Kissinger had had some of that, and President Richard Nixon found him incredibly useful, because that is the kind of strategic thinking he brought. I think he was thinking strategically when he encouraged Richard Nixon to start opening up relationships with China, for instance, Otto von Bismarck, the German politician, again, you know somebody like that. It goes without saying that I regard Winston Churchill as a strategic thinker. He never took his eye off the ball of the goal, of the goal, line of the destination. Throughout World War Two, he knew the goal was the utter and complete defeat of Nazi Germany, and everything he did was focused on approaching that goal, reaching closer and closer to that goal, which is fantastic, really, isn't it, when you think about it, it's remarkable. But he did it. Look at today who occupies Macron in France, the midget Pierce Starmer, Prime Minister of England, I hope not for not much longer. I can't imagine it'll be for much longer, a fool, a real dance. And as you look around much of European politics today, idiots, they're real, nobodies. They're interested mainly in elections and in their own power and in their own prestige. And again, many, many, many American politicians are on that, on that ended the scale, small, petty minded little bureaucrats who achieve a level of power by winning an election and then, from then onwards, devote themselves to retaining that power. Biden was, was an example, a complete ox, a little man, a stupid man. But again, certain. Incapable of any strategic thinking. I think President Obama, by the way, although I think he was a terrible president, perhaps did doing more damage to America than anybody else since Woodrow Wilson, but to some extent capable of strategic thinking. I think, to some extent and not great, but to some extent, I those of you who have been watching this podcast or listening to the podcast for a long time, will you know that I started supporting Donald Trump in early 2015 and I'll tell you the answer, the reason why, it's not that I knew what kind of President he would be. I didn't, but I thought he has to be better than the sort of people we're seeing in the presidency and I he was a businessman, and if you're a successful businessman, and he was dealing in the cutthroat business of New York real estate, and he ends up with a lot of friends, lot of friends, and he ends up having been successful. I say to myself, obviously I could be wrong, but assuming we only know that he's not a politician, he's a business professional, and all the others he's running against are politicians. I'm going to go with a business. I'll tell you why. Number one, I think that he will be a strategic thinker, because if you want to run a business successfully, and this applies to you and me and to each and every one of us who is working on the finance of our 5f right? We're doing something worthwhile there, and we must think strategically about our careers, about our finances, about our business. And I knew that that's got to be part of Donald Trump. I also thought he was going to be slightly more likely to keep his word and again, because if you've spent a lifetime in business and you grew up with a father who was a business professional. His father, Fred Trump, was a successful and well liked business professional. You know, when you grow up in in the house, in a close knit family where your father does a certain type of work, you get you grow up knowing a whole lot more about that work than ordinary people, other people on the outside.
Daniel Lapin 17:35
Would you know, I grew up in in the house of a distinguished rabbi. And although I always said I never wanted to be a rabbi, it was in my blood I knew. And to this day, a young Rabbi sometimes consult me and say to me, you know, should I do this? And I say, Well, you should do this. Because if you don't, this is what will happen. Invariably, a week or two later, they call up, and how did you know that was going to happen? I decided going against your advice and what you said would happen exactly. How did you know? I can't always tell them. Sometimes it's a it's just a function of having grown up in a Rabbi's home. The other part of it is that Bible study in its depth in ancient Hebrew ancient Hebrew wisdom brings us to a an understanding of how the world really works and so very often, from time to time, I make A judgment or I ask a question to somebody who might be working with me, under me as a coach, somebody who's working in in that area of client advisory services, and he also, how did you know? And I can't always say exactly how I knew, but very often it's a function of understanding how the world really works. I had a situation a little while ago where somebody called me to ask me if I would do a favor for somebody. There was somebody he wanted to help, and I happened to be in a position of reaching the person who could provide the help, and he asked me if I would do that which I was happy to do, and I did. I don't yet know if the person whom I reached accepted the proposition and undertook the mission. I don't know that. But during the conversation, and we only spoke for 1012, 13 minutes, but during the and by the way, I just want to make clear I'm not trying to pat myself on the back or blow my own trumpet here. I'm trying to make the point that understanding how the world really works, which is the entire mission of this podcast. Helping people understand how the world really works. The ability to do that is incredibly useful and and so I listened to this man, and towards the end of our conversation, I said to him, I will be willing to do what you asked me to do, but on only one condition. And he said, what is that? And I said that you start giving paying more attention to your finances. You're not paying enough attention to your work. You're paying a lot of attention to a lovely thing, which is helping people in the community. I can tell that you help this. The case you called me about, is one instance. I'm willing to bet there many other instances you're working on of trying to help people, and it's very wonderful and it's very beautiful, but it's wonderful and beautiful. Let me tell you, at the end of the Sabbath on Saturday night, we do a Havdalah service, and what we do is we fill a cup of wine or grape juice. And when we reach the top of the cup, we run it over till it runs over into the saucer on which the cup is standing. And then we make the benediction of, you know, welcoming the beginning of the week and blessing our work and hoping that everything will go well in the week ahead. And the theme of the overflowing cup, there is the idea that filling the cup happens first. That's taking care of me, my needs and my families running over. I continue the effort pouring. I'm still working away, and what runs over is for other people. And I said to this young man, it's clear to me that you are speaking almost too passionately, as if you're almost too invested in this mission of helping this woman he wants to help. And that was what tipped me off, that said to me, there's not balance in his life. And it's even possible that because working at your work, working at your job, working at your profession, working at what you must do, is not nearly as much fun as volunteering to help people. And it is quite possible that you are volunteering to help as almost a trap door, an escape hatch, so you don't have to work at your business because you're busy, you're doing all these other very important things. And to his great credit, he wrote me an email afterwards, saying you're absolutely right. And I said, Well, I will help you on the other matter if you guarantee to me that you are going to make changes and tell me exactly what you're going to do so you are going to start paying attention to your business because family and finance and faith and fitness and friendships, this was a friendship issue. It was taking care of someone in the community, but it wasn't balancing with the amount of time he should have been putting into finance and so since I tell you the story, I ask you whether you may be diverting or defaulting to an escape hatch that allows you to do all kinds of things other than what you must do for your finances. Maybe it even has to do with faith, the whole reason that we wrote the holistic you how to integrate your finances and your friendships and your family and your fitness and your faith, how to integrate the 5f in your life is because it is so common for people to be making a mistake and not doing what they really should be doing by doing something else that is also good to do, but not urgent, not important. It doesn't have to be done now, but your business needs to be taken care of now. And it always involves unpleasant things. It always involves things that are hard to do. And so are you defaulting to an escape hatch? Are you spending more time than you should on one of the other four F's. So you can tell yourself it's okay that I'm not devoting time to my finances because I'm doing other important things. Balance is critically important, and I'd say a large part of what I do in coaching and mentoring is exactly that helping people, even vigorously busy people and conspicuously successful people. It's very easy to escape hatch to something you enjoy doing, which is good and worthwhile, but you shouldn't be doing it at the cost. Of the finance side. And so at any rate, a lot of this has to do with strategic thinking, and a lot of it has to do with why it was that I supported Donald Trump from the beginning. And yeah, for one thing, I was really surprised early on in his presidency, he moved the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. I went back and checked and almost, I think every one of the last five or six, seven Presidents all said in their in their campaign, they were going to do that to, you know, so called, get the Jewish vote for whatever that's worth. And nobody else, they always reneged on it. Donald Trump, and somebody who was with him at the time told me that he Well, I told people I was going to do why is everybody making such a fuss? Nobody believed that he would do it. I told you I was going to do it. And so I laughed when that happened, because I said to myself, I think as a businessman, he's going to be more inclined to keep his word, because you don't stay in business for very long if you don't keep your word, it's a huge problem. You can't do that. It's obvious, right? And so I was right about that, and I was also right about him being a strategic thinker. Now he uses his words to generate all kinds of bedlam. He says things in order to get people all riled up or distract their attention to things. Meanwhile, the important thing with President Trump is to watch what he does, not what he says, because what he does is almost always strategic thinking, and so I want to encourage you as much as possible to make an appointment with yourself. You know what I mean by that? Put it down in the calendar and make it uninterruptible. So put your phone away for this appointment. Don't have your computer open in front of you, sit in a quiet room with a notepad and pencil, and start asking yourself, How well are you doing on making a plan and following through on it and executing it? How good are you at strategic thinking? Do you have a goal?
Daniel Lapin 27:26
Do you have a three year goal? A five year goal? Not 20 years, three years of Have you got that? Because things change, and you may well reach year two of a three year plan, and realize you have to rethink the plan right away, and you may need to slightly adjust the goal that happens all the time, but when you're accustomed to thinking strategically, you make regular appointments with yourself. You also make more frequent, regular appointments with yourself to follow through on tactical thinking that you are taking the correct steps to get to the overall goal. All of that really important, and I just want to raise it as a possibility that you may well be able to improve the extent to which strategic thinking and strategic acting is a part of your life and of your activity. So please give some thought to that as a happy warrior, you are definitely going to benefit from doing that. And so that, I think, brings us much, pretty much, to the end of what I wanted to share with you for today's show. So All there is left for me to do is to thank you for being part of the show. Thank you for promoting the show. Subscribe if you haven't done that already, and thank you for being part of the happy warrior community. If, if you, if you haven't done that already, do that. And I wish you a journey onwards and upwards during the coming week, with your family, with your finances, with your fitness, with your faith and with your friendships, I'm Rabbi Daniel Lapin, God bless.
