TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Expand Your World
Date: 04/21/2026 Length: 38:05
Daniel Lapin 0:00
Greetings, Happy Warriors and thank you for being part of the rabbi Daniel Lapin show, where I your rabbi reveal how the world really works. That's right. And one of the ways that the world really works is that you have to know that you can control your feelings. You have to know that your moods and your feelings are very much within your power to control, particularly if you are male. It is true that for women, hormonal effects are stronger than for men, and there are understandable times where a woman does feel moods that are beyond control. Husbands need to understand that. But for men, feelings are very much under your control, and if you know, if your wife finds you moody, the answer is not, well, I can't help it. The answer is, I have to control it. Which brings us to the definition of a happy warrior. That's you. All the devotees of this show are, in fact, happy warriors and happy warrior, it's two things. You're a warrior and you're happy. Why are you a warrior? Because you are devoted to building up your five fundamental foci in life, your family, your finances, your friendships, your fitness and your faith, your finances are all relationships having to do with your revenue, with your creativity, with the way you serve humanity. It's also your relationship with inanimate objects, like your bank account, your possessions and so on, your your family, all relationships that grow out of as a consequence of male female relationship. And so the only reason that we have cousins and the only reason we have uncles and aunts is because grandpa and grandma had a relationship that produced offspring. And those people had relationships that produced offspring. And you know, here you are, so you have a grandfather and you have uncles and aunts, you have cousins, all of those are family relationships. And then you got friendships, which are all relationships outside of finance and family, which are social and political and professional. You know, if you belong to a league of bookkeepers or whatever it is, all of these fall under friendships. Faith consists of all relationships with things that are intangible and non measurable.
Daniel Lapin 2:59
You know, that includes things like happiness, which is what we're talking about. And then fitness is your relationship with your own body, of course. And the idea of a warrior is somebody who is constantly trying to improve in these areas. He's trying to make his body healthier. He's trying to build a connection with God, which not everybody has, naturally. Few people have naturally. You actually have to create it and work on it and bring it about. It adds value to your life, your relationships with family, and your relationships with finance, all of these things you're working on and the natural order of the universe is to resist your efforts to improve your five F's. That's just an unfortunate reality. It's I can give it a spiritual gravity. You, you trying to lose weight. You're trying to go to the gym and work out and make yourself stronger and healthier. You, you will find that you are being tugged in an unhealthy direction, both by other people, sometimes unless you choose friends carefully and well, or sometimes just by your own appetites and desires. And so it is with each area, finance and friendships and family, all of these things interact with one another, and it's always a struggle. It is easier to sit back on the couch and watch a video on your computer of something that has been sent to you because of a brilliantly designed algorithm that has picked up what your interests are and what will grab your attention, and it'll try and do just that. So to resist that takes real strength, and it's a fight, and that's why we're all warriors, because we're engaged in that fight. We don't surrender. We are not tennis balls floating down the gutter of life. We are actually agents of our own lives. It is our hands. On the tiller of our ship, the ship of our life, tough to take, because the wonderful world of therapy, generally speaking, will assure you that nothing is your fault. You are a function of your makeup, and you're a function of your background and of your parents and the you know, the most you can do is just sort of cope with where you are. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the truth is what I regard as my solemn and sacred duty to convey to you here through the eyes of ancient Jewish wisdom. And so, yeah, we're all warriors and happy, yeah, because we can control ourselves, and it is a requirement to be happy, because one of the greatest gifts you can give to the people you live with and the people you work with is to be a happy person, to radiate happiness and optimism, which is a wonderful thing, and you become a person who's likable. You become a person who is influential, because nobody wants to hang around pessimistic people and nobody wants to hang around miserable people. There's a there's a gentleman who is a regular attendee at one of the synagogues I worship at. Periodically, I always go up to him after the service and say Shabbat, shalom, a Happy Sabbath to you, Mr. So and So, how you doing? And it's just because I get a kick out of his response every single time, which is good. I think you know this guy. I'm sure he's lonely, because, I mean, I just, I don't hang around after that. I didn't I, you know, I usually ask him what's going on, and it turns out be something utterly trivial, which is allowing to take over his entire makeup. But that initial groan when I say, so, how you doing?
Daniel Lapin 7:00
And, yeah, look, it's, it's, he's not about to change and I'm not about to try and change him. And so that's just who he is. But we really are capable of doing that. I was coaching a group of business professionals in London yesterday, obviously over the internet, not in person. I'm not in London right now, and I started off by asking people to tell me what are the challenges. And a number of people said that they can't get their associates, and they're all in marketing. They can't get their teams to take training seriously or attend the meetings. One person said, I have trouble with mood swings. You know, I'm up and optimistic and excited one day and then another day I'm down and miserable. I explained to them, Look, you know, regardless of where you personally stand with respect to the Bible, you cannot deny that it's a book that has been around for a very long time, couple of 1000 years or more, and there is no book that has been printed, no book of which more copies have been created. So obviously there's a demand for it, and it must provide something of value at the at the bare at the bare minimum, even if your familiarity with the Bible is highly limited, that it's got to be that. And I said the 10 Commandments are very interesting, because the commandment number eight is that you're not allowed to steal. Pretty basic, you would think, right? And the idea is, if you look at the preceding two, you mustn't kill. That's number six and number seven is no adultery, and number eight is no theft. And when you think about these are the basic rules of a relationship. First of all, can't kill you, which means I acknowledge your right to exist. You are a person, and I acknowledge you as another person. If we can't agree on that, there's no reason to go any further, we don't have a relationship. And then the seventh one is no adultery. Which, in specific terms, we all know what it means, but in more general terms, what it means is every relationship must be unique. And so not only the relationship with my wife must be unique from my relationship with every and any other woman on the planet. But all relationships, the way I relate to one friend is not exactly the way I relate to another friend, and I must be careful not to commoditize my connection so that I'm absolutely standard and predictable, and I say the same things when I meet the same people, except for that guy who always say, How are you doing this design so but other than that, you have to work on making certain that your relationship with each person is a unique relationship, and that's really the general meaning of command. Number seven, adultery. And then commandment number eight is you're not allowed to steal. Well, I acknowledge in in six, I acknowledge your existence. You're another person. Number seven, it's, I have a unique right? You're a special person. You're a unique person, and my relationship with you, therefore, is unique. And number eight, I acknowledge your Expanded Universe, I acknowledge your possessions as part of you. Now that's a really important thing to have clear, because our possessions are part of who we are, and they're an important part of who we are. They add to our expansiveness. They add to our feeling of growth and our feeling of being a bigger person. It's a desirable thing to have possessions. And I'm not in any way seduced by the digital nomad lifestyle, and it's been popular for years, which is that, you know, I don't own anything. I don't own a car. I call Uber or Lyft when I need a ride. I don't own property. I'm a tenant. I rent, and I don't everything I own, everything I need, I rent, I don't own anything at all. And people, people call that freedom. You remember the line from the old song, me and Bobby McGee, and the line gets repeated several times in the song, Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. You know that's rather sad. It's very untrue, and it misleads people, because it's sad and simply not correct. Not having anything to lose is not a good situation, first of all, for you. But first of all, think about, would you like to live among people who have nothing left to lose?
Daniel Lapin 11:54
I don't think so, because people with nothing to lose can be reckless, can act in desperation, and can do dumb and dangerous things. It's one of the reasons that insurance rates for single guys are very different from insurance rates. I'm talking about car insurance for married guys, and particularly married guys with children, because as soon as you have something to lose, you start behaving more responsibly, more wisely, more creatively and productively. And so living among people with nothing left to lose is a dreadful situation in which to find yourself. And as far as you yourself are concerned, to own nothing is just another way of putting yourself in a place where you are a limited and restricted individual. Look it's hard, you know, I'm not going to be speaking about things that each and every one of us can do, but when I hear somebody say to me, why didn't you come and join us for the weekend at our country home? Now, that hasn't happened for a while, but, but it did happen sometimes in England, and it has happened every now and then. I like it. I love here. I don't feel jealousy. I mean, I feel I would love to do it myself, but somebody says, come and spend a weekend with us at our country home. How wonderful is that it's a terrific thing that a person should have his own home, his own piece of property, his own piece of the earth that belongs to him, and presumably to the taxing authority to whom he pays property taxes, I'm afraid shouldn't be that way, but it is, yeah, there's something valuable in that, and to be able to grow. And if you know a young person starting off, somebody in his late teens or her early 20s, and you think, no, you definitely want to organize your life in a way that moves you towards ownership, because that is the progression from individual to relationship with people, and then relationship with things. And being able to have relationship with things is really, really valuable. I totally get people having a relationship with their cars. Not for some people, it's just transport. And indeed, many people now don't own cars. They just perfectly happy to call a ride share service. And I understand that, but I also very much understand somebody really enjoying their car when I owned a boat. And for many, many years, Susan Lapin and I owned boats, and it was an expanding thing. And to be able to go and spend an afternoon on our boat, that was wonderful. It was an additional thing. It was part of our it expanded our world. And. Little bit and it's a good thing. And so all of that is part of the idea of the sequencing of commandment, six, no murder. Seven, no adultery, no commoditizing the relationships. And eight, No stealing. But then you come to the last commandment, and what we have there is you must covet. Now this is an interesting question, isn't it, because why would God care if his people desire other people's things? Don't covet the possessions of your friend or your neighbor? Listen, I've already covered not stealing in number eight, so I'm not going to lay hands on it. I'm not going to touch anything that belongs to him. So what do you care if I desire it and I think about it. And so step one is that it makes you a little more venal, because it's not saying don't desire a car or don't desire a boat or don't desire a country home or a vacation home. You certainly should and can desire those things, and you should work to try and attain them. Obviously, it says, don't want the thing of your friends, don't want his don't have the desire to take it away from him. And wanting other people to have less is a very unworthy human failing,
Daniel Lapin 16:37
very easy to fall into that, and it's not something we want to do. And then the second part of that 10th Commandment is, don't desire things that belong to somebody else. And somebody's response might be, what do you mean? Don't desire it. I can't help myself. Yes, you can. And that is the mere value of commandment number 10 is the lesson that God wouldn't ask us to do anything that we're incapable of doing. Don't desire something that belongs to other people. That actually does mean, do not let your thoughts and feelings go unhindered. Control them. There's a part of you that springs up in your mind that says, you know, I'd like to get that thing. No, you suppress it, you tamp it down. And so whereas we we certainly accept a measure of occasional moodiness in a woman, for a man to say, leave me alone. I'm in a bad mood. That's not a business like way for a man to talk. That's rubbish. What do you mean? You're in a bad mood, so snap out of it. You are supposed to be in control. You are master of your destiny and master of your fate, and master of your body and master of your being. And that means, as a man, we control every aspect of our being. There is no such thing as I'm in a bad mood or I'm depressed, and again, let me leave aside clinical, diagnosable, real depression, which is overwhelmingly not what is involved when people say I'm just so depressed. No, don't say it. Don't be it. We are capable of controlling ourselves, not easy, but it's what we are supposed to do. So being a happy warrior means I make sure that I act and behave in a happy way, which, by the way, then brings about changes within me. And then I also make sure that I'm constantly at war. I'm constantly struggling in order to achieve my goals. You know, they tell a story about Napoleon. I don't know for sure if it's true. I've, I've, I've not seen it said by Napoleon, or in any thing like that all, but I have heard it said in the name of Napoleon that he was superbly self disciplined. Well, that makes sense, because you get to be emperor France only if you are a self disciplined person, a strong person, not if you're a self indulgent person. And and the story is told that while he was training as a young man as a soldier, it was a bitterly cold one night, bitterly cold. He was in bed in his tent, and around about 2am he felt an urgent need to urinate, and so he started getting out of bed, and he said to himself, what I'm Napoleon. Can I not control my bladder till the morning? That's ridiculous. And he swung his legs back into bed, and he was about to lie down when he said, Oh my goodness, possibly I'm telling myself that because I don't want to face. Is the frigid cold outside in my long walk to the latrine. And so it's only my fear of the cold that is making me decide to control my bladder. And and then he went on a little bit later, and he said, I really feel as if I need to go and take a pee, but and then he again, but I'm just yielding. I'm not controlling myself. I don't have enough discipline. I've got to control my bladder in it. But now he said, I'm doing it because I'm scared of the cold. And so he finally did the only thing he could have done is Napoleon. He got up, went out into the cold, walked across the camp to the latrine, stood there for a moment, did not urinate, turned around, went back and climbed back into bed, and then he slept comfortably and happily till the morning, because he had overcome his urge to pee, and he'd overcome his fear of the cold and as master of himself, he felt renewed the the English warrior Oliver Cromwell, who was a protagonist in the English Civil War in the middle of the 17th century, had a friend. The poet John Milton was a friend of his. John Milton,
Daniel Lapin 21:21
by the way, absolutely fascinating poet, he wrote what can only be described as one of the most outstanding expositions of the first beginning chapters of Genesis in a long poem called Paradise Lost. And it's a remarkable poem, if you have any interest in in poetry, if you enjoy poetry, or even if you'd be interested in trying out poetry, that's a pretty good place to start. But he said something about Cromwell, he said, and I'm quoting him, not verbatim, but in but what he said was, he said that before Cromwell ever stepped onto the battlefield, he had already won many battles over himself and again. So Cromwell's effectiveness as a leader was very much a result of him having become very self disciplined, very very internally strong, and so that's one of the things that as happy warriors focused on improving the 5f in our lives. That is one of the things we absolutely work on, which is to make ourselves more self discipline and and maybe that means rising just a little earlier every morning. Maybe it means regulating one's diet. Maybe it means start reading a good book and keep reading on a regular basis, taking away screen time, less time on an in front of a screen more time in front of a book, all kinds of ways to improve yourself, more time with family members, all things we can do, but they don't come easily to us. And so developing the discipline for those things, you know, I've taught a lot on persuading and influencing and selling, and they're all part of the same area, right? When you're selling or influencing or persuading, these are all parts of leadership. What is the definition of leadership, influencing how somebody else acts or thinks? And our ability to do that is enormously enhanced by the radiating of strength that comes from self discipline. So really, really important thing, back to back to the ownership of things. Several reasons why it's important, but one of the interesting things is that there is a biblical commandment to return a lost object to its owner. Isn't that interesting? So this means that if I'm on my way somewhere, I've got stuff to do. I'm not just on a leisurely stroll and I see a gold watch lying on the ground, I actually have to stop what I'm doing, pick it up, take responsibility for it, and then set about trying to locate the owner,
Daniel Lapin 24:29
even to the point of advertising it. I found a watch at the corner of maple and Elm on Wednesday. Would the owners form a line, no, not really for if the owner can provide identifying information, I'll be happy to hand it to him. And by the way, to ask the owner to cover the cost of the advertisement is perfectly reasonable. But my main point is here that God this is a biblical rule, so God doesn't like ownerlessness. Do. God, likes people to own things, and likes things to be owned by people, so much so that this ownerless this watch that belongs to somebody that's just lying there on the street, he obviously dropped it. It fell off his wrist that should be returned to its owner as part of the overall moral matrix of society. It's an interesting thing. It's also why the post office does not work as well as FedEx. And when you walk into a FedEx Office, you get a different feeling than from when you walk into a post office. And the reason is, again, it's owned by somebody. The post office is owned by nobody, because when something is owned by everybody, it's owned by nobody. And one of the great failures of socialism is that the glorious rhetoric of socialism is everything must be owned by the people. Everything must be owned the workers should own the means of production. That's one of the slogans of socialism. The trouble is that, in practical terms, it never ends up being the workers who own it. It ends up being the state that owns it on behalf of the workers. And that's what happens to socialism everywhere, whether it's Venezuela or the old Soviet Union or wherever you find it, and there have been times when the United Kingdom has been very, very close to socialism. So yeah, socialism is the opposite of a biblical view, where you and I, ordinary people should own things. FedEx is owned by specific, identifiable people, not everybody. There are more people in America who do not own FedEx than who do own FedEx post office, government owned means nothing, and so all that happens is post office keeps raising the rates and delivering less service as each year goes by, Sams are more expensive and mail delivery less reliable. It's ownerlessness has that property associated with it, and capitalism, you know, it's, it's, it's a word that has become almost a slur. It's almost a pejorative, and so it's a difficult world word to use, but in terms of a of a social system that favors people owning things, well, that's a little bit of what the opposite of socialism is all about. And it's not an accident that April the 22nd coming up very soon. April 22 is Earth Day. When was the first Earth Day? First Earth Day was on April 1970 and the student movements and the activists who brought this about found an ally in Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. He had earlier been a governor of Wisconsin, and they got him to do it. I don't know that he necessarily knew what I'm about to tell you, but I do know that the student organizers of which for whom Gaylord Nelson, the senator, was just a helpful dupe. I have no doubt that they knew it. And what I'm about to say is that Vladimir Lenin, one of the founders of the Soviet Union, and somebody who really was devoted to socialism, His birthday was on April 22 1870 and so in celebration of the 100th anniversary of his birthday, the student organizers pushed for Earth Day. Earth Day isn't just about looking after the trees. Earth Day is essentially an attack on capitalism, and that's why it is that the the heirs to Earth Day. The those who have been bequeathed the legacy of Earth Day are devoted to
Daniel Lapin 29:11
avoiding, basically reducing the quality of an industrialized life for everyone in America, you go to a market, you'd better bring your own bag, because the days of the market giving you bags are finished. Ask why. It's to protect the Earth, to protect the environment, you go to a hotel, and you don't get automatically, regular room service. You don't get towels changed regularly. You know why? In order to protect the environment and to protect the climate, the cars you buy, the shower head, you take a shower in, all of these things are a result of Earth Day. Try and tell people the sea level is not really rising. Try and tell people that the climate is not changed. Catastrophically, it's just not a big problem. Try and tell people that we're not running out of oil. Tell people that electricity is power is an absolute indispensable and to have people paying more and more and more for the electricity because they are subsidizing wind power and solar power, none of which are any use at all. It's tremendously diminishing our quality of life. And yes, that is part of the legacy of the original Earth Day. It is socialism in its extreme, and socialism means no private ownership, and essentially a de industrialization of the West. You'll notice that nobody is pushing for Earth Day in China, nobody pushed for Earth Day in the Soviet Union. It's only in America that these things must be forced down the throats of people. And it's a it's a sad thing, but, and here's the funny thing. I did a back in the days of cassette tapes. I did a cassette tape called environmentalism as a religion, and my point was that each and every prognostication, every prophecy about what was going to happen to the earth was proven not to happen. This is like, you know, the religious zealot who walks around with a sign saying the end of the world is happening this December the first, and December the first comes, and the world is still around. So he scratches out December the first and puts down April the 19th, if you're committed to the idea that the earth is coming to an end, then the details don't matter. And so whether it is the predictions of the late Professor Paul Ehrlich, who said that before the year, 2000 Americans are going to be dying of starvation, and when he spoke, people speak about that by 2000 the North Pole, the Arctic ice will have all melted by the year. None of these things came to pass. All that happens is they just move the date because they are religious zealots. When you are religious, it's true that facts don't matter. You know, I give the it's a silly little example, but you get the idea I get. I my family and I only eat kosher food, food that has been prepared in accordance with the dietary laws of the Bible.
Daniel Lapin 32:38
And we're not unique in this. There are millions and millions of Jews who adhere to that. But if you came to present us with the facts that we could save 5% of our monthly budget by buying non kosher food, it doesn't make any difference. I'm not going to argue with you on the facts you probably write about that, but it makes no difference. I'm immune to the facts. That's the difference between religion and science. Science is very interested in the facts. Science will throw out an old view if new facts emerge, religions don't. Science moves forward in a spirit of skepticism and inquiry towards ever increasing disclosure of truth. We know much more today about the vaccines that we used for covid in 2020 than we knew six years ago. Back then, we now have a pretty good idea of the truth about those vaccines. We didn't know it then, but religion starts off with a revelation, and people move and preserve it. From there, it's not open to change on the basis of new discoveries. I've often pointed out that if, if there are UFOs, if there really are unidentified flying objects that pass by the Earth sent by civilizations in deep space, so what it has no bearing whatsoever on how I will pray tomorrow morning. It's irrelevant. It's not irrelevant the other way, by the way, but that's another In other words, for those committed to the religion of secularism, for them, it's highly important that there is life in outer space, because unique life presents a mathematical and statistical problem. If life only exists on earth, then I got news for you. It was put here by the Creator. If it was an accident, if it was a random result of natural selection, it has to have happened somewhere else as well, because random events never happen uniquely. That's a basic fundamental. Or principle of statistics, so that fact of whatever it is makes no difference to me. If what I'm dealing with is faith, a religion, if what I'm dealing with is science, then facts are very important. And now I ask you, do the environmentalists? Do the Earth Day nuts. To those people who are absolutely fixated on the idea of the environment and climate change like the New York Times, are they actually interested in facts? No, you can show them. Show them that there's been zero change in sea level. And this is easy to see from photographs are 100 years old. Coastal photograph no change, and we know it for in a variety of different No, it doesn't matter. The sky is falling in, the Earth is coming to an end. Sea level is rising. Glaciers are melting, and we're heading towards a man made calamity, unless we can stop producing carbon. I don't think any of that is true, because it's a religion, not a science. And that is, it's how, how I celebrate Earth Day by remembering that this is somebody's religious festival. It's not mine, but it is somebody's. There's a bunch of people that do believe in it. And so if you're listening to this before Earth Day, take a look and see you're going to you're going to find a lot of stuff out there on reaffirming this religion. Talk about separation of church and state. If there's anything of a state religion that is being shoved down the throats of everybody, this would be it, folks. I think we're coming to the end of the time we have available for today. So please visit the website Rabbi Daniel lapin.com
Daniel Lapin 37:00
and you could also go to Rabbi Daniel lapin.com forward slash start, and that's also a pretty good place to take a look at everything that I have available in the way of resources for you, Rabbi Daniel lapin.com and so I urge you, Regardless of climate change, regardless of population, Threats and Dangers, regardless of all those things, regardless of everything that has happened, regardless of the closing and the opening of the Straits of Hormuz, regardless of any wars that are going on. All of those things are important on a on a macro, geological and geopolitical level, but for your life, don't be distracted from focusing on your families, your finances, your friendships, your Faith and your fitness. I'm Rabbi Daniel Lapin, God bless.
