Reality can hurt. When Tal and I recorded this episode, we were living through a war, and the pain and sadness in the country felt especially heavy. Time itself seemed to move more slowly. This wasn’t a sprint that would soon be over. It felt like a grueling marathon, or a long-distance swim, and we had to keep bringing ourselves back to the same inner point again and again.
I was seeing that same heaviness in my work. People were struggling with endings, regret, ugly divorces, and every variety of heartbreak. Some had reached the final stretch of a divorce after bringing in armies of lawyers and fighting on every possible front.
I kept returning to a line we both love: “There is nothing more whole than a broken heart.” I realized that people don’t really understand what it means. The real heartbreak comes when you look at a reality that isn’t good for you and recognize that you created it. The heartbreak doesn’t come from the fact that someone hurt you, cheated on you, or left you. It comes from seeing the reality before you as a product of you, your thoughts, and your actions. That is the real heartbreak.
Give sadness a boundary
That doesn’t mean denying pain. Tal said she isn’t free of sadness, and neither are the rest of us. There is an undercurrent of sadness in each of us, and sometimes it rises and spills over. Try to ignore it, and it will find its way out anyway.
The Tanya guides Tal in both her work and her life. The lesson she drew from it was practical: don’t deny your feelings. If sadness is present, give it a set amount of time. Put aside an hour, perhaps from noon to one, to cry, fall apart, and let out the pain. Then return to life. Feel the sadness, but don’t sink into it without a boundary.
Even in our sadness, can we open our eyes to the beauty of the world? What we notice depends on where we place our attention. When everything inside us feels terrible, the whole world can look ugly. But the world is also what we see and what we make of it. We can loosen our grip for a moment, then look again.
At our core, each of us has a winner waiting to wake up and step into the world. We have to stop convincing ourselves that we aren’t good enough.
What is this life, anyway? It’s a good question. Maybe we can relax a little, knowing that we’re all trying to understand the same thing. Life isn’t a riddle we solve once and for all. We wake up every morning and meet it again. We can’t swim toward a new horizon until we have the courage to leave the shore so far behind that it disappears. The challenges become stepping stones for growth, and the beauty lies in the journey itself.
What creating reality means
Creating reality is a form of mental training that helps us receive what we ask for. It is a tool used by the most successful people, but it isn’t a child’s game. It belongs to all of us. Nor is it simply a matter of thinking something and hoping it comes true. Creating reality has a scientific basis in the way the human neurological system works.
It means seeing what you want, feeling it, imagining yourself already there, and giving thanks as though it has happened. It also means releasing resistance, fear, perfectionism, shock, other people’s expectations, and whatever else keeps you trapped in a loop of frustration. Once those obstacles leave your system, there is room for a new reality.
Let me be clear: creating reality isn’t about attracting what you want. It is about understanding that you attract what you are. And what are you? Your thoughts. Your words. Your actions.
Most of us were raised to be ordinary. I don’t look down on an ordinary life, and I’m not saying it can’t be good. But for me, it isn’t enough. Being ordinary means staying on the conventional path, behaving as expected, doing what your parents told you to do, honoring them, perhaps being humble, acting like everyone else, never challenging the system, being a good citizen, paying your taxes, fulfilling your obligations, and then dying.
Being exceptional is different. It means recognizing what is unique in you and expressing it in the world. We are all special, and that possibility exists in every one of us.
Every society is shaped like a pyramid. Most people stand at its broad base, and very few reach the top. The simple logic is this: if you want to realize what makes you unique, look at what everyone else is doing and dare to do the opposite. Don’t follow the usual way simply because it is usual.
From thought to words to action
Look around you, wherever you happen to be listening. The chair, the lamp, the garden, the car: everything began as a thought in someone’s mind. That thought became words, and those words became action.
The simplest example is deciding to go to a party. First I think, “I want to go to that party.” Then I call Tal and say, “Taltal, I’m going.” Finally, I act on those words and show up. That is creating reality, beautiful souls. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It begins with a thought, moves into words, and becomes action.
You can also reverse the process and begin with action. Suppose I want to live in financial abundance, but I have only 50 shekels in my wallet. I can take those 50 shekels to a store, change them into coins, find someone on the street who has less than I do, and give the coins away. I have helped another person. I have also trained my system to experience myself as someone who has enough to give. In that moment, I feel wealthy, even like a millionaire.
That is what it means to embody the action and live in that reality now.
See it, feel it, and give thanks
The basic practice is simple:
- Be completely clear about what you want. Not something vague, close, or almost right. Name it precisely.
- Spend five minutes a day imagining it as freely and simply as a child would.
- Feel grateful for it as though it has already happened.
Make the vision detailed. What does it look like? How does it smell? Is there a taste? Let yourself taste it. The emotional connection is what gives the vision life.
The episode includes a story attributed to a woman named Einat, whose full name isn’t clear in the recording. A child desperately wants a piece of candy. He calls his father at work, but his father doesn’t answer. The child sits at home imagining the candy, its colors and its taste, until his mouth waters. When his father comes home, he brings the child candy even though they never spoke. In the story, the child creates the reality through his own state of being, as though he has already received what he wants.
Gratitude is central to the practice. As we discuss in the episode, research shows that genuine gratitude changes the rhythm of the heart, improves blood flow, and even helps blood flow more effectively from the heart to the brain. It produces a physiological change. A person moves differently in a state of gratitude than in frustration, resistance, or impatience. It is a different state and a different level of consciousness.
This practice moves the brain from fear to faith (emunah). That shift is a way out of frustration, a way to stand against the odds, meet life’s challenges, and make real changes.
Everything here is energy. Einstein’s most famous formula converted energy into matter, and today research proves that everything is energy and everything vibrates. Nothing is merely material. If we live within an energetic field, then we need to learn how to work with its rules.
Imagination is one way we do that. I see and feel the experience within me because, on an energetic level, the subconscious and the brain don’t distinguish between imagination and reality. In my inner system, I have already done it.
Some people will immediately say, “No, change is a process. It has to be slow.” I say it is slow because you believe it has to be. A long process becomes necessary because you believe it is necessary. We have to understand the power within us and use it. Otherwise, we are led around no differently from animals: something happens and I react; something else happens and I react again. That becomes the reality I experience, and it is exhausting.
Our deepest challenge in life isn’t simply to find a good job, earn a living, build a home, or even find our soulmate. All of those things are blessed, and everything is for the good. But our purpose is to learn how to use our own powers, how to make full use of who we are, and how to receive the higher powers that descend from above for our benefit.
Everyone has experienced imagination shaping the body at least once. The episode offers an intentionally provocative example: think about how you reach orgasm. Describe every step in minute detail, and you will understand very clearly how an imagined experience begins to feel real. We all have a hand in creating reality.
Dare to imagine something different
Yes, the situation around us can be hard, sad, and depressing. That is true. My practical suggestion is to put a limit on the pain so you don’t disappear into it. To create a different, larger, or more magnificent reality, you have to step outside the norm a little. Dare to hold an image in your mind even when all your inner objections rise at once: “It isn’t possible. It isn’t reality.”
Who cares? Later, you see someone on television or another platform and wonder, “How did he do that?” It began with his imagining it and thinking about it.
I speak about this with such confidence because I went through it in the most critical, even cruel, way. Imagine standing over the bed of your eight-and-a-half-year-old son while he is sedated and on a ventilator. You are told that your child won’t make it through the night. In that moment, I entered another reality, one in which none of that was happening. I didn’t care about the scans or the readings. I connected to joy, health, wholeness, and miracles, and that is what happened.
This possibility belongs to all of us. We need this shift now because the energy around us is so heavy. We need to rise above it and create a new reality. It is darkest before dawn. And what do we have to lose? We have already made a mess of things. Why not try something else for a moment? Maybe, maybe, maybe it will be good.
Where you place your attention
If you have a goal, a dream, or a vision, develop it. See it in your mind and break it down into the smallest details. Begin talking about it, even if you are only talking to yourself. Spend five minutes each day inhabiting the feeling that it has already happened, and then act accordingly.
That is what I did at the hospital without even realizing it. How is a woman in that situation expected to behave? She is expected to connect with pain, sadness, mourning, and loss. I was somewhere else. I connected with joy, health, wholeness, and miracles.
The hard reality is still real. But nothing we have should be taken for granted, so give thanks even for the smallest thing. When you are grateful for that tiny thing, it grows. Speak respectfully to yourself about what you want.
If I want financial abundance, I have no business dwelling on poverty. If I want fertility, I have no business dwelling on sadness, mourning, and loss. If I want joy, immersing myself in poverty, sadness, and illness so I can examine and understand them may sound humane. But, beautiful souls, it doesn’t move me forward one bit.
If you want to be empathetic and identify with someone else’s pain, give it an hour, following the teaching we drew from the Tanya, and then move forward. You have made your contribution. Now continue.
Your real contribution to yourself, to the people around you, to your country, and to this whole planet is to hold positive energy. That is our work and our invitation to you: be grateful, even if it is only for the smallest thing you have.
We placed a sweet song at the end of the episode to carry us into gratitude and into the sweetness of knowing that divine providence is at work, and that everything is for the good. Tomorrow the sun will rise again. There is nothing new under the sun; everything moves in circles.
A kiss for each of you, beautiful souls. May we hear good news.