Faith and trust in the Creator
14 episodes of The Truth Hurts on this topic, each with its notes, key points and the questions it answers.
Episode 100 · September 18, 2025
The Creator as a Mirror
Why you feel like someone up there is punishing you
You look at the chaos in the world, at the things in your own life that refuse to work out, and you feel like someone up there is deciding who gets rewarded and who gets punished. The way Gili sees it, that is not how any of it works. There is no judge up there handing down sentences. There is only a mirror, and it gives you back exactly what you send out. Your reality is not happening to you. It is being built out of your own choices, one moment after another, and that is both what makes it painful and what hands you real control. The question is not why this is happening to you. The question is what you are broadcasting.
Episode 91 · April 10, 2025
The Purpose of Creation: From Reactivity to Freedom
Why you react automatically before you've had time to think
You react with an intensity that doesn't really fit the situation, and afterward you ask yourself where that even came from. According to Gili Man Wolner, the answer goes far back, to the first seven years of life, when the subconscious was built like a recording that keeps playing on a loop. Anyone who is ruled by that recording, the way she sees it, is a slave. Not to a boss, not to a partner, but to their own thoughts and feelings. The question she suggests asking is not how to change your circumstances from the outside, but how to connect to the part of you that doesn't depend on them at all.
Episode 89 · March 20, 2025
Entering the Garden of Eden
Why it's so hard to stop thinking about the person who hurt you
You know exactly what happened, and you still go back to it again and again. The same thoughts, the same anger, the same feeling that nothing is moving. According to Gili, that's no accident. We live what we believe, and most of what we do runs on an autopilot that comes straight out of the past. Healing doesn't start with the person who hurt you. It starts the moment you stop looking for answers outside and turn inward. And at the end, three simple ways you can start as soon as tonight.
Episode 83 · January 9, 2025
Wake Up, Soul!
You know exactly what you want, and still you keep finding yourself in the same place. Not because you don't want it enough, but because your brain is built for survival, not for happiness, and it will pull you back toward the familiar every time you try to move. The way Gili sees it, every possible version of your life already exists, and the only question is what you choose to focus on. She offers a full week of practice: imagine it, feel as though it has already happened, and behave accordingly. Anyone who commits to it all the way does change.
Episode 78 · November 21, 2024
My God
You're waiting for something on the outside to finally make you feel good: a job, a relationship, some recognition. Then it happens, and you're still not there. The way Gili sees it, that feeling depends on inner work and on self-examination that nobody can do for you, and never on whatever is going on around you. She brings up King Solomon, who was offered wealth and honor, chose wisdom instead, and received all the rest on top of it. And when things are especially hard, the way they are now, the answer is to draw strength and keep the habits that hold you up, not to give up.
Episode 76 · November 7, 2024
Avra Kedavra
Why you always feel you have to prove something to someone
You're tired of pretending. Tired of smiling when you don't feel like it, of defending things when you're not even sure why they matter so much to you. Gili Man Wolner argues that this moment, the one where you stop keeping score of what other people think and start living honestly, is exactly where real confidence is born. Not the confidence that comes from a title, from a job or from somebody else's approval, but the kind that comes only from what is genuinely in your own control.
Episode 75 · October 31, 2024
Authenticity and Faith
You're living by a script somebody else wrote for you: your parents, society, the fear of what people will say. You promise yourself things and you don't always keep those promises, and without noticing it that eats away at your confidence. According to Gili Man Wolner, this is exactly what happens to most people. They aren't living their own real nature, they're wearing other people's expectations. Here she explains why that happens, and how to start finding your way back to yourself.
Episode 66 · July 18, 2024
You Fell Hard. Now Get Back Up
You're fighting something that has already happened, trying to change it in your mind over and over, and in the end you only hurt more. Gili puts her finger on that exact moment: when you insist that reality be different from what it is, the painful thought only grows stronger and the body gets dragged along behind it. Radical acceptance isn't giving up in sadness. It's simply an end to that argument inside you. And when you let go out of faith rather than out of defeat, room opens up for outcomes you never even imagined.
Episode 63 · June 27, 2024
Every End Is a New Beginning
Why you're waiting to feel strong before you move
You know something has to change, and you aren't moving. Not because you don't have the strength, but because something inside you is afraid. Gili says nobody changes until they change what's going on inside. As long as your surroundings are running your thoughts, nothing really moves. And even when a door closes and it looks like the end, another door is waiting behind it.
Episode 57 · May 16, 2024
The Paradox of Creation: The Tension Between Consciousness and Physical Reality
Sometimes you feel loneliest exactly in the moments when you would most want someone to be there. And when you look outward and see a world that always seems to take the wrong side, that paradox does not stay out there. It seeps inward. In Gili's words, that feeling of loneliness is a belief we created ourselves, because Creation only reflects back to us what we believe in. From there she builds five principles that try to explain how this works, and why the only real choice left to us is what to believe.
Episode 43 · January 25, 2024
Faith Beyond Religion
There are moments when you feel you're simply not ready, and you still have to show up, decide, keep moving. Gili knows that feeling well too. The gap doesn't close with more effort. It closes with faith (*emunah*). The more of it there is, the less you need to push and strain. A lot of the beliefs running our lives today, she says, were picked up back in childhood, and they're still writing our reality now. Sometimes all it takes is to stop and ask what exactly they're costing us.
Episode 37 · December 14, 2023
Reality Check: What Is Reality Made Of?
You feel like something is missing from the picture, and you don't know what
You live inside laws that look self-evident to you. An object falls, a hand gets burned in fire, a seed turns into wheat. And that's exactly what makes you forget that there's something much deeper here, hiding underneath everything you see and touch every day. The way Gili sees it, our reality is only the result of a long chain whose roots are completely hidden from us, and other realities we know nothing about could exist alongside it. What is reality? That's no small question. Asking it is a tool that can teach you to doubt what looks obvious.
Episode 36 · December 7, 2023
Hanukkah: Miracles and Wonders
In this episode, Gili and Tal celebrate Hanukkah, and the way Gili sees it, the holiday carries a special meaning this year, following the national awakening since October 7. Gili presents Hanukkah, as the Holy Ari wrote about it, as an event of cosmic significance and not just a historical story about the war between the Greeks and the Maccabees, a war that in her view symbolizes the constant struggle between the soul and the false part of us that chases material things and instant gratification. She talks about what she describes as the psychological warfare being waged against the Jewish people since the crisis, and about her view that unity was the secret of the Maccabees' victory. The episode also includes practical tips for lighting the candles and an explanation, according to the approach she presents, of the inner meaning of the oil and the candle.
Episode 14 · June 22, 2023
Where Do You Place Your Faith?
You can be as secular as they come and still believe someone is watching over you
If someone ever told you that you can't start working on yourself because you don't have faith, that's simply not true. You already trust basic things every day without noticing: that the traffic light will work, that your paycheck will land in your account. Gili explains that faith (*emunah*) isn't a trait you either have or don't have; it's a muscle you have to train. You can be completely far from religious law and still feel closer to the spirit of the Jewish message than someone who keeps the commandments without understanding why.