Old Testament Heroes Greatest Moments Later in Life

Rabbi Evan Moffic uses this episode to talk about time as a currency. He discusses the importance of putting time on your side and gives us insight on how to do so. He connects this to long-term real estate investing. Even as you are aging, it does not mean you are lacking time. Rabbi illustrates his point using various examples of heroes in the Old Testament who had their greatest moments at a later age. He goes over some studies showing why happiness increases after the age of 60.

Announcer 0:02
Welcome to the Solomon Success Show where we explore the timeless wisdom of King Solomon and the Bible as it relates to business and investing false prophets and get rich quick schemes are everywhere. Let’s not be distracted by these. Instead, let’s go to the source, the eternal principles that create a life of peace, power and prosperity. Here’s our host, Jason Hartman.

Rabbi Evan Moffic 0:32
Welcome to the Solomon success Show. I’m Rabbi Evan masik. I’m a friend and client of Jason’s, and he was kind enough to extend the opportunity to co host this show. I’m an author and a rabbi and believe passionately in the message of Solomon, in the message of the Bible, in that it is the best guide we have the wisest guide to a life not only of success, but of meaning of happiness. That’s what we’re here for. That’s what Jason teaches. That’s what you listen to the show for. I can teach lots of Bible, lots of laws all day. But what we’re here to learn is the principles that lead to a real life of success in meaning and happiness. And if there’s any area of life, where we need wisdom, true wisdom, it’s in the quest for wealth, real wealth, which is time and happiness. We don’t need any more get rich quick schemes, which you can find all over the internet and on other shows. We need time tested principles, truths about life that we need to hear, and we need to incorporate and that’s what you’re going to get here. That’s what we’re doing together. That’s what I’m committed to. That’s what Jason is committed to. And this week’s episode is called time is on your side, which is really true. Now, let me preface this by saying I wrote a book on happiness. It’s my favorite of my book. It’s probably I guess it’s not my best selling book. My best selling book is called what every Christian needs to know about the Jewishness of Jesus. But the book on happiness is my favorite. And it really is a compilation of a lot of the research on what makes for a truly happy and meaningful life. And I put that research in a religious or spiritual perspective. And one of the discoveries that I found in researching this book is that older people are happier, on average, our happiness really starts to increase after age 60. Now that’s barring any major health issues, things that are outside of our control, but barring any serious debilitating health issues, we get happier as we get older. Now, when you hear that you might think that sounds counterintuitive. Don’t we want to stay young? Forever Young is that famous song A Bob Dylan wrote it right and then who made it famous I forget who made it famous Rod Stewart, who made it really famous Bob Dylan wrote the original lyrics in our culture, glorified. youth. And yet, the older we get, the happier we are. Now, why is this? And by the way, you should test this out, ask people who are older if they’re happy, and you actually will see more people who are happier as they get older. But why are we happier? There’s a couple of reasons. The first is what psychologists call a reduction in the anxiety about the future anxiety about the future when we’re young. We’re always worrying about what comes next. We’re focused on Are we going to get far enough in our career? If we’re a student? Are we going to do well on that test? Are we going to graduate? Are we going to get that promotion we’re always worried about the future. But when we’re older, we don’t have that worry as much, and we can focus on the present. We can soak up the beauty of the present moment. And living in the present is the best guide to happiness because the present is all we have. There’s a very famous author Jason may have had him on the show before called cart tolay, who was an advisor to Oprah and Go forth. And he talked about the present moment, soaking up the meaning the beauty, everything out of the present moment, because the present is all we have the future is an illusion. So when we’re older, we can really focus on the present, because the future is only the next present, focusing on the present as we get older. The Secondly is that we have a better idea of what is truly important in life. As we get older, we really see what matters and what doesn’t. I was very close with my grandfather, because we live just a mile away from him when I was younger, and I could see that he really understood what mattered and what mattered to him were his relationships with his friends with me, his grandson, and with his other grandchildren. He really knew what matters. As we grow older, we realize some of the things that we thought mattered at one time, maybe the kind of car we have or how big our houses or do we make more than our brother in law, all these things that perhaps matter to us at one moment in life. Don’t really matter in the long run, what really matters are the relationships we have and the sense of purpose we’ve developed. And we have the experience of life to help us get there. I came across a wonderful quote that I’ve saved, it says, wisdom is accumulated 50 years of cumulative experience is very different than one years experience repeated for 50 years. So when we live a truly meaningful life, we have different experiences over 50 years, and we learn from them. 50 sister random number could be 40, it could be 30, could be 60. But when we have those varied experiences, we figure out what’s truly important, and then we focus on them. That’s true happiness. And so seeing this psychological research about how we get happier as we get older, helped me understand a couple of really interesting parts of the Bible. And one of them is that a lot of the greatest heroes of the Bible. I’m talking now about the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. I’m not talking about Jesus right now. Because Jesus, of course we know it’s 33. But the Old Testament, many of the heroes of the Old Testament have their greatest moments later in life. Abraham, the father of all religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Abraham is in his 90s when God calls out to him, and tells him to journey towards the promised land, Moses is at when he begins to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, towards the promised land, ones in his 90s, and ones in his 80s. And the interesting thing is, it says, Abraham, the older he got, the harder he worked. When his wife Sarah died, he sped up his life work, he had more children. Now, of course, some of those a little bit mythological. It’s not like he was in his hundreds and having children. But it’s, the idea is that he began to work even harder as he got older, because he realized that not much time was left. So he wanted to do more, and he Had some of his greatest achievements later in life. It’s amazing. And there are actually people in our recent history, even though our culture glorifies youth. Think of Mark Zuckerberg and all the tech millionaires and billionaires who are in their 20s and 30s. Actually, some of the greatest heroes of Western civilization did a lot of their work later in life. Now, he’s not really a hero of Western civilization, but he’s a great stories. Think of Colonel Sanders. He started Kentucky Fried Chicken. When he was in his 60s, Mozart and Beethoven. They were both youth prodigies, but their greatest works. I mean, think of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony came later in life. They wrote their greatest music later in life. Claude Monet, if you’ve seen the beautiful water lilies, those were painted, much later in life. Frank Lloyd Wright, the greatest architect of 20th century, he designed the Guggenheim Museum at age 92. The Amazing. So our culture, as I mentioned, tends to say the opposite. It reinforces the power of youth. But the Bible reinforces the truth, the beauty, the dignity of aging. Now, even Solomon, Solomon’s son actually should have known this lesson he didn’t. When he became king, he was facing a revolt in the north, and the northern kingdom was saying, your father made a slaves. And now we want to be free, stop the slavery and sell them and consulted his advisors and his younger advisors said, Forget it. You’re the king. You tell them what to do. His older adviser said, listen to the people of the North release their burdens, your father made a mistake. You need to rectify it. And what is Solomon’s son do? It’s Jeroboam. He didn’t listen to the elders. He listened to the youth and he lost his kingdom. elders have wisdom that we need to listen to. Now, what does this all have to do with What Jason teaches? Well, a lot. One, if you’ve listened to Jason Hartman owns real estate investing shows income property shows creating wealth, you know that he has said that time is on our side, purchasing income property puts time on our side. There’s another saying that says, Don’t wait and buy real estate, buy real estate and wait. And even if you follow Jason’s method, you don’t even have to wait that much. Because if you buy income property, you buy it. It has to make sense at the time that you buy it. So you’re getting income as you’re waiting. You don’t even have to wait for the appreciation. You’re getting income as you wait. Purchasing income property puts time on our side in so many ways. I mean, think about it. The older you get, the more you pay off your mortgage, the big boring idea that Jason has talked about, so the longer you have the property, the older you get, the more of your mortgage, you’ve paid. off. Secondly, the older you get, the more appreciation you get your property goes up in value over time real estate is always he even with blips like 2008 downturn, other downturns over time real estate goes up in a way it has to because of the way our monetary system is, over time rents go up. So if you own income property, you’re raising rents over time even as your mortgage payment stays the same. So purchasing income property puts time on your side, it gets better as you get older, what a gift. What a gift. And it’s really absolutely aligns with biblical principles, that we get better. life gets better, life gets richer as we age. If we do the right things, doesn’t just automatically happen. We’d have to take the right steps on the creating wealth show you learn about the right steps in income property. But I’m going to add to that a couple of more right steps that we can take in our personal lives in our communal lives as to how more ways to put time on our side. How do we make aging even better? You Even more beneficial? Well, the first part, the first step is to focus on what’s truly important. I counsel lots of people who are in their 40s, even 50s, maybe some upper 30s, too. And that’s a point in life, where people are kind of coming to terms with what they’re good at who they are. And sometimes people are frustrated. They say, Well, you know, I wanted to become a Senator, I wanted to become president, I wanted to make $10 million, by the time I was 30. And perhaps they’re frustrated live. I’ve talked to people about that. And part of the process of growing older is to realize what’s really important in life. And you some of that comes automatically, you know, just life teaches you those truths, but a lot of it has to be consciously embraced. We have to learn we have to devote time to relationships to friendships. A lot of men have this problem actually, women tend to have more close relationships than men and are happier. part of growing older is embracing friendships. Because that truly is what brings meaning and purpose and happiness to life. So part of the process of aging is to focus on what’s truly important and what truly brings happiness. And that’s not really our career. It’s our relationships. It’s what we do with the time that we have and enriching it with others. A second practice we can embrace to make aging, putting time on our side, is to mentor others, to realize that part of the reason we are here is to help prepare future generations, we’re stewards, not just consumers, we’re stewards. As I’m recording this, just a few days ago, Toni Morrison, the late great author passed away and I came across a quote of hers that really jumped out at me. She said that she used to tell her students at Princeton, when you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for. Just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab bag candy game. I love that. Where we get in life. I mean, Jason does this so much. Jason gives away so much free information. He mentors, others, he teaches us. Because he’s been there, he’s done that he’s achieved great success, and he teaches us the path on how to get there. And we all have to do that whatever we do in life. As a rabbi, I try to do that. For rabbinical students. I try to do that with members of the staff of my synagogue, great teachers. I know try to do that. For younger teachers and their students. We need to figure out ways to empower others wherever we are in life. Third practice as we age is to figure out ways to be useful. I just read an article by a wonderful scholar named Arthur Brooks. We should get him on the show. He was the president of the American Enterprise Institute. And now he teaches at Harvard. He talked about he did a study or he reviewed a study of about happiness people in their 70s. And he found that the largest majority of those who report, the people who reported the highest levels of happiness were those who had figured out ways to be useful. That is they volunteered at the hospital, they volunteered at schools, they went and help their children with their grandchildren, they figure out ways to add value. They didn’t just sit around and play golf and watch TV that made them happier. Isn’t that amazing? If we can figure out how to be useful to others, we’re not designed to just consume, consume and consume and feel pleasure, pleasure, pleasure. We’re designed to give, we’re meant to be altruistic, we’re happier when we give, to give is to live. And study after study proves that it’s particularly true as we get older because, in some ways, the best jobs, the jobs in fact, where we make a lot of great income is when we’re giving we’re providing value to others. And so even as we age, and maybe we’re not working for money anymore, we still need to provide value that makes us happy. Fourth practice is to try to meet new people. That’s hard as you get older. You know, some people just want to retreat into the cocoon of familiarity. I came across a great quote from the author Henry Miller. And he said, if you can fall in love again and again, if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surely bitter and cynical. You’ve got it half licked. I love that line, fall in love. Again, I don’t think that needs to necessarily mean romantic love. I think it can mean finding new relationships, finding new ways of giving and living and loving. That makes a big, big difference. Finally, we can maintain our ideals. We can keep the purpose that guides our life and keep it going. You know, the Bible ends where it says Moses, this is the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, the five books of Moses. It ends it says Moses died with eyes, undimmed and vigor unabated. That didn’t mean that he didn’t have any bad eyesight, or he hadn’t lost some strength. He was aging. He was 120 years old. With the interpreter set as it meant his ideals remain strong. He didn’t get cynical. He didn’t lose faith. He kept going. His eyes were undimmed in his vigor unabated, he kept looking forward that made the difference for Moses. So wherever we are in life, we can preserve our ideals as we age that will make us happier. That will give us greater purpose. It’ll make us more useful. It’ll give us a greater focus in life, and with real estate and income property time is on our side. Purchasing good income property from Jason from Jason’s network puts time on our side, and living following these principles puts time on our side on a spiritual and psychological level. I wish all of you a week filled with shalom with providing ways of being useful of giving value of respecting our elders and finding ways To bring greater happiness into our lives as we age because however old we are, we’re aging, but that aging can be an opportunity for greater happiness, greater depth, greater closeness with God and with our reason for being shalom.

Announcer 17:14
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