The Simple Secret That Will Change Your Life: “Just to Be Nice” - Rabbi Yitzchok Rubin

Hi everybody. My name is Yitk Rubin and I'd like to share with you something that has inspired me in the most amazing way and my hope is after listening to today's lecture that you will be inspired as well. I have been had the opportunity to teach at a yeshiva in the old city of Shallay and during one of my daily lectures I stumbled upon this idea. Many of us are familiar with this idea, but I'm hoping that with what I share with you now, this will be able to give you a little bit of a different perspective and hopefully make it a lot more personal. Kindness, that's the idea. And I'm going to share with you something that hopefully will make this very real and personable. Ever think to yourself from the moment you're born till wherever you're holding at whatever stage in life you're up to God has been involved in my life in some way shape or form he's been helping me guiding me giving me so much goodness all this goodness you ever stop to ask yourself why why is he giving me so much why is the abundance of you know family, wealth, all the wonderful things, health. And the more I thought about this question, it dawned upon me that God doesn't need anything from me. God has everything. Why in the world would he be so gracious as to give me all these wonderful things on a daily basis, every second of the day? And that's when it hit me. You know why? for one and for one reason and one reason only just to be nice. God is giving it to us. This is what is all about. Let me explain. There's something called which we said is kindness and which is charity. Giving is giving someone something because they need it. said, on the other hand, kindness is doing an act for somebody else out of the goodness of my heart purely because it's nice, not because they need it, simply because it's nice. Now, as I started to develop this idea and the more I gave it thought, I said to myself, "Wow, that's amazing. If I do something for somebody else just because it's nice, that means that in some ways I'm actually emulating God. I'm doing God's work. That's what God does. And that's when we came up with this program, this initiative called Just to Be Nice. simply said all you got to do is a few acts of kindness, a few acts of being nice. I'll give you some examples soon. But before that, I want to share one interesting idea that I heard from a friend of mine. There's a Maharal, one of the early commentators who says something incredible. He said, you know, when God was creating the world, it says as we know, he built the world. He created the world with this thing called this kindness. Why? Why did he use to build the world? Well, this is exactly what the maral says. Listen to this. He says something spectacular. When Hashem created the world using what is means I'm doing something for you purely for altruistic reasons only because it's nice. There's nothing in front of it. Meaning there's no approval. There's no attention. There's no thank yous. I'm just doing this because in the world there was nothing. He used to create the world and there was nothing in front of it. Meaning there was no feedback. There was nothing in return. I'm not getting any for it. Why are you doing it? I'm doing it just because it's nice. This is an incredibly deep idea. Something which is so godly. So this with all these ideas and understandings of what is, we can make it practical by figuring out ways and looking for opportunities in our every single day to be able to bring this godliness into the world. As it says, just like God does goodness and good things, so too we do good things to emulate him. We all know that everyone is created. We're created in the image of God. We have godliness in us. But how do we access it? How do we bring that godliness into the world? How do we bring Hashem into the world? How do we do it? This is an amazing amazing way that each and every one of us can do it. We can do a f a few acts a day. We committed in our group to try to do five a day. Now I know you can do many many more many many more. It starts with five. You know what? If five is too much, start with one, two, three. Whatever you do, it doesn't matter because the goal is to bring this message to your consciousness to bring it to your awareness to be thinking about ways to be nice and to do nice things in the world. Let me give you a few examples. You're walking in the street. You notice on the floor some piece of garbage. Now, many times you might have walked by that garbage. But you know what? Picking up that garbage, taking a moment to stop and putting it in the bin, not only does it make the street cleaner, but it also makes it nicer for other people to walk around just to be nice. You don't have to do it. No one knows that you're doing it. You're just doing it because it's nice. Smiling at somebody, saying good morning. That beautiful smile. We know just like face is like the water. It creates that reflection. When you smile at the world, the world smiles back. There's nothing like getting a warm smile from someone in the morning, in the afternoon. How about a good afternoon? How about a good night? It doesn't cost anything. It's simple. But those beautiful simple acts have such an incredible power in the world of bringing that goodness in. Another example, how about a kind word, an affirmation, a compliment, words of encouragement? It's so beautiful and so easy, but it has such a powerful effect on those around you. You know, I was walking the other day in the street in my neighborhood and I saw something beautiful. I saw a just to be nice act. There was a guy walking down the street and there was a tree and it's a place that I happened to pass by many times and I guess I didn't notice it but he did. He saw a branch that was leaning down a little bit too low into the sidewalk and he stopped for a moment, broke off the branch, put the branch on the side of the road. You know why he did that? Just to be nice. So that when people walk by, they don't have to duck their head behind it. That they can walk right through and feel comfortable. And that's what it's about. It's about making the world more comfortable for others, making people feel good. How about holding up the open the door for somebody or being a little bit more patient? You know, we all rushing to get on the bus or rushing to get somewhere, rushing to get in line. Just take a few moments and say, you know what, this is my just to be nice moment. I'm going to let you go first. It's okay. Nothing's going to happen. And you'll start feeling so much better. I want to share a story about my grandmother. This is a story that goes back over 50 years. A story I heard from my own mother. She said she used to go shopping with my grandmother and when they would get to the register with all their items, they would start putting their items on the conveyor belt. And my mother noticed that my grandmother was organizing all of the different products on the conveyor belt. After she saw this a few times, she she asked her mother, "Why why are you organizing and turning the bottles a certain way?" So my grandmother said, "You know, every product has a barcode. I'm setting up the barcodes to make it easier for the cashier just to be nice." Now, what's amazing about this initiative is we know that what goes around comes around. When we do kindness, we think, "Oh, I'm doing it for you or I'm doing it for them or I'm doing it to make everyone better." What I have learned because I joined the program myself is that the more I do good things, the more I do kind acts, the more I do nice things, besides the fact that I feel happier, I feel a sense of inner happiness, an incredible feeling of that permeates in every part of my of my being. It comes back at you. The world all of a sudden becomes a place where there's things that I can do. There's ways for me to get involved. There's so much out there. It gets me out of myself. We know the word ahava. Love has two letters in the middle. He bay. He and bay which in Hebrew means have which is to give. We know that when we give it creates a feeling of love and connection. This is an unbelievable way that can help us in our relationships, whether it be in our marriages, in our relationship with our children, in our relationship with anyone. This is something that again, that's what makes it so godly. It's something that will bring out your potential, something that's wonderful to help you with mental health, to get you out of that stuck place, to start thinking about others and connecting with others. I think this is a tool that can help us in so many different areas and aspects of our life. Okay. So, we heard about kindness. We heard about being nice. We heard about uh doing good things. Now, I don't know what kind of person you are, but if you're the type of person that likes to post and you like to share things on family groups or with friends. So, this could be a wonderful opportunity for you to be able to take the kind acts that you're doing, that nice thing that you're doing, going out of your way looking for those nice thing, snapshot, short video, a little short, and share it. Spread the light. Spread the message. Spread what you're doing. Show people how the daily, the simply daily things that we do over the course of our day are things that anybody could do. Your friends, your family, your neighbors, we can all do it. And that can be your message and that could be your way of just to be nice to share and get it out and get that message out there. Now, with everything that I said, and I hope you've been inspired till now, there's a catch. There's one catch. We spoke about how this is a godly act and this is something that we want to emulate God. Well, what do we know about God? We know that he does these things and he takes care of us in the most personal and sensitive way. But we also know something about God is we don't see him. He some for some reason does this in the most hidden way. We can't see him. We have to look for him. We're always looking for him. We're always trying to find where's God? Where's God? Where do you see God? Well, what he's teaching us is that the highest level, the most incredible and most powerful way to do and kindness is in a hidden way. And that's what we have taken upon ourselves as well. When we do these acts of kindness, these nice acts of giving and helping and being there and whatever it is that we're doing, we're not posting it. We're not even sharing it. No videos, no fanfare, no attention. This is going to be a pure relationship between you and God. Now, that's amazing. So, this not only is going to help me in my own personal life, but this is also going to create a deep deep connection between me and the Rabona Shalom, Hashem. Unbelievable. So part of our commitment is what we say to walk with God in a private way, in a hidden way. Behind closed doors, do you know how many things we can do behind closed doors? No one needs to know. You know, I was just thinking the other day, you ever notice in the bathroom the roll of toilet paper is finished, so change it. It's not clean. Nobody sees you. It's a place of privacy. Clean it up. Clean up after yourself so the next person that comes in could have it nice, comfortable, and clean. That is godly. Nobody knows. Just me and God. This is a deep, deep relationship which we are developing. And then you bring out the godliness from within you. Now you are emulating Hashem. You are emulating God. I hope that this message is something that touches you in the deepest way and I hope you can join us. We have started groups. We've started all sorts of groups for men, for women to join us just to be nice. The point of the groups is that we can get support. We can get advice. We can have tips. I've been posting tips of the day. I've been post we've been posting all different types of stories to encourage you on a daily basis to keep this going. The more we do it, the more we build that good habit of thinking about it again, bringing it up to our consciousness and doing it together. I also have one exciting thing I want to share with you. There's an incentive. We have an incentive program special for the month of Kissle for this month. Anyone who joins the program this month and does this program on a daily basis will be entitled to join a raffle and that raffle is really just to get us going getting us into the program. I hope you can join us. Thank you so much for listening and we hope to see you on the group with us all just to be nice. Have a great day. >> Anyone who would like to join and we'd love to have you. You'll see right below is the link to our WhatsApp group. Just join the group. If you have any questions, I'm the administrator. You could send me the questions. Again, my name is Yitzk Rubin. Be happy to help you along. Anyone who doesn't have access to WhatsApp, we're going to be having a uh email group as well. You could send me a personal email at yitsrubin yz ru b i nggmail.com. I'll be happy to get back to you with the group and you'll join the group and you'll get all the updates. You'll get all the quotes and everything that's happening. And if you want to join the raffle as well, just, you know, let me know that you've joined. Send me a private message and I will get you in. And this is going to be something that uh will hopefully be incredibly inspiring and life-changing.