The WAY to WOW Shows
Get Back on Track After a Setback
April 1, 2022
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[0:03] good afternoon and welcome to the way to wow my name is leah siegel i'm the host of our show today and i'm actually here with our producer rabbi kevin bemel and he is going to be our guest speaker today i'm so excited before we get into that if you missed last week we we had brenda kramer on with us helping individuals understand the ins and outs of student loans the different options that exist with repayment and forgiveness programs so make sure you go to the way to wow youtube channel check that out it's gonna be very eye-opening

[0:39] today we have a very special guest someone who's very near and dear to me who gave me this platform i had the honor of being on his show last year maybe a year and a half ago and we had some real great conversations and today we're going to focus on rebuilding and coming out of perhaps a setback that life might throw at us right we all go through life's journey and sometimes things happen that we didn't plan for they come in all forms all shapes and sizes right and today we're going to focus on getting back to where we want to be

[1:16] in fact i would even say becoming something better than we even thought was possible and you know it starts with you can be prepared for certain things certain things that you didn't see them coming but what if you knew there were things and steps of action you can take so that you don't have to face it in a really frustrating and a way that could be a struggle so let me first tell you a little bit about who we have here with us today rabbi kevin bemo lives in los angeles he actually had a 20-year career owning a real a commercial real estate

[1:52] company he pivoted over and became a chaplain in the navy and he has been all over the world he's been in japan he has times left his family for even seven months at a time which is really challenging when you have a child we'll get to hear more about that and what leads us to this is there's been some changes in his life that he now knows he can help others avoid some of the landmines so to speak that he came across right um he has some great stories on how he

[2:27] became a coach and how he helps people transition from the military into civilian life is specifically finding the career path that speaks to them and i love learning from you and and hearing from you you're famous for uh many things especially helping people find their calling and the way in which you do it is very unique i'm sorry we're not in the same room last time we were you made it an exquisite cocktail for me you had a you had actually a professional drink maker uh mix that for us and that was really nice and i got to

[3:03] be in your home and really get to know your family and now we're going to talk about a couple things that are going to help those who go into some life changes right and they could be unexpected it could look like a death it could look like a divorce it could look like job interruption it could be many different things so let's talk about what would you say are some most commonly frequently made mistakes that people can make when they have a setback coming their way yeah um and so first of all leia thank you so much

[3:40] for having you on the show i mean i never intended to to be a guest i know i made you do this um you know i i'm this is this will be interesting for me i was thinking about this yesterday as i was doing my show um the tables are turned now so um so this is this is really interesting you know i i kind of um get to know what my guests feel like i think which is which is good so i you know we know these things um

[4:15] but i think until we experience them sometimes they don't resonate nearly as deeply as they ought to so um i'm going through a time of transition in my my life i'm in some ways um this transition has been going on for uh four years so um um in uh 20 then towards the end of 2017 i went on what turned out to be my last active duty time in the navy i was sent to germany without my family and

[4:50] unfortunately things didn't work out very well although i feel compelled to say because people just go oh jewish guy in germany of course they didn't work out well the german people were absolutely fantastic they were lovely people extremely supportive extremely respectful and i even i got into an automobile accident one time on of all things christmas eve taking some of my sailors to uh the evening catholic mass and and the odd the it was clear the accident was clearly my fault

[5:25] um and the the you know the german police show up it was a a man and a woman and and they they come walking up to me and the woman says you know what we're here to investigate and i i turn the manny she says no spreckensie english you know i'm like oh great you know he's tall and nordic looking you know the whole thing i'm like wow okay i'm i'm in for trouble here right to make a long story short after they finish the investigation the way it works in germany is they adjudicate the case right then and there so the the female officer comes up to me and she says we've determined that the the accident

[6:01] was your fault like okay yeah that's the case right she says is that okay like is that okay no i've decided to find you 16 euro so i thought i heard her wrong i said you mean 60 euro which would be about 70 dollars she said no no no 16 1 6 euro was about 17 dollars i'm thinking to myself hmm she says well that be all right i said um yeah you know and then she said what was the thought

[6:37] process behind that dollar amount i don't know wait here's the kicker she says to me i've decided to wave the fine again right so i i she said well that'd be okay i said absol sure the male officer comes up to me and perfect english says to me is it true you're a jewish rabbi he says i've never met a rabbi before it's an honor sir and he puts out his hand to shake my hand i got shells just now yeah right um what i found out

[7:12] subsequently was they were um you know people don't understand what they haven't experienced so the idea that a a jewish chaplain was taking roman catholics to church to celebrate christmas maps it completely changed their world view in a way the respect you just gained was tremendous yeah right so so um so like i said the german people were great it was unfortunately the americans i had to deal with that weren't so in 2018 i get back from active duty and and then there were a couple of deaths in the family so i you know i was i was

[7:49] although not actually out of the navy i was done with my navy career the end of 2018 which had been my whole professional identity for the last at that point uh whatever it was uh 14 years wow um and then important people in my life pass away um and then there's covid and then you know more sort of you know personal life turmoil after that and so over the last four years i've had a number of i don't want to sound you know inflammatory but sort of almost like assaults on my identity right because we we look at ourselves a certain way

[8:25] and [Applause] when life doesn't shape up to to our self-image i think that's when we really start to struggle so that's really a powerful point you just made right there yeah so you know i'm here you know here i was um sort of sitting in the midst of covid at the time and um a friend of mine um has an organization called c-suite networks and he'd been talking to me over the previous couple of years about doing something um with him and i just didn't know what you know i

[9:01] didn't know what i wanted to be when i grew up what i what i you know calling kevin 3.0 right kevin 1.0 real estate commercial real estate 2.0 navy chaplain right and now i'm not going to be enabling navy chapel anymore i'm not going to go back to 1.0 that's you know so last you know version right and so now i'm going to figure out what am i going to be now right um and so my friend jeffrey hayslit uh you know i ended up doing a very intensive session with him and his partner and i had mentioned to them that while i was in the navy i had developed a resiliency program for my sailors and

[9:37] marines that i called the three pillars of fitness and um they they came up with the idea of sort of reworking it for civilian consumption and and that from there that blossomed into doing a weekly um well really weekly talk show so um if people were to go to our our you know youtube channel um they could see the first two seasons of the show including the the the episode we did together which you are so great on that episode i have to

[10:12] say yeah um we did a very highly produced show very different than what we're doing now um and and the show we we i ended up naming the show the way to wow show um so if it's the graphic in the back here may be a little bit hard to see so i was talking to someone they say wait a while like you know life isn't always wow and that's it's not that kind of wow it's not like wow fireworks boom boom bang big colors way to wow is figuring out who are you and what you want you know when i when i was growing up as as a you know a young boy

[10:48] um i pretty much knew how my life was going to work i was going to graduate high school i was going to go to college i was going to be a lawyer a doctor or an accountant or in my case an architect that was you know acceptable um you know in a jewish family i was gonna get married i was gonna have 2.4 kids and a dog and live in the you suburbs and and the reality was almost none of that came true i mean i did i did graduate from college um and and um i

[11:24] you know fortunately for the urban environment i never became an architect because things would have absolutely you know horrified people that's great and uh you know so now we don't we have no guidelines and so we have to figure all this out and the challenge then is when we get hit with those um those big setbacks in life you know a death in the family a loss of a job

[12:00] you know a divorce whatever they are they have a much greater impact on our self-image because society isn't sort of holding us up like this the way it used to and and we could have a philosophical discussion about whether was this better than you know this that's a separate issue i we have to deal with the fact that the the world is this now when when somebody a parent says to a child you can pretty much be anything you want you know aside from you know someone like me 5 8 being you

[12:35] know in the nba which is never going to happen no matter how good a basketball player i am right um you know a lot of that is is actually pretty true you know i mean if she really wanted to my daughter could probably grow up to be you know president of the united states you know right i mean it's it's certainly she's you know almost 15. it's well within her the li you know it's in the realm of possibility right um but with with that greater freedom comes greater responsibility to ourselves and so now each one of us has

[13:11] to answer you know who are you what do you want so people tend not to ask themselves those questions in advance and so then when the crunch comes they can't answer those questions and they keep trying to push through life when they're not even sure where they're going so to get back to your original question i think the biggest mistake people make is not having figured out some of life's foundational issues

[13:46] while while life is reasonably calm and then they get into the crisis and they don't they try to push through without have with you know even more of their foundation knocked out from under them so we need to i think at that point we need to take even a further step back and say maybe this is a sign that i really need to take a wider view of my life where am i who am i what do i really want and and then then start moving forward after we figure those out

[14:22] very important and and i know the world the you know self-care is important and i know you've mentioned that before and that's different for everybody right my self-care might look different than yours what would you say are some common self-cares that people can take and then if you don't mind to share what you do personally for some self-care in that department so um it's funny i was just having this conversation with um um one of my business coaches earlier this morning and we were debating what is self-care right so i think there are

[14:58] three fundamental parts of self-care um that we all share one is getting enough sleep and especially when we're in crisis that can that can almost take our entire day in the sense that um you know if if if our day is filled with anxiety depression all those kind of things they're all going to impact our sleep so how do we manage our day so that at least we can get a good night's sleep the second thing is eating properly

[15:34] so the the impetus our body starts craving all kinds of things that satisfy us in the moment but long term and long term can even be you know the next day to the next week the next month aren't really going to help us get through this whether it's you know eating a pint of haagen-dazs nothing against haggadahs it's great but i mean eating a pine a day probably not a good good diet drinking drinking too much these kind of things they satisfy us in the moment but as we move forward

[16:11] and try and deal with the various issues we need to deal with they're eventually going to hold us back okay so that's number two and number three is getting exercise probably look i'm not a nutritionist or any of these kind of things but i can tell you from my time in the military the the the sailors and marines who did the best under stressful situations were the ones who routinely got exercise even if it was just like when we were deployed we'd go up on the deck of the carrier when there weren't flight operations going on and we walked back

[16:48] and forth across the deck a thousand feet each you know each direction or we do it in the hangar deck you know when we duck when the you know when there was a prop coming over our head or something like that right um or we'd go to what was called the outboard gym i used to go there virtually every day i'd get on one of the treadmill or not the elliptical machines and we had a view of the ocean and sometimes the dolphins would come and play in the wake of the ship well nice right so those three things i think are common for all of us um

[17:23] you know i when it comes to sleep that is you know that is my achilles heel so i i work with a sleep specialist um a fantastic um guy his name michael dr michael bruce um he i did an episode with him on my show as well i you know he's called this the sleep doctor i think thesleepdoctor.com i want to say but if you look at michael bruce b-r-e-u-s michael is one of 185 people in the world who have the level of credentials and expertise and sleep that he has so he's

[17:59] creme de la creme he's got an enormous amount of material on his website um to help you uh to help anyone who's having trouble with sleeping so um you know michael is is you know such a you know this term menschla um such a you know nice nice guy right so he's he's you know consulted with me um you know kind of pro bono because i was in the military um and and and he has you know over the last several years really um you know gotten my sleep a thousand times better you know and

[18:35] then i definitely want to learn more about that it's so interesting that you mentioned sleep because you know we all make jokes when you're around someone who's in a bad mood we're like you need a nap or did you not sleep last night it's like the first thing we say we didn't we don't say to them did you skip the gym today right or did you eat a hamburger we say you need a nap right so i i'm dying to know more about that i tend to go to sleep late or even if i get into bed early it could take a while to go to sleep because everything's racing in my mind that my son-in-law gave me this

[19:12] amazing book i did it on audible turns out my other daughter across the world in israel read it not knowing i did called why we sleep um by dr matthew walker okay and i think i want to know more about your stuff and i'll give this as a recommendation because it just taught me so much about the sleeping the rhythms the patterns why one shouldn't rely on all these uh what melatonin really does and these sleeping aids right um so important i had no idea you were going to talk about that today oh

[19:47] because self-care could be like i'm going to get a massage but you're talking about some basic fundamentals that as human beings whether or not you know you like massages and spas or but we all need to eat better we all need to sleep better we all need to move around yeah you know so i think you know this is what i've learned over the last several years um good sleep is the foundational element to

[20:22] um a life well lived is how it used to be spoken about you know when i was when i was a young guy so what does that mean for the typical adult that means at least seven hours of actually being asleep not seven hours in bed so you sleep six hours but seven hours of actual sleep so i know for me that means i've got to be lying in bed in a sleep mode for typically at least seven and three quarters to eight hours because i i move around a lot when i

[20:57] sleep i'm not a good sleeper um so uh so that's that's one thing the second thing is sleep hygiene is enormously important so um we're much better off sleeping in a cool room because that's telling our body go to sleep if we're in a warm room it's telling our body hey wake up go party or whatever you're going to do right interesting we shouldn't you know watch television at at least or do computers anything with a screen for at least 30 minutes before we go to sleep shouldn't drink you know liquids

[21:32] probably for 30 to 60 minutes because then we're you know our body's gonna might wake us up in the middle of the night um you know a lot of people sleep with dogs i i i did until you know several months ago um and now the dog i slept with years ago would snuggle into me go to sleep and not move the whole night and so he helped my sleep the dog i had more recently she was bigger and moved around a lot and you know she'd wake up at two three in the morning sometimes she'd jump off the bed come running back on it's like so she would wake me up so you know you

[22:09] have these challenges i'm not suggesting by the way that people should get rid of their dogs i'm not saying that at all please please all you dog owners out there i love dogs um but you know these are things to take into account um and and uh dr bruce talks about understanding your chronotype so i'm not going to get into that because i'm i'm not an expert but really what it says is you know when are we different people have different prototypes which means that they're they're better off sleeping at different times of the day

[22:45] so whatever our chronotype is we really need to set a sleep schedule and stick with it as much as possible so you know my my apple watch tells me get ready to go to sleep at 9 30 so that at 10 o'clock i'm in bed and hopefully within four to seven minutes i'm asleep and at six o'clock my alarm goes off and i'm getting out of bed that's that's my sleep schedule and you know rarely do i deviate from it and that has made a huge difference in my sleep and i i will say

[23:20] um i have a an aura ring and um it is fantastic for tracking your sleep so each morning i can get up and i can see you know how well did i do you know for for someone who like like me who's really into you know did i get an a teacher i love it exactly last night i didn't get an a in sleeping but you know three nights before i did so but it really gives you a lot of information that's useful to know and you can really see how the things you do impact how well you sleep wow and this is stuff that everyone

[23:55] needs to be doing regardless if you're going through a setback right this is normal life right and and going back to setbacks and curveballs right we want to move on right we're doing the self-care what are some steps that one can take to rebuild but before we go to rebuilding i think we need to talk about what was and i don't want to use the word destroyed god forbid it could be very uh it's a powerful word but when something is taken apart right and we have to rebuild it what are some of those things that you know you've experienced you know

[24:32] others have experience because you talk to you know a lot of people you have a huge network of close friends and um colleagues so there are things that have majorly shifted so what are some of those things and how do we take a baby step to rebuild so i think the first thing and you i you were kind of searching for a way to describe them i i tend to think of these things as losses okay um so whether it's somebody who's who's died whether it's getting fired or laid off um all of these things that their their

[25:07] losses they may be physical losses if we get divorced we're physically now separated from our spouse um and even if we you know even for someone who hates their spouse i mean i've dealt with a lot of people who've gotten divorced and and um you know it's it's not uncommon at all for you know for example a woman who's you know she was the one who divorced her husband so she was the one who initiated it and yet she misses him she missed because she feels alone right so so there's a loss there no matter who may have been

[25:43] if even if there was an initiator you know to the overall loss right so i think the first thing we need to do is come to terms with what that loss means in our life um and you know there's a whole thing about um you know bargaining and negotiating and that whole thing which is you know probably it's not nearly as accurate as it's thought to be but we do need to go through a grieving process of something yeah i hear like the word mourning kind of comes to my mind when i hear a loss i think of mourning

[26:18] yeah so i'll give you an example um from when i was uh deployed um on on i was a airwing chaplain um and we we were deployed and it just so happened that right after our ship left port um the earthquake and tsunami and reactor meltdown in japan and i believe was 2011 happened and so the united states uh decided to send uh you know uh you know assets for to help with the relief efforts and so our ship was

[26:53] tasked to go help right and so we're we sailed across the pacific ocean on our own right people are like wait carriers don't go by themselves it's like well actually the carrier protects all the other ships these days because we have these things called jet airplanes and they can fly off and you know shoot other boats so so we get on the scene and we're we're in the ocean okay so we're not on the land but there are pieces of houses floating by our ship so

[27:28] now um try and create this this atmosphere a little bit it's a it's a nuclear aircraft carrier there's about forty two hundred people on the boat you say forty two hundred forty two hundred okay wow about ninety percent of them are in their mid twenties or younger so what we've got is an enormous floating college dormitory i was going to say these are people's babies people's little children right and this is not to say that many of them haven't been through traumatic things in their lives of course they have been in

[28:04] many cases that's what motivated them to join the military a very credible you know really admirable thing for them to do and yet the idea of seeing houses float by your ship is not something that most people ever experience especially because you're pretty sure the houses aren't empty right so um i was sitting in my office one one day and uh you know a sailor uh comes up to my door you know knocks on the door jam

[28:39] hey rabs can i speak to you please it's like but it's it's always it's always you know a temptation to go now get out of here you know so i say no no come on in mate have a seat if you want the door closed close the door so what's on your mind he says and he's almost crying and he's probably you know early 20s he's a with what they call an eredale he works on the flight deck of the ship um you know i think he was i think he was a fuel guy so he was you know fueling jets

[29:14] um and he says i feel awful and i cannot figure out why i said well what's been going on and he said just you know doing my job there on the deck of the ship and i'm like well kind of take me back in time a little bit does this remind you of anything he says well you know it's a little bit like my last deployment so what happened on that he said not a lot really um oh yeah you know part way through the deployment my grandmother died and they flew me off the ship

[29:49] to go to her funeral and he said i get to her funeral and my my mother is devastated and my family is devastated so i've got to arrange the funeral and i had to take care of my family and you know make a long story short by the time he's flown back to the ship he's done no mourning of his all of his own and his grandmother effectively raised him so he was actually attending the funeral of his mother and that moment grieved for her loss

[30:24] wow so i said to him do you think maybe now that we're surrounded by death in some ways it's bringing up feelings that you haven't resolved he looks at me he goes yeah wow so um i didn't say it to him this way you'll appreciate this because you're jewish so i said to him my friend you need to sit shiva now this is a a jewish practice where for about a week after some someone

[31:00] important in our life dies we basically just focus on grieving to start the process of coming to terms with the pain getting it out and so you know as much as i wanted to say to him i'm gonna go talk to your your you know your chief and say you got to give this sailor a week to just sit in his room and create that's not going to happen so you know but we worked it out and and over the next you know month or so he would take an hour or two a day as he could grab it and just go someplace alone where he could think about her he

[31:36] journaled about her journal about life and that's how he got through it so those kinds of things are relevant maybe losing a job isn't as you know um devastating as losing a loved one but it can still be very very devastating you know in the united states so much of our identity is is tied into what we do you know when you meet someone at a you know even socially well what do you do that's what you say in europe they ask you who are you that's interesting that's a different perspective different perspective

[32:13] that's what right do at first is is grieve before we start the rebuilding process otherwise like that sailor we're rebuilding but there's sand underneath us and so then when when something else happens that i mean i would argue as as horrible as being in in the ocean was at that time was it was nothing like losing your mother right but it hit him for such a whammy because he was already on shaky ground that he didn't realize you know had he not had you kevin i feel like his work on the ship could have been completely

[32:48] disrupted and he would have been of no good no service you know how to break down without even knowing what's at the core of it and not only did you help him mourn his grandmother you helped him be the best he could be for the navy i feel like there's such an important role you played that it's not just one thing it's many layers and they're all connected and we don't realize that for someone who you know let's say does lose a job it can be just as great as a loss if that job was their entire life like you said your identity

[33:24] is wrapped up in what you do and especially let's say someone's family situation is not the stronger point in their world but their work is and at work they're held held to a higher esteem or or you know something like that where that comes crumbling it's the biggest blow and i have you know you've heard stories we've all heard stories of uh suicides that are related to to that you know income titles you know even market loss so it's it's loss is

[34:00] loss and how we deal with it is so important so now that we understand we've got to grieve first then we can think about rebuilding talk to us a little bit more about some of the baby steps that people can take in rebuilding um you know how does one even start how do you plan that i mean there's so many layers there's like you you talk about purpose you talk about mission we one thing a therapist told me years ago was that at the end of the day you're alone even if you're in a marriage even if you have a large family you are

[34:36] alone and we need to be okay being alone so now someone goes through a divorce so talk to us about some rebuilding there and before i do that i you know a thought came to me one of the other big life shifting events is retirement we all tend to think of retirement as being very positive it's like i don't have to work anymore i'm free i can tell you for a lot of people who retire whether it's from the civilian workforce or especially from the military especially if they were either a very

[35:12] senior enlisted person or a high-ranking officer they go from being able to say jump and a bunch of people go yes sir you know to you know nobody listens to them at all so it's it's a you know it's anything that disrupts us in that way can cause us to have to re or can necessitate our our our i'm having to re-examine our identity so you hit you hit i think on on on what i consider to be the the two main um aspects of our identity purpose and

[35:48] mission now a lot of people define them in various ways i have a i have very specific ways that i define purpose and um actually if you if you i'm going to go ahead and share yeah i was going to say if you have anything you want to show everyone let's do it so let's this is the um this is the um civilian version if you will of the three pillars of fitness it's now called the three pillars of attainment you can see that in the center it's a little bit dark so you can see on one side you've got purpose and on the other side you have mission and

[36:24] here at the top is self so the three pillars are self relationships and pursuits right and if we think of self as being you know certainly it's our identity um included in that is is our health and our mindset those are all internal to ourselves right so then as we move out of ourselves which hopefully we do as you know as a child we're this is this is kind of where we live right that's all we know it's what we know and then you know we we branch out into some play maybe and and

[36:59] family and then eventually friends or maybe you know we go to church or synagogue whatever god we match under relationships eventually we go to school and then eventually you know we we go to work that's sort of the um you know the progression through life um what those things entail is on the one side interacting with people and on the other side pursuing certain pursuits going after certain pursuits to my mind that's the difference between purpose and mission so our purpose is

[37:35] how do we relate to other people so if you were to look at my statement of purpose you would see i'm what's called an evid hashem a servant of god i'm you know i'm a father to you know my daughter um i'm i you know i'm an athlete not that i have you know dreams of glory i'm an athlete because i i exercise you know six days a week you know um you know so those different aspects are you know from how i interact with other people right

[38:10] my mission then is what i'm going to do to have impact on the world hopefully positive impact so you know be a an effective businessman um help people to live better lives through understanding better who they are and what they want right that's my my mission in life and then i i pers i go after that through my pursuits right so as we start to come out of a loss i think the

[38:46] first thing we need to do is focus on self that's our health and our mindset which underpin our identity and then as we get more solid in in our self then we need to start moving back into our purpose and back into our mission through engaging with other people and through engaging in pursuits that's that's what i would call sort of the the you know the road map

[39:21] to recovery from loss now of course i'm not saying that oh you know you become a monk until you're you know part of recovering our identity is going to hopefully involve reconnecting with family friends and for people who who believe in god you know god um and and it's also going to involve reengaging in our pursuits right but we do that and this is i think what what is is difficult for a lot of people

[39:57] um i know it's this is one of the harder this was one of the big things i had to overcome is relying on family and friends felt very selfish because i think more about that to keep i needed these relationships to support me and i'd always been on the other side right as a chaplain people come to me chaplin my life my life i'm i'm having difficulty my life help me no problem i got you mate or mates wife husband child you know i'm there sort of i'm i'm i'm under here you know holding this up right that's that's

[40:33] my identity was on the guy who who helps right and then all of a sudden the tables are turned and i'm the guy who needs help but i can't need help because that's not who i am so it seems like it not just humbled you it made you human um because we we all need each other right right it certainly made me much more empathetic for you know other people um you know hopefully i was sufficiently empathetic as a chaplain to really help people i mean i think so

[41:09] i don't know for sure you never know something tells me yes thank you um but certainly going through you know a loss multiple losses really has made me much better at being empathetic and understanding that when i approach someone to help them they could be just as reluctant as i am to accept the help because they don't want to feel guilty they don't want to feel an obligation all these things that we sometimes feel

[41:44] and so what i one of things i've learned is as i started to re-engage with friends and family being willing to share the feelings around my loss gave other people almost like permission to share similar things with me in doing so these relationships got much much stronger because we could talk about much more personal issues and and and and you know strengthen

[42:21] deepen those bonds right suddenly you're relatable nobody wants to feel like oh you're going to help me but you don't know how i feel you haven't been in my shoes you can say you know it's kind of similar when i help people i can say i've been where you are i've been completely in debt zero saved not in the know about finance and then suddenly now i'm deaf we have abundance of savings you know and and so that gives hope for someone to be like okay

[42:57] they can show me because i feel i can trust them now right and this is this is something i actually learned very early on in my chaplain career so i had a young woman come into my office um i'm gonna let a guest in okay sure um um so uh this was maybe i don't know i've been there for a couple of in japan for a couple of months in okinawa actually and um and she sat down and and you know i might how can i help you mate she said well she said i i used to talk to a chaplain um he really helped me out a

[43:32] lot but he he left he was you know he went back to united states um and i've been looking for a chaplain who can help me and i haven't found one yet i said well you know tell me about it um and she told me a a a you know a seven minute life story that really was horrendous really horrendous i mean abuse and physical emotional i mean you know and i'm trying to keep you know a calm look at my face and what i want to do is say oh my omg right oh wow your life really is

[44:07] that bad i'm just kidding and and she got done talking to me and i s and i said to her this is this is what was as as christians say i love this expression this is what was on my heart i said to her look i have to be honest with you there's almost nothing in what you've told me about your life that i can understand on a visceral level i just i just haven't had things like that happen to me things that are frankly so horrible

[44:42] i said i am absolutely willing to talk with you help you however i can but you have to know i don't know what you've been through [Music] she looked at me and she said you're my chaplain wow so sometimes i think what's most important when we're in those crisis moments in those loss periods or helping someone who's in those periods let's be authentic let's be honest

[45:18] one of the things i found is look i'm blessed to have a lot of friends fortunately a lot of them don't know what i'm going through and so they will say things to me sometimes and in the back of my head i'm thinking to myself okay this is not helpful at all right and and i have to stop myself because while they may feel like they have relatable um uh um happenings in their life not really so we what like what you were saying a minute ago in the at the end of the day we're

[45:54] all alone at the end of the day my well we may have shared experiences they're not the same so what i've taken to doing is saying you know kind of been through something that seems a little bit like what you've been through that maybe i can relate to your situation if that's true of course rather than saying i understand what you're feeling because the reality is i don't but you're holding a place for them to feel safe

[46:29] and what i feel they're feeling because here's what i'm feeling as you say that is that there's a curiosity enough in you that wants to understand me and that alone helps me feel like you were there and you know that word curiosity is is such an amazing concept um the most wonderful people i know in life are the ones who are most curious so we talk about having an open mind and you know somebody once told me you know

[47:04] some of these people have such an open mind everything's fallen out so what what i think is more important than an open mind is that we stay curious if i'm curious then i want to know about your experience because it's it's interesting and it may impact my life but in any event it will be a connecting um function between the two of us as

[47:41] as you become the person who can in essence fulfill my curiosity and you get my attention and and i get your attention et cetera et cetera et cetera right so um you know and kind of as we talk about moving out of loss and taking the next steps so one of the things that i've worked to do is is re-engage in my curiosity and that that's opened me up to all kinds of experiences that that you know i i for

[48:17] various reasons kind of cut myself off from yeah i mean because we have like you mentioned recovering and it can be very overwhelming there's there's so many things that you feel have to heal at the same time what would you say um how does one deal with the overwhelm when trying to get back to finding themselves and what are some simple things you know it's not just curious with others i'm feeling when you mention curiosity it's curious about us

[48:53] ourselves not why is this happening to me but why is this happening for me right that simple change in perspective i think is is definitely powerful um and it's it is um something i'm still working on frankly um because you know it's natural to think why is this happening to me you know and and by the way that's not sometimes we are a victim to deny that victimhood

[49:30] is not productive either in fact um you know i know no hopefully i don't no shame from my perspective i i i have a psychotherapist you know and i said something to him one time but that was that would you know imply that you know i thought everything happened in my life was my fault he was like shaking his feet like that is not true do not go down that road not everything that happened is your fault and if you try and take on that burden you will only delay your recovery right so i think we

[50:07] the the process is one of figuring out okay what happened what what is my share of the responsibility and what happened yeah right and yeah and then so that's you know so some things happened to us they did there's in the end there's nothing we can do about that well i shouldn't say that there it's not within our control to do anything about that whoever did it to us has something in their control but they may not care right so or you know i you know if somebody dies i mean

[50:42] the person did something to us they became a loss to us but they're not here anymore to to deal with that so there's we just have to come to reconciliation that's what the grieving process is for the other half though where where you know we have responsibility for these losses is that's where we can ask why did this happen for me and and and the the you know the basic answer is to have an opportunity to grow right to make changes so make room for the next best thing that's

[51:17] headed your way exactly so i remember the first time i got fired from a job and by the way let me just say categorically he should have fired me because i was trying to get him to do that so you did that very well i was successful in getting fired and yet it still felt horrible to get fired right it was just like i remember when he finally said it and he was almost crying as he fired me because he was so upset that you know he had to i you know i was going to be worried and i'm i'm i'm like acting all happy and then i got home and i i'm like oh my god i got fired i'll get me that kind of thing right so

[51:53] um you know the the the reality is um getting fired was the first step in my professional growth if i had stayed where i was job-wise i never would have started my own business i i never would have gotten so bored with my own business that i joined the navy and had to work in a huge organization for the first time and learn what is that really all about i wouldn't have had an opportunity to sort of help people in a in a more

[52:29] meaningful way perhaps than we do in business although i do believe most people in business are helping other people if at least if they're successful they must be um and and so you know those those losses then become a springboard to something bigger having said that i would encourage people watching this most people in the beginning part of a loss are not prepared to hear that this is going to be the best thing that ever happened to you right very very clearly

[53:04] it's pro it may very well be true although you know someone dying probably not the best thing that ever happened to them um but you know losing a job um you know a relationship breaking up uh retiring it may be that those are the best things that happen to us but you know while the grieving process is going on it's not helpful for people generally speaking for people to be told that because they can't hear it yet right let them be the one to say it when they're ready this was the best thing that happened to me yeah i mean and it's something we only

[53:40] know on reflection anyway yeah so you know i mean i i hope that the disruptions in my life the losses in my life will lead to something better um but to be honest with you i'm not 100 convinced of that yet okay we're still right so that's you know i mean i try and keep an optimistic outlook of course um i think you're doing a great job at that and it's certainly giving you more time and space to focus on career for you helping more people listen you reached out to me and started you know producing a show

[54:16] that didn't happen up until that time you know you got cr the creative juices started to flow and you started thinking about how do i help more and more and more people because we don't have a tremendous amount of time left i want to kind of shift over to the financial conversation when it when we have to recover that way and rebuild that way what are some things that people can do to prepare themselves when they're going through a divorce and they have to think about oh my goodness now our money situation's changing right and i know that you know off the camera we've had some pretty

[54:51] intense conversations around that and you know you and i have both been through a divorce and had quite a a big shock when it came to what did that mean for us financially so talk to us a little bit about that so um you know whether whether it's a divorce or whether it's you know being fired from a job you know um obviously one of the key factors in getting back on our feet is is getting you know getting our finances our financial house in order um and uh you know most of us were not born with a

[55:26] silver spoon in our mouth so i think you know if if we are already in a particular industry on a particular professional trajectory so it can be a much easier issue to deal with but if we're not so now we've got to deal with well you know what am i going to do to pull my financial house back in order um and i actually did a show on this on my show um so if if folks were to go to our youtube channel they can find the episode on your discovering your unique value

[56:02] proposition wow so in order to find a satisfying professional direction shall we say what i recommend is we look at three things one is our knowledge skills and experience think of that as one circle knowledge skills and experience the second thing is what do we enjoy doing okay you know some people talk about what are you passionate to do um unfortunately a lot of passions don't translate into an actual career but think about things that we like to do

[56:37] okay you know i'm still looking by by the way for that job where i can eat chocolate and ice cream and read and hike a year right then get paid right and get paid exactly so what do we like to do that's the second circle the third circle is what will people pay for me to do where all three of those circles overlap it's kind of a triangle with with rounded sides that's our unique value proposition and that's where we can find a professional direction

[57:13] that will that will pay us well and we will enjoy and if you think about if you have only two of them so if you have something you know how to do and you like to do it but you won't get paid for it you have a really great hobby if you have something you know how to do and you get paid for it you have a job you don't like right and if you have something you like to do and can get paid for it but you don't know how you're not going to get the job right so you've got to have all three elements so as we think about rebuilding our finances typically that inc that that means rebuilding our

[57:48] professional life first whether it's a job or building a business you know i i recommend that people take a look at that unique value proposition even if they're pretty clear on what they think it is put it down on paper it's it's different once it's there you know on paper in front of us where we have to look at it you can see i have various things here on my um the the partition behind me that's because i want to look at these things every day look at them um deeply critically like this one i just went through a session with my coach and it's going to change

[58:23] dramatically because when when i took her through it she said yeah but what you're saying is not what you've got on the paper right so when we have things done on paper too we can show them to people we trust and they can help us clarify our thinking and then from there we can engage in the process of rebuilding our professional life love it wow there's so much i mean i know we're running out of time but i want to thank you and i know that we need to have you back on this show there's so much to learn there's so much to go over i think we just touched the

[58:59] tip of the iceberg to be honest i know we need to dive more into this i also would love to share some of my thoughts on this i mean today was about finding out how you're doing it and um there's so much that we all can learn if you want to know more you want to reach out and go to the way to wow show go find rabbi kevin bemel on youtube he's interviewed so many people that are going to help you understand so many of the topics we were talking about today and clearly you've done that you've found your sweet spot let's call it where you are really good at coaching people right you know how to do it you love it

[59:35] you like it you enjoy it and you make great money doing it that you found your sweet spot and you bring all that experience from you know having 20 years being in real estate and being a chaplain in the navy for many many years being you know ha being a dad being a spouse you know you have it all i really feel and and having um a very strong sense of self and spirituality you know being that you're a rabbi you have so much to offer so many people can learn so much and we're so grateful to have you on with us and next week we're going to have a topic that's going to be a little different um because a i'm not going to

[60:11] be the one doing the asking i'm going to be having a substitute because we're talking about cryptocurrency we're going to have an expert who not only is knows everything you need to know about cryptocurrency she and her husband created their own cryptocurrency and her name is kira and you're gonna fall in love with how she's gonna turn you into um a lover of the world of uh money that's not touch you can't it's not um something you can put in your pocket and and um and buy a candy at 7-eleven but i'll tell you something

[60:46] you need to be in the know right you need to be in the know um you hear all over right now the metaverse right there's so much going on and so come learn with us next thursday 1 p.m pacific on everything crypto and have a wonderful wonderful day thank you so much rabbi kevin