0:06 who are you and where are you going what do you want [Music] hello and welcome to jigger's place on the way to wow shows I'm your host Kevin bemel and we're here for this particular
0:43 show every other Thursday at 5m uh Pacific time and we talk about all those things that make life worth living aside from Business and Professional and financial matters and so today we're GNA the the uh title of the show is come on get happy we're going to be talking about this topic of of Happiness uh it's it's it's something that I've looked at a lot in my life um but before we do that we're going to have our cocktail I have my trusty recipe here this is a roots and Wing cocktail designed by chat
1:21 GPT and uh for those of you who are not on my email list the cocktail represents the balance of staying grounded and reaching for New Heights it combines Whiskey's depth with herbal and Botanical notes along alongside a hint of spice for warmth doesn't that sound good so um these are the ingredients we're using um it it wh in this case whiskey I'm using a Ry which is a whiskey where the grain is rye um in this case I'm using mitcher single barrel mitchard has been making a rye in
1:56 the United States since 1753 so since before we were a country um and this is a Kentucky straight ride um and then we're going to use some Amaro so in this case I'm using um R jelinic um this is a a an Amaro from the Czech Republic and um it's been made since 1894 so you can see I I I have this thing for for old stuff and then we're going just be using a little bit of Ginger lure you can also use just ginger juice you can use some muddled um
2:33 fresh ginger um i' I've have this barrows intense Ginger lure for quite a while and I thought it'd be fun to try it out in this cocktail and then just some uh lemon juice fresh squeeze is always best I didn't have time to get to the uh to the store so I'm using a little bit of of uh just lemon juice and then just a little bit of simple syrup so so those are our ingredients and we're going to start out with 2 oz of whiskey of of Ry whiskey this is the MCH and make sure I find my uh it's this
3:11 whole thing okay okay so 2 O of whiskey and then I think it's a yeah half ounce of of Amaro Amaro is a a bitter lure um and uh let's flip over to this side yeah there we go okay and um typically a lot of Amaro are are from Italy I think I last time I used Amaro
3:48 it was an Italian Amaro that I used I thought you know tried something different um and then let's see a half ounce of the ginger lure give it a little spice ginger has some Ki to it I don't know if you if you're like me I Love Sushi and I love the fresh ginger that usually goes with the sushi okay and then 3/4 of an ounce of lemon juice see yep there it is
4:32 just about use the lemon juice up I think that's good okay and then to offset the lemon juice will be a half oun of simple syrup simple syrup is really just syrup uh sorry sugar um boiled down in water and we go okay I don't remember what Rand this is just something I found one time oh master of mixers simple syrup um I've made my own in the past I used
5:08 um what is it stirrings all of them are good okay so then we're going to um put some ice in the Shaker sometimes I you know I pour in the ingredients over ice in this case we're doing we're putting in the ingredients first and then putting in the ice a little bit more that's okay it's just water that's the thing about ice okay so there's there's our ice and uh oh here it is okay here's the top of
5:43 our shaker okay and and for those of you who watched before you know that we want to shake it down good um it's not just to mix it but to ice it down let some of the water come in I mean let some of the ice dilute so that it opens up the FL flavor and you can see the Shaker is getting nice and frosty on the outside a few seconds more okay yeah that that looks good I'm G to use a rock glass for this this is from a it's got a juniper square logo on it
6:19 Juniper square is a company that provides uh support for um for organizations that do investing um and uh um one of their people when she was in Los Angeles took me out to lunch to talk about it we had a lovely lunch okay and here we go so look at this color it's golden wow that just looks fantastic okay here we go give it a try wow another home run all right I'll
6:56 meet you on the other side so here we are over on the sofa or the love seed actually I've got my cocktail that's so delicious I have my
7:31 coaster I think I got this at kitson if I remember and it says happy hour records site a I want I want to dance with some Brandy there you go right uh you know we got to have our jokes so so our our topic for today um as I mentioned at the opening is is is happiness um and uh like I said it's been it's been a challenge of mine pretty much my whole life so um I have a a friend and over
8:08 the last um six seven eight nine months we've actually become much better friends his name is Michael I have a lot of Michaels in my life and I remember when I first U met him he was always a very uh upbeat person and I really admired that and um we were coming out of a synagogue um Beth Jacob of Beverly Hills one afternoon and I I stopped him and I
8:43 said did you become this this upbeat way as a result of living a more traditional Jewish life because at the time I was just becoming more traditionally religious and I thought you know that would be a great benefit of of uh you know living a more traditional life and he laughed and he said no he said I've always been this way it's it's something I got from my mother so I thought that was interesting you know from his perspective it was kind of I don't want to say he was born with it but he was he was raised to it I
9:19 I was not uh and and but but that's just sort of one uh one step on my road to finding happiness so as as a you know prior to that as as a young guy living here in Los Angeles I went to college here I went to USC starting in 1978 um graduated from USC and basically 82 and stayed on here in La so la especially at that time had a lot to offer um a young guy so I was in the
9:54 real estate business one of what I especially at the time were um I think the two most prominent Industries in Los Angeles real estate and the other being the entertainment industry and um I got involved uh I always loved movies and and and and it was it was a it was a it was a fun city to live in um my my I had friends from Santa Barbara where I grew up they'd come down here we go to film festivals all that kind of stuff and one of the things I noticed
10:30 was I was incredibly lonely even when I um was you know had a girlfriend uh I I I was still lonely and one of the I think what I what I tried to do at that time was assuage the loneliness and the pain of loneliness by uh distracting Myself by seeking Comfort basically by
11:05 by trying to make sure I wasn't experiencing pain whether it was the pain of loneliness or or whatever it was and I tried that for years and years and years and could never sustain happiness in any real way and so that's when I started looking at what is happiness what what does it really mean and one of the um people that um I listened to was a a
11:42 very well-known um lecturer at the time he was a um like a coach sort of Zig Ziggler and he observed that it's really easy to be happy all you have to do is start laughing even if you're even if you're not feeling like you start going and you're going to feel better right the the the just the the action of laughing causes us to feel better but that's not really what I think most people consider to be happiness happiness is a sense of of
12:18 contentment and uh a sense that I I have a place in the world and all these kind of things so so um drinking heavily um you know chasing members of the opposite sex drugs all these things they numb us so we don't feel unhappy but and and they they may make us feel comfortable and being very wealthy and being able to buy all kinds of things we can buy a tremendous a lot of
12:53 comfort but comfort and happiness are not the same thing and so then I I started looking at life differently as I headed into my especially as I moved out of my mid-30s um and and and into my late 30s and 40s and I realized that happiness was happiness as as at least as I was seeking it was something more than not being uncomfortable and
13:29 uh in in my particular case I I had always felt very connected to being Jewish but I was not particularly involved with Jewish practice and and so after um I my uh first wife and I got divorced I I I met a a fellow by the name of of Greg Yus and he started inviting me to his home he and his wife uh celebrated a traditional Shabbat a Friday night dinner or Saturday lunch and and I started opening myself up to
14:06 opportunities to grow and to start seriously looking at setting goals for my life not just financial goals so I always prior to that I always looked at goal setting as I'm going to earn X number of dollars a year I'm going to have X number of dollars in accumulated wealth another sip of my cocktail and it was very frustrating because I
14:42 was in the real estate business and sometimes the real estate business just does not cooperate so if if there's if you know if if the economy is not with you it's very hard to to beat the economic conditions that create a poor real estate market and and so I realized I needed to have goals in all areas of my life and I needed to actually look for opportunities to grow
15:17 essentially that's what a goal is a goal is saying my life is here right now I want my life to be here I'm going to have to make some changes along the way way to get from point A to point B and change almost by definition means growing and growth means by definition not being comfortable now I won't go so far as to say it's always painful
15:52 although sometimes maybe oftentimes it is but it is definitely uncomfortable we don't grow staying in our Zone where everything is okay hey no problem all that kind of stuff and what I realized was as I started achieving other types of goals I I I my self-respect grew and as my self-respect
16:27 grew I was I was happier that's the best way to put it not happier in the sense of going to a comedy show and laughing at a lot of great jokes but happier in the sense of being content with own within my own skin having a sense that I had some agency over my life so so let's let's let's be honest there are a lot of things that happen in life that we have no control over so as I as I'm talking to you right now the uh 2024
17:05 presidential election was was just held uh well or at least election day was was two days ago and uh president Trump won the election and Cala Harris did not win and it was it was a relatively close election I I think president Trump won 51 plus per of the popular vote um although he won a much larger percentage of the Electoral College vote and and I've been listening to various podcasts
17:40 sort of doing you know post-mortems about the election and there's a lot of people who are very sad that their candidate didn't win and there are a lot of people who are very happy that their candidate did win some of them are even gloating which I think is not such a great thing frankly but here's here's the thing when all is said and done we had nothing to do most of us not not everybody of course most of us had almost nothing to do with who won or
18:16 lost except for voting this is something that we do as fellow citizens but we have very little agency over the result little if any agency over the result so on a certain level to be happy or sad about the outcome while it's natural hopefully it's not going to be something that impacts us for very long because two years from now there's going to be another election and you know things could could change two years
18:51 before in 2022 there was a big election there were supposed to be a quote unquote Red Wave and it didn't happen and it shouldn't have been a cause for people who wanted to see the red Red Wave to happen because most of us had very little uh ability to affect it one way or the other so so what setting goals does for us is it gives us an opportunity to strive for something that we actually have the
19:29 ability to impact okay so I'll give you an example I've always wanted to be a musician and a singer now you know to be a singer as good as Dean Maron or somebody like that uh I mean I don't have the voice but you you know it would be Beyond a dream come true I I don't have any aspirations or goals to
20:05 get to that level but I did get I I did set a goal to learn to play the ukulele and to be able to sing along and and and perform and I achieved that goal for the most part now I'm not an expert ukulele player I still have I I have to get back into it and and continue practicing and building my skills but that I was able to learn to play the ukulele pretty well and with my little amplifier and my pickup on my ukulele and my my you know
20:42 song sheets and be able to sing and do a little performance even if it was only for me or me and my family that that gave me a great deal of happiness and and that's that was clearly something that was Within my ability to achieve it it stretched me because it required more a lot of self-discipline to do the everyday practice it takes to become you know to to be able to play a musical instrument
21:17 and it was physically painful sometimes because I would get calluses on my or not calluses but I would uh you know my my like my my my finger would be r red and and and and my nail would be you know would hurt from from the strumming and my the pads of my fingers until I developed calluses would hurt from fingering the cords so there was physical pain and there was kind of the emotional pain of of oh I've got to practice again and it wasn't exactly happiness although once I would start
21:53 practicing I would feel happy because I had exercise selfis displine toward being able to do something that I I very much wanted to do so it was a growth experience for me and I remember I I I I learned to play the ukulele while I was uh on active duty in the Navy I was sent to Germany as a Geo Bachelor and and and you know I eventually I came home and and I would do little concerts for my then wife and daughter um and I'm I'm
22:28 pretty sure sure they both thought this was super super cheesy on my part but you know excuse me being able to uh sing songs to my wife especially certain love songs um you know uhh one of my favorites was um Jet Plane the the John Denver song you know leav on a Jet Plane don't know when I'll be back again going to bring you a ring all that kind of stuff for me that was that was kind of you know very romantic and all of that I I I guess in retrospect it
23:03 wasn't for her I don't know but um but it these this experience of of being able to endure the the uh build the emotional uh resilience of of the self-discipline that was necessary to to achieve this was was really terrific thing and it's still when I when when I look at my ukuleles um in their in their little holders and I have my my amp there and whatever my my music stand with my microphone I see that and and I I feel a
23:41 certain self-confidence and happiness that I was able to achieve enough of becoming a musician that could justify my spending whatever it was $3 $400 on on this various equipment and so so I think we we tend to to look at it and say well if I can be comfortable I'll be happy if I can avoid pain I'll be happy but the the the reality of life is a of seeking comfort and avoiding
24:17 pain I think leads more much more likely to unhappiness than it does to happiness and conversely purposely putting ourselves in a situation where we are going to experience some challenges maybe even some pain as we strive to grow whether it's grow emotionally whether it's grow in some kind of physical way like building calluses on our fingertips learning to play the ukulele whether
24:52 it's growing spiritually by committing to a spiritual discipline like like being more uh more traditionally religious and being more involved in in ritual and such there I I think it creates a a sort of inner happiness that we actually have the ability to guide our lives and not be subject to the the the sort of um uh you know whims of life and and the vicissitudes of of existence
25:28 that to me is a is a sense of of of happiness and satisfaction that is much more deeply enriching than merely trying to avoid pain and and seeking comfort so another another another sip here well I have to say the mix of all of these the so Rye is a spicy GR and has lots lots of layered flavors where as a as as compared to something
26:04 for example like bourbon which is corn at least 50% corn and and as you probably aware corn is a sweetener so bourbon has a sweetness to it that's the overwhelming Taste of bourbon although obviously there are other things Rye does not have that same quality Rye is a is a a spice palette and then mix that with a little a t of bitterness and a tinch of sour and a tinch of of uh you know intense spice of the ginger and just a little bit of sweetness of the of
26:41 the simple syrup makes just a wonderful cocktail but but I digress but but after all it is you know it is jigger's place where we we talk about books cocktails life all these kind of things so so you know I I encourage you to seek off opportunities for growth maybe it's taking a class some sort of you know academic or intellectual growth maybe it's taking you know getting involved in some sort of physical activity that challenges you physically learning to to spelunk you
27:16 know uh rock climb um maybe it's adopting a pet and having uh another living creature to take care of uh or you know even better maybe it's really going out there and saying I want to spend my life with another person uh so I was I was uh talking to a friend of mine I believe it was yesterday or the day before and he was talking about a verse from the Hebrew Bible and
27:53 he he quoted me the Hebrew but the Hebrew basically it was talking the story of Adam and Eve the Hebrew was saying uh essentially uh um Eve was a challenge to Adam that's that's a fairly accurate translation of the Hebrew it's like wow why would Adam ever want to be involved with a woman who was a challenged to him but that's the archetype the person that we marry and
28:29 and I would I would argue that marriage is the most challenging relationship into which we can enter because it is supposed to be lifelong easy for a guy like me to say who's you know um who whose second marriage is has you know Unwound um but to live with you know someone who you know who's a different sex than we are and and we don't have a viseral understanding of of how this person thinks how this person feels Etc so so this this is a continual
29:07 opportunity for for growth and it's going to cause us pain it's going to cause us sleepless nights it's going to cause us annoyance and anger but I think those of you who are married I think you would age with me when you sit down very calmly and look at your life to have a successful marriage is a source of
29:45 tremendous Pride not pride in the sense of how great am I but self-satisfaction maybe pride in the sense of self-satisfaction there there there is no be to to sustain a marriage is far more difficult than any other situation in which we can put ourselves especially because marriage is voluntary and so I I encourage you I implore you I uh urge you to find situations in your
30:24 life that will challenge you that will give you the opportunity to grow and really find true happiness the kind that that that gets into our kishkas as we say in Yiddish that gets into our our gut that gets into our soul and and that give us the opportunity to to really believe in ourselves and be very very a very content centered person so cheers
30:59 jiggers this place it's a good place to hang out and uh so I have a little bit of extra time here couple of thoughts if you have an issue of life that you feel strongly about sharing with other people send me an email my email will be in the show notes uh after the episode posts on LinkedIn and maybe you'll join me here on jigger's place and we'll talk about it together I have a few ideas for this
31:35 coming up and you know rather than making this always a monologue I I I would love to share this you know these Thursday evenings with uh you know with with one person or two or three or 10 um and uh and and and and hear in real time your thoughts about my musings so uh like I said if you have an idea for something let me know i' I'd love to uh hear about it always interested in your comments post them on
32:11 social media and uh you know I I I I will do my best to respond and together we will find a way to make our lives better not only our lives but our family's lives our children's lives Etc so before I leave you couple a few things number one next week starting on Monday all of these are Pacific time 10:00 a.m. trust and Estates weekly the topic is self-explanatory Tuesday 10: a.m.
32:46 Pacific Time Business lessons from the military and Wednesday 10 a.m. pacif Pacific time is people making money so those those are my regular weekly shows and I hope you'll join me if you are not a subscriber to my YouTube channel I would absolutely be very very grateful if you would subscribe and more importantly spend some time watching my my various shows I have I what I think are some fantastic guests uh Maryann Dean was on my show
33:23 earlier this week she's an expert in dealing with conflicts and helping people mediate their way through them what a wonderful wonderful woman I invite you to go and check out MaryAnn's episode a few weeks before that Jacqueline Yu was my guest dealing with complex issues and trusts and Estates again just really an amazing amazingly knowledgeable woman and Incredibly clear in how she explained it so as you might guess I I have a
33:58 particular particular affinity for people who explain things but also exhibit humility at the same time so as always I thank you very much for joining me and I wish you not only a wonderful evening but a wonderful rest of the week looking forward to seeing you next week oh one last thing if you're if you uh haven't subscribed to my YouTube Channel please do consider subscribing that way you'll always know when a new show is posting so a toast to you and signing
34:36 off as I always do my dear Marie you are my bell courage at all times even when life has thrown you a curveball that you really didn't want to have to take a swing and miss that courage at all times my friends