0:00 Who are you?
0:01 >> [music]
0:03 >> And where are you going?
0:07 >> [music]
0:08 >> What do you want? Hello and welcome to Jigger's Place. So, I apologize for starting late. Uh I I uh had a business meeting in uh Menifee, California, which uh is about uh uh roughly 2 hours away from where I live, and the meeting ran long. The good news is it was a very successful meeting, uh but the bad news is I'm I'm starting
0:44 a little bit late today. So, um thank you for joining me. And uh this is indeed Jigger's Place. It's That means it's Thursday at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time, 8:00 p.m. on the East Coast. And today, or this afternoon, this evening, we're going to be talking about courage. So, if you have ever received an email from me starting in uh 2020, uh it's signed "Courage at all times." And
1:19 uh some of my friends, you know, they know me well, and and we've talked about why I started signing my emails that way. Um you may be wondering and thinking, "Okay, this guy's off his rocker." Uh that's possible. Uh but in any event, I'm going to be talking today about courage. And in honor of courage, uh my co-cocktail creator, ChatGPT, and I created a cocktail called The Steady Hand. So, uh this is a bourbon cocktail, and I'm going to be using Belle Meade uh sour
1:55 mash whiskey, straight whiskey, which is a bourbon. Uh This This was This is made in I'm trying to remember. I want to say No, Nashville. It's made in Nashville. It's been It's been around for over 150 years. And you can see it's one of my favorites. Okay, so that's one ingredient. The next ingredient is honey ginger syrup. So, you've seen me make cocktails with honey syrup before. This is honey ginger syrup. The recipe
2:31 for the honey ginger syrup If you Well, all the cocktail recipes, if you want them, just go to my website bemil.com, sign up for my email list, and the Thursday morning before a show, you will get the recipes for the cocktails. I included in this week's recipe how to make the honey ginger syrup. It's a little bit different than just plain honey syrup. So, that's next. And then we have some lemon juice. Normally, I would make fresh squeezed lemon juice, but I was pressed for time, so I'm going to use some pre-squeezed Angostura
3:07 bitters. And then a little bit of sea salt. This happens to be fleur de sel Le Saunier de Camargue. This comes all the way from France. It's um it's famous all over France. It's It's really great sea salt to the extent that I guess we can taste the difference between sea salt. I have my shaker with my ice in it. So, we're going to start out with 2 oz of bourbon. And there it is.
3:42 Okay, so a little bit more than a [ __ ] of bourbon. And thank you, Miss Bell. And let's see, 3/4 of an ounce of the honey ginger syrup. I'm going to have to I'm going to estimate this. That looks about like 3/4. And in it goes. And then 1/2 oz of lemon juice. It opens over here.
4:19 Or maybe it opens here. It opens over here. There we go. Okay. So, we'll get a 1/2 oz of lemon juice. There we go. Okay. Some people are very, very careful about the measures. I'm not as careful maybe. Maybe I should be more careful. Okay. And two dashes of Angostura bitters. Okay. And think we're Wait, wait, wait for the salt. Oh, no. Add the salt. So,
4:55 um just a small pinch of salt. There we go. Put that in there. I don't think you can see this this this this salt. It comes in this very beautiful little uh container. Okay. And now we're going to shake it with ice. And for those of you who watch the show all the time, you know that it's not just a matter of mixing the various ingredients, but and and chilling them down, but it's also letting some of the ice melt because water opens up the
5:30 flavors. So, a good, you know, 20 to 30 seconds anyway of shaking. Uh I I am not like Tom Cruise in the in the movie Cocktail, so I can't be, you know, tossing shakers over my head and all that kind of stuff, but uh I do my best. You can see the shaker is getting frosty on the outside. That's how you know you're you're getting close to being ready. All right, that should be good. And I have a rocks glass here with a with with an ice cube in it.
6:05 So, we're going to pour this out. It's got a nice kind of pinkish color. Well, more more of a golden color, I think, because of the syrup and the bourbon. Nice sidecar cocktail. Let's give this a try. Mhm. You know, after a long day, this is nice. See, I got my tie down just like, you know, businessman coming home from in the '50s
6:41 and '60s. Okay, see you on the couch. Ah.
7:08 >> [sighs]
7:10 >> It's time to relax. Ah.
7:18 >> [snorts] [cough]
7:21 >> Ah. So, um I hope you had a good week. Just one day left and then the weekend and uh you know, a little time for us to spend together. So, all right. So, the topic for today's show is courage. And what's what's that all about? So, I think the key aspect of courage is [snorts] courage is is is it's not that
7:58 we're not afraid. It's that we act despite our fear. That's central to courage.
8:09 >> [snorts]
8:10 >> And there's lots of things there's lots of types of fear. So, we can be afraid of being hurt physically. We can be afraid of being hurt emotionally. We can be afraid of being embarrassed. We can be afraid of uh failure. So, fear comes in many different varieties. And yet
8:45 most of the things we want in life are on the other side of fear. That's because fear seems to most often crop up when we're we're approaching a new experience. So, diving into a swimming pool for the first time. I I remember when I was a child, I was very afraid of diving into a swimming pool. Uh especially in the deep end. I've
9:22 never done it before. The whole idea that was scary. I wouldn't hesitate to dive into a swimming pool nowadays. And in fact, after taking swimming lessons And or and and and having my dad my dad would my my dad was many things. He was a lifeguard and a swimming teacher when he was a teenager. So my dad with my sisters he used to have us jump into the pool and he'd be standing right there. So we knew that no matter
9:58 what our dad would you know, save us, right? And it was in that way that uh I'm getting a little misty here remembering have that memory of my dad. In that way we learned not to be afraid of jumping in the swimming pool. It was we had to sort of my sisters and I had to screw up our courage, right? Even though our dad was there and and we knew he loved us and was going to take care of us, but you know, things can go wrong, right? Uh so
10:31 >> [clears throat]
10:31 >> but after a few times oh, okay, you know, dad's going to get us. He's not going to miss. So you know, "Daddy, daddy, I want to jump into the pool, right?" So that was one step and then of course the next step would be to jump in the pool when when daddy wasn't there. Right? So there are you might say, "Well, that's that's you know, that's a pretty small act of courage." Although from a child's perspective it's probably a big act of courage. That's that's what courage is. It's it's the
11:06 ability to jump into the swimming pool despite being afraid of doing so. Courage is also sticking to what we believe even when what we believe is not popular. It's not, you know, part of the current cultural gestalt. Right? So, there's moral courage, there's ethical courage, there's emotional courage.
11:42 All of these are important because courage is an essential quality to building resilience. And resilience is necessary for getting through life.
12:19 And you say, "Well, that sounds awfully simple. It's simple to say it, but it's hard to live it. And this is why courage is such an essential quality to build, especially when we're going through turbulent times.
12:41 >> [snorts]
12:41 >> And so, in 2020, with COVID, lockdowns, masks, people were afraid of each other. There wasn't food on the shelves of grocery stores, all kinds of crazy things going on.
12:58 >> [snorts]
12:59 >> Our country hadn't lived through anything like that in a hundred years, since the Spanish flu epidemic.
13:06 >> [snorts]
13:09 >> And I saw, when I would go to the store, I I would see frightened people. I remember being at a uh a grocery store, and the shelves were maybe half filled. And a guy walk comes in with his his shopping cart and proceeds to literally pull stuff off the shelf into his cart. Clearing the shelves. And I walked up to him and I said,
13:48 "Maybe you ought to leave some some things for other people.
13:53 >> [snorts]
13:54 >> Maybe you ought to leave some things for the people who work in this store, who can't shop until [snorts] closing time." And he turned to me and he said, "F you."
14:14 >> [snorts]
14:15 >> I gave him my standard response, "Nice mouth. You kiss your mother with that mouth?" He was clearly afraid. He was so afraid he was going to run out of food. He thought of no one but himself. And I I was talking to one of the people I knew who worked at the store and he told me there were that this is what people were doing. I mean I told him about my, you know, what had happened. He He said,
14:43 >> [laughter]
14:44 >> "It's okay, brother. I'm with you." Kind of thing, you know. I can I can appreciate somewhat, you know, being afraid of, "Oh, there's not going to be food, you know, to eat." This is why courage was so essential. We had to, you know, it was necessary to overcome our fear and to remain human,
15:17 >> [snorts]
15:17 >> to still have some kind of consideration for other people despite our fear. And that's why that's when and why I started signing my emails courage at all times. I actually I sent an email to someone I knew during that time and she sent me an email back saying, "I think it should be kindness at all times." I disagree with her.
15:53 First of all, people too often confuse kindness with niceness, like being nice to someone. Sometimes the kindest thing is to be tough. And in order to be tough with someone when they're vulnerable, we need to have courage. We need to have courage to accept that they may think, "This person is not very nice." But hopefully down the road they'll realize
16:28 that what we did was actually helpful to them and it was a kind thing to do. Undergirding kindness is courage. When we're feeling tired out of sorts if if if we're going to stick to who we are, people who believe that all people should be
17:04 treated decently we're going to need to exercise some courage to overcome our fatigue, our annoyance, all those things. Mhm.
17:23 >> [snorts]
17:26 >> So, how do we build this? How do we become courageous people?
17:37 >> [snorts]
17:38 >> We don't build courage through solitary acts of heroism. Don't get me wrong. To do something heroic is a noble it's a noble behavior. But one courageous act will not build the habit of courage. And like so many behaviors,
18:13 we need to habituate them to make them a part of us. We need to habituate being kind. We need to habituate treating people decently. We need to habituate being resilient.
18:30 >> [snorts]
18:30 >> And so, we need to habituate being courageous. A thousand small acts of courage will do far more for our lives than one huge heroic act. Again, not to refrain from doing the heroic act, but look for opportunities in your life each
19:05 day to do something this big that's courageous. That's That's what's so important. Just like we need to exercise to make our muscles stronger or to retain just to retain the strengths in our strength in our muscles, not even necessarily to make them stronger, but to retain our muscle tone, to retain you know, the vigor in our muscles.
19:41 Right?
19:43 >> [snorts]
19:44 >> We need to do the same thing for our psyches, for our personalities. No one is born courageous. For that matter, no one is born kind. This is a This is a dispute I have with my my older sister Marla, who I love dearly. Children are not born nice. That's why they'll they'll hit their friend in order to get what they want. They have to learn to be kind. They have to learn to share.
20:19 They have to learn good values. Children need to learn courage. It is probably the most precious gift my father gave me. For all the times that I stood on that pool deck with my toes over the side and my father encouraging me to jump. There There is no more precious gift
20:56 than he could have given me than a hundred times of doing that. That little act of courage as a little kid
21:08 >> [snorts]
21:08 >> four or five years old showing me that I could be courageous and that most of the time performing that act of courage was going to lead me to something better in my life. By the way, sometimes I would jump off the pool and I would,
21:44 you know, stub my toe. I was a very
21:48 >> [snorts]
21:48 >> accident-prone kid and I would I would hurt myself a little bit. And my dad would say it's all right. You're going to recover.
21:59 >> [snorts]
22:02 >> Just go on and swim, enjoy yourself. And I would forget about my toe that hurt or whatever it was. The wounds we may uh suffer as a result of of doing something courageous physical emotional, spiritual often times fade
22:37 in the face of the growth that we experience by realizing that by taking that courageous step we've we've been able to make ourselves better people. We've been able to enrich our lives. And that's why I wanted to do this show on courage. So, let's let's give a toast to courage.
23:16 >> [snorts]
23:16 >> Not to the kind of courage that that we attribute to people [snorts] in the military. People in military we're we're incredibly [snorts] grateful for the support of our fellow citizens. We most of us don't like being called heroes.
23:35 >> [snorts]
23:35 >> We're not necessarily doing anything courageous or more courageous per se than our fellow citizens. But sometimes we do. The guys in explosive ordnance division, they're doing courageous things. The people who actually engage in combat, they're doing courageous things. But that's a small percentage of the people in the military. Most of us are doing we're doing our jobs to enable the people who do the
24:10 courageous stuff to be safer. Their families are taken care of, etc. But let's let's let's let's make one more toast. Let's make a toast to I don't know, maybe it's our mom and dad who helped us realize that we could do courageous things and grow. Here's to that. Here's to our siblings who maybe did the same thing. And our friends, our neighbors.
24:51 Here's to a thousand acts of courage that over the time it took to do them embedded in our souls the opportunity to grow to become more resilient and to have greater capacity to help those who we love. Cheers.
25:26 >> [cough]
25:30 >> So, thank you very much for joining me this afternoon. Again, I apologize for being late getting started.
25:37 >> [clears throat]
25:38 >> But, uh I really as those of you who have seen the show before know this is a a special time for me.
25:47 >> [snorts]
25:47 >> It is it it is an opportunity for me to hopefully connect with you on the most important things in life and I can't thank you enough for for watching this show. If you know someone who would benefit in particular for this show, who maybe is feeling down, is feeling beaten down by life and you think maybe this will give them some comfort or a little bit of inspiration
26:22 consider sharing this with them. This is This is my toast to them. This is my toast to your friends and loved ones who are struggling who need an extra dash of courage. Have a wonderful evening. A wonderful rest of the week and weekend. Signing off as I always do to a a woman who was so special in my life.
26:57 Marie darling, you are my bell. Courage at all times, my friends.