A Bit of Optimism - Peace Is A Process with negotiation expert William Ury

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Peace is a process, not an outcome. It's a process that must begin with understanding the other side.Few people on this planet have as much experience making peace as William Ury. William spent decades as a peace negotiator, resolving the world's most intractable conflicts — from avoiding nuclear catastrophe in the Cold War to mediating ethnic tensions and civil wars. Considered one of the world's pre-eminent negotiation experts, he's written several books on the subject, including the best-selling Getting To Yes. His latest book is titled Possible. I sat down with William to discuss the possibility of peace in an increasingly conflicted world. He shares some great stories with me from his career and what he's learned about the right way to influence others.This...is A Bit of Optimism.For more on William and his work, check out:his books, Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) in an Age of Conflict and Getting To Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving Inwilliamury.com 

There seems to be no shortage of conflict today. There are multiple wars, political fighting, and let's not even start talking about the dumpster fire that is social media. The point is, if you're looking for an enemy to hate, there are plenty to choose from. So what about peace? Is it even possible for us to sit down and listen, or feel heard, with the people we disagree with or even hate? If there's one person on this planet who can answer that question, it's William Ury.

William is considered the goat when it comes to negotiation. The author of multiple books on the subject, including Getting to Yes, which is an absolute masterpiece. William has spent decades as a peace negotiator, working to resolve the world's most intractable conflicts. And if there's one thing I've learned from William, it's that peace is a process and not an outcome. It's a process that begins by listening to those we oppose with the same human dignity we offer to anyone else. And if you think some of the people you disagree with or hate don't deserve to be treated with dignity, this episode is definitely for you. This is a bit of optimism. You're a world famous peace negotiator. Do you have any competition? I hope so. I hope

I have plenty of competition. I know, right. Seriously, I hope there's a whole industry just of peace negotiators. You came to fame by co-authoring the book Getting to Yes, which is the Bible for anyone who studies negotiation, and it's used in any number of universities and courses. In your years of understanding negotiation, is there any difference between a peace negotiation, a negotiation in a business context, trying to make a deal? Are all negotiations basically the same thing regardless of the stakes? Or are they actually different? If I'm negotiating a contract or trying to negotiate a deal with my union versus a peace negotiation at the highest levels of Israelis, Palestinians, et cetera, Is there actually a difference or is all negotiation basically the same thing? So is that book that you wrote, not just a book on how to effectively negotiate,

but how to have relationships, how to have a better marriage, how to have, you know, peace? Is it all basically the same, even though the words might be different? Well, there are obviously a lot of situational differences. There's no question about it. We can go into all that. But at the root of it is what you're asking, I think, fundamentally. It is, in my experience, I can just speak to my experience, it is the same. And I work in all, I've worked, you know, I started working in coal mine strikes and coal mines and in the Middle East and family

disputes and a lot of business disputes and so on. And yeah, that's my experience. It's basically human beings dealing with other human beings and having conflicts, which we all have at every level. And the evidence of that is that book, because that book had examples from all of those realms. that book, because that book had examples from all of those realms. And it's used in prisons with prisoners, it's used in divinity schools, it's used in diplomatic academies, it's used in the State Department, it's used in the Pentagon, in the military, and obviously a lot in the business world. It's used by therapists, and that's because they find it helpful across the different domains. Because we're talking about human beings trying to live with other human beings.

And to me, this is the key thing right now is we're in trouble here. The country stops C-tervary, the world stops C--turvy, social media, artificial intelligence, everything is going on, all the changes, climate change, all that stuff. There's more and more conflict because naturally, because there's more and more change in the world. And with more change comes more conflict. And conflict is not something necessarily bad. It's actually natural.

It's human. Everybody has conflict. There's conflict all the time. The choice is not about getting rid of the conflict. It's about how Everybody has conflict. There's conflict all the time. The choice is not about getting rid of the conflict. It's about how do we deal with the conflict? Do we deal with the conflict by opposing each other and getting into this fight where we all lose in the end? Or do we, as you were saying, do we face the situation together and say, how do we resolve this? Or how do we transform it? Or how do we agree to disagree? How do we get along? And on that question, our personal happiness depends on it,

but our collective survival as a species depends on how we answer that question. I think there's something very important here that when you and I talk about our desire for world peace, there's nothing Pollyanna, Pollyannish about that. We don't imagine a world without conflict. We imagine a world in which all conflict can be resolved peacefully. And that's what world peace looks like. Exactly. Peace is a process. It's not an outcome of like some fairy thing. It's a process. It's can we deal with our differences constructively? And I like to provoke people by sometimes saying, I personally believe the world needs more conflict, not less.

And that's not to keep me in a job, but that's because wherever there's change that needs to be done in families and communities and businesses, or whether there's injustices, you need conflict, you need to engage, you need to stop avoiding, you need to engage it. But the way in which you engage is the critical, do you engage by listening? Do you engage by cooperation? Do you engage by using creativity? You engage by collaboration? Or do you engage by, you know, going to war? And we all know how wars turn out, everybody loses. going to war. And we all know how wars turn out. Everybody loses. Can you tell a specific story from your peace negotiating where there were two sides that have historical hatred for each other and how you were able to find a breakthrough that

they could see each other as actually more the same than different or at least in common cause in some way, shape or form. Okay. I'm going to tell a story I usually don't tell. It was a number of years ago, there was a terrible civil war raging in the country of Turkey between the Turks and the Kurds. There was a Kurdish separatist movement and 3,000 villages were destroyed, tens of thousands of people were killed. It was going on over many,

many years. In the midst of it, a group of Turkish leaders and Kurdish leaders who were former top military or former parliamentarians, congresspeople, and so on, a small group of them, we brought them out of Turkey because they couldn't meet in Turkey. In fact, Small group of them, we brought them out of Turkey because they couldn't meet in Turkey. In fact, when we brought them to a place in Switzerland, just a quiet place, and they couldn't be known to be even talking to each other because they would be considered traitors by their own side. That's how think it was called the White Wolves, which was a kind of a shadowy paramilitary kind of terrorist organization. And he was described to me as someone who'd rather shoot a Kurd than sit down and talk

with a Kurd. So he was there. We're meeting the next morning. And I say to them, I want to hear from each side, what do you most want? What do you really care about? What's really important to you here? And one of the Kurdish leaders started talking about the right to self-determination, to choose your own fate, choose your own destiny. And as soon as that word self-determination, to choose your own fate, choose your own destiny. And as soon as that word self-determination came up, this Turkish guy got up and said,

that's treason. That's criminal to even use that phrase, self-determination. I'm leaving here. What am I doing here? And he stormed out of the room. And everyone was in kind of shock. And so I went after him with another colleague of his and said, look, you know, it's really important to your point of view to be heard here. Come on back in. He was going to leave, was packing his bags to leave. He came back in and explained what it meant to him. And then the Kurdish leader said, you know, I didn't get a

chance to finish what I was going to say. I believe that all human beings have the right to self-determination. And I, as a Kurdish citizen of Turkey, believe that we Kurds ought to exercise our right of self-determination to remain part of Turkey. And I'll tell you something, if an external enemy attacked Turkey, I would sign up for the army and give my life for Turkey. And I'll tell you something, if an external enemy attacked Turkey, I would sign up for the army and give my life for Turkey. It's just that chance to really listen to what they actually said. Then something really interesting happened, which was that night. That was that little breakthrough. I saw everyone's when when the kurdish leader said that it's like the the emotional reading in the room we kind of like oh that's what you mean you know

when you get a chance to really listen to what the other person says rather you know it's that immediate trigger well that night i saw that kurdish guy turkish guy having dinner we were having dinner you know having and they were sitting at their own table and with a couple others and they were talking heatedly and and whatever it is. I noticed, wow, they're really deep into it. And then the next morning, when we were starting, the Turkish guy, who'd been the member of the White Wolves, and who'd been so triggered, said, I just want to start by saying something. He said, last night at dinner, I heard for the first time what the Kurds have gone through in the course of this war, what they've suffered, the killings, the torture, just even for being able to speak their language in this country. It was forbidden.

It was against the law to speak the Kurdish language, their own language, or to have their own religious festivals. It was all against the law. And he said, I finally got that. And he said, and that last night, I didn't sleep a wink. And I want to tell you something. He said, if someone had told me a month ago that I'd be sitting here listening to Kurds talk about self-determination or Kurdistan, I would have thought I was living my worst nightmare. But now I understand. I think I'm living in a dream. I want to thank you for opening my eyes. And it wasn't that he abandoned his side. He just understood the other side story. And it was like, there was a real just like a shift in the whole room.

And this is what I love about conflicts is you got to work with the ones who are not just the moderates, work with the so called extremists, because they're the ones when they shift, when they have that shift, it changes the whole room. I think people forget that you can't make peace with your friends. I think people forget that you can't make peace with your friends. You can only make peace with an enemy. Right. And so if you desire peace in a nation, then you have no option but to engage with someone that you consider literally the enemy.

Right. That's it. And, you know, so, I mean, this is why I do this work is, this work, because people say, wow, it must be really tiring. I've worked 40, 40, 50 years on the Middle East, Ukraine, just name the conflict. And it must be absolutely exhausting. But the thing is, those moments when human beings are actually touching into that thing, there's an energy that comes. There's a light that comes in the darkness. You can see courage. You can see little acts of courage and it's alive. There's an aliveness in the middle of those conflicts that often you don't find when people are just kind of off living their lives.

Our country seems to be ripping itself to shreds. Now, I know, I know that a lot of it is blown up in the media. I know that most Americans are moderates. I know that most Americans are curious about other people. But at the end of the day, the people doing the shouting, whether it's the politicians or the media, are dividing us. We shout at each other, we talk at each other, we don't listen and we exercise zero curiosity. Thanksgiving is approaching. And when you have a family member with different political views than you, the rule of thumb is just don't talk about it. Avoid it. How do we change that, that we do talk about it, that we do talk? Where do we start, Bill? How do we get peace in America? That's a great question. I think you just gave the clue, which is you can talk about it, but just start by listening. Meet perceived animosity with curiosity. Turn to that favorite uncle or not so favorite uncle or whatever and just say,

tell me more. Tell me why. I agree with you entirely in theory, right? But the problem is, is these things are triggering. Like I had a conversation with a friend recently who is, it's somebody you and I both know. He is, I would consider, above average intelligence. He's a very smart, articulate, thoughtful, curious person. And yet the anger that he has when I said, we have to learn to listen to people with whom we have sometimes completely diametrically opposed political opinions,

the anger, something triggered in him, but they're stupid or they're this. So if your crazy uncle says something that is triggering, that attacks the beliefs that you hold, whether they're intentional or unintentional, how do we not be triggered and stay in that space of curiosity when we want to fight? That's what triggering is. What I like to do is when I know I'm going to be in a situation that might be triggering, I look for whatever my favorite way,

and everyone has their favorite way of what I call going to the balcony, which is just resourcing yourself. Take a walk around the block. Imagine that, wow, something's going to come up at Thanksgiving. Think about what self you want to bring to that conversation, because they're going to say something, you're going to be triggered. And if you can just for one moment, when you just name it, say, oh, I knew that was going to come up. Just naming it creates a little bit of psychological distance. It frees you. There's an old saying that when angry, you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret.

Don't make the best speech you'll ever regret. Realize you have choice. You have agency. As you're talking about this, what's going through my mind is this is not dissimilar than having a functional relationship of any sorts. It's the exact same thing. And I'm thinking about my own sort of relationships. And I think the mistake that we make is that the reason we get triggered and the reason we lose control

and the reason we attack or feel attacked is to prepare. And I know that in my relationships, when I have been in a time of peace, whether with my partner or by myself, to mentally prepare ourselves or to mentally prepare myself for the time, the inevitable time where there will be disagreement, tension, or a fight, that we establish the rules in peacetime so that we're prepared in war, as opposed to just trying to invent the rules each time. There you go. And I know one of the things that helped me was we agreed that if we fight or when we fight,

that we would fight instead of me versus her, it would be us versus the problem, or that we would fight to get to resolution. And I remember being in an argument in tension, and I would have to remind myself, I'm not fighting to get to resolution here. I'm fighting to be right. I would catch myself. But I did the work. I built the muscle memory before the tension arrived. And I'll just give you one example of how it worked. And I'm hoping that this helps for those political discourses. We were having a disagreement. And it went something like this. Here's what I did right. And here's what you did wrong. And her response is, oh, yeah, well, here's what I did right. And here's what you did wrong. And her response is, oh, yeah, well, here's what I did right

and here's what you did wrong. And my response is, oh, yeah, well, here's what I did right and here's what you did, and you could see where this was going. And it was getting more heated. It was getting more personal. And I realized that we were breaking our own rules about how we're fighting. We weren't fighting to get to resolution. We were fighting against each other.

And I literally interrupted the fight. I said, this is clearly not working. New rules. I said, from now on, I'm going to tell you what I did wrong and what you did right. And then it's going to be your turn and I'll go first. I said, here's what I did wrong and here's what you did right. And she goes, oh yeah, well, here's what I did wrong and here's what you did right. We were good in five minutes or less because we realized the other person was actually trying, as opposed to finding all the failures. And I think that's an interesting technique,

whether that works with political discourse or not, which is here's something I think you have fundamentally right that my party has fundamentally wrong. Yeah. To actually change the rules of the discourse. Engage in what can be called meta-talk. Talk about the talk. Talk about the talk before you have the talk. Set the ground rules. And so much easier to do that when you're in peace with each other than when you're at war. And a little bit of preparation. I mean, think about it.

Those conversations are some of the most important conversations we have in our relationship. They're make-or-break conversations, cumulatively, right? A relationship fails or succeeds depends on the way in which we deal with those conversations when we have conflict. I've seen surveys of psychologists say

the single biggest success factor in a relationship is how people deal with conflict. So if that's so important to you, think about you're going to make a presentation at work. You don't just go on the fly and do it. You prepare, you rehearse, you think about it, you prepare yourself mentally and emotionally. The conversations that you're going to have with your most intimate ones or with people, your most intimate enemies, you know, or whatever, the ones at the Thanksgiving table, they're crucial for relationships that will go on for years. They matter to us.

So prepare. Take a moment to prepare. As a rule of thumb, take as much time to prepare as you're going to have the conversation, one to one. But even if it's less, even if you're about to get on the phone, if you've got one minute, just take one minute of silence. Calm yourself. Breathe. And then remember what the rules are. Remember what your intention is. Remember what your why is. And it could be so helpful. And you just came up with it right there in your conversation with your partner. Everyone will come up with the things that work for them.

But the most important thing, I think, is just to remember to pause. We're in a world where there's no pauses anymore. You know, we've got these phones. They deprive us of pauses. We used to have pauses. You know, now you go to a restaurant, everyone's looking at their phone. No one pauses from, where are those little moments between conversations

when you can pause, remember what it's about, think about it, give yourself those little micro pauses in the course of your day and you'll be much more successful. This is so interesting. And as you're saying these things, a lot of ideas and experiences are sort of coming back to my mind. Another one in relationship, which is I remember we were having a conversation and she was saying things to me that were triggering. Like she was hitting my insecurities. I was getting defensive. I wouldn't let her finish a sentence because I needed to defend myself. There was some preparation

at another time for another reason that I was able to recall in the moment was this is her story. It doesn't have to be right and I don't have to agree with it. It is her story, and my job is to listen to her story. It is the technique that you talk about going to the balcony, which is, I was able to remove myself from myself in that moment. And I still got triggered, but I remembered I was able to not take it as personally. And I was just like, she's not attacking you. She's telling you her story. If you're feeling attacked, it's okay. Just listen to her story. Her story doesn't have to be right. It doesn't have to be accurate. You don't have to agree with it. It's just the story. Just listen to the story. And I was able to not disconnect myself from the conversation. I remained present and I remained curious,

disconnect myself from the conversation. I remained present and I remained curious, but it really helped me to not take the things that were being said to me personally. And this is what you're talking about, about going to the balcony. That's it. That's it. The thing is, it's so simple and it's something that any of us can do. This isn't like something you have to go to school for. This is something, you know, we have practice every single day. I'm learning this. I mean, I'm happy to practice this every day. You know, I've been doing this for a long time, but it's like, this is our daily practice as human beings. We're going to be faced with tensions right now in the world, in this country. Obviously, they're amplified,

so it's even more important. But just put yourself in their shoes and hear their story. It might be as simple as, you know, someone says something to you. It's really important. We're about to give our response. Let me tell you what it looks like from my point of view. Well, that's important, but what about just taking a moment and saying, let me make sure I heard what you're saying. And you just paraphrase back to them what you heard them say,

and say, I got it right, where did I get it wrong? And you know what that does? First of all, we think we're communicating clearly, but we may not be actually hearing them. A, and B is, you just do that, it kind of slows down the conversation, so you can actually, the pace, you can actually deal with something. But it also signals them that you're trying to listen to them, that you're trying to hear their story. And so it communicates basic human respect. Everyone,

every human being wants to be seen. They want to be heard. They want to be listened to. I mean, this is our birthright. Listening is our birthright. We've got two ears and one mouth for a reason to listen twice as much as we talk. One of the uncomfortable truths about finding common ground or listening, and I learned this from Dia Khan. I think you know Dia. Dia is a BAFTA winning documentarian. I've told her story a few times on here. She made some comments about multicultural society on the BBC, and for some reason her comments went viral in the white supremacist community,

and the white supremacists started trolling her to the point where it got so dangerous that the police told her to stay away from windows. And the way that Dia reacted, she's a Muslim woman living in the UK, the way that she reacted is she moved to the United States to meet some of the white supremacists. And she was walking in Charlottesville, not marching in Charlottesville. She was walking with them in Charlottesville. And she actually ended up making a documentary called White Right Meeting the Enemy about her experience of going to meet these white supremacists. And she gave them a safe space to feel heard. Because they don't usually get that, right? They either get

attacked. And one of the leaders of the white supremacist movement says, when I go on TV, it's a win-win for me because it's a recruiting tool. He says, they either let me spew my stuff, in which case it's great for recruiting, or if they shut off my microphone, I'm the victim and it's great for recruiting. So it's a win-win for me, right? But he offered Dia a short period of time and he offered her more and more and more. And when Dia said, why do you keep giving me more time? He said, because no one's actually been curious about my point of view. Now, she didn't agree with him, obviously, but she gave him a safe space to feel heard. And I talked to Dia after January 6th, and I've talked to Dia after

George Floyd, and she's worked with jihadis and white supremacists and all these people. Oh, I should tell you before I go on that what you see in this documentary is these white supremacists who hate Dia because she's a Muslim, right? They, over the course of time, they start to trust her and consider her a friend. And then they struggle to reconcile their racist points of view with the fact that they consider this woman a friend. And slowly, one by one, they drop out of the white supremacist movement. a drop out of the white supremacist movement. So her technique of making the other feel heard and allowing them to come to the realization of the absurdity of their views actually was more helpful than her spitting on them at a rally, which by the way, she's done as well. And she said, I would go to these rallies and spit on the white supremacists when I was younger,

and we would go home and high five each other and feel like we were the best and all the self-righteousness. But she came to the realization that she affected zero. That's beautiful. And that's, I mean, that's such a powerful story. And I bring it back to the question, you asked the question earlier of like, we're so polarized, or we appear to be so polarized when actually there's an exhausted majority and the people on the extremes are amplified. What's the next step? What do we do? And I think she just points the way.

Any one of us has the ability to reach out to one person whom we know, who's probably a family member, who was a friend, who was a colleague, who was something, who was a neighbor, who we happen to suspect or know has a very different opinion than ours and is on the other side of the divide, and do what she does, which is listen to them, respect them. You know, dignity is indivisible. My dignity is the same as your dignity. If your dignity is assaulted, my dignity is assaulted. It's not like, it's not a zero-sum game here. And so just reach out and prepare, like you were saying, you know, prepare, you know, think about it. And then listen to them. Prepare so you don't get triggered.

You draw them out more. You meet animosity with curiosity. And guess what? You're going to have a lot more influence in, oh, that person listened to me. Well, maybe they're not all. So, you know, just the same as the white supremacists began to drop out. You're going to have a lot more influence. It's going to be a much more powerful thing to do.

The uncomfortable truth, though, that Dia has discovered. And again, I talked to her after January 6th. I talked to her after George Floyd. I've talked to her a fair bit. She says the uncomfortable truth that people don't want to accept is in her experience, almost always, it's the victim that has to go first. And the victim has to listen to the oppressor. And the victim has to listen to the oppressor. And the standard reaction is, why should I have to? I've been enduring their shit my whole life, and now I have to listen to them? They should listen to me.

But the problem is they won't. The problem is they won't. That's it. The white supremacist is not going to offer a safe space for Dia to feel heard. It's just not going to happen. And so the uncomfortable truth is as exhausted as they may be, unfortunately, it's the victim or the person who feels victimized that has to go first and offer the safe space for the other to feel heard. And at that point, to your point, when they feel respected and they feel heard, they become vastly more open-minded to other

points of view. Yeah. And we have really good examples of that. I mean, you know, like Martin Luther King, he was the one who held the olive branch out. That's what made the magic of the civil rights movement. Mandela, he's in prison, 27 years. He comes out and holds out the olive branch to his white enemies. In fact, in prison, you know what he did? The first thing he did in prison was he learned Afrikaans, the language of his enemy. That's what he studied in prison. And not only did he study their language, he studied their history, their own history of traumas. In the Boer War, the first concentration camps, he understood it. So then that's what made him so effective. So it's not just kind of being nice. It's actually being

effective. It's actually being practical. You want to change people's minds? This is how you do it. There's a common thread here, which I think is so interesting, which is usually when we create caricatures of the other, right? We literally call them the other, right? And they become caricatures and we attack the caricature and that person feels triggered because they feel attacked and they become even more sort of entrenched in their ideas. Even if they would disagree with themselves because they feel attacked, they become entrenched, defensive. And in all of these cases, whether it was the White Wolf or Mandela, which is they took the time to de-characterize. They took time to get rid of the stereotypes or the assumptions. And they actually, whether by listening or by studying separately, they learned the real history and they could understand the other's point of view

and why they would be so defensive about X, Y, or Z from a historical or realistic or even a perception standpoint. They took time to understand the other. Doesn't mean agree. And I think people misunderstand that, which is giving someone a safe space to feel heard does not mean you agree. It does not mean you endorse. And it doesn't mean you've let go of your own values, your own point of view. All you've done is allowed the other person to feel that they matter, that there's dignity. And when we get to the point where when we say to ourselves, but they don't matter, then I think we need to take a hard look at ourselves and say, maybe I'm part of the problem. That's it. That's it.

You know, the work, I mean, enough we project we project all the bad stuff on others it's easier you know we're the good ones and they're the bad ones and you know the most effective leaders the most effective influencers even on a one-to-one interpersonal thing are people who do a little bit of work themselves, just like you did in that conversation relationship. This is what I did wrong. And this is what you did right. You switched it. You actually took a little bit of responsibility.

And by taking responsibility, you gave yourself more power. That's the key thing here. It's not just about being nice. It's about being powerful. What is the powerful way to behave in this world that gets you the world you want to live in? And then the next stage is to leave behind the make wrong, the right or wrong, and just realize, okay, what if we actually set aside the blame game for a moment, even the self-blame game, and just said, everyone's a human being. They've got their traumas. They've got their own thing.

They're behaving the way they're behaving. Everyone has their own point of view. It's valid to them. It may not be valid to me. Every human being, no matter who they are, no matter what they've done, deserves basic human respect. It's just a birthright. We're not talking about something they have to earn because of approval or something like that. It's just something you're born with. Hostage negotiators, and I've trained a lot of them, what's their secret? How do they take these situations that happen every day in the New York City hostage department? What do they do when they're dealing with armed criminals who are supposedly evil people and they can, you know,

all this stuff? It's like, I remember talking to one New York cop who said, what I learned is just be nice. I mean, but just respect, a little bit of human respect. You're trying to influence that respect. You're trying to influence that person. You're trying to get them to surrender the hostage. You're trying to make sure that, you know, it's not a firefight where a lot of people die. A little bit of human respect. It's like that little bit of deposit you put in changes the whole situation. If you're going to change someone, first of all, it's hard to change someone, but if you're going to do it, it's the cheapest concession you can offer.

A little bit of respect costs you nothing, but it means everything to the other side because it's their dignity. And so no matter who you're dealing with, a little bit of respect goes a long way towards being able to influence them to do what you want them to do. Because negotiation is about influence. You're trying to change someone else's mind. How can you possibly change someone else's mind unless you know where their mind is? So it's not just about being altruistic. It's like, I mean, know your enemy. You know, I remember once many years ago, I was working on the Cold War. I gave a talk at the U.S. Naval War College, and I was saying, you know, if we're going to deal with the Soviets, we have to understand them.

And one Navy captain got up and said, you want me to put myself in the Soviet shoes? That might distort my judgment. But in fact, in war, what's the first thing? Know your enemy. So even in warfare, you've got to know your enemy. So in any kind of situation, the ability to put yourself in their shoes doesn't mean that you're taking their side. It just means understand them.

It's going to help you so much more than sitting in your righteous corner. Yeah. And like my friend who we were talking about, our friend, you know, who, when I said we need to learn to listen to the side who got angry at me, he thinks he does from his own biased point of view and listening to his own media.

He thinks he does understand them. He believes the caricature that he's created in his mind and that his politicians keep hammering home and reinforcing and his echo chamber and his friends and his dinner tables have all reinforced for him. He thinks he understands even though he's engaged with the opposite side, a total of zero. Right. Well, that's the key. We think we might be listening. Oh, I'm listening. And what we're doing is our mind is saying, I disagree with that.

I disagree with that. I disagree with that. This is what I'm going to say. I'm going to refute. No, what genuine listening is, is you move the spotlight from your thoughts for a moment to where they are, their thoughts, their feelings, where they're coming from, and try to understand them from within their perspective, not from within your perspective, but from within their perspective. That's what putting yourself in their shoes means. You know what's funny is all these people who hate their enemies politically in our nation are probably pretty good at this exact skill with their kids. You know, when your kid is angry about something, the first thing we do is validate the kid's feelings.

We don't disagree with the kid's feelings. Good parents will say, boy, yeah, I understand why you're frustrated. That's really hard that your sister took your cheese. I understand why you would be mad at that. And the minute you validate the feelings, now you can have a conversation about how to get to resolution instead of punching your sister that there's another way. But we don't do that with adults for some reason. We invalidate their feelings on a regular basis. And yet we know if we invalidate a child, it's going to get worse. And yet why we think adults act any differently because those limbic systems that control all of our emotions, they don't mature as we get older. They're the same.

Exactly. Exactly. Now that's it. It's like this capacity is within each of us. This is not rocket science. This is something we know. But it does take practice. It takes practice. It takes a little bit of courage. It's like apology. You know, kids know. You're playing a game with other kids. You break the rules somehow. You say, I'm sorry, and you're back in the game. Adults. Oh, no, I can't apologize. I can't apologize.

You know, lawyers, you know, I can't apologize. You know, no. Apology is the simple human capacity that we have to repair a relationship. Admit that you did something, and then you can move on and you can be back in the game. But no, I'm too proud. I'm an adult now. You know that something like 70% of medical malpractice suits are because the doctor refused to apologize? Right. I believe it. I'll tell you something. I mean, back to that same Turkish Kurdish situation. Now that I'm thinking about it, it happened 30 years ago, but it was like in another session,

Turkish and Kurdish leaders were meeting at risk to their own lives, remember? And it was tense. It was really tense because there had been a lot of bloodshed and suffering, and the issues were highly emotional. At one point, there was a retired Turkish admiral. And he said, let me just say something for a moment. And he said, let me just say something for a moment. He said, as a retired member of the Turkish Armed Forces, on behalf of my colleagues, I want to acknowledge the suffering that the Kurdish villagers and all the Kurds suffered over the last 30 years. All the thousands of villages that were razed to the ground and people killed,

people tortured, said, and I want to apologize. Well, you could have heard a pin drop in that room. There was this like, I mean, this is the thing, when something happens genuine like that, there is this quiet and then spontaneous applause from the Kurds and the Turks, from everyone. And that moment, that little moment, that one little apology, that one little acknowledgement, it doesn't like solve everything, but it shifts the emotional tone. And out of that meeting then, these same people agreed to form a kind of a network to work together, like you were saying, instead of against each other, against the problem of the war and so on. And that work went on for years afterwards. And a lot of it, I attribute to that little shift, one person making an apology. If I can summarize the magic that is Bill Ury

and the conversation that we've just had, what I've learned from you is that whatever conflict someone would like to resolve or lean into, whether it's political disagreement, disagreement or tension with a loved one, a business tension, if we take responsibility to set in motion to resolve the conflict peacefully, responsibility to set in motion to resolve the conflict peacefully

if we set in motion our desire to try and understand the person with whom we disagree or we've labeled as evil or the problem we've labeled them as the problem and if we ourselves can affect that change the ripples are incredible because if i am able to make someone who's prepping for a fight with me because they think i'm prepping for a fight with them, if I'm able to change the whole tone of that conversation and that they leave my home feeling seen and heard, then the next person that they engage with, they will take the lessons that they felt and try and project them on the other as well. And then those people will take the lessons how they felt from that. And before you know it, the ripples lead to world peace. And if we want to change the discourse in our nation, then change starts at home. And instead of criticizing the other or criticizing the politicians, we're saying that they have to start, we have to start. Every one of us needs to take responsibility to do our part to resolve conflict peacefully, and then watch the ripples.

That's the key to world peace. Starts right here. Bill, every time I talk to you, I learn something new. I'm inspired. Thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me. I always love talking to you. I love talking with you, Simon. I love you. And I love, it's funny, right now we're at this kind of critical moment. And I see so much possibility. It's just all depends. It's like we're on a razor's edge. Our future could go pretty dystopic or it could be pretty good.

And all of it depends. There's no problem on earth that we cannot tackle if only we can work together. And the only thing that's in the way of us working together is this, quote, conflict. So if we can deal with our conflicts constructively, we can work together and we can make the world we want for us and for our friends, for our families, for our communities, and for our world. And that's the key. Amen. Thank you, Bill. Thanks, Simon. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website,

simonsenic.com, for classes, videos, and more. Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company. It's produced and edited by Lindsay Garbenius, David Jha, and Devin Johnson. Our executive producers are Henrietta Conrad and Greg Rudershan.