Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 301: A Holiday Survival Guide for Difficult Conversations | Bill Doherty

Episode Date: November 18, 2020

What to do if you find yourself marooned at your Thanksgiving meal, facing a voluble uncle who is spewing political ideas you find abominable? Our guest today is overstuffed (see what I did there?) with practical ideas. I first met Bill Doherty several years ago, when I was doing a story for Nightline about a group called Braver Angels. The group was formed in the aftermath of the 2016 election, with the idea of bringing reds and blues together to create some mutual understanding and trust. As I watched the man moderating these seemingly incredibly successful discussions (ie no shouting, no rote recitations of slogans), I was really impressed. I later learned that he was both a marriage counselor and a meditator. So I invited him to come on the show. In this conversation, we discuss: why trying to change people’s minds or get them to abandon their core values is unlikely to be a winning strategy; the value of sticking with so-called “I” statements; and how to reach what he calls “accurate disagreement.” Please note: this interview was recorded before most of the tumultuous events of 2020, but it remains immovably relevant.  Where to find Bill Doherty online:  Website: https://braverangels.org Website: https://dohertyrelationshipinstitute.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/billdoherty Full Show Notes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/bill-doherty-301 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So to go claim your discount, 10% dot com slash reward, that's 10% one word all spelled out dot com slash reward. Hello, so timely question here. What do you do if you find yourself marooned at your Thanksgiving meal facing a voluble uncle who is spewing political ideas that you find abominable. Our guest today is overstuffed, see what I did there? Anyway, sorry, annoying dad joke. Overstuffed with practical ideas for this situation. I first met our guest, whose name is Bill Dardy, several years ago when I was doing a story for Nightline about a group called the Braver Angels.

Actually, at that time they were called the Better Angels, but they changed their name to rave rangles. The group was formed in the aftermath of the 2016 election with the idea of bringing reds and blues together to create some mutual understanding and trust. As I watched the guy who was moderating these seemingly incredibly successful discussions, I.e., there was no shouting, no wrote recitation of slogans, and in fact, many of these people seem to be becoming friends. As I was watching all of this, I was really impressed.

I later learned that the moderator was both a marriage counselor and a meditator, so I invited Bill to come on this show. In this conversation, we discuss why trying to change people's minds or get them to abandon their core values is unlikely to be a winning conversational strategy. The value of sticking with so-called I statements and how to reach what he calls accurate disagreement. Quick note, this interview was recorded before most of the tumultuous events of 2020, but it remains in my opinion, immovably relevant. So here we go with Bill Dirty. Nice to see you again.

Good to see you. Thanks for coming in. Have you tried to get you on the show for so long? Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm pleased, I'm really pleased that you were able to get to New York City for this, as you know, I'm fascinated by your work, and we're gonna dive into it.

Can I start with your meditation career? And I'd love to hear how, I also, I think you also do Chi-Gong, which I don't know much about. Yeah, yeah. So I'd love to hear how, I also think you also do Chi-Gung, which I don't know much about. Yeah, yeah. So I'd love to learn about both of those things. Well, I started the Chi-Gung meditation practice 20 years ago, and 2000, the year 2000.

So I'm a practitioner, I'm not an expert, I'm not a teacher, never written about it, but I had a good friend who was into it and had a master who taught locally in the Twin Cities. And I just decided to try it. And mostly because I was interested in reducing stress in my life. And I loved it. And I started out 20 minutes a day. I started out with the video of the master doing the moves. So I could just sort of watch him and follow him. Then I wined my way off the video, started with 20 minutes. And now I do 40 minutes every morning.

So I'm embarrassed to admit, I don't really know what it is. Well, it's ancient Chinese spiritual and healing practice. So it's 5,000 years old. And it combines breathing and gentle movements. And there's a theory behind it that I'm not sure I'm into the theory so much, but energy in the body as a source of healing. So the master I studied with is a healer. And I'm not into that as much as I'm into it, just a deep relaxation, breathing and gentle movements. And it just calms me and centers me and I tend to have sometimes creative ideas during it.

Are you telling me that the life of a marriage counselor is stressful? Well, I'm an academic and I do a lot of community engagement work and I live a fairly intense life and that includes my clinical specialty as couples on the brink of divorce, so I'm like an intensive care physician. So all of that can add up to a fairly intense life. So meditation practice just grounds me and I sound it every day, sort of grateful to be alive. How does it ripple out to the rest of your life?

Well, a lot of the work I do, both with couples and also my work with, as we'll get into my work with better angels where we deal with conservatives and liberals who are at odds with each other. Did you notice that? A lot of it is for me is about how do I manage myself in the face of conflicting people and conflicting agendas where the stakes are high. And so the meditation practice adds into my therapist training to do what we call the jargon phrase emotional self-regulation and centeredness in the face of a difficult interpersonal situation. Yeah, I mean, I've watched you at work. and centeredness in the face of a difficult and personal situations. Yeah, I mean, I've watched you at work.

I went to the national, I think it was the first that arranged national conference and watched you do your thing and you're a calm dude, at least on the outside. Yeah, well, when I'm in my work, in my modem, actually calm inside too, because this is what we're here to do folks. So let's do it and let me help you engage each other. So let's talk about the bit of angels. Can you just give me some background on how the group got started? You remember the 2016 presidential election? Vagely. Yeah, a lot of people remember that one. But about 10 days after that election, two long-term colleagues of mine

who had worked on marriage and family issues. One in New Yorker, David Blankenhorn, a barricade of Manhattan. The other David Lapp Southwest Ohio, South Lebanon and Ohio, universe is a part in terms of how people there felt about the election. They were on the phone together.

How are New Yorkers doing? How are Ohioans doing? New York, Upper East Side, Manhattan, Gloom and Doom, a funeral, and in Ohio, hope and change. And they decided on the spur of the moment to get together 10 Hillary Clinton voters and 10 Donald Trump voters for a weekend

in Southwest Ohio in December to see if any of the gaps could be bridged. And then they called me and I said, oh that's pretty brave. What we're thinking of doing with them. And they said they didn't know, but they thought I could figure that part out if they recruited the people. And I remember sitting at my home desk hoping I was not free that weekend, you know, kind of looking at my count. Oh darn, you know, having engagement. But in fact, I was. So I said, let's go for it. So we had people, the 20 folks from that part of the country from southwest Ohio for Friday night, all they

saturday and sunday afternoon, 13 hours. And it was a remarkable experience. We asked people why they came and they said they couldn't, they didn't want to keep living with the acrimony. They said, you know, we have a small town here, we got the hospital to run, we got schools, we have to educate our kids, we got roads to fix, and we can't go on this way.

So there was a concern about their community and about the country. And they wrote a report. We wrote a report with them to the nation about this experience. And then we started to do media interviews and did a radio, national public radio call-in show with two women from Ohio, a red and a blue, who'd become friends. We talked about the experience. And then from around the country, people started to email us saying, could you come to my town and do one of these workshops? And we'll put you up in our houses, we'll recruit the people, we'll find the, you know, the

VF lodge, whatever. And so we said, okay, so we just said we have to keep going. Better Angels is a term we Well, why don't you describe the Abraham Lincoln term the better angels of our nature. It's the last words of his first inaugural dress trying to prevent the Civil War. So you Do be clear you make it sound I don't think deliberately, but you make it sound a little bit easier than it actually was. It's not like you just get these people in a room and let it rip. What I was very impressed by watching you in action at this aforementioned national conference

where you had better members of the better angels from all over the country getting together, and then you were also running groups with reds and blues. And I watched a several of these. I watched you moderate several of these groups. And there's a real system. Could you break it down? What's it like in the room? How do you structure it and why?

Yeah, it's kind of like marriage counseling in a way that you want to create an environment that minimizes reactivity, that maximizes the chance that people will hear each other. And so if you just gather people around the table and toss out topics, it will be a disaster because they will interrupt each other, talk over each other, characterize the other person's position. It'll just be like, you know, family Thanksgiving.

So instead, what we did was created a process in which there is calmness in the room. And there are exercises that people go through, like one that I know you saw a fish bowl exercise, and some of your listeners may have heard about this as a common technique, where you have two groups who are different in some way. And you flip a coin, and you decide

who's going to be in the middle, chairs in a circle, for the first part. And the other group of sitting on chairs in the outside listening to the conversation and not interrupting, not saying anything, no verbal or nonverbal participation, to learn how these people see themselves and the world. That's your job when you're in the outside. So the people in the middle are talking. Yes. And they're really, it's like your eavesdropping on a conversation from the other half of America. Exactly. This sort of thing we hardly ever get to do because who usually were in the conversation. And the people in the middle are not arguing with each other, they're just explaining themselves.

And then of course you flip the outside goes in the inside out. And the two questions in our better angels, Rebler workshops in the middle are the first question is, why are your sides' values and policies good for the country? Why your sides' values and policies good for the country is the first question. And so it lets conservatives say, why they think the world is better and people flourish better when we have conservative principles and values and policies. And then you have the level of the blues do the same thing on their side. Then the second question is part of a better angel's ethic. The second question is, what are your reservations or concerns about your own side? And that's the humility part of it. And so first crow, man,

boom, like I remember red, we use red and blue rather than the broad conservative. Red saying that free market capitalism has raised more people out of absolute poverty in this world than any government program, massive breakthroughs. You know, as you get micro lending and people with their own cell phones and small businesses, and he's right about that.

That was part of the first part. So he cared about human flourishing for people who are in poverty. Bulls don't usually hear reds talk that way. Kind of an idealism about capitalism. And then on the second question, what are your reservations and concerns? He said, you know, we say all the ships will rise when the when the capitalism will generate wealth and he said it doesn't rise fast enough for everybody And there are people left behind and we're not often so good and what to do foreign with those people While the tide is coming in so Say you've got the reds in the middle and the blues are listening

At the end of the a lot of time where the reds have spoken in the middle and the blues are listening at the end of the a lot of time where the reds have spoken in the middle, what happens next? Then you just shift. So the blue is no interaction. Not a doubt point. Both sides have to have a chance to hear the other side. Okay. And what's interesting about the hearing of the other side is it's not just like, okay,

I'm a conservative and I spend an hour listening to MSNBC where people are shouting. Right. I'm actually listening to MSNBC where people are shouting. I'm actually listening to regular people talking down to earth terms. That's right. And the regular people don't talk in bullet points. We've moved on when people have an initial experience like this, they can move on to other workshops where we talk about topics. And so we recently did one on abortion where we had eight people who were strongly pro-life

and eight people are strongly pro-life and eight people are strongly pro-choice. So you can get some really tough issues. But when you frame questions such as, what's the heart of this issue for you? What's the heart of this issue for you? You get people telling stories. You get people talking from their values as opposed to, are you pro-choice a pro-life and give us the reasons?

In our public sphere, people sound like talking points. When you pose that question, what's the heart of this issue for you? You get something else. So one side's in the middle of the fish bowl and they go and the other side listens, then you switch it. Yeah, and then what happens?

Yeah, so now here's a crucial part. The question on the table is, what did you learn about how the other side sees themselves and did you say anything in common? In fact, that's how we set it up. That's what you're when you're in the outside of the fishbowl. You try to deactivate your critic, your argument. They just said that and I've got three responses. Try to activate the curious part of you. How do they see themselves? And then be open to something you see in common. So that's what you're directed to do when

you're listening. And so when the two groups of God, we have people pair up, a red and a blue pair up for three minutes. In a one-to-one process, what did you learn about how the other sightsees themselves and did you see anything coming? And that's all that they're expected to do then. And then we gather the whole group around the table, again, for that two-part question. And who wants to start a red start, you go to blue, you go back and forth and back and forth. And the moderation of this, and this is what we train our moderators to, if anybody veers off answering those two questions, you stop them in mid-sens. So if somebody were to say, I thought their second point, they didn't, hold on, right

now we're just answering, what did you learn about how they see themselves or anything coming. You just stop them. If you let them go, the other side is gonna wanna retort and it could escalate. And by the way, in the ground rules, where people have ascended to the idea that we're only gonna deal with what's on the table

at this time and they give the moderator's permission to intervene if people veer off that. So there are two things, at least, that struck me as deeply wise about this approach. One is you've structured it carefully so that you're not activating the amygdala, the stress center of the brain, of the participants. And once you activate the stress center, it would basically hand you things straight. And you're very carefully activating other parts of the brain, which I think are probably around empathy and compassion. And there's

an expression, it's hard to hate up close. And after you've sat and listened to the other side, hash things out in a personal way, and then you're faced with an actual real-life person in a diet and a one-on-one. It's hard to get the hatred fired up as much as it might be if you're just watching the other side demonized on your favorite cable channel. Yes, yet you're not doing outrage TV watching, where you're just, those are the particular species of animals that you're watching, you're engaging. Do we get all the way through how a session works?

Well, there's more of it, but one of the most in a red blue workshop, the first exercise is not the fish ball. It's what we call a stereotype exercise. And that is we have each group go to a separate room, reds and blues separately, to come up with the four top false negative exaggerated stereotypes that people have of their side. What do people think of us reds? That is false negative exaggerated us blues. And they brainstorm a whole list and then they vote on the top four. And then for each of those, they go through two parts. One is to correct the stereotype.

If they think that we read the racist and hate all immigrants, what's true instead? OK, so articulate our belief in human equality and human dignity and our belief that America was built on immigration. And we want it to be legal and controlled, but we like immigration. And then the second question is, what's the kernel of truth in this? What part of that may have some truth in it?

That's the humility part. And we give them some categories to think about kernels of truth. One may be that this may be true of a subset of your group. It may be something in a historical that's carried over that still brands your group. It may be in the heated rhetoric of public debate, your side comes across this way sometimes. It may be this is an area that something your group doesn't focus on a lot, maybe a bit of a blind spot or something that you relegate to a third or fourth area, but not primary. So we give them some ideas about that. So for each of those, it's like, what's true instead and is their kernel of truth?

And then we select somebody from each group, they come back together to present that to the other side. Here's what we think people get wrong about us. And here's how we see ourselves. I'll give you examples on the blue side. Arrogance and allegis is always a big one. Big government for its own sake, unpatriotic, anti-religious. So what's true instead? And then where did this stereotype come from in some way that might be grounded? Okay, so they come back together present. And then the question again, what did you learn about how the other sides sees themselves and did you see anything in common starts with one to one and then around the table? So what that does, that strategy does, and I learned it from a Boston based group originally called public conversations,

I didn't make this one up, is you get the worst stuff out at the beginning of the workshop. Okay, the reds are always afraid, somebody around the room is gonna go straight up with my racist, okay? And the blue is worried that there's gonna be a pro-life person, it's gonna be your baby killer, you know, people are nervous.

You get all that crap out, okay? But you're saying it about how people see your own side, you get it all out. And then you get a chance to clarify. And I want to mention where the idea for the kernel of truth came, because that's not part of the original stereotypes exercise that I learned years ago from the public conversation script. It happened in our second ever workshop in Ohio.

We did the first one. It was glorious. And we thought, well, we need to do at least one more to see if the first one was a fluke. And when the reds were doing their stereotypes and the racist thing, you know, that it's always the first one that the reds are worried about, it's the racist. And so they did their correction of it. And then somebody said, you know, hey, why don't we just get honest here? They're racist in our midst and some of our leaders are. Could we just say it? And that this is partly where the stereotype comes from and they went, yeah, I guess so. So they did that in the report out for a number of their stereotypes.

And it blew the minds of the blues because the blues just followed the instructions. In other words, why are we not bad guys? And the reds were vulnerable. And it completely opened up the workshop. And so I said to myself, we got to build that into that exercise. That's great. So the way it goes, if I'm going into, if I'm my first time at a better angels gathering, we're going to do the stereotype exercise that we're going to do fishbowl.

Right. And then we're going to do the one on ones. Yeah, the one on ones are part of each one. Part of each one. Part of each one. Part of each one. Before we process with the whole group, we process one to one. Is that it or are there other?

For the three hour of red blue. These are red blue. We have other workshops. We were to teach skills and other things. But for the red blue workshop, the three-hour version, that's basically it. And you do a kind of a checkout. For the day long workshop, there is a third exercise where it's questions and antirexercise. So by this time you've heard enough from folks, there's enough trust.

You get a chance to ask questions of the other side. And I want to tell you the backstory here because the very first workshop that we did, you said at the beginning I was making it sound easy, it was hard. It was hard. And the hardest part of it was that I made a mistake with the design. I thought that I, explaining the difference between a question of curiosity and a gotcha question, and give examples would be enough for people to be able to ask good questions that were not versions of my favorite gotcha one would be, so given that your candidate is a known sexual predator,

I'm curious about how you came to it, right? So I explained it, gave people a few minutes to write the questions down, they got in subgroups, and the questions were terrible in terms of they just stirred defensiveness. And then I had to use my therapist skills, then, to help people come down, refresh things. I remember one particularly angry blue almost left the workshops. She felt I was stifling her, so I had to make up with her afterwards, because I wouldn't let her just ask these questions. So from then on, what we do is we get the reds and the blues in separate rooms 20 minutes to come up with four good questions for the other group. And we curate them. And it's actually kind of fun because they can go, this is how

I'd really like to ask. But okay, that's going to stare at the defensiveness. And by the way, by this time they kind of know each other a bit and they don't really want to put the other group on the spot. So does this process work? How do you define? Yes. So what we've been able? How do you define? Yes. So, what we've been able to do so far with our very limited resources is we do an evaluation at the end of the workshop around the goals of it, understanding the other side, more deeply, feeling more understood, feeling like you have some skills to have conversations.

And those are very positive. You know, we have a one-to-ten scale on about between seven and eight eight, you know, is what people come out. They feel like they got something. We now, I'm glad to say, we've been out there for a couple years now. We're attracting interest from academics and other words. So there's a study underway at 60 universities now with college students, what we call randomized controlled trial, you know, with a control group that's going to follow people over time. And so we'll know more trial, you know, with a control group that's gonna follow people over time. And so we'll know more about, you know, more scientifically how it's going. What I can say is people's subjective experience

of this, when we ask people to check out at the end about, you know, what they're taking with them, the biggest one they say is that I have more hope for the country. I'd learn that people on the other side are people who I share a concern about our country with, that I share some common values with, even though we differ a lot on policy. So that's what people tend to take from it, and we'll know scientifically more over time. There's a phrase that I love that I heard for the first time while hanging out with you guys, which is that your goal is not to get converts, to win converts. It's to arrive at, quote, accurate disagreement.

Yeah, that's one of the goals. I'd say the accurate disagreement goal is that we both actually understand each other's views, which then allows us to see where we differ. Most conflict and disagreement about politics is each side's stereotype in the other side. You guys don't care about fiscal responsibility and we do. You guys don't care about the poor and we do at a larger level, but even on particular policies, people can't articulate in a way that the other side could get. You know my position on this, okay? And what happens is if I was involved in this around the gay marriage issue some years ago, with a group that met several times pro and anti-gay marriage. And the achievement, nobody changed the minds,

but they actually understood the other person's position more. And then people could leave friends, because where people get angry is this exaggerating my view. You're saying what I don't care about, saying an ignorant. So accurate disagreement. Humanizing and accurate disagree. Yeah, Yeah. Seeing

each other, understanding each other beyond stereotypes, finding common ground and accurate disagreement on the things that you differ on. Well, we don't have scientific evidence yet. It seems like it's in the offing. One qualitative result that's compelling is that, and you feature these folks on your website, there are all these strange bedfellows now. All these real friendships. And I met these people and I can confirm this real warmth that does not appear to be affected

between reds and blues. I did a story and you guys for Nightline and we followed one of these pairs. It was a traditional red voter guy. Greg, right. And Kuhiar. Kuhiar, who's an immigrant and the software design guy. And I think Greg's a former cop construction worker evangelical Christian and Kuhiar is a software engineer, if I recall. And who our lives in an affluent suburb and Greg lives in an exurb in a more rural area. And you would be hard pressed to find

two more constitutionally different human beings. And they really like each other. I mean, I can't poke in at it. And I think they've just arrived at accurate disagreement and humanizing. Right. And the thing is, they just happen to sit next to each other at the workshop. This was an big design. And I remember one of the things they said to each other

at that very first workshop in a pair, they both said their religions have been hijacked. Kuhir's religion is Islam. Yeah. I think he believes he's from Iran. He's from Iran. Hmm. Kuhiara's religion is Islam. Yeah. I think he believes he's from Iran. He's from Iran, yeah. They both love this country and they completely disagree about things like abortion. For Greg abortion is like the central, you know, issue in his world. And for him to be able to befriend somebody, A, who's not a Christian and B, who has pro-choice, is really quite remarkable. So how has the organization grown? Is it the start in 2016 or in 2020 now? How robust is it?

You mentioned limited resources. Yeah, that's one of our main problems. There's a lot more money and polarization than depolarization. But we decided 2017 to become a membership organization. Membership is just $12 a year. And so we're up I think to 9,000 members and growing. And we have had workshops I think in 37 states. So we've had five or six senate workshops, a few hundred train moderators. We have alliances in about 20 states and these are people who have been through initial workshops and then they form red blue alliances. They meet monthly, talk about issues, sponsor other workshops. We are getting interest from political folks in Minnesota where I'm from.

I did a workshop for 30 members of our state legislature, a skills workshops. We haven't talked about that as much, but we have skills workshops where we teach people how to listen in a way that the other fear understood, how to express your political views in a way that they're more apt to absorb those and we have people practice.

So 30 legislators, both the Democrats and Republicans, and when I asked them why they came, a number of them said that when they were doorknocking during the last election, the biggest issue they heard from constituents, both sides of the liberal conservatives, get over this divisiveness, is paralyzing us, paralyzing government. And I still remember a Republican, a very senior committee member, he was the only one there in a suit and tie. When we've had them practice making political points with eye messages rather than just

sort of absolute truth statements, one of the things we teach, this is how I see it, after practice, you said, you know, I sound more human this way. So we're going to be doing a workshop for county commissioners in Minnesota coming up because they're kind of different parts of the status split. And we did a workshop for the congressional staff members of two members of Congress from our Minnesota delegation, representative Dean Phillips and representative Dean Stover who are both freshmen in the Congress and the House and the members of something called the problem Sovereys Caucus, which is a 24 Republicans, 24 Democrats who are committed to bipartisanship.

So we had seven of their staff members, each of their staff members together for a full day, going through a better range of style workshop, it was really powerful. Much more of my conversation with Bill Dordey right after this. Hey, I'm Aresha, and I'm Brooke, and we're the hosts of Wundery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about drag icon Rupal Charles. After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Rue goes out searching for love and acceptance. But the road to success is a rocky one. Substance abuse and mental health struggles threatened to veer Rue off course.

In our series, Rue Paul Bornnaked. We'll show you how Rue Paul overcame his demons and carved out a place for himself as one of the world's top entertainers, opening the doors for aspiring queens everywhere. Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. I think what you're doing is really important, super interesting. And by the way, I just want to point out that we're going to in a minute, we can dive deep

into the skills because I think listening to this show, I'm going to want that. But before we get to that, let me just ask this. Having said what I just said, I think the group is fascinating and the work is unimpeachably to use a loaded term and important. Why do you think more people are not doing this? And do you get discouraged looking at the size of the organization and the seemingly unrelenting pace of polarization in this country? Well, I don't get discouraged. I like to say I inherited the optimistic Irish genes not the depressive ones

Right, so I look at it this way that we're involved in social change cultural change and the first stage in that is naming a problem and Now one thing our country agrees on and there was a reason I think Pew a poll around this 95% of Americans agree were to divide it That's the pollster said you don't get 95% agreement on the earth being divided. That's the pollster said, you don't get 95% agreement on the earth being round. I mean, this is unanimous. So the beginning of change is naming a problem. And that problem that people are naming is not just the other side, okay?

It's about we. When you talk about polarization, it's like a married couple saying, we have a problem in our relationship. It isn't just your bugging me. We have a problem. And so that is beginning to take hold on the country. And that's the beginning of change.

And for me, with our low resource organ, we have about seven staff members. Everybody else, including me, is a volunteer. We have people who have retired and devoted their entire retirement to this work. It's phenomenal. It's phenomenal. And there are other organizations working in this field too. So I think there's something beginning to shift.

So I am hopeful. I do want to point out that a particular advantage that Angel says is from the beginning we made the decision that our leadership board staff leadership group core volunteers state coordinators would be half-right Hamplu. So I'm going to leadership Zoom call every week that is half right Amplu, and there is a purifying element to that. You're not in your own group. You don't have just your own assumed language. And so, I've learned, for example, how colorized language are.

So, blue terms like diversity and equity and inclusion and privilege, right? Blue's every other word is privilege these days. You know, my privilege is so and that kind of thing. And these perfectly fine terms and they completely turn off reds. So you have in your company, you have at your university, a division for diversity, equity, inclusion and those words say to reds, not me. That's that you're talking to everybody else but me, and they hold back.

That's not what is intended, but that's how it's received. Similarly, red terms, like self-sufficiency, love of country, American greatness, fiscal responsibility. What's wrong with those terms? But they trigger blues. And I'd learn this through better angels. Where are you? Where am I? Red blue. I don't talk about that. You don't. No. Okay. Yeah. So, but if if your group is going to be meticulous about making sure there's even representation between red and blue.

How do they classify you? David Blankenhorn is a president. I are given permission to be whites. White hat. Yeah, that's right. That's right. But what I can tell you, my own transformation is that I always wanted to be bilingual, but never was, but now I am.

I can speak red or blue. Gotcha. That's a valuable skill. So skills, let's talk about that. but never was, but now I am, I can speak red or blue. Gotcha. That's a valuable skill. So, skills, let's talk about that because I think many of the people listening for better or worse are probably not gonna go to a workshop, but they may have in their orbit somebody

or several people with whom they disagree. So, and actually by the way, these skills are eminently scalable beyond political disagreement to just human disagreement. So, I know of, and let's start with these three skills that I know of, and then we can go beyond that if you want. One of the recommendations from you,

and you've already referenced this, is, use I language. You often hear this in sort of various touchy, feeling workshops I've been in over the years, keep it in the eye. Why is that so important? Yeah, we say use eye statements rather than truth statements. So, and I'll start with the truth statement thing,

this is the way it is. Okay, you know, if you're a red saying, immigrants take jobs from Americans, you know, particularly illegal immigrants, they take our jobs. And that is an example of a truth statement. Chances are the person saying this is not a researcher on immigration and crime, okay. They've read that somewhere, they've heard that somewhere. But to say, from what I understand, or from what I have read, or from my perspective,

you know, own it. So this is how what I think is going on, based on what I have read or what I've heard. I'm still making the same point, but I'm not saying this guy is blue, dummy, true statements around politics tend to come with a comma at the end dummy. If you don't agree with me on that. Whereas to say, I believe this, I see this, this is what I'm basing it on. So you can be, this is why it's not touchy-feeling. You can be vigorous on that and still put an eye in there. And some of what I, when I explain this to people that almost none of us when I explain this to people that almost none of us have direct personal access to policy relevant facts. So I'll do a little aside on this now

because blues in particular like to say, we can't even agree on facts. So we have to establish the fact basis before we can have the policy discussion and those people on the other side, they're just watching Fox News and they're completely bereft of facts. So how do we even talk to these people?

This is part of why blues get called arrogant and elitist, by the way. And part of what I say on that, and I realize I'm riffing on your original question here, riff, is that most of us don't have direct access to policy relevant facts. If you're not a climate scientist, you don't know the science behind climate change. So for the rest of us, we rely on experts that we trust. We rely on sources. It's a matter of trust, social trust, where we get information related to policy that we believe is credible. And so why not say, this is my understanding of this, based on where I got my information.

What that opens up is the other person with invited to make an eye statement as well, that based on what they understand, that they don't think that's true. And now we're not having a clash of religious truth. God know, God is this, God is that, Jesus is this, Jesus is that. Those just, they're just the clashing truth statements better to use high statements.

Another of your precepts is, don't try to convince anybody. Don't try to win. Yeah, yeah. If you start out the conversation with the idea that my goal is to persuade you to change your mind about something that's important to you, you're done from the beginning. We have a brand new workshop, by the way, going families and politics. And the, we call the prime directive for talking about politics with relatives, and this would be true for close friends, whatever. The prime directive is, do not try to change

a family member. You can only change yourself. Do not try to change a family member. And so particularly nowadays, when political beliefs and affiliation have become part of identity for so many people, I mean, they're part of core values. There's a moral tone to being a Republican or Democrat these days in a way that it didn't used to be before. If the person in the conversation gets the sense that you want to change their political philosophy, beliefs, something they're going to just absolutely rebel. A rule of thumb from you is don't characterize the other parties, positions only your own.

Yes, yes. It goes along with the I statement thing, speak from your own convictions, your own beliefs, and don't characterize the others because inevitably they will not see it the way you just characterized. So this is something from Marriage Counseling, is when somebody says, well, my wife thinks this about this issue, I just stopped them immediately. Because unless this person is just quoting her from what she said two minutes ago using her exact words, there's a good chance that she doesn't quite see it exactly like that. And so, and that's even if you're trying to be nice to somebody, let alone if you're

characterizing their side that you disagree with. So you set up these straw arguments. Your side doesn't even understand how important immigration is to our economy. And then you're just going to get the defensiveness. So we talk about it in Family Theory, we talk about boundaries, staying on my side of the boundary, so that I am not characterizing you and your people in ways that inevitably you will not think are fair. It was humbling for me to see these rules and realize that I break all of them all the time. Are there other skills that are worth

talking about? Yeah, so I'll mention another one. Find something to agree with in the other person's view before you disagree. That means you have to actually listen to them, okay? Find something to agree with, and it could be something like, I agree, this is a, we're in a mess on immigration, okay? Or I agree, we haven't figured out how to do this gun control thing in our countries, really. Or you're a blue and you're talking to a second amendment

oriented red. And you don't want to abolish the second amendment, you don't want to take away everybody's guns in the country, but that's what the person may think you want to do, because you're in high dungeon about the mass shootings and so so. And so if you begin by saying, you know, I'm with you on Americans have the right to bear arms and I don't want to take away responsible people's guns. It's part of our culture. And I think it ought to be. You have to actually believe what you just said. Okay. But something to agree with, what that does is softens the other person. Because

if you agree with me on something, then I think you're not maybe as dumb as I thought you were. I mean, you found something in me. Or it could be, let's take immigration. I think almost anybody in either side could say this with confidence and have the other person agree that both political parties have been kicking the can down the road on immigration for the last 30 years, even when they had big majorities in Congress. And we as a country have been not responsible on this, and both parties are at fault. Chances are whoever you're disagreeing with is going to agree with what you just said.

So find something, it has to be real, find something to agree on. Let's say you're having a big debate about healthcare, Medicare for all versus more market oriented thing. You could say that I agree with you that we have to find a way that everybody gets good healthcare in this country. So anyway, my point is, something to agree with and then get a yep, yep, you're right. blah blah blah. And then there's a new skill we're teaching now that I'll mention. This would be for somebody who's really worked up about their issue. You find something to agree with. And then the skills called pivoting before I come up with my counter position,

basically asking permission to get in. So you're really fired up about gun control and I say, I'm with you, blah, blah, blah, blah, agree with that. And then instead of just saying, I think we should be limiting guns a lot more, let's say if I'm a blue, to say, so I have some thoughts about the constitution and what we can do with it. I have some thoughts about, I've been thinking about this. That's called a pivot. You're signaling that you want to get in with your own perspective. And then you're looking for either nonverbal

or verbal agreement for that. When I explain pivoting to people, I think I give an example, let's say in a group conversation, people who are very skilled, who want to change the topic, and we've been on the finances, and I think we need to move to personnel, they don't just do it, change the topic, they say, I wonder if we could change the subject right now and move over to such and such,

and they look for the agreement on the group, from the group, and then they do it. That's called a pivot. And so, particularly in conversations with somebody who's really fired up about it in our workshop, we talk about the family gladiator, get the gladiators agreement for you to start giving you a perspective. I conceptualized that for the first time when I was on an Uber ride with a guy from a small town in Ohio. He was the only Uber. They call him Uber Jack, you know what I mean? And so he picked me up at the airport and said, we had a long trip. And so he was going on for at some length about how he thought about President Trump and changing his mind and this and that and the other thing. And then I'd listened and engaged and then at one point I just said, so interested in my thoughts about the president.

He said, yeah, yeah. And so then I had the floor. I had the floor. So that's another kind of new one we're teaching. So to summarize these two additional ones, it's find something to agree with before you disagree. And of course, you use the I statement since then. And consider, particularly if it's a kind of a 10th situation, consider a pivot where you get the go ahead to then give your own perspective. I like it because what you're doing for your interlocutor here is two things.

One, playing into the visceral primordial appeal of being heard, because you're finding something in order to have found an area of disagreement, you would have had to have listened and then restated in your own language, which feels good, even if the other person doesn't even know what's happening. And then you're getting their consent to pivot and people like having their consent sought. Yes. Okay, so we've just learned a bunch from you. Five skills.

Behavior change is hard. Habit change, habit formation, habit breaking habits. These are all really hard things. How would you recommend we start operationalizing this advice in our own lives? One thing we can all do is plan in advance. So chances are, if you're going to have difficult conversations across political difference, they're going to be with the same people. You're not going to do it on a subway.

It's going to be somebody in your life, your old friend, your relative, your in law, whatever. And that there's a certain amount of predictability in this. One of the things we say in this new families and politics workshop is an advantage with family. It's a very predictable. This is not your first rodeo with your family. And so you can actually plan in advance to approach the conversation, not in a reactive

way, like somebody pops off with something and you're in, but you're a MIGDLE activated, you could actually go into it and say, I'm going to try out some skills here. I'm going to try out agreeing with finding something to agree with first. And see how that goes. And this is something that I practice in my own life. I have relatives around the country, some of whom I visit and some of whom come to Minnesota, who are all over the place politically. And by the way, as an aside,

extended families are one of the last bastions of political diversity in our country because you didn't choose your in-laws and your cousins and all those people, starting out your parents, your siblings, but you got us sort of hanging out with them. So I have some relatives that when I visit or they visit us, I plan, I'm looking forward to a conversation in which I am not starting out triggered. And so one of the things I do say with one relative is to say, so how are people in your part of the country viewing the president, president Trump right now? People love to expound. And you noticed the question wasn't, how are you feeling?

I could ask that, but I ask a more kind of sociological question. It's also not values laden. You're not saying, how are people in your part of the country thinking about those awful Senate Democrats? How are the people in your part of the country thinking about this terrible president? Let me practice the skill. I knew there were two things in there that I heard that I really agree with when they're related. One is, it makes a lot of sense to think ahead, given how hard it is to operationalize new skills.

The other is one can approach this with a certain amount of delight and interest, because it can invert the situation. In other words, instead of the dread, you may feel but of noxious uncle. This is an opportunity to practice a skill that's going to help you in many areas of your life. And then the whole complexion of the opportunity or obligation changes. Yes. I have another idea. Mm-hmm.

Can I share that? Hey, good pivot there. Okay. I'm paying attention. I think, and I've said this publicly, and I wrote a column about your work for men's health and I proposed the following, and I suspect you might agree,

although I never really asked you. And now you do agree, I think, that I proposed the following, and I suspect you might agree, although I never really asked you. No, you do agree, I think. That I think a contemplative practice, meditation, Cheegong, that calms the mind, reduces the baseline level of a migdala activation. And can familiarize you with your own mind in a way that reduces the odds that you're gonna get triggered because you may notice some noxious thoughts emanating from your mind and you're

not as likely to be caught up in them. Can be a really saliatory addition to this process. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm thinking of, at the moment, as you were talking of a judge, friend of mine, his retired judge, who is a long-term meditator, who would completely agree with what you're saying and applies it in the court where people are only in front of him because they're serious conflict. And he talks about maintaining his own kind of emotional state.

And he also says he can sort of tell which lawyers are better dictators or not by their bearing. So I think that this is helpful in our work. And it's also helpful in these relationships that we have. And I want to tie it specifically into not wanting to change people. Because the heart of close relationships is accepting people, accepting that this person who I love, who I struggle with sometimes, is who they are that come to this point in their life. And this is how they see the world, and this is how they see politics. And they are not asking me to change them, and it's not my job to change them. And I can feel okay myself with them as they are.

I have a meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein, who I'm very close with. I was listening to him give a talk recently about a kind of meditation called meta, METTA, or loving kindness meditation, where you repeat these sort of phrases of well-wishing and hurl them mentally, silently at various people in your life. And when he said that there's been a lot of study that this type of meditation is very effective in lots of ways, psychologically and physiologically for people. But one of the things he said was the radical takeaway from this kind of meditation is the way you feel about another person is not contingent upon about another person is not contingent upon their behavior is contingent upon your mindset.

Beautiful. And that is that it changes the way you move. Well, in my experience, that can change the way you move through the world. Absolutely. And I will also say just on this issue of the before I was giving my opinion about how approaching here to for dreaded conversations with a sense of opportunity, I'm not talking, this is an academic, you know, I've done a reasonable amount of communications training myself because my communication skills and many areas have been deeply lacking. And it's really, I've noticed that applying them, I'm going

into conversations with a certain amount of excitement because I'm like, okay, this is a chance for me to practice. And by the way, it's not just practicing some random new skill that doesn't matter. It's not like my yo-yo skills have gotten better. It's that my life is better as a consequence of doing this. My moment to moment experience of being alive and being in relationships with other homo sapiens is way more useful. Yeah, that's beautifully said.

And what I want to add is that if I can approach people with curiosity, because I'm not trying to change them, then sometimes I listen for and ask for the deeper story behind the disagreement. So a relative with very strong opinions about the political issue comes out of law enforcement. And when I took the time one day to get some deeper background stories, I understood a lot better how this person came to their views, even if they sometimes say them in ways that are kind of sharp. There is something soft underneath. In therapy, we talk about the hard feelings and soft feelings and anger, hard feeling

frustration and resentment. There's always soft feelings under them. And I think it's the same way for people who are particularly hard to take sometimes with their political views. You know, they're making their truth statements. They're absolute and the other side is, you know, is entirely wrong. There is something under there that is making them come across in this way. And if you're not trying to change them and you are interested in the deeper story, and you're willing to let go when you're having that conversation, you completely let go of having to express your view. In other words, you're kind of an

anthropologist. Right. And by the way, you don't have to relinquish your values to do this. No. In your interest, given that you don't have a choice anyway to have these conversations turned into something that can be interesting, skill building, restorative, as opposed to a grind or demoralizing, and you can still believe what you believe.

Yeah, yeah. And I have found that if people can differ from me greatly and they know what we both know it, if they feel my respect, I remember a guy saying, I just want to be treated as a moral and intellectual equal. And this is a very smart guy. He was a university professor in a school in a setting that where he was in the minority. I mean, he was a red and he was in a higher education.

It's very blue. And he said, I, people don't have to agree with me. I just want to be treated as a moral intellectual equal. Let me ask you in closing, you've chosen to build a life where you're putting yourself in the middle of conflict on the regular. You're working with reds and blues, you're working with couples on the verge of divorce. I police and black men. I was just going to say, I know you do all sorts of other community oriented work.

Why? I mean, you could have a much easier, quote unquote, life in many ways. Why do you do this? No, it's never asked me that. I enjoy being in the middle of action. I enjoy being close to the tension points and the pivot points where there can be breakthroughs. I think that's how I would answer it. I like bringing what I can bring to those very difficult moments. So, my clinical specialty is couples on the brink of divorce were one wants out, or certainly leaning out of the relationship, and the other wants to save it.

So they have very different agendas. And I do brief work with them, and no more than five sessions is called discernment counseling. And I love the intensity of it And I love the intensity of it. I love the intensity of it. What I hear you saying is not only you love the intensity of it, but you also love the fact that you can help. Yeah. In chemistry, they talk about, you know, far from equilibrium states of chemical systems,

that's where change can occur. And so when there are pressure points, so everything I do is a try to look for a pressure point. Something has to give here. We can't go on like we are. And then what can I do with that pressure point right there, where something may pop? I know I said that was my last question, but something came to mind that you had said to me on our first meeting, which was actually this work with Reds and Blues is harder than working with couples.

Yeah, that there is, with couples, there is a history of love. There is a shared, they have children together, if they have kids, there's, you know, there's glue that has been there. And with Reds and Blues, we're living in different sizes. Look at the countries, the map, the red and the blue. I mean, we're moving away from each other and shutting down and then lacking the ability to communicate when we come together.

So in that way, it's more difficult. Well, I heard you say before that you've got the optimism gene from your Irish forebearers. Well, I don't know if I have that from my on one side, Jewish forebearers and the other side in Scottish, but I hope you're right. I hope you're right, because as a journalist, I see this tearing apart all the time and it's hard to watch. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Really appreciate you coming on. Happy to do it's hard to watch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really appreciate you coming up. Happy to do it. I'm thrilled. Before I go, if people want to learn more about Better Angels or Join or Support, how can they do so? So, Google Better Angels, technically BetterHiphanangels.org, and please join. We have an online skills workshop that people can do when they join join and we have lots of things going on around the country.

Great job, thank you. Thank you. Big thanks to Bill and big thanks as well to the folks who work so hard to put this show together. Samuel Johns is our senior producer DJ Cashmere. Our producer, Jules Dodson is our AP. Our sound designer is Matt Boyton from Ultraviolet Audio. Tools Dodson is our AP, our sound designer is Matt Boyton from Ultraviolet Audio. Maria Wartel is our production coordinator. We get a ton of massively helpful input from TPH colleagues such as Jen Poient, Nick Toby Ben Rubin and Liz Levin. And finally, as always, big thank you to my ABC News comrades Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan.

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