Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How to Keep Going When Things Get Hard | Bryan Stevenson

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

Have you already bailed on your resolutions? Where are you on your other life goals? This episode is a master class on sticking with it, no matter what.Bryan Stevenson is a public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned. He is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, based in Montgomery, Alabama—an organization that has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, as well as reversals, relief, or release from prison for over 140 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row. He is the author of the bestselling memoir Just Mercy, which was made into a feature film, and the subject of an HBO documentary, True Justice. He is also a MacArthur “Genius,” a graduate of Harvard Law School, and a recipient of over 50 honorary doctoral degrees from institutions like Yale, Princeton, and Oxford University.In this episode we talk about:Bryan’s “non-negotiables,” including exercise, music, and mindfulnessThe necessity of “proximity”How he manages fear, anger, and hatredHow he cultivates hope and faith in the face of overwhelming oddsRelated Episodes:Father Gregory Boyle on Conquering Hatred with LoveEsther Perel, Bill Hader, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Pema Chödrön’s “Non-Negotiables”Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/bryan-stevensonSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello gang, how are we doing? It's the start of a new year, and many of us may already be struggling to keep our resolutions. And even if you set aside how hard it is to exercise more, meditate, eat, write, whatever, even if you move beyond all of that, many of us also have huge things we're trying to accomplish in our lives. Career goals, relationship goals, a desire to change things about the larger world, and to state the obvious, it can be very hard to stay on track with these massive long-term goals. Perseverance, keeping at it,

whether it be with resolutions or over-arching life goals, can be very hard. Today, we are going to hear from a master at Perseverance in some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable. How does he do it? Brian Stevenson is an incredible human being and he's got practical advice that can work for any of us and he has truly battle tested this advice.

He's a public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned. He's the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative based in Montgomery, Alabama. They've won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing and winning reversals, relief, or release from prison for over 140 wrongly condemned

prisoners on death row. He's the author of the bestselling memoir, Just Mercy, which was made into a feature film starring Michael B. Jordan. And he's also the subject of an HBO documentary called True Justice. So what keeps this man going? We talked about some basic stuff, like exercise, music, and mindfulness, but also some non-obvious stuff, like what he means by proximity, how he manages it when fear, anger, or hatred come

up in his mind, and how he cultivates hard-nosed, reality-based versions of both hope and faith. I should say before we dive in, this is the latest installment of our non-negotiable series where we talk to smart people about their must-have practices and life philosophies. I've been consistently surprised how starting with this very simple question, what are your non-negotiables has consistently led us to fascinating and surprising and deeply useful places. So enjoy this one. Anderson Cooper is back with season two

of his podcast, All There Is. I'll sit down with President Biden in the White House for a conversation about the losses in his life and how he lives with them. I don't anybody who welcomes grief, but you gotta confront it. All there is with Anderson Cooper is about how we can live on with loss and with love. I mean this in the bottom of my heart, my word is a Biden.

They're always going to be with you. Listen to all there is with Anderson Cooper, wherever you get your podcasts. My family and I use Airbnb's all the time, especially when we take beach vacations. I love being able to get a spot that is super close to the beach, but way less expensive than staying at a beachfront hotel. Don't get me wrong, I like hotels now and again, but being able to have your own house, especially on a beach vacation where you've got tons of stuff, buggy boards, etc., it's really nice to have a house.

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Free on Amazon Music, or by subscribing to Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. on Apple Podcasts, will the Wondery app? Brian Stevenson, welcome to the show. Glad to be with you. I'm honored to have you on the show and really appreciate you making the time to do this. Thank you. Very welcome. So as you know, we're doing this big series in the new year here about the non-negotiables of some interesting people, some of the smartest people we know, we called them up and asked them, what are your non-negotiable practices or precepts? And so I'm curious, given all of the many struggles and challenges and

achievements in your life, what do you rely on to persevere? Well, for me, a lot of it has to do with how to maintain purpose, how to maintain kind of an aspiration for something that keeps you moving forward. And I think, you know, a couple of the things that are key for me is proximity. I'm persuaded that to do the kind of work that I do, I have to be proximate to the people, the communities, the places where the challenges manifest themselves. I do, I have to be proximate to the people, the communities, the places where the challenges manifest themselves. I mean, I think of myself as doing justice work.

And I don't think unfortunately in our society, we've created a consciousness about how we advance justice that requires us to be close to people who are experiencing injustice. And I think that sets up all kinds of problems. In business, you are required to understand everything about an opportunity. You can't be a good investor.

You can't be a good business person. If you don't understand all of the forces shaping demand and supply and technology, we require insight, knowledge, proximity to kind of have the ability to create innovations. We have a vaccine for the COVID virus because our medical research is understand that their way to solve a problem is to intimately pull it apart. But somehow in the justice context,

our policy makers and many of our elected officials think they can advance justice with no proximity, no awareness, no closeness to all of the places where injustice is manifest. And so for me, it's been critical, as I do my work, to be close to the marginalized, the poor, the disfavor, the condemned, the incarcerated. If that's where I'm trying to make a difference in terms of my day-to-day work, I have to have that kind of proximity.

And I think it's just been key to my own understanding of what it takes to evaluate a situation, to think strategically about responding to a situation and having ideas about what may be a better way. I think that has always been key for me. And then I guess the other thing is that, you know, I've always believed that we should be smart and informed and tactical and all those kinds of things. I tell my students, you know, the ideas in your mind are going to be critical for how you solve problems, how you shape and live your life. But I'm persuaded that the ideas in our mind have to be fueled by conviction in our heart. And so making sure I'm mindful of the things

that I'm feeling and aware of and moved by, as I think about the options and choices that present themselves to me, has been for me a really critical component of how I get through the world, how I move through time. I wanna come back to proximity in a moment. I don't want to let that fall by the wayside, but you talked about being mindful of what's happening inside of you as you do, what you do.

What do you mean by that specifically? Can you unpack that a little bit? Sure. I think that oftentimes we try to do something and we have an understanding it's what we should do. It's what we think is the right thing to do or the best thing to do. But as we do it, we feel some disconnect. We feel some discomfort that is rooted in what we're experiencing, not being in harmony with what we're expecting or what we're trying to achieve. And I mean, in my work, I have to sometimes believe things I haven't seen, which means

that if I don't feel like I can move towards some goal, if I don't think that what we're trying to do is going to actually get advanced, it will undermine my ability to do what I'm trying to do. Because a lot of it doesn't have precedent, it doesn't have a pathway, it doesn't have a formula, it doesn't have a prescription. And when you're trying to do things that aren't clearly defined in terms of one, two, three, when there's no recipe, you sort of have to understand things about what you're trying to do at, kind of, like a psychic emotional level. It's got to have a feeling to it.

I sometimes go into communities and just see a Responsiveness to what we're trying to do that is really energizing. We started doing some work on food insecurity and I didn't expect that we would have to have as much contact with people as we Ended up needing to have but the way to run the program we're trying to run it required that we had have to have as much contact with people as we ended up needing to have, but the way to run the program we're trying to run, it required that we had to meet people every month. And it's been the most essential part of this program. We've doubled the number of families we're working with because we're so energized by the quality of those encounters. And I would not

have anticipated that, but once we started experiencing that, we began to see that there was value in this project, there was value in this project, there was value in this process, and we felt differently about what we were doing, the people we were working with felt differently about the experience. And that gave it a whole another dynamic, a whole another dimension of value. If you say, if you're going to give families $415 a month to help them deal with food insecurity, that's the only thing you need to know. We know that with high inflation and all these other things that's going to make a difference.

You know, my state has one of the highest rates of food insecurity. But if you don't actually have the experience of going into homes and seeing how this impacts families and talking about the impact and experiencing the gratitude and the emotion and the power of helping someone. I think you're going to underestimate the significance of the project. You're not going to be as committed to it as you might otherwise be.

And that's what I think I mean is that there are these other forces that can move you through a challenge, through a problem that go beyond just the thing you understand in your mind, that involve your heart, that make you feel inspired, that make you feel energized, that make you feel motivated in ways, that the absence of inspiration, motivation, and energy will defeat. I think those things are key

when we're trying to make a difference in the world, when we're trying to live lives that are meaningful, that are affirming, those emotions are key, those feelings are key. So let me see if I can stake that back to you. In your line of work, where you're trying to do things that either haven't been done before, or there is a clear path, but it seems basically impossible getting somebody at a prison, designing a program to feed people who otherwise have been underserved. The list goes on and on.

When you're in that kind of endeavor, you need to stay motivated because it's not going to be easy. It sounds like it does kind of loop back to proximity. If you're close to the people you're trying to help, you will not have existential crises because you will know what the assignment is. I think that's right. I mean, I've gone into detention facilities to work with children. And when you show up and they hear for the first time that someone is actually going to advocate

for them, it's going to try to help them. There's a lot of emotions surrounding that. Before you know it, you feel a connection to these young people and they feel a connection to you. I think that's an important part of how that work will evolve. You're going to learn things about their capacity, their priorities, their abilities that you won't learn otherwise that will influence the strategy, the tactic, the approach. And I've always believed that more people need to get closer to the marginalized, the poor, the disfavor. If they really want to make a difference on these issues, and I think that you hear things

you won't otherwise hear, you see things you won't otherwise see. And yes, that does yield understanding and knowledge, but it also creates a relationship to these things. I mean, in sports, what you're trying to do is to get to a place where when you run, you feel better, when you play a sport, you're energized. And in music, I think that's certainly the same dynamic. I grew up in a musical household. You know, when you figure something out, there's a's certainly the same dynamic. I grew up in a musical household. When you figure

something out, there's a kind of joy with that. And when you're able to express that with the technique and the skill that you've developed, it just takes you someplace that you begin to get passionate about it. You start to love it. I don't play like I used to, but sometimes when I'm really challenged by something burdened, by something by something, you know, sitting in a piano and playing for an hour, it just provides a kind of comfort. It creates a feeling that allows me to understand that things can still be put together in a way that will sound like progress, sound like possibility, sound like hope. And I just think in our lives and in our work, you wanna seek that dynamic. We don't have to be denied the thrill

of athletic achievement or musical success, or an intense relief that comes through, the things that many of us do through exercise and music and whatnot in our day-to-day life. And I guess because I grew up in an environment with those things really sustained me as a child, I have never been willing to kind of have days go by, why don't feel some of that. And that's what's required to proximity we're talking about.

I actually have more questions about proximity, but just because you mentioned music and exercise, how abiding are those habits for you? Oh, no, they're really key for me. I think growing up in a racially segregated community, where there were no safe places to express yourself outside of the church, which was our domain. The church was very shaped by music. That became a place of real identity building. Then as things change and you could leave that space

but still have opportunity for musical expression, became a really important part for me. I've always found great joy and consolation, meaning, inspiration and music. I've been living in these little tiny rented apartments for the first probably 10 years of my career, maybe longer, but I always had a little keyboard in the house and you'd have to use headphones

and things like that. And then when I got a little older, I said, I really want a piano, so I actually bought a house so I could get a piano. And I have this piano in my house, and it looks like that's exactly what I did. If you came to my house, you'll see the piano. You won't see much else in the living room.

But for me, it's been an incredibly important space for comfort and consolation, but also for inspiration and motivation. And hearing music can be a really powerful thing. But if you have the ability to create music, I just think, no matter what your level is that that's a whole another dimension that I feel really fortunate that I grew up in a place where that was something that was expected of me, my little church, they just put you on the piano and say, play and they

don't kick you off when you sound terribly. They allow you to grow and evolve. And my mother was a musician and I had musicians in my family. But for me, that's been a really, really wonderful gift that definitely continues to sustain me today. I was struck by something you said before. When you sit down at the piano and you're playing a piece in music, if everything else in the world doesn't make sense and seems broken, it almost infuses you

with a sense of both beauty and agency. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think in my work, I often just see people in anguish, people really in a lot of pain, people who are overwhelmed, people who are despairing. And if you have a full day of a lot of that kind of emotion, it can leave you unsettled if you don't have a way of Managing it and for me at least Music is a really powerful way to do that. You know, you start playing something and not only does it sound Affirming and complete, but it gives you the opportunity to kind of creatively respond to what you've been carrying for that day.

Sometimes playing something joyful after hours of sadness and anguish, or playing something somber after hours of suffering and despair, can help you not be overwhelmed by what you're experiencing. I think that there's a kind of beauty in music. And for me, I'm always looking for something beautiful because I think beauty is affirming, it's inspiring, it's energizing. And if you can create that on a musical instrument and it's a fixed environment, right? I know all of the notes. I know if you put these four notes together, you're going to get this kind of chord. If you do this, and it

allows you to kind of enter that space with not the complexity of life without the obstacles of life where you need other people to do all these other things. For me, it's very affirming because you can control the notes that get played and you can have an understanding of the sound they create. And that gives you the confidence to do something that responds to wherever you are. I do feel really grateful that that's something that I've been able to carry with me into this work. As promised, I do want to go back to proximity. Yes. Because I think it's a very powerful point. The idea that a massive source of inspiration and passion and encouragement and motivation for you

has been being close to the people you're trying to serve instead of having them as an abstraction. I wonder if I can prod you to get into advice giving mode because it's new years. A lot of people are thinking about how to change their lives do better and many different areas of life. And if if we're thinking about proximity, I can imagine a lot of people would be hearing this and say, well, I have a busy life. I got a bunch of kids. I got a job. Maybe I have aging parents. I'm taking care of what. Yeah. What do you mean? How do I get proximity to the underserved? Well, I think just expressing our closeness to the people we care about, I think is important. You know, I grew up in a community where the schools were segregated and then lawyers came

and made them open up to schools. And so we kind of integrated the schools. This is in the 1960s. And my grandmother who had never lived through integration, I think was very alarmed by that. And I talk about my grandmother a lot, but she was one of these classic African-American matriarchs. She was the power in our family.

She was tough. She was strong, but she was kind, and she was loving. She was the daughter of people who were born in slavery. And that experience made her very tactical and strategic. And when integration came, she started doing this thing that she hadn't done before, where she would come up to me, and she would hug me so tightly. I thought she was actually trying to hurt me.

And then she'd see me an hour later, and she'd say, Brian, do you still feel me hugging you? And if I said no, she would jump on me again. And so by the time I was nine or 10, my grandmother had taught me every time I would see her, I would say, Mama, I always feel you hugging me. And it became like this thing. And she lived into her 90s.

She worked as a domestic her whole life. When I was in college, she fell, she broke her hip. She had been diagnosed with cancer and she was dying. And I went to see my grandmother and just couldn't imagine being in the world without her. And I went into her room and just sat down and I persuaded myself that she couldn't die if I were talking to her. So I just started talking. And she wasn't responding or reacting. And finally one of my relatives came and said, Brian, you can't just stay here and keep talking.

You got to go. And I remember standing up and taking a step. And that's when my grandmother opened her eyes. And then she squeezed my hand. And she looked at me. And the last thing she said to me, she said, Brian, do you still feel me hugging you? And then she said, I want you to know I'm always going to be hugging you.

And when I talk about proximity, I'm actually talking about action, doing something that creates connection to the people we care about. And I tell people all the time that sometimes I think the most important thing we can do to help people who have fallen down, people who have lost the way, people who have been overwhelmed, people who have been traumatized is wrap our arms around them and affirm their humanity and their dignity. We underestimate the power of that act, that gesture. And I think there is something significant about expressing our connection to a human being, to another person, our family members, of people who are trying to work and serve in a way that's genuine

and rooted in our love, our compassion, our empathy. And I think that's important when I talk about proximity, is that we understand it to require action to do something. And it doesn't matter how that plays out in your life for some people, you know, it's volunteering here or doing something there for some people. It's investing in relationships that are complicated and challenging for some people. It's taking time to do something that's not easy, but feels very affirming. But I do think that's key. It's not, you know, the things that were just naturally

proximate, that just happened by themselves. For me, that's not the kind of proximity I'm talking about. And in our country, it's very easy to isolate yourself, you know, residentially and culturally. And I just think sometimes when we choose to not do that and commit to something we believe in, that we think has value and purpose in meaning. And then reinforced whatever we're trying to do by a commitment to getting close to the

people or the entities that are important. Things change and they change not just for the people we're trying to help and serve, but they change for us. You know, I in my book I talk about really struggling in law school because I went to law school trying to help the poor and the disadvantaged in my first year of law school because I went to law school trying to help the poor and the disadvantaged. And my first year of law school, nobody was talking about that. It was only when I went to Georgia and met the group of lawyers who seemed to be animated by the work they were doing and was asked to go to death row and meet someone that everything changed. And I went to death row and met this man who was burdened with chains. He took to chains often. And we started talking. And I just forgot that he was a death row prisoner

and I was a lawyer. We were just were two people in a space. And I stayed longer than I should have stayed. And the guards got angry. They came into the room and they couldn't do anything to me. So they took it out on this man and they kind of threw him against the wall and they pulled his arms back, put the hand goes back on his wrist, wrapped the chain around his waist, put the shackles back on his ankles, and they were treating him fairly violently to get him out of the room, and I was begging them to be gentler, and I said, look, it's not his fault, it's my fault, but they ignored me. And they got this man near the door, and I remember how he just stood his ground when he got in front of the door and planted his feet, and then he turned to me and he said, Brian, don't worry about this.

You just come back. And then he did this thing that I've written about where he closed his eyes and threw his head back and started to sing. And he started singing this hymn. He started singing. I'm pressing on the upward way. New heights, I'm gaining every day still praying as I'm onward bound. And then he said, Lord, plant my feet on higher ground and it's stunned everybody. The guards stop. And then they recovered and they started pushing him down the hallway and you could hear the change clang, but you could hear this man singing about higher ground. And when I heard that man sing, everything changed for me. That was the moment that I knew I wanted to help condemned people

get to higher ground. But more than that, I realized that my journey to higher ground was tied to his. And when I got back to Harvard Law School, I was a completely different law student. You couldn't get me out of the law school library. I needed to know everything about federalism and comedy and the jurisprudence necessary to help condemned people get to higher ground. And it all was a result of being proximate to a condemned man and hearing his song. And I genuinely believe that in many places where there's despair and anguish and places of marginalization, places of poverty, people are still singing. And when we hear these songs, they change us. If you ask me today, what the secret is of helping people, I would say we try to be smart, we try to be hard working,

we try to do all the right things, but the real answer, if I've helped anybody during my legal career, it's because I got proximate to a condemned man and heard his song. And I think that opportunity is something all around us that we can all access and you don't have to do what I do. You don't have to be focused on justice, or focused on mass incarceration,

or focused on poverty. But whatever it is that interests you and inspires you and motivates you to make a difference, I think that proximity is going to be important to it. So if I'm listening to this, if I'm a listener and hearing your incredible stories, I don't need to feel insufficient and like a failure. It's not, I don't think you're saying, but please correct me if I'm wrong, that we need to radically up end our lives to achieve the kind of proximity that you have. It's more that, look, whatever spheres you're moving in, there are people you say you care about that you might not actually be fully engaged with, and especially given that everything,

as I like to say, in our lives in a modern context, militates against connection. Can you counter-program against your technology and your individualism that we're raised with in this culture and dig in with folks who might need your help? I think that's right. I mean, I just think that there's something really powerful about kindness. There's something really powerful about compassion. There's something really

powerful about being generous, but it requires some kind of relationship with someone else or something else. And it doesn't matter what that is. And I do think that it has a kind of return that you'll find will change you, that will reorient you in ways that can make a difference, particularly when, you know, we're living at a time when there's so much fear and anger and polarization and so much conflict that it can make you helpless about what to do and what to think. And I just believe that acts of kindness and compassion and engaging with people and looking for opportunities to be a change maker, a different maker in the lives of other people can be the most restorative and energizing things

we can do for ourselves. I agree. I used to be a hard charging news anchor and war correspondent and now I'm the type of guy who does what I'm about to do, which is quote the Dalai Lama. I've been very influenced by him and he does this interesting thing and you're doing it too, which is he talks about kindness and compassion and those can sound like empty bromides or impossible standards, but he frames it in terms of self-interest, which is something that a person who's been what hired for selfishness, like I'm pointing at myself here, can really resonate with.

And he has this term, wise selfishness. So we're all selfish by nature, he argues. It's part of being human. It's not entirely bad. But if you want to do selfishness correctly, you will be as kind and compassionate as possible because that is what actually will make you happy. Not being a dormant, not being a pushover,

but being engaged with other people and the science backs this up. And it seems like that's a similar argument to yours. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I do think there's a real return on compassion, there's a return on kindness where you experience emotions, you feel things that are really powerful, really affirming. And I actually think it's also, it gives you hope.

And I think for me at least when you talk about the things that are non-negotiable, I have to be hopeful about what I do. I think, first of my work, that hopelessness is the enemy of justice and injustice prevails where hopelessness is the enemy of justice and injustice prevails were hopelessness persists, but even beyond that, I think if I have any strengths or powers, it's rooted in hope. I think it's kind of a superpower that we all need, and you have to be willing to kind of believe these things you haven't seen. And what compassion and kindness yield is hope about what you can do as an individual and about what you can see in the world, what you can experience in the world. I've represented young kids who were just coming out of really horrific situations.

Because we don't charge people money for the legal services we provide, I will sometimes with my young clients say to them, but you got to read a book. And every time you read a book, I'll come and visit you and try to motivate them because I think having a world bigger than the world you see in a custodial or a carceral setting is really key to not being overwhelmed by the despair and the hopelessness of those places and just trying to get them into a bigger world. And it's been amazing to me to see what that has yielded. It moves me actually to now be working with people who have been representing for a long time. And they'll call excitedly because they just finish some book. I order for them. I won't even remember what I've ordered, but they'll tell me of the phone. Okay, we are talking

about the book you sent me. I said, okay, I'm sorry, I don't remember what book was it. And then they'll start talking to me about Dostoevsky and the brother's character, which is one of my favorite books. And I'll just listen to them talk excitedly for 15 minutes and it's just the most extraordinary thing, the most beautiful thing, the most satisfying thing to have people creating relationships with ideas and values and understandings that are important to you and have them experience that.

And that's the thing that I do think is essential. And it does come from, as the Dalai Lama suggests, the return on kindness and compassion. You begin to see that it can actually achieve things that hopelessness and fear and anger can't achieve. And that's a really exciting idea if you're trying to make it through the world in the 21st century at a time of so much violence and war and conflict and animosity and bigotry and all of these things that we see way too much of. Yeah, it's so easy to get whether we're engaged in the sort of cinematic big work that you're,

I mean, literally cinematic work that you're engaged with, or we're just trying to get through in a quote unquote normal life. It's easy given our media environment and given what's happening on the planet to get sucked into hopelessness, but there is the antidote is around us all the time. And it's other people.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. And I think in many ways, it also allows you to push back against, you know, fear and anger. I do think that fear and anger are the essential ingredients of injustice and oppression. They lead to depression and, you know, and despair and all of these terrible

things. And we're just living at a time when a lot of people are trafficking in the politics of fear and anger. And I mean that broadly, not just in our political sphere, but in our social spheres and our cultural spheres and educational spheres that people seem to be motivated to use fear and anger as a currency to gain more influence and power. That worries me because I look through world history and I see the worst and most tragic manifestations of human behavior rooted in these narratives of fear and anger. The Holocaust was created by a narrative of fear and anger that were wandered in genocide a hundred days that was facilitated by

this powerful narrative of fear and anger. You go any place in the world where people are being abused and mistreated. If you talk to the abusers and those who are mistreating them, they can give you a narrative of fear and anger to justify and defend what they are doing. And I just think that fear and anger causes you to tolerate things. You would not otherwise tolerate.

It causes you to accept things. You would not otherwise accept. How did we reconcile ourselves to be in slavery in this country to have millions of people violated and abused and say, we mob violence throughout the 20th century, the first half of the 20th century, where black people were pulled out of their homes and beaten and drowned and tortured and lynched,

sometimes on the courthouse lawn. And some of these mob members would bring their children to witness the torture and the violence. And how is it that that would be a reasonable or rational thing to do? Even the architecture of segregation that I grew up with, why this intense hatred of people because of their color, not wanting them to sit where you sit, not wanting them to eat, where you eat, go through the door where you go through, all of that is rooted in these

narratives of fear and anger, many of which we inherit, and if we don't consciously work to overcome, they shape our lives and will feel rage in ways that we don't even understand. And that's why for me, countering that, challenging that is so essential. And it doesn't mean we have to all agree on policies or issues or topics. But we do have to understand that we don't make good decisions when those decisions are shaped by our worst fears or by our rage and anger. And hope is the most powerful antidote to that. And hope rooted in compassion and kindness. I hope rooted in the belief that we can do more than just rage at one another, be afraid of one another, hate one another. I want to get on the other side of that because I don't want to be burdened by those things either. And in

many ways, it's a legacy that I feel fortunate to have inherited. I mean, when I look at American history, I think about the four million people who were emancipated out of the Civil War. It would not have been irrational for them to say, we want retribution against those who enslaved us, who separated us from our children and our family members. But most of them chose citizenship. They chose fellowship. They chose community. It was an act of hope that you could argue wasn't rational, but it was powerful.

And all during that time of exclusion and disfavored, I feel fortunate that were people in my ear saying, don't hate those who exclude you. Don't hate those who don't want you to go to school with them, who don't think you should be in the pool with them, who don't want to sit next to you. Because if you do that, you'll be defined by your hatred. You'll be burdening yourself more than they could ever burden you. And that relationship to a life for me is really essential because there are so many

things that are enraging. There are so many things that are enraging. There are so many things that are oppressive. There are so many things that are just heartbreaking when you see how humans interact with one another. That it's very easy to get pulled into that narrative of fear and anger that can shape your whole life. ... Coming up, Brian Stevenson talks about what he does when he sees fear and anger coming up in his own mind.

How he's learned to think about people he encounters along the way, who he feels are abusing their power or acting in other wise ugly ways. And why he thinks it's important not just to criticize, but also to state out loud your highest aspirations repeatedly. Hi, I'm Anna. aspirations repeatedly. Hi, I'm Anna and I'm Emily. We're the hosts of Wondry's podcast, Terribly Famous, a show where we bring you outrageous true stories about our most famous celebrities. Our later season is all about the Catwalk Queen Naomi Campbell. The years Naomi had to fight to be treated barely in an industry that was overwhelmingly white.

That drive saw her break down barriers and reached the pinnacle of high fashion, but it also got her into some dangerous situations when it spilled over into an anger she couldn't control. In our new season, Naomi Campbell's model behaviour, we tell the story of how a young girl from South London became a trailblazing black icon, but had some very public falls of how she stood up to the British tabloids and one, and then lengths she had to go to to be the first black woman in history to make the cover of French vogue. But, she risks losing it all when her explosive behaviour lands are in court. Follow Terabie Famers wherever you listen to podcasts,

or listen early and add free on Wondry Thrust on Apple Podcasts or the Wondry app. Quick reminder, you can join the free 14-day imperfect meditation challenge over on the 10% happier app right now. It features amazing teachers like Carl I, Don Ricio, and Matthew Hepburn. You will discover how embracing imperfection can help you improve your relationship with meditation. It's live. Go check it out. As you were speaking, something came to mind, which is there's a form of

Buddhist meditation that I do quite a bit. And it's called meta, M-E-T-T-A, which is often translated as loving kindness, but I think the better, more accurate translation is friendliness. In this practice, you systematically envision beings. You start with an easy person, then you move to yourself, and then you move to a mentor, and then a neutral person, somebody you might overlook, and then you move to a difficult person. Actually, in many Buddhist circles, they call this person the enemy. I often advise people to start with somebody mildly annoying, but you move to a difficult person. Actually, in many Buddhist circles, they call this person the enemy.

I often advise people to start with somebody mildly annoying, but you move to somebody truly difficult as you progress in the practice. As you envision these people, you're sending them phrases like may you be happy. And one of the phrases is may you be safe. And it's counterintuitive to wish safety upon your quote-unquote enemy. But as I often think about it, a person who feels safe is unlikely to be that dangerous.

And that seems to rhyme with exactly what you just said. Oh, absolutely. We have a project where we're trying to put up markers at lynching sites around the country. One of my goals is to kind of just change the landscape. We've just been so silent about so many parts of our history. And we invite people to come together and to these community groups. And the number one thing we stress is that it's got to be a safe environment for everybody. Because that allows us to then hear things and understand things and work

on things that we won't otherwise be able to do. And one aspect of this project is we, we have people go to lynching sites in Dick's soil and put it in a jar that has the name of the victim and the date of the lynching. And then they bring it back and in our museum we have a whole exhibit created by these jars of soil, 800 jars of soil we've done this now. And we were doing one in Alabama, the Middle East black woman came to me and said, oh, Mr. Stevenson, I want to dig soil for your exhibit. I said, okay, and we gave her the empty jar, we gave her the memo that talked about the lynching, we gave her the implement to dig the soil.

And she got to this location, and when she got there, she told me that it was really scary because it was a dirt road. She didn't feel safe. And she had to pray to kind of get her courage, and she found her courage, got out of the car across the dirt road, found the spot where the lynching took place, got down on her knees, and she was about to start digging when all of a sudden a pickup truck came down the road. There was this big white guy in the truck

and he stared at her and he made her nervous. And then he slowed his truck down, he stopped, turned it around and drove back by again and stared at her some more. She said her heart started to pound. And then to her horror, the man parked his truck, got out of it and started walking toward her. And he came up to her and he said, what are you doing? And we tell people when they're out digging soil, that they don't have to explain what they're doing if they don't want to. And she told me that she was going to tell this man. She was just getting dirt for her garden, but all of a sudden something got a hold of her. And she said, she told that man, she says, I'm digging soil here because this is where a black man was lynched in 1937, and I'm going to honor his life today.

And she just looked down and started digging. And the man surprised her by saying, does that paper talk about the lynching? And she said, it does. And then he said, can I read it? And she gave the man the paper. And he started reading while she started digging. And after a few minutes, the man finished reading the paper, he put it down. And then he really surprised me. He said, excuse me, ma'am, but it would be all right if I helped you. And she said, yes. And the man got down on his knees and she offered him the implement to dig

the soil. He said, no, no, no, you keep that. I'll just use my hands. And she said, he started throwing his hand into the soil and putting it in the jar, throwing his hand into the soil. And she said, no, no, no, you keep that. I'll just use my hands." And she said, he started throwing his hands into the soil and putting it in the jar, throwing his hands into the soil. And she said, there was something about the conviction with which he was putting his whole body into digging up the soil that just moved her. And she said, she went from fear to relief to joy so quickly that a tear started running down her face. And the man saw her tear and he stopped.

And he said, I'm so sorry, ma'am, I'm upsetting you. And she said, no, no, no, you're blessing. quickly that a tear started running down her face and the man saw her tear and he stopped and he said, I'm so sorry, ma'am, I'm upsetting you. And she said, no, no, no, you're blessing me. And he kept digging with his hands and she kept digging with the implement and they were getting near the top of the jar. And she noticed that he was slowing down and she looked over at him. She saw that his face had turned red, his shoulders were sagging. And then she said, she saw a tear running down his face. And she stopped and she put her handging. And then she said, she saw a tear running down his face. And she stopped and she put her hand on the shoulder and she said, are you all right? And the man said, no ma'am, no ma'am, no ma'am. And then he said, I'm just so worried that it might have been my grandfather

who helped lynch this man. And she said, they both sat on that roadside and wept. After a few minutes, the man turned her and he said, I really want to take a picture of you holding the jar of soil. And she said, well, I really want to take a picture of you holding the jar of soil. And they took pictures of one another. And she said, well, I'm going back to Montgomery to put this in the exhibit. The man said, well, wouldn't be all right

if I just followed you. And I was here when these two people who met on a roadside in a place of agony and violence in shame came in together and did something beautiful by contributing that jar of soil to our exhibit. And I'm not naive. I don't believe that beautiful things like that always happen when we tell the truth.

But I believe we deny ourselves the beauty of justice when we don't tell the truth, when we don't allow ourselves to actually get closer to those people who we sometimes think are not our friends, when we engage in that kind of compassion and kindness, when we put ourselves in places, where we have an opportunity for new truths to emerge about who we are, and what we can achieve as a community, as a family, as a nation, whatever it is. And I very much see that in the work that I do, which is an enormous source of inspiration, even though there are times when people express a lot of

anger and rage and bitterness and fear, I am ultimately persuaded that those are not the forces that will ultimately prevail. I just think there's something so much more powerful about hope and compassion and kindness, both for ourselves and for the people we are in community with. I'm persuaded that there's a kind of force to that that can and will prevail. Do you see anger, rage, fear, bitterness coming up in your own mind and if and when that happens, how do you deal with it? Oh yeah, I mean, I'm constantly seeing things and hearing things and experiencing things that are just so painfully unjust

that are such manifestations of abuse of power and difference to human suffering. It's very hard knowing that we have the power and capacity to do something about these things, to then have decision makers just refuse to do something about these things, to then have decision-makers just refuse to do it, have people choose not to solve a problem that is easily solvable. And I think that's a really hard thing

to kind of navigate, particularly when you're aware of the consequences of the lack of intervention, the pain and the suffering. And I think for me, I have to find value in being the person who continues to push. I live in Montgomery, Alabama, and during the pandemic, I had an opportunity to just think more about the generation who came before me in this community. And there was a generation of people in this community, people who were committed to ending segregation who would put on their Sunday best, and they would go places and get down on their knees and pray for

an end to bigotry, the right to vote. These things that the Constitution guaranteed the long time ago. And while they were praying, they would often be beaten, bloody, battered, bruised, and they would go back home and change their clothes and go back and do it again. And there's a kind of power in that resolve, but there's also a kind of therapy in that resolve. You are actually practicing, hopefulness, you are practicing commitment, you are practicing a vision of something better.

And for me, I sometimes have to practice overcoming hate and practice getting past rage, practice, getting past the anger and the vitriol and the abuse that others are projecting. You know, the more you do it, I think the more confident you are that you can continue to do it. For me, it's, you know, it's like running or something. The more comfortable you get at a distance, the more you know you can do that. And so showing up someplace where people are screaming

and angry, shouting things that are unkind and ugly, you get to the point where that doesn't turn you around. You get to the point where you don't let the, the kind of the bigotry of others define how you see them because you really want them to be free of that kind of bigotry. I think that's for me been really key. Even the people are acting in ugly ways. I really want them to get to a better place. I don't want them to feel the kind of anger and

bigotry and violence that they are expressing because I know that that's not a healthy place to be. I want them to get to a place where they don't see someone and just immediately become outraged because that person is different. That person has these features of these qualities and characteristics. Because I know that's a tough way to go through the world.

And even though I have to sometimes fight them in court or fight them in some space where we're in conflict around some topic or issue or sentence, it doesn't mean that I don't want us all to get to a place that's better. How do you do that? I mean, how could somebody listening do that? We live in a time of such polarization where other rising is on steroids via social media, what is a practice that we could do to not be so reflexively judgmental?

I think people are very resistant to expressing what they like, what they love, what they appreciate, what's good, particularly in situations where there's conflict. And I think we need to get past that resistance. I don't have a problem. You know, I give a lot of lectures. I'm talking, we've built these sites in Montgomery about slavery and lynching and segregation and sometimes because I'm pushing really hard to get people to talk about things we haven't talked about. I'm trying to get

the nation to respond to things. I think sometimes people think when they hear me talking about slavery and lynching and segregation, I want to punish our nation for this history. And so I feel the need to keep affirming. I have zero interest in punishment. My interest is liberation. I genuinely believe that there's something better waiting for us. There's something that feels more like freedom, more like equality, more like justice. And I want us all to get there, including those who I see as resisting and pushing back

and obstructing that journey. But I genuinely want us all to get there. I'm not trying to replicate the dynamics of hierarchy and power that have disadvantaged me by then disadvantageing someone else. I want to get to something that transcends all of that. And I think it's worth saying that. I often feel the need to say, yeah, I don't hate. I don't, you know, I don't, I sometimes am really antagonized by the things that people say and do, but I try to commit to not hating. I believe that we are all more than the worst thing we've ever done.

I think if someone tells a lie, they're not just a liar. I think if someone takes something, they're not just a thief. I think even if you kill someone, you're not just a killer. And I make that argument on behalf of my clients because I want the world to see beyond the terrible thing that they know about that person. But I also believe that for myself. And I believe it for those who are oftentimes saying really harsh and painful things about what should happen to the people I represent. And it's in that space that practicing these acts of transformation of compassion and kindness for me are really key. And I do think in a polarizing moment like ours, it's so much easier to say something

harsh and critical and to be celebrated for the witness of our harsh and critical observations to be reinforced by all of those who share that same critique. And so much harder to say, yeah, well, I disagree with that person, but I hope we get to be friends. I hope we get to a different place. I hope we actually can come to an understanding that allows us to get to something that feels more like community,

feels more like connection, because that's a healthier place to be than in a space where there's division and violence and conflict. And I do think that we're just very reluctant to say the words and I find myself particularly as I've gotten older, being more vocal about those aspirations, being more verbal about my commitment to everybody, to wanting to see us all get to a better place, not just the people I represent. wanting to see us all get to a better place, not just the people I represent. I suspect just saying it, articulating it on the regular, actually creates neural pathways.

I think that's absolutely right. I think you're absolutely right, Dan. I mean, we work with, I work with a lot of people who have been traumatized by their environment. A lot of kids that are born in violent households, live in violent communities. They see a lot of violence by the time they're three and four. There's a lot of shouting. There's a lot of cursing. There's a lot of pushing. And these are kids who have trauma disorders by the time they're four and five. If you tested them, they'd have high levels of cortisol and adrenaline running through

their brains. And what we know from neuroscience is that if you put someone in a stressful situation, a threatening situation, you'll begin to produce these chemicals that help you cope with threat. And what happens to our soldiers when they go abroad and they're in combat, the brain just produces those chemicals all the time.

And they come back with these post-traumatic stress disorders because they have those chemicals coursing through their brain and they're reacting to situations in an inappropriate way. They're overreacting, they're hyperreactive, but that's because of what's happening in their brain. In a way, we treat that trauma as we have to create an environment

where people feel safe. We have to help them get their brain to stop being so reactive. And so if you can create a space where people feel safe, you can create a space where people feel affirmed and loved, that will actually allow them to recover from that trauma. And much of what I think we need to be doing in many of our communities is applying that same approach

to many of the children that are growing up in spaces where seven or 80% are expected to be in jail or prison. And when we do the opposite, which is what we too often do, we send them to school and then we have school teachers that talk to them like the school teachers are correctional officers and principals managing the school like their wardens and we threaten and we challenge and we say do this and we'll suspend you, do that, we'll expel you. You're just setting up these despairing behaviors because when you're constantly dealing with threat and you get to eight or nine

and somebody gives you a drug for the first time in your life, you feel for three hours that you're not being constantly threatened and menace, you won't know of the drug. You get to 11 and somebody says, hey, join my gang, I know exactly what you're feeling. And you'll join the gang, but if we just understood that we should be trying to help people feel

safe, responding to these forces. So I do agree. I think that our brains and our bodies need to have a kind of hope coursing through us. We need to feel some compassion, some kindness. We need to have a way of coping with conflict that helps us not be defeated or defined by it. And I very much do believe it's a heart, body, mind, dynamic that we're talking about that is key to

not just happiness, but also overcoming many of the challenges that too many people have had to bear. Coming up, Brian talks about why he chooses to reflect on and believe in things that he has not seen, but believes are necessary, and why he believes that service, which can sound like eating your vegetables, should not be seen as an obligation. As it pertains to the maintenance of your own hope, your own ability to persevere toward these big visions, you have a societal transformation, how important is faith by which I mean prayer which is something you've referenced a few times in our conversation.

Yeah, I mean for me it's important to have a kind of a spiritual life that allows you to kind of transcend the day-to-day, the physical and the empirical challenges that are coming to you. And I do tap into that because for me, it's something that sustains me. And the older I get, the more I feel it and appreciate it. You know, I do feel like I'm being lifted up by all of these faithful people when I went to law school in the 1980s, Harvard was doing something then to try to help students feel more comfortable because paper chased these things that come out that gave it, made it look like it was so torturous. So they said, oh, we want everybody to be in an orientation group on the first day. And so they put all of us in these orientation groups. And I went out with these kids, 10 other students in the orientation group leader, asked a very benign question, she just said, so tell me, why are you in law school? How

did you get here? And I sat there and I listened to my classmates all talk about how they were the son or the daughter or the grandson or the granddaughter or the nephew or the niece of a lawyer. And the more each one was saying this, the more diminished I felt. And they kept doing it. And then halfway through it, I realized that not only was I not related to a lawyer, I'd never met a lawyer. And when they finally got to me, I wasn't honest. I did something deceiving. I just told a joke. I made something up, but I didn't answer the question. And afterward I called my mom and said, mom, I don't think I belong here. And my mother said, no, we put you there. People have been praying for you to get there. You're not there by yourself.

And she said, I don't think you should start your law school education on day one by being dishonest or being deceptive. And she said, you need to find all of those kids and tell them the truth about how you got there. And I didn't do it for a couple of weeks, but it just weighed on me. And at some point, I said, you know what? I'm gonna go do that.

And I tracked on all these kids. It was sort of awkward, it was bizarre. But I tracked them all down. And I said, you know, I wasn't honest on our orientation day. I didn't tell you that I'm not related to a lawyer. And I've never even met a lawyer. But I can tell you why I think I'm here.

And I told them that my great grandfather was enslaved in Caroline County, Virginia, but learned to read while enslaved in the 1850s because he had a hope of freedom. And it wasn't a rational hope. He couldn't know that a war was just a decade away, but he risked his life to learn to read because anti-literacy laws made it illegal

for enslaved people to read. But he took that risk because he believed that one day he'd be free and he knew that education would help him. And after emancipation, my grandmother told me that, once a week, my great-grandfather would stand on the porch of their home and he would read the newspaper

to formerly enslaved people who would come by, who couldn't read. And he would help them understand what was going on and she loved the power he had just because he could read. And she said that she would push your siblings out of the way when he started reading and just wrap her arms around his leg because she thought the way you learned to read was to touch someone while they were reading. And this was her motivation. And he finally figured out that she was

trying to learn to read. He said, I'm going to teach you how to read Victor. And he taught her to read. And even though there weren't schools, my grandmother was a reader. She had 10 children. She worked as a domestic her whole life, but she was a reader. And I'd go see my grandmother, and sometimes she would stand on the porch with a stack of books and you'd have to read something from a book before she would let you in the house. She was very wily. She asked you what kind of dessert you want. She'd make something really smell so good. And then she'd stand in front of the kitchen and not let you in until you read something. And I grew up in a poor community or racially segregated community, a rural community.

And most of the adults didn't have high school degrees because they were in all high schools in our county when they were teenagers. And you didn't see much opportunity outside the door. But my mom went into debt when we were kids to buy us the world book in cyclopedia. And she wanted us to have these books as a portal to something bigger and better than we could see outside the door. And I didn't understand it at the time, because you know, if you're 10, and Christmas comes along and you go outside

and your friends are like, well, I got a basketball for Christmas. I got a bicycle, I got a baseball. I'd have to say, well, I got volume G of the World Book of Cyclopetia. But when I got to law school, I realized that this was the gift that I had been given. And it was a gift rooted in a faith, a gift, a rooted in a belief.

And I feel like I have been lifted up by that. And I just have to believe that the prayers of my great grandparents who were enslaved in the prayers of my grandparents and my parents, that believed something that they hadn't seen was so essential. And so now, yes, that is very much a part of what sustained me. I have a belief that we will create a day in this country,

maybe when the children of our children will no longer have to confront the presumption of danger, this and guilt that I've had to confront throughout my life. I have a belief that we can create a world where the vestiges of slavery and lynching and segregation are eliminated. And we can truly begin to have relationships that are rooted in the kind of compassion and love that we're talking about, that we can get past the bigotry and the violence

and the despair. We've created a very violent society, and I just have to believe that we can do better than that. But it does require faith. It does require the habits of sometimes thinking about, reflecting on what you haven't seen, but believe is necessary. Yeah, that, for me, is an important part of, you know, how I try to go through the world, but I also feel like it's a gift that I've been given by four parents and people who've come before me, who absolutely define their way through an even more challenging world based on their faith. Would it be correct for me to surmise that faith for you is less about the metaphysics and more about the community support in the inner strength to realize visions that may seem to be impossible?

Yeah, I think that's right, but I do think that the joy and the peace and the love that we sometimes experience when we understand that we are loved, that we are actually part of something bigger than what we sometimes experience is an important part of how we create those communities. And again, music is for me a good example. You can make a connection with someone musically if the music is beautiful, if it corresponds to the kind of sounds you want to create. if it's bad, it can just create frustration, it can just create, you know, annoyance. And so there is a metaphysical component even to something concrete and physical like being in a room with three other people and trying to create sounds that satisfy and please you all. And I think for me faith is very much like that.

Yes, it has to be expressed in community, expressed in action, expressed in works, expressed in relationships, but it does have a metaphysical component to it where it can feel sustaining and inspiring and even transformational. I'm sensitive to your time. So let me ask my two traditional closing questions.

One is, is there something I should have asked that I failed to ask? No, I think the only thing that I would just add that maybe we haven't talked about is that I don't think service is something we should fear. I don't think it's something that needs to be viewed as an obligation or burden or a dread I have found trying to meet the other needs of people if I can if I have skills and ability to do something that creates relief and peace and opportunity and healing for someone else then I don't actually think of serving to that in as a burden. I think of it as really a blessing.

It's the kind of thing that I get something from. And I do hope that people create a relationship to service that allows them to see the power of helping others and doing for others and not some zero-sum game where if you help someone else you're hurting yourself, if you give to someone else you're taking from yourself, I don't think that's true. And at a time when there's a lot of focus on the kind of self-awareness and self-care, which I think is important, but sometimes I think it can undermine our belief

and the value of serving others. And for me, I think that's just been a real gift. I wouldn't trade my experiences trying to help someone for anything. It's, you know, there are a lot of ways to get reward in life for a lot of people. It's monetary, a lot of people. It's celebrity, a lot of people. It's status. But there is something

I think even more powerful and being a servant to those who have needs where you can meet those needs and create opportunity, peace, healing, freedom for people who wouldn't otherwise be able to achieve that without your help. Yes, I mean, it kind of brings us right back to why selfishness, self-care, properly understood, involves other people. Yeah. The final question I want to ask is, it relates to service. If people listening to this want to support you and your work, what's the best way to do that? They, first of all, should come to Montgomery and spend time at our sites, which we're really proud of. We think they're truth-telling spaces in this country

that everyone needs to experience. They can learn, I think, that learning is an action item. And so each day, we put out something that tries to educate people about the issues that we're working on. We have a calendar, a history of racial injustice. And it's just an opportunity to develop knowledge, which we think can empower them to be better citizens, decision makers, participants, and journey toward justice.

And then lastly, they can go to our website at eji.org and just learn and experience the things that we're doing. And if any of those resonate, we always look to try to involve people. We're now operating a health clinic providing screening to people coming out of jail's and prisons, I've mentioned our hunger program and that's been so gratifying. So there are lots of ways and if we can't to work with you here, there are so many organizations around the country

doing similar work that would desperately like to see more people and hear from more people. So there's no limit to the opportunities to kind of get involved and make a difference. Brian, thank you so much for your time and for the work you're doing on the planet. Really appreciate it. I appreciate you. Thank you. Thanks again to Brian Stevenson, honor to have him on the show. If you want to hear more from our New Year's non-negotiable series, check out the links in our show notes. And for another conversation with somebody who,

like Brian Stevenson, is doing incredible work in the field, check out our conversation with Father Gregory Boyle. You can find a link in the show notes. 10% happier is produced by Gabrielle Zuckerman, Justin Davy Lauren Smith and Tara Anderson, DJ Cashmere as our senior producer, Marissa Schneiderman as our senior editor, Kevin O'Connell as our director of audio and post production, and Kimmy Regler as our executive producer, Alicia Mackie leads our marketing and Tony Magyar as our director of podcasts. Finally, Nick Thorburn of the Great Band Islands wrote our theme. If you like 10% happier, I hope you do.

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