The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Saving Grace: Speak Your Truth, Stay Centered, and Learn to Coexist with People Who Drive You Nuts by Kirsten Powers

Episode Date: November 19, 2021

Saving Grace: Speak Your Truth, Stay Centered, and Learn to Coexist with People Who Drive You Nuts by Kirsten Powers The CNN senior political analyst, USA Today columnist and NYT bestselling author offers a path to navigating the toxic division in our culture without compromising our convictions and emotional well-being, based on her experience as a journalist during the Trump era, interviews with experts, and research on what leads people to actually change their minds. For years, Kirsten Powers has been center stage for many of our nation's most searing political and cultural battles as a columnist, TV analyst, and one-time participant in the thunderdome of Twitter. On a good day, there will be civil disagreement. On a bad day, it's all-out trench warfare--nothing but a cycle of outrage and self-righteousness. More and more, Powers finds herself wondering, along with countless Americans: How are we to cope with this non-stop madness? In Saving Grace, Powers writes with wit and insight about our country's poisonous political discourse, chronicling the efforts she's made to stay grounded and preserve her sanity in a post-truth era that has driven many of us to the edge. She draws on lessons offered by faith leaders, therapists, theologians, social scientists, and activists working for change today. She dismantles the widespread misconception that grace means being nice, letting people get away with harmful behavior, or choosing neutrality in the name of peace. Grace, she argues, is anything but an act of surrender; instead, it is a kinetic and transformative force. Saving Grace offers a template for a different kind of America, one where we can engage with people who hold opposing views without sacrificing our values or our passionate beliefs in the causes we care about. It's a culture that embraces repentance and repair, a process through which those who have caused harm can take responsibility and work toward righting the wrongs in which they have participated. It's a place where we're empowered to see the possibility in other people, even people who are driving us nuts. Provocative, original, and filled with deep wisdom, Saving Grace is an essential read for anyone engaged in the struggle to live compassionately in an era of relentless demonization and division.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Thechrisvossshow.com.

Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you tuning in. Thanks for being here with us. To see the video version of this, go to youtube.com, 4chesschrisfoss. Hit the bell notification button. You can see all the wonderful stuff we're doing over there. And you can go to Goodreads where all the books we're reading and reviewing are over there as well. You can also go see our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and all that good stuff.

All those places, those cool kids are online nowadays. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets

from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. So you can preorder the book right now wherever fine books are sold.

But the best thing to do on getting a preorder deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon, you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom-made numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com.

So be sure to go there, check it out, or order the book wherever fine books are sold. Today we have an amazing guest on the show, and she's written an amazing book that I just really enjoyed. It just barely came out on November 2nd, 2021. Title of the book is Saving Grace. Speak your truth, stay centered, and learn to coexist with people who drive you nuts. Kirsten Powers is on the show with us today and she'll be talking about her amazing book. We'll be talking about all the great read that it was. She is a New York Times bestselling author, USA Today columnist, and CNN senior political analyst,

where she regularly appears on Anderson Cooper 360, CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, and The Lead with Jake Tapper. The Washington Post has called her bright-eyed, sharp-tongued, and gamely combative, and a ferocious advocate for her points of view. Her new book, Saving Grace, it will be released, of course, like I mentioned, in November 2nd, 2021. So you can get it now. It's out now. Welcome to the show, Kirsten. How are you? I'm great. Thank you for having me. Thanks for coming in. Congratulations on the new book. Give us your plugs. Sorry.

Give us your plugs so people can find you on the interwebs. Oh, just my name at Kirsten Powers, K-I-R-S-T-E-N Powers. And you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. There you go. There you go. And LinkedIn if you're on LinkedIn. There you go. So what motivated you to want to write this book? Necessity. As they say, the mother of invention is necessity.

And I think in many ways, I wrote the book that I needed. But I also saw that there were a lot of people around me that seemed to be in the same state that I was in post-2016, which was a lot of hopelessness and despair and confusion and rage and contempt and all of these other things that were kind of eating at me, I guess. I didn't really realize that at the time, but were sort of eating my insides. And in 2018, a few years into this, I realized that something needed to change. And I think the real moment for me was when I realized that the way I was thinking about people and the way I was sometimes acting on social media was not aligned with my values. And I felt like this isn't really who I want to be in the world. And I had this intuition that what was missing was grace, that I didn't really have grace

for other people. And I didn't see other people really having grace for other people. And I wrote a column. I read it USA Today. And I wrote a column about how toxic our discourse had become and that I recognized that I participated in that and that I wanted to change that. And so this book grew out of that column. It was basically a marker of me saying, I don't want to do this anymore. But then I had to figure out how do you get from this place, you know, Kirsten Powers,

late 2018, early 2019, to where I am today? How do you get from point A to point B? And, you know, it turns out it was really hard. And there were a lot of things I had to sit with myself and say, it's not just enough to say, I'll have grace for people, or I will view people through the prism of grace, or other people should do that. I had to look at what's impeding me from doing this, because I've already intellectually assented to it, right? I already have assented to the idea that I should love my neighbor and I should love my enemies. But how do I do that? And so this book is the story of that journey and, and, and has a lot of practical tips that worked for me, uh, that I think can help other people. I love it. Would you say that's the arc of the overview of the book? Sorry, what was that? Would you say that's the arc of the overview of the whole book? The narrative thread is my story. Um, but my story is a lot of people's story. Right.

So there are specifics to it that might be different. But I think that a lot of people will relate when they read the first chapter about what's really the second chapter, I guess, is where I really get into what it was like in 2016, right, through the campaign and then going into after Trump was sworn into the White House. And, you know, a couple of people have told me, like, when they got done reading that chapter, they're like, that was a little triggering. Like, it's bringing back a lot of memories. And so I think it's I think that that a lot a lot of us have, are, are in the same place and dealing with the same things. And, um, and actually it doesn't really matter where you fall on the spectrum. I think there's been a lot of suffering and a lot of broken relationships, uh, and a lot of fear, uh, you know, since 2016, regardless of where you stand on who won the election.

Yeah. So that's what happened in 2016. Why everyone was angry. No, I know. No, I'm just kidding. It was this little thing.

Just this little thing. Yeah. The, uh, no, I, I went through the same experience you did. I,

uh, I was screaming at the TVs, at the phones, at the computers, raging all over social media. I was, you know know and you wake up every day and of course there would be some sort of gaslighting going on and you probably felt great right like no i i just i don't even know there were like whole days where it would just be like

rage because i work for myself so i get to sit home and rage and you know the social media and then a lot of a struggle i mean one of the beautiful things about your book is you really talk about how to try and make it so that we don't have to alienate and unfriend and block everybody. Uh, you know, I mean, that was the biggest thing. I mean, I lost a lot of friends. I lost a lot of friends and, you know, some people looked at it as, as politics, but there are certain things that aren't politics. Racism isn't politics. That's not, that's not a party thing. That's just a horrible human being thing. So I love how you address a lot of these things in the book.

Well, okay, so I would say I actually don't believe in horrible human beings. Oh, sorry. No, no, no. I'm working. No, and that's fine because I used to believe that. I believe there are people who are doing horrible things. And so that, um, and that, that sort of is a, that's a perspective that you gain through practicing grace, which is you kind of can pull the lens back a little bit and, and not become entangled with what that person is doing or how they're behaving. And I say grace creates space for other people to not be you

and then not be demonized. Right. So, um, it's, it's not that what they're doing is okay. It's not that sometimes they're doing very, very harmful things. And, and that's, and it's, and you should name that and you should see that. And sometimes relationships do have to end. Uh, so I don't, this is not an argument for just looking the other way and letting people get away with things. It's more about how do we, so a really important clarifying thing is anger is a positive emotion. So it's not a negative thing. So to say I was angry is not negative because that anger tells us something's wrong. So we're recognizing something's

wrong. The question is, what do we do with that anger? Do we, do we become filled with contempt and hatred, which usually puts us in a pretty unhappy, miserable place and sometimes makes it difficult to actually even do anything about the issue that's problematic? Or do we find a way to be clear about the fact that that belongs to that other person and not to us? We don't have to basically take that on and marinate in it, which is what I was doing. Instead, we can do other things. We can write a letter to the editor. We can donate money to a political party. If you think that that's the problem, you could donate money to an organization that's an anti-racist organization.

You could amplify voices, anti-racist voices. There's a lot of other things we can be doing that actually don't require us to hate other people. And once we realize that the people who are being harmed by hatred is us, I think that makes it a lot easier. MLK said hate is too great a burden to bear. He's recognizing that it's a burden that we carry.

It's not the other person. Right. So whatever you were doing on social media, whatever I was doing on social media, does Donald Trump really care if you hate him? I think he likes it, actually. I think he likes it actually i think he likes it i think you're right i actually think he does like it and i think he loves hijacking everybody's not just their days but during you know while he was president moments minute to minute he had complete control over the emotional states of people right so i think it's basically saying grace is creating the space between me and this other person and saying like, you don't get to be in control of my emotional state.

And, and that is the mentality that a Nelson Vandella had. That is the mentality than an MLK or a Ruby sales or a John Lewis had. Right. It's not that it's an endorsement of segregation. Of course, it's not. They're calling out segregation. Then they're saying that this is wrong and all these other things. They're just not willing to take on all of that hatred because they knew it was going to harm them. So does that make sense? It does. It does. The tools that you gave in the book, and clearly I'm still working through them because I'm still, I'm still practicing. You know what? It's a journey. Because I, after I got finished with your book, I was like, I remember saying some things or making some notes for the show. And I was like, wait, I'm not supposed to be doing that with, with,

after I read her book, I'm supposed to learn. No, but actually I'm glad that you brought that up because it is a practice and it is a journey. And so I spent a lot of time, for example, on non-judgment because what I was just saying that when I, if you could like create a picture in your mind of here's this person over here doing something and you're judging them, it is the equivalent of like reaching your hand out, taking what they have and bringing it over to you. Right. And once I understood that,

like, no, that's theirs and I can decide what to do. I might have to have a conversation with them, confront them about it. I might have to say, Ooh, this isn't a person that I'm probably gonna have in my life. Um, though I do see the potential for them to do better. I mean, that is part of grace, but I had to learn that, right? I had to sit there with my therapist and I would come in and I would say all these things. And then she'd say, okay, let's try saying that in a non-judgmental way. And then I would say it another way. And she'd be like, no, it's still judgmental. Right? And so it's a learning process. And the other thing I would say is that a lot of times people start with, well, what about Donald Trump? And I say, you don't start with Donald Trump, right? That's like someone says, I'm taking up running and I'm going to run

the Boston marathon in two weeks. It's like, no, that's not where you start. You can certainly bring the, you know, try to think about these practices when it comes up, but recognizing it will be one step forward and two steps back. That's just the way growth happens. Right. But maybe start it with somebody who you actually do like and love, but who has views that are really upsetting you, but you can at least see, you know, you can sort of practice this idea of looking at somebody as more than the belief, right. That like grace kind of creates that space for that. It's that, you know, you're more than the belief, right? That like grace kind of creates that space for that. It's that, you know, you're more than this belief and you have a story behind how you got to this

place. And that's, that, that may, that's, that's where I would tell people to start. Yeah. I really love what you talked about in the book about John Lewis, inspiring you. Uh, Jamar Tisby was on a couple weeks ago on his book, How to Fight Racism. We also had Adam Russell on with his book talking about a new vision for the beloved community. A lot of beloved, you know, a lot of people are coming out with books like yours. And there's this discussion about

how we can create a better community and reconnect with the other side and become American again. When I, in 2016, I did not know what the term gaslighting me meant. And when I was raging at the TVs and the, and the computers, um, my friend says, you know, Chris, you suffer from someone, you're someone who's suffering from being gaslit. And I go, what the hell is that? And they explained it to me. And what I loved in your book is you really identify the importance of, you've experienced trauma from your childhood and you don't respond to this stuff very well.

And I guess one of the proponents for the book was you seeing with some of your trauma in your life and you seeing Brett Kavanaugh, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. Do you want to expand on that a little bit? Yeah, I think so. Gaslighting is something I actually experienced growing up. And so it's and so and I think a lot of people who are drawn to justice, you know, fighting for justice and equality have often come out of environments where they were traumatized. It's often the thing that I think inspires people to, to help other people creates a lot of empathy. And so, but I also think that, first of all, even if you never had any trauma, any gaslighting trauma, being gaslit is traumatic, even as an adult, even if you had nothing, that in itself is a traumatic experience because you feel like you're going crazy.

That's the problem. And so you start to feel like you don't know what reality is. And so it's abuse. And so for me, what I realized was that I had a lot of unresolved trauma that had not really been integrated, some of it from childhood, some of it from adulthood. And that caused me to react in certain ways that made certain experiences even harder than it was for the average person. into play. But, you know, I never was somebody who said this person is absolutely 1000% guilty. I was the one who said, I was saying, this is a serious accusation. This is the highest court in the land. And we have to take it seriously. And then we have to have a real investigation. And the gaslighting really was them claiming they were doing a real investigation when it was a total sham investigation, right? And so that was towards the end of 2018. And that really was when I was sort of hitting rock bottom, I would say, because it just felt like, wow, what kind of message are we sending, you know, to teenage boys right now and girls that we're not even going to take this seriously. We're not even going to try to get, you know, to figure it out. And so I think that trauma also, it takes away your ability to see now, and this is not about Kavanaugh. So I'm moving on from that as a topic, but, but just generally speaking, like if we take politics, for example, it takes away your ability to see nuance or complexities because you traumatize

people, which most people are traumatized people actually. And in the book, I give a place you can go to take a test that will tell you, you know, how many traumatic events you've had and people are going to be really surprised how many they probably have had had and it takes a and so what it does is in order to stay sick keep us safe our brain just sorts into good and bad right so it's and it's just it's a survival mechanism and so i because of some things that happened in childhood and then a bunch of deaths in my family right as i was starting to do television and write columns, was in this hyper dualistic binary place where there just were two ways to see something. And sometimes there are just two ways to see something. But the problem is, like, you bring up racism. I mean, racism is

bad. Like, there's no, there's not another side to that story, right? But in a lot of issues, especially when it involves people, it's a lot more complicated. And so what we do is we take that, it's like, you know, if your hammer, everything looks like a nail. We use the same analysis for every situation. And so when I became aware of that and realized I needed to deal with some trauma and then did deal with that trauma and did integrate that trauma. I started to have a capacity to kind of hold space for that area where people are more than just the thing they're saying or what they did or how they voted and being able to see them more in their full humanity. Again, I have to always go back to this just to make it clear. It doesn't mean if somebody causes harm, they're not accountable. It's just that when you see people that way,

you hold them accountable in a more humane way, and you hold them accountable in a more restorative way, where we can recognize the potential in them to do better. One thing I also talk about in my book a lot is reflecting back on my life and realizing how many dumb things I've done and how many things I've said that I don't believe anymore. And do I want to be held to that standard, right? Of who I was 15 years ago or 10 years ago. So that's what grace kind of creates a space for people mess up, people change and they grow. If they're really sorry and they're willing to do the work of making things right, I think that we should work with them to try to make things right.

Which is an interesting approach. I love how you did it in the book. You talked about the rigid strategy, I think it was, on how to deal with resolved trauma and how to try and see people for who they are and try and get them down the road. Like one of the great things you talked about in the book was trying to use stories to help change people's lives instead of facts. I really love that. And that really gave me some toolbox and tools to take and use with, with people I'm struggling with. Yeah. So there's, and that's based on social science. And so what they've found is particularly in the post fact world, showing up and bombarding somebody with a bunch of facts is going to get

you nothing. Even in the pre, whenever, you know, before we were in the post truth world, nobody really wants to be lectured or told how, you know, I have all the right facts and you have all the wrong facts. So that's usually you're starting out the wrong way. But in the post-truth world, it's really not going to work because the first thing the person's going to say is, where did you get that? And you're going to, if you're in that much disagreement, wherever you got your facts, they're going to say, I don't, that's not a reliable place to get your facts. I don't trust them. That's made up. That's fake news, whatever it is, right? So what social scientists have found is that what can change people's minds is sharing personal stories, because people believe that you at least have knowledge and authority when speaking about things you have experienced or people around you have experienced, things that you have seen.

And so they've seen this, they're adapting kind of the way political canvassing is done, where it used to be for political canvassing, and people still do this, but you would show up, knock on someone's door and say, hi, I'm here to tell you why you should support transgender rights, and here's the list of reasons, right? What, what they are doing instead of something called deep canvassing, which is you actually have, they actually had like transgender people go out, knock on the door. Hi, I'd like to talk to you about transgender rights, um, and start a conversation. You know, what do you think about it? And the person may say, well, I don't, I don't get it, or I don't think that we should do this and I don't think it's necessary. And then the person can say,

well, I'm actually transgender. Can I share some of my story with you? And they share their story and then they ask them, you know, kind of to respond and then they listen empathically. And what they found was people changed their minds and the, and the legislation that they wanted support for to protect transgender

people, you know, the last basically, you know, people voted to have that law to protect trans transgender rights. And they, you know, the people who did the campaign feel very strongly that it was because of deep canvassing. So, yeah. And so it's, so it's not so people would go from being like, I don't think there's any need for this to Oh, I actually can see I can see where you're coming from. So but you know, it's, it does require it, it requires a lot of empathy and humility. And it's hard. And it's not for everybody. That's the other thing. I mean, if there's a person listening to this, who's a transgender person saying, I'm not gonna, I don't want to go out and talk to people about why they should protect my humanity. I say, don't do it. Right? Like, that's not, there's no requirement to do this. The point just is that people tend, you know, when it comes to changing people's minds, it's just typically not through facts. I have another story in there about a friend of mine, Amanda, who, you know, comes from an evangelical family that were very, you know, anti-gay. They opposed her marriage. They didn't come to her wedding, all of these things, including an uncle who, you know, had prayed, you know, against the homosexual agenda with her at the table and all these things. And she never, she never really, and she has a real gift for this, right? Because I'm thinking when I hear the story, I'm like, I would have like thrown the

mashed potatoes across the table. You know what I mean? Like, I don't understand. So, um, but she just, she just felt like, and I asked her how, anyway, fast forward to when she gets married two years later, um, he, this uncle is like posting on the wedding page about how they changed, you know, they showed him what Jesus's love is really is and how they're a model for him. And, and, you know, he had just changed through a relationship with them. And, and so, you know, she had, and I asked her, you know, where did you, like, why did you do it this way? And she just said, you know, basically I'm modeling Jesus. And now that's the way she did it.

That's not, so a binary, someone who's binary right now is now going into, Kirsten's saying this is the only way you should do it. Like, and if I don't do this, I'm not practicing grace. And that is not what I'm saying. There are other ways to practice grace. I have another friend who has told his evangelical dad who wants to tell him how, you know, he's going to go to hell because he's gay. He says, you'll have to go somewhere else. You have to process this fear with somebody else. I'm not here for this. Right. That's one way to do it. I have another friend who basically has cut off almost all contact with her family and has her chosen family. Everybody does what they feel is right for them. And so it's not, you know, it may be, and I can say for the friend who cut off contact with her family,

they're not going to change their minds. Sometimes you, you do realize that this is just, it's, it's not going to happen. Like you have tried, you've had this conversation, you're throwing pearls before swine.

As I say in the book, you know, a pig doesn't know the difference between a string of pearls or a pile of dirt. And continuing to share your wisdom or knowledge with somebody at some point can become self-defeating. And so it's not a lack of grace to say, I'm going to take care of myself and, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to demonize anybody or hate anybody, but I am going to say, I'm going to, I'm going to take care of myself and I'm not, and I'm going to just, I'm going to have to either end this relationship or I'm going to have to move it into a different space. I had a really great epiphany when you, when you talked about telling stories to change people's minds instead of facts. Uh, and I was

like, wow, that gives me a really good set of tools to take and use. Uh, years ago when, you know, they, before, um, uh, gay marriage had become legal, uh, I had a relative who was, you know, against it and blah, blah, blah. And no matter what I said, I couldn't get them to change. But then I started telling them the stories of, of why they needed, why gay marriage needed to be legalized just for the rights benefit of it. And I'm like, imagine finding someone that you love, the hardest thing that you can do in the world, finding someone who loves and put up with you for the rest of your life. Right. Um, and, uh, you find someone you love, you, you, you live with them, you spend all

this time. And I, I told him the stories about how they they they didn't have the power to inherit uh you know maybe they own a home together and like the family of one the one spouse that died would or not spouse but partner that died would come just take the house and take all the furniture and everything that they built you I met and I said imagine going to the hospital when your partner is in the hospital and they won't let you in because you don't have any marital rights. You don't have, you're not really next of kin and you can't hold their hand as they're dying. Imagine what that feels like. And so, and so telling those stories, flip the switch.

Yeah. And I've seen that with a lot of my friends, my gay friends, um, who just the family, you know, there was another, another friend who was dating somebody who came from a religious family who didn't really approve of it, but we're kind of trying to be open to it, but didn't really know what to do. But when they saw my friend's relationship with his partner, they recognize that this is the same as my relationship with my husband, right? They actually saw seeing it shifted it, whereas before, they were just they were basing their opinion on stereotypes and caricatures at best, you know, and demonizing and dehumanizing at worst, that they had been fed by other people. And when a real person

showed up and it didn't match up to that, then that was what changed their minds. And so I think that stories are very, very powerful and relationships are very powerful as well. Yeah. Resolving your trauma can help. And then the next thing I loved was the boundaries, talking about boundaries with people, how to set boundaries. You know, I had, I had one friend recently that I didn't want to lose and he consumes his news from a propaganda network. I think we all know which one that is. The, and he, and we would battle because he would start, we'd start talking about politics and things would be clean. And then he'd start throwing tropes at me and I'd be like, I know where you get your information.

And, uh, and they would just get ugly. And so finally when I had to start doing, cause you know, I have a lot of historians that are on the show. We've done almost a thousand shows. We have a lot of people that are brilliant authors like yourself on the show.

And so, and so I'm, I hope I'm fairly well educated and it's never a finished job, but I'm like, look, until you've spent as much time reading and understanding as much stuff, this is a boundary. We're not going to talk politics until you've, and I offered to him, I said, look, I'll give you some books that we have. You know, we got a ton of books laying around. I'll give you some books. If you want to read them, if you want to explore some stuff, I'll explore with you, but you just can't throw traps

at me. And so I had to do what you talk about in the book, set a boundary and say, nope, this is the no-go zone. We'll talk about kids and everything else, but no politics. How did he react to that? He's pretty cool with it. You know, every now and then, we're still friends.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I think that that's, we got, right. Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's, you know, and I think that the thing is, is that it's not like you didn't try. I do think you should try when somebody,

you know, because it's not, you don't want to also just leave people holding bad beliefs because it obviously harms other people, but it harms them too. Right. So, so I think that, that it's worth, I have a whole chapter on embracing healthy conflict. And, you know, I say, be a peacemaker, not a peacekeeper. Don't be somebody who just, you know, uses boundaries as a way of getting out of actually having to have an uncomfortable conversation. But sometimes you do

get to a point where you realize I'm not dealing with somebody who can receive what I'm saying. And so at that point, you have to just basically say, no, we're not going to do this. And then find other ways for you to change the things that you're concerned about, whatever your friend is bringing up that's concerning to you. I'm sure there's an organization that's working on that, right? That could use your help. And so, you know, versus trying to browbeat somebody into believing something that they don't want to believe. And, and also understanding all the psychological dynamics, the way our brains work, you know, and realizing that, you know, people probably didn't reason their way into their views. Um, because most

people don't, most people decide what they believe and then they find the facts to support it. Most people aren't working in the industry that we're working in where it's actually your job to be digging into this all the time. They have other, they have full-time jobs, they're doing other things, right? So it's, it's not, they, they've chosen who they trust to get their information from. And that's, that's basically where it ends, right? They probably, I don't know if your friend, maybe if you wanted to talk about it, you also, you could set boundaries about how to talk about it. Right. Which is, we only share stories about people that we know. We don't, we don't, you know, you don't tell me what you saw on the news or whatever it is. Like it actually has to be a person that you know. Yeah. That was really important. You talk also about the repentance process in your book. I really loved it. And I'm an atheist too,

but I still, I still just, I was cool with all the stuff that you had in the book about I've heard that a lot. I've heard that from a lot of people who are atheists. Yeah. Sometimes I struggle. Yeah. I wanted the book to be accessible to everybody. So I think that there are, there's wisdom in the Christian tradition, the same way there's wisdom in the Buddhist tradition. I'm not Buddhist, but I access that wisdom, right? And so in different traditions, you can find things and most of these things show up in all the different traditions. And so I think that we can all benefit from them. There are also things, by the way, that most

therapists agree with. So like most therapists would tell you, hating people, it's not going to help you, right? I mean, the first thing they would do is try to get you to learn how to stop judging people and all these things, right? These are also just basic kind of therapeutic things as well. Yeah. Even if it's an atheist, I go, would Jesus do this? I try and follow the golden rule. I mean, I do. Well, no, but I mean, you can see Jesus as just somebody who is a model to follow. You don't have to believe that, you know, he's your savior, right?

It's, that's the point. It's like, there's, there's lots of wisdom in there that you don't have to sign on to the religion to, to benefit from. Yeah. I think this is a term you use in the book for my notes, rhetorical dope peddlers. Yes, that's something Arthur Brooks, actually, he's at Harvard, a social scientist, he coined that term. And he basically said we're always concerned about other people's rhetorical dope peddlers

who are the people that are just feeding them, you know, outrage and anger and hate. But we have to really be concerned about who our rhetorical dope peddlers are. Who are we going to to tell us what we already believe and to tell us how good we are and how bad the other people are? And, you know, to really stay away from those people. And I say like a test after you have consumed news or have been on social media, a test is, am I more informed or am I more activated to hate people? And you really, if you're activated to hate people or other people or any of these things, then find a different way to get your news because that's not really what it's for. If you feel angry, like this is unjust and this is wrong, or I'm scared about what's happening in our country, that's fine. That's good, actually. But if you start moving into, I immediately, as soon as I turn off the news, I'm just consumed with how evil half of the country is. Right? Then you're not really informed. That's not, you can you can be informed and engaged without those

emotions. I know because I now do it. And, and I spend very little time on social media. And to the extent that I do it, it's extremely curated. Those rhetorical dope peddlers are not in my feed. I, I just, you know, I even block some of them because other people retweet them. Right. And I'm like, I don't want to see this in my feed, um, because it's not informative and it is not helping me in any way, um, you know, to see things clearly or to be able to help people. Yeah. I noticed that, uh, in the last year or to be able to help people. Yeah. I noticed that in the last year or two where I was like, a news channel would be going, this news channel is bad and that news channel is bad. They're fighting over stuff and you're like, are we, are we doing anything besides pointing fingers at each

other's news channels? And, and so you're like, and so you're like, okay, well, where's the information? Where's the good stuff? Where's what's really going on in the world and the stuff? And I like how you decided to deal with social media, too, where I think you cut off a lot of it, didn't you? Initially, I cut it all off. So I went cold turkey. And I deleted all the apps from my phone and I had for Twitter. I didn't really have that much of a problem. I didn't do Facebook and I didn't,

Instagram wasn't that much of a problem for me, but Twitter was a real problem. And so I deleted the app and I had my fiance changed my password. So there was no, and I was like, I don't know. If I had to see something like someone sent me a message, cause I could see if I had a message in my email, I would have to go to his computer and he would log in.

And then I would look and read the message and reply. And then he would log me out. Like he couldn't even log me in on my computer because then I would save the password. So I say in the book, I felt kind of like what it must be like when an alcoholic says I'm not going to drink anymore. And they like pour the vodka down the toilet. Right? It's like, that's sort of what it was like. But I have to say it was only like two or three days and I felt different. Yeah. And within a month, I decided to go back on and do this Twitter thread about what I'd kind of reflected on. And I went on and I just,

I just, it all looks different to me. I just thought, gosh, this is really messed up. And, and, and this is not saying that I think that Twitter is always bad because I don't, I think that there are a lot of good things about it. And I think that, you know, Black Lives Matter and Me Too, I don't think would exist if it wasn't for Twitter. And so sometimes it can be a really, you know, powerful tool for change. And a stayed off of it mostly for the last couple of years. I only I moved when I finally decided I'll go on it. Sometimes I only look at it on my computer and it's not it's not addictive. And I talk about in the book how these social media apps are created to addict us through the you know, they know how our brains operate and what our brain likes and how the dopamine hits we get. And so infinite scroll is something that was invented so that we just keep doing this. And so when you're on Twitter, even if I did it right now, having hardly

been on, it's very, you'll start just doing it. It's like, you just are kind of like, there's just something in you that's, it's very pleased, especially when you're tired and you don't really want to do anything. You're kind of like, oh, I'm in line. I'm just going to do this. So I only look at it on my computer. And so that means I hardly look at it because you kind of go on and you're like, you know, like maybe I see an article and I click on it or something, but it doesn't really do anything for me. So I think you have to be realistic about the fact that the business model for, for these social media applications is to get you amped up. Like that is, that is the entire point. It's not a side effect. It's, it's the purpose of it. And so, um, you have to be super careful.

I, you know, the title of that chapter is what goes in must come out. And my point being everything you're taking in, it's going to come out some way. You're either going to spew it out on another person or you're going to get a migraine or back pain or whatever it is, but it's going to go somewhere. Like you just can't be taking in all this information without it coming out in some sort of unhealthy way. So be careful about what you're letting into your mind and into your body. Your central nervous system is being activated, you know, when you're seeing these things and it's not an accident that that's happening. Yeah. I think, I think we need dopamine, dopamine,

dopamine rehab centers for everybody at this point. Yeah. I know. Cause you do go through withdrawals when you, when you stop getting those dopamine hits. Yeah. And I think someone had a book called Dopamine Nation that we tried to get on the show. Oh, really?

That sounds interesting. Yeah. I want to read that book. But yeah, Dopamine Nation. And I think almost in school, I think we need to teach people how to evaluate information and facts and how to, you know, like what you just talked about, how to, you know, analyze them and be able to pick them up and put them down without getting addicted to them. I don't know. Yeah. Well, I think also so much about practicing grace for me is holding onto my own power and not giving it away to other people. And I think we kind of mindlessly give our

power to other people. And so, because I methodically went through what are the things that are standing between me and practicing grace towards other people, I started to see like, oh, you know, when I do this, like I'm allowing social media to control how I feel and what I think about people, you know, and, and you start to notice that you're, you know, when I'm obsessively following, you know, everything that a certain politician is saying or whatever, it's like, well, that politician now has complete control over my emotional state. Versus I only need a very tiny bit of information about that politician to know that we have a problem. Right? It's like, I don't actually need to know hour to hour what's going on. And so I, my, my goal is always just to be informed, not to put my head in the sand and be like, Oh, everything's great. And we don't have anything to worry about. Cause that's not true. That's absolutely not true. But to be informed and to try to, you know, figure out what can be done to deal with the problems that are facing us.

Yeah. And I love your suggestion that we need to interact with each other socially more as human beings and not online so much, but, you know, go be human with each other so that we recognize each other's humanity. Yeah. The thing that, and also that's totally backed up by social science which is when they're working with people who are you know highly polarized people who have views about the other side as being evil for example and then they say to them do you know anybody who belongs to the other political party not a friend but just a person in your community that you know and respect, you've had some conversations with, and they'll go, yeah, I know this one person. And they said, well, what do you think about them? And they just immediately start depolarizing.

So on the one hand, it's that they're seeing them as a full person. So they're seeing them as more than just the beliefs. They're also seeing that that person doesn't fit the caricature of this group of people, right? Because we have this binary political system where you're either a Democrat or you're a Republican. And so whoever you voted for, people are like, well, I know who you are, and you'd actually you don't. And so you certainly can make the argument that if somebody voted for this or that, that, you know, you believe that they have enabled certain types of behavior, but you don't really know what the calculus is that led them to that decision. You don't know, you know, what news they're consuming, where they're trusting these

people and believing that they're telling the truth. So I have a lot more compassion for people around that. I will say it's the hardest people are the leaders because they're the ones they know what they're doing. Right. So it's it's not that it's not the sort of average person who thinks when they listen to the certain person that they're getting the truth because that is what they believe. Right. And so and and, and I'm not sure that it's fair to expect people to be cynical, right. To expect people to be able to recognize that because most people, you know, grew up in an environment where they were told, this is the news you can trust and everybody around them trust that news. And so, um, they trust it. And so I I'm able to have a little more compassion for them than I am. But the people who I'm like, gosh, I know, because I actually know you. And I know that you know better than

this. Those are the hardest cases. Yeah, it's, it's, it's just, you give me so many tools for this book. I consumed it like a few days. And I just felt so empowered. And I'm still working on it, as you can tell, as you know, so I got a quick call on people, horrible people, uh, but you know, it's a,

it's a journey, but, uh, it's a, it's a wonderful book and I'm so glad that you shared it with us. Uh, I advise everybody to get it, read it,

consume it. If you have traumas in your life from childhood or whatever, get those fixed, go see a psychiatrist, get them fixed. Uh, when I sat down with mine, uh, went through my leaving Neverland experience of coming out and letting the poison out as, as Oprah talked

about, um, that got me out of the gaslighting and now the gaslighting is dead for me now. And so just dealing with the trauma, getting that done. And you give me so many tools in the book to sit down with people that I love and care about that I don't want to lose, be over political stuff. And thankfully, things have calmed down a little bit until 2024. But thank you very much for the book. It was awesome. Thank you so much. There you go.

Thank you for having me. It was a great conversation. Thank you, Kirsten. Thanks for coming on the show. And to my audience, be sure to pick up the book, Saving Grace. Speak your truth, stay centered, and learn to coexist with people who drive you nuts. Like yours and the powers you can order up today. Wherever fine books are sold.

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