Hi, this is Ronald D. Moore, writer of Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, and you are listening to Authenticity Radio with Slade Suter. Hey, welcome. Grab a seat anywhere. No, we don’t have any menus. The only thing we have today is the freedom to express who you truly are. We call it Authenticity Radio. You’ll like it, don’t worry. Let me go grab the host. He’s got the hospitality of a fat and jolly innkeeper. He’s a good guy. Slade Suter. Welcome and thank you so much for joining us today on Authenticity Radio’s Morning Edition. This is Slade Suter. Today’s guest is Dr. William Ury. Dr. Ury is the co-founder of the Harvard Program of Negotiation. He’s also the founder of the Abraham Project Path Initiative in throughout the Middle East countries. He has written many books. Some of the most famous is Getting to Yes, which he co-authored with Roger Fisher back in 1981. Getting to Yes with Yourself and Otherworthy Opponents is his last book, published in 2015. Inside that book, there is a wonderful piece of Going to the Balcony, and we’re going to be talking about that, and also a little bit about the breakfast table, and bringing all the voices to the breakfast table. So without any further ado, we’re going to go to Dr. Ury’s backyard, the Colorado Rockies, and that is where we will join the broadcast. Today we are on location in Boulder, Colorado. We are speaking with one of my heroes, Dr. William Ury, who is the author of a gazillion books. Dr. William Ury, thank you and welcome to Authenticity Radio. It’s my pleasure, Slade. It is so wonderful to have you. I’m very, very tickled to have you here. Today’s broadcast is From the Balcony to the Breakfast Table. That’s very apt. And we are actually diving in to a portion, well actually it’s quite the entirety, of Dr. Ury’s last book, Getting to Yes with Yourself. And Other Worthy Opponents. And Other Worthy Opponents. Wow. Yeah, I guess the first worthy opponent is oneself. Yeah, that’s what I’ve discovered is that all the years I’ve worked, many, many, many decades working in the area of conflict, whether it’s family or business or world conflicts, is in the end the most difficult person we ever have to deal with, the greatest challenge, the person who really gets in the way of us getting what we truly want in life, is not the difficult person on the other side of the table. It’s the person on this side of the table. It’s ourselves, which also means that we are our own greatest potential ally. And that’s what the book’s about, is about how to turn ourselves from our greatest opponent to our greatest ally. You have this wonderful activity of going to the balcony, being able to remove yourself to gain another perspective of oneself in either a negotiation or a conflict. Yeah, it just comes from the observation that we human beings, we’re reaction machines. It’s the most natural, it’s natural, it’s understandable that we react. It’s like the old saying goes, when angry, you will make the best speech you will ever regret. And what I find is the foundation of successful negotiation is this ability to go to the balcony, this metaphor of imagining yourself like you’re talking with the other person on a stage. Part of you goes to a mental or an emotional balcony, which is a place overlooking that stage, which is a place of perspective, a place of calm, a place of clarity, a place of self-control, where you can keep your eyes on the prize. What is truly, truly important to you? Because what I find so often is even though negotiation is supposed to be goal-oriented behavior, we actually get in our own way. And so the ability to, particularly in this frenzied world with cell phones going off and texts and you name it, the ability to stop for a second, listen, and ask yourself, what is my real objective here? What’s really going to advance the situation here? I find that that’s the key competence that we need in today’s times, is that ability to go to the balcony. We have a lot against us whenever we open a dialogue with someone else or negotiations with another partner. And I wrote some notes down. One is a fear of scarcity, of thinking that there’s a limited resource. And then you pointed out many times over and over again of coming to a negotiation with an unprepared BATNA, which is the best alternative to a negotiated agreement. Good. All right. Got that one. Our own hand is part of that. And we don’t even recognize that our hands are tied behind our back. And so this is about untying ourselves, recognizing ourselves and becoming free. That’s it. That’s it. That’s exactly it. It’s about, it’s about, I call it the process, I call it getting to yes with yourself, is realizing that all conflict, all difficulties start right here. And if we can free ourselves and really understand what we truly want and align ourselves with it, we can, there’s incredible power that we have to be able to influence others and to be able to get what we actually need in life. So the key, you know, many, many years ago, I co-authored a book called Getting to Yes with Roger Fisher. And what I found is that there’s actually a missing first half, you know, which is that if we can get to yes with ourselves, it’s going to become a lot easier for us to get to yes with others. And that yes, when you mentioned power, it doesn’t have to be strength. It can be very gentle. That’s true. That’s exactly it. It’s power to do things. It’s power to fulfill your dreams, to fulfill your perspectives. It’s not power over the other. Yeah. And we, I mean, we confuse those two. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, it’s power to rather than power over. Sure. And the feeling is very different learning how to start recognizing yourself from the balcony. Right. So can you talk to us a little bit from a perspective of individuals who have had little practice on being able to see themselves from a perspective apart from how they feel? Sure. It’s really trapping. Yeah, it’s true. And, you know, we see it these days, even in a very simple way, you get an email that irritates you. At work, you’re left out of some decision or you feel you’re left out. And the simplest thing is, you know, the temptation is you immediately compose and you get that satisfaction of hitting the reply button, but you should just hit, you don’t usually hit the reply button, you hit the reply all button, and then it goes out to everyone and the team, everyone in the organization. You start to see conflicts start to escalate. Well, there’s a button on that screen which is very rarely used, which I think of as the balcony button, and it says save as draft. And that’s where you kind of, you write it if you like, you know, save it as a draft. Then everyone has their favorite techniques for going to the balcony. Some people like to go for a walk or go for a workout or have a coffee with a friend or sleep on it, but some activity that allows you to get a little bit of perspective so that when you then come back to the screen, you look at that email, and then you can ask yourself the very important question of what’s going to advance this situation? What is really going to resolve this? What is going to advance my own interests? And as likely as not, having gone to the balcony, you’re going to hit the delete button, and then you’re going to pick up the phone, call the person, arrange to get together with them, and try to, you know, work it out. But that ability to do that, to pause, hit the pause button, that’s the ability to go to the balcony. And the ability to, on the balcony, what you ask yourself is a simple question of what do I really want? Because oftentimes what we think we want, if we actually ask ourselves, it may not be truly what we really want. I remember in the book, I tell the story of working with a very, you know, a big kind of a business entrepreneur who founded a very large company, and he was stuck in a huge legal battle with his partner. And, I mean, it had gone on for like two and a half years. It was all over the papers. They were hiring, you know, lawyers galore, fighting each other in every way. And, you know, when he asked me for my help, that was the question I asked him, was from the balcony question, was what do you really want? And, you know, and he gave a very intelligent answer, like most of us give answers. He said, well, I want the stock at a certain price, and I want the elimination of the non-compete clause, and I want a piece of real estate. He had a whole list. But those are, you know, in negotiation, what you call your positions. But what do you really want? What’s behind the positions? What’s the underlying interests or desires? What’s your deepest need there? And as I asked him that question, and he kind of sat with it, he said, what do you really want here? You’re a man who seems to have everything. Why are you spending your life, you know, consumed with this conflict? And he said, you know what I want? I want my freedom. And then once I knew that that’s what he wanted from the balcony perspective, I’d helped him go to the balcony and ask himself that question. Then everything we did was, how do we give him, get him the freedom that he really wanted? And then this case that had been, like, taken two and a half years, once he’d gotten to that yes inside himself, found out what his yes was, which was freedom. And this was a man for whom freedom actually meant something because he had once been kidnapped and held in a kind of coffin for a week. So he was, you know, we thought maybe, so for him freedom really meant something. You know, he had essentially made himself hostage of the other side. And that’s what we often do in negotiation or conflict. We make ourselves the other side’s hostage. He took his own power back. Because then I asked him the question, and this goes back to the question of BATNA, which is your best alternative. I said, well, even if, let’s imagine you can’t resolve the situation, what can you personally do to give yourself that freedom? In other words, I was asking him, is it, is it only the other side? Your former partner, your opponent, your enemy, who can give you your freedom? Or to some extent, is it you? And once he realized that, he took his power back. He said, well, okay, what does freedom mean? Well, freedom is like freedom to pursue other deals, freedom to spend more time with my family, he said, which is the most important thing in my life. So he began to spend more time with his family, he began to pursue other deals. And that freeing of himself psychologically from the situation enabled us to close a deal in four days that gave him everything that he wanted, all those things that he wanted before, all his kind of positions, everything. He said, I got everything I wanted, but the most important thing I got was I got my life back. I got my freedom. And that to me is kind of like, that’s kind of archetypical of all of us is that we, on the balcony, it’s so important to really understand what is it we truly, truly want, and who can give it to us? Is it really only the other side? Or is it us? Because once we realize it’s us, then it becomes a lot easier to solve any situation. It seems to me that recognizing it, and then verbalizing it himself, and then you feeding it back to him over and over again, helped him to stay on track. That’s it. And because you know, it’s not easy, you know, it’s not easy to go to the balcony, but it’s also not easy to stay on the balcony. You know, we often, you know, we’re all, we’re human, you know, so, you know, he got angry, and he got, you know, he got tied up in that. But, you know, we fall off the balcony. But then the ability to get back on the balcony, and my job was to help remind him to keep coming back to the balcony, remember what he truly wanted, help him keep his eyes on the prize so that he could essentially free himself to do what he now does, which is, he’s amazingly free to, he says these are the best years of his life, and he’s so happy because he was able to kind of break through that knot, which the key was everyone was working on the external situation, and what I was trying to do was help him work on the internal conflict inside him. You know, was he going to fight for the rest of his life, or was he going to actually seek his freedom, what was most important? And once he realized what was most important, then he was able to break himself free of the situation. It’s amazing, embroiled down in such a conflict, is able to make such a fast turnaround, probably because you assisted him, because I was imagining this probably would have taken, like, a lot longer by oneself if you were alone. It could be. It could be. Sometimes it’s useful to have friends, like in this situation. But I feel like it’s, it’s kind of, to me it’s, I use it as an example because to me it’s like, every one of us could be in those shoes. We’re all, if ever we get enmeshed in a conflict, we find it hard to go to the balcony. We find it, we don’t really often, we often fail to really understand what we truly want, and we often, if we can do that, if we can go to the balcony, understand what we truly want, sometimes with the help of a friend, then, and realize that we have the power, then we can, we can find a solution to, that actually works for us, really satisfies our deepest needs, and at the same time, satisfies the needs of the other so that we get to a mutually satisfactory solution. And, you know, the other thing I remember at one point when I first met the other side’s, the other side’s main negotiator, you know, I began with, you know, life’s too short, you know, because, just to get some perspective, life’s too short for these kind of titanic conflicts that not only consume us…
William Ury:
But they affect our families, and in this case they affected 150,000 employees of this company. You know, conflict has such huge costs when it’s pursued destructively. But when we can turn it around, when we can transform it into constructive engagement, you know, constructive conflict even, constructive conversation, collaboration, then the rewards are enormous. Are you still in touch with him? Yes, I am. I just was talking with him yesterday.
Oh, cool. And he’s still doing great? Oh, he’s doing fantastic.
Authenticity Radio:
So the balcony requires a lot of work. Would you recommend not waiting until we’re embroidered or pulled into or sucked into a conflict?
William Ury:
Absolutely. I think there are a lot of tools that we can know.
I think there are daily practices that can help us because, first of all, every day we’re negotiating whether, you know, it may be small things. It may not be a huge conflict we’re embroidering. You know, when I ask people if I define negotiation very simply and very broadly as the act of back-and-forth communication, you’re trying to reach agreement with someone. You know, who do you negotiate with? They say, well, my kids, my spouse, my partner, my friends, my colleagues, my coworkers, my boss, my employees, my customers.
You know, it’s everyone. And, of course, then they say, and myself. And so how much time do you spend negotiating? And people say, you know, 50 percent, 75 percent. So the wonderful thing about this is that we get to practice every day.
So we can practice going to the balcony every single day. And it could be everyone has their own practices. You know, some people meditate, for example. That helps you go to kind of a place of clarity. And, you know, meditation doesn’t have to be like sitting for 30 minutes.
It could be just sometimes 30 seconds, you know, just taking a little moment of silence. Like I find it useful sometimes just before I pick up the phone or I’m about to do an email just to take a few seconds by myself just to listen to myself, clear my mind, and remember what my intention is. And it doesn’t have to take a lot of time. But everyone will develop their own favorite, you know, practices. Even in the midst of a conversation sometimes when you find yourself getting reactive, particularly in a conflictual situation, the ability to, you know, take a quick break.
Hey, let’s take a coffee break, tea break, whatever it is. Or even just take a quick breath, take a breath, you know, breathe for a moment. You know, well, that brings oxygen back to your brain. You know, you can kind of think more clearly. So people have any number of techniques.
I remember Thomas Jefferson, for example, during the Constitutional Convention when everyone, you know, it was a hot summer, steamy summer in Philadelphia and tempers were rising. He would always say, you know, when angry, count to 10. If very angry, 100. Simply because he knew, you know, physiologically, which is true, that if you just wait a second, your physiology calms down and you can kind of see a path more clearly forward.
Authenticity Radio:
You know what, Dr. Ury?
I just realized that there’s another form of going to the balcony, and that’s with my, I was just describing to you offline a little bit, my father has Alzheimer’s. Well, part of his brain, his filtering brain, is kind of not really present as it was. And so for caretakers, for caregivers, it seems to be very, very important for caretakers especially to go to the balcony and to observe ourselves and to see how we are coming across, you know, because it’s not necessarily a conflict situation with Alzheimer’s patients, but it has a lot to do with agendas, you know, because the best agenda is not necessarily the agenda that they want at the moment. But it’s a lot about energy that we’re carrying and how we’re presenting ourselves as caretakers or caregivers.
William Ury:
That’s it.
I mean, this is kind of a fundamental life skill. And when I think of negotiation, I don’t think of it always as conflict. It’s just like you just interact. Whenever you’re interacting with a human being, you know, you’re in that, in a broad sense of the term, you’re negotiating. And yes, balcony is, because in a situation like that, it’s very easy for us to, you know, to get reactive, to get frustrated, to have some kind of judgment that the person should act in a different way than they’re acting.
So the ability to, you know, take breaks, you know, even like taking a break is, okay, take a break, you know, just go outside, you know, just whatever it is that you use. I love, I mean, one reason why I love to live here in Balcony in Boulder is this is my balcony, these mountains, whatever, because I work on a lot of world conflicts, but I just love to be able to go out for a walk and in nature just gives me a perspective that I can then bring back to some heated situation.
Authenticity Radio:
This balcony is and can take many forms, and it’s limited to our creativity to find how many balconies that we can take. I want to share with you, since I talked with you last, I think it was March, I was on the road and I was discussing with you and you were sharing with me about the balcony and your book was fairly newly released. I participated in a conflict resolution training program and trauma program, and so I did the conflict facilitation, and I took the balcony part and I worked it in such a way of a visualization so the people can visualize themselves on stage with the other individual.
So I had them stop, play without sound, just so they could really see themselves and invite them to come up, and I played with it and walked around themselves as they were involved with the conflict and watched their face and then go on the other perspective, look at their face from behind the other individual. And then at the end, I had them place their face on the other individual.
William Ury:
Wow, how beautiful. It was gorgeous.
Authenticity Radio:
Yeah.
And they came back.
William Ury:
So this is all a visualization.
Authenticity Radio:
Visualization, just had them shut their eyes and kind of walked them through it and the feedback was absolutely fantastic, and it was one of the most important pieces of that workshop, and that’s to recognize you for this work and in this book. We’re all in this together.
William Ury:
I’m really delighted to see you taking it and kind of being creative and trying to think of how can you make it come real for people in their situations.
That’s a beautiful, beautiful example of a creative technique to allow people to go to the balcony. Yeah, and I guess what the fun part was is that we did enough stuff, like stopping, rewinding, so they got the sense that they were in charge of it, that it was not necessarily in charge of them. So their emotional charge dissipated over time, so they can start observing the neck muscles and the eyes and how you look. Do you look inviting? That’s it.
Yeah, yeah.
That’s it. No, that’s exactly it. It was so cool. What’s amazing is we have so many capacities like that, including the capacity to observe or the capacity to empathize, put ourselves in the shoes of the other, which are key capacities for dealing with difficult situations with other human beings, and we kind of let them lie fallow. We don’t take advantage of those.
We don’t tap into those capacities, because it’s not like you have to learn something you don’t already have. You have to discover something you already have is really what this is. All of us have an innate ability to go to the balcony, have an innate ability to put ourselves in the other side’s shoes, and we just need to cultivate it.
Authenticity Radio:
Rediscovering, in a sense. We’re just rediscovering something.
William Ury:
Rediscovering our talents and our capacities, powers.
Authenticity Radio:
I was talking with you also in the same conversation last year, and I was saying that I was at a point in my life of not wanting to go to war, not wanting to go into conflict with my own self. Then you mentioned a very intriguing idea I just loved, and it stayed with me. You mentioned coming around the breakfast table, inviting all the voices to the breakfast table. Can you tell us about this?
William Ury:
Yeah, it’s a way to— In negotiation, we talk about the importance of putting yourself in the other side’s shoes. What I find is equally important, or maybe the step beforehand, is to put ourselves in our own shoes. One way to do that is—what I like to do as kind of an exercise is, when I wake up in the morning, is to imagine, visualize that I’m at the breakfast table, and the different voices that show up. For example, the voice of anxiety of, Oh, I’ve got all this to do today. How am I going to do it? Give that voice a seat at the breakfast table.
In other words, include it. Every other internal voice that might come up, just include it, include it, and then watch the— from a balcony perspective, from the point of view of the observer, just watch the conversation. What I find is that that gives me the ability to listen to those voices without necessarily being controlled by those voices. So I call it kind of this breakfast table conversation. Just the kitchen table.
You’re sitting around the kitchen table. It’s kind of cozy. Yeah, kind of cozy. And just give everyone a seat, including— there’s one of the strongest voices in me and in everyone, I think, is the judge. It’s kind of self-critic.
Judge, have a seat. Have a seat. Then you can listen to them. Then from that conversation, it will help you understand yourself better, but it will also help you distance yourself from those voices but at the same time include them. You’re not rejecting them. You’re giving them a seat at the table, and you’re able to observe it so you’re able to not necessarily fall into the trap of being the judge or fall into the trap of being anxious about the to-do list.
Authenticity Radio:
Well, I don’t know if the judge is really comfortable at the breakfast table because part of its energy is to work the background.
William Ury:
Yeah, it’s true. It’s true, and that’s why— but I find that if you can recognize it, ask yourself if you can recognize the judge and name the judge. Oh, okay. The thing is, what I find sometimes what we do and what I found in the beginning of this process is I would judge the judge. But when you judge the judge, you’re still the judge.
Yes, yes. You have to use a little bit of jujitsu on the judge. You have to kind of like accept the judge. Because otherwise the judge, as you’re right, sort of steals into the background and starts to control everything. You have to kind of reclaim who you are, which is something bigger than the judge.
Yeah, yeah.
Authenticity Radio:
I was just having a conversation with a friend of mine. We went for a walk here in Boulder. Oh my gosh, how inspirational is this? We were talking about the higher self, lower self.
Lower self meaning more ego, initiatives, drives. And the higher self, more of a spiritual component. And he brought something to my attention. He says, well, in between there’s a nonjudgmental piece that really deserves to be looked at. His name is Mark Azoulay.
He’s a psychotherapist here and a wonderful man. He does contemplative work. And that is it. Because you know what? Here my failure, listen to me, is that it’s easy to identify the ego as the culprit of most everything.
However, the higher spirit, I mean, it’s so easy to be, the spirituality component, the higher self, can be equally as ego-driven. Yeah. And it is so healthy to be able to see that nonjudgmental piece that kind of is in between or focusing. So this breakfast table is very, very healthy exercise. Uh-huh.
That’s it.
William Ury:
That’s exactly it. No, that’s it. Because sometimes, you know, if you call it the higher self, for example, it’s very easy to, okay, the element of pride to come in, okay, I’m the higher self.
Authenticity Radio:
You know?
William Ury:
And so it’s like, it’s very easy for the ego very subtly to reemerge in even, you know, the highest, the most noblest kind of cause. Yeah. And I often find this, too, even in, you know, working in organizations that, you know, like peace organizations as well. We’re the peaceful ones. And then what is it?
Then you get kind of collective ego. And those, oh, they’re the warmongers, you know? And you start to replicate, actually, the same problems of dividing people, judging people. And so this is why going to the balcony is so important is because you’ve got to be able to observe the subtle ways in which conflict patterns, we fall into the same conflict patterns even thinking that we’re somewhere above them.
Authenticity Radio:
Sure.
No, I totally understand.
…and this and and funny enough we’re absorbed into these conflict patterns without even knowing that we’re being absorbed into these conflict patterns and to have little tricks to be able to identify when we’ve been swept up what would you recommend well a key part to me of going to the balcony is the ability to like from the balcony perspective it gives you the ability to name the game and if you can kind of identify the game oh I’ve been to this movie before I played this game before you know the ability to recognize once you’re able to recognize then you’re free of it just you know it’s not even you have to don’t even have to change something so we will think they have to change something but you just you just recognize it and let it go and then there is an evolution that will take place of change but it has to start with recognizing it and that starts from the balcony to your to your book I have the doubtable version oh my gosh I love it yes it comes to life when you when you when you speak the words you told you had a story of Jaime from Colombia yeah and this is this is a perfect perfect this is a very good example of someone who has done much much much work behind the scenes on the balcony you can can you would you mind telling our listeners I just need to ask you is the wind yeah yeah this is okay because if not we can do it because they accept that’s a wing to blow up here and I don’t know whether for your mic no this is and just for our listeners we are out in dr. William Uri’s backyard where you can see the mountains of Boulder this is absolutely gorgeous so what you hear is nature in the background so yeah honey I’ve been I’ve had the honor of being able to work with the president and government of Colombia for the last four years in helping to think about how to bring an end to an incredibly painful more than 50 year long civil war in Colombia that has there been over two hundred and thirty thousand deaths there have been over six million refugees internally displaced and the question is how the challenge was how do you even begin peace talks with with guerrilla movement that you haven’t you know that there hasn’t been any kind of conversation with it when over ten years or twelve years and so we were we were talking about this and it’s also it’s it’s not easy for a country to do this it was a lot of people who fear that peace means giving away things and so it so it had to be done initially quite in confidentiality to be it to see if there’s enough there there that the president could actually you know take the political risk of announcing the beginning of peace talks so one of the initial challenges was how to was how to extract a guerrilla commander out of the jungle to to a third country which in this case was Cuba so that you could actually have these initial confidential talks and it had to be done totally confidential confidentially and so it fell to one of the one of the one of the government officials that worked with the president’s name was Jaime who had to find a helicopter worked with the Red Cross and got in the helicopter the Red Cross official got in and I think a Cuban official got in handed the coordinates to the pilot about where in the jungle they were going to meet because obviously the guerrillas wouldn’t trust the government with this coordinates because maybe they you’d invite an attack and then they flew out in the middle of the jungle for whatever 30 minutes found a clearing landed in the helicopter and stayed there and then suddenly dozens hundreds of guerrillas came out each carrying an AK-47 aimed at the helicopter zone and and Jaime my friend here was in the helicopter thinking what do I do you know life didn’t look very friendly at that point but he had the presence of mind to go to the balcony and realize that you know there’s no use me staying in the helicopter because you know the bullies he goes with helicopter so he he opened the door helicopter got out strode right up to the commander and said senor comandante I am now placing you under the personal protection of the president that is what in negotiation we call a reframe because he’s taking a situation where it looks like all the powers against him things are very unfriendly you know you know this these are his enemies or you know with all these guns aimed at him and he is reframing and saying we’re partners together I’m putting you under the personal protection of the president so instead of enemies were partners and the guerrilla commander looked at him for a moment it was a very uncomfortable moment said okay we got in the helicopter and they flew off to Cuba and the negotiations began which which I’m hoping actually this year are going to lead to an unprecedented peace agreement that will be that will end the the last war happening in the in that Western Hemisphere it’ll be historic 30 years 50 years 50 or over 50 years actually I don’t just show I hope it will show people that even the most intractable situation that people think is absolutely impossible and I can tell you that so many people thought this is totally impossible situation because the war the feelings drugs so many so com so many complications that shows that through patience through persistence through reframing through negotiations you’re putting yourself or the other person’s shoes slowly slowly you can bring an end to even the most intractable conflict so so one person going to the balcony did after disquest another person going to the balcony builds on itself that’s it this is I love I love this story and then another story that I love is one of Gabby your daughter who has in two ways of going to the balcony of you doing your work with her and then she doing her work with herself to be able to get her do would you like to tell her tell tell the story without being a spoiler oh sure sure I’ll be happy to Gabby has been one of my greatest teachers she’s now 17 she’s about to go off to college but when she was born 17 years ago here in Boulder she was born with with special needs there was a diagnosis at all these congenital anomalies that she said she’s had over 15 major surgeries on just about everywhere her organs her legs her feet and so on her back and so she’s had a rough life in that sense but she’s also I mean she’s amazing teacher of how you know you could sort of you could frame life as being very unfriendly but she in fact you know she not only accepts her condition but she doesn’t let it in the slightest get in her own way she she’s you know she’s probably you know good head or or more shorter than all the kids in her class but she decided she was gonna try out for volleyball one day and and and she can’t really run so the teacher the teacher said well Gabby why the other kids run why don’t you do the plank and I don’t know if you know the plank exercise but it’s a core abdominal exercise where you lie down on the ground you plant your your elbows on the ground and you hold your body perfectly straight you know and and people do it in yoga people do it in the army it’s a kind of core abdominal exercise and it usually most of us like I can do it for about a minute and then you start to do it straight so but you know when the when when the kids came back from running the mile Gabby was still doing the plank after like 10 minutes and the teacher said you’ve been doing the plank the whole time and then Gabby realized ah I’ve got a little talent ever since she was little she always wanted to be in the Guinness World Book of World Records you know she when she was younger she tried the longest hopscotch course or whatever you know she wouldn’t let anything stop her she just thought she could do anything nothing was going to stop her not her her special needs and whatever so she decided ah so that day she wrote away to the Guinness Book of World Records came back that the world record for females was 40 minutes holding that plank so she started training and training and she decided that for her 16th birthday party she would go for the record and and you know even like a week before the party the current record holder who held that 40 minute record wrote her and said Gabby I’m sorry to tell you this but I’ve broken my own record and I’m just about to submit to the Guinness World Records and it’s now an hour and but Gabby didn’t let anything stop her we had her you know birthday party everyone was around and for the Guinness Book of World Records you have to get like you know two witnesses and two observers and you got to get cameras and so I got to kind of to verify that in fact it’s the case and by golly if Gabby didn’t go for an hour and 20 minutes which was she doubled the world record and which was amazing and then like the next week she was on Good Morning America and and the Guinness Book of World Records officially presented her the the record and and what she showed I think from that is that you know just how much it’s this internal you know no matter what your external circumstances are you know that you can take things that you think are absolutely impossible or whatever whether it’s conflicts or whatever and through you know you can find a way she you know she was able it’s it’s that same power that that Jaime had which is to reframe one of the greatest powers and negotiations power to reframe to change the way you see the situation from an adversarial one to a potentially cooperative one and Gabby was was able to do that to me it’s you know it was Einstein I think who once said the most important decision any human being needs to make in their life is to answer the question is the universe friendly because who knows but we could if we the reason why he was he thought that was the most important thing was he you know this is after the atomic bomb which had to do with nuclear physics which he had a lot to do with he was he would say well if we think the universe is unfriendly then we’re going to treat everyone as a potential adversary and with nuclear weapons pretty soon you know we’re going to destroy ourselves but if we think the universe is basically friendly then we’ll give the other other side a chance and maybe they could become partners and so that ability to to make that choice to say yes to life as it were that’s what that’s what I’ve learned from Gabby that’s what she does and that’s why I consider her one of my greatest teachers Wow this is so cool thank you Dr. William Ury for for joining us on Authenticity Radio and we have a tradition we always ask our guests what is your bottom line message for humanity so Dr. William Ury no pressure my bottom line message for humanity is is an invitation to ask its invitation to go for a walk I love to go for walks but just go for a walk and and ask yourself why why not get to yes I mean why not get to yes with ourselves why not get to yes with others because if we can do that you know then everything else we want in life can can can follow and so that’s why I’ve dedicated I mean my my passion is helping people get to yes help get to a piece realizing that that inner peace actually is just as important and it’s the kind of the the precondition to the outer peace that we seek in the world for ourselves for our families for our workplaces for our communities and ultimately for the world go for a walk and why not get to that yes okay and will you join us in the future for another program in there I’d be happy to all right this is Slade Souter until next time be authentic be true go for a walk and ask yourself the question why not get to the yes and be free authenticity radio conflict is a choice you know watch it sorry in order to gain a new perspective and how to resolve conflict in your organization business or family go to authenticity radio.com.