Welcome to What Drives You. I’m Kevin Miller, your host and guide to help you master your inner drive so you can live a driven, inspired, and peaceful life that sees you driving further and enjoying the ride. In this episode, we’re starting a series on conflict, though more specifically the possibilities within and around conflict. We seem to be a world more at conflict than ever, and we can ask why, but where it starts is with us. Chances are, as you’re listening right now, you have a list of people in your lives who you’re struggling with or distanced from because of conflict. How can you, how can I better steward conflict in our lives and from there in the world around us? My guest and expert on the topic is William Ury. William is one of the world’s best known experts on negotiation. He’s the co-author of Getting to Yes. That’s the world’s all-time bestselling book on the topic with more than 15 million copies sold. He’s co-founder of Harvard’s program on negotiation and has devoted his life to helping people, organizations, and nations transform conflicts literally around the world, helping serve as a negotiator in a lot of the toughest disputes of our times. He’s consulted with the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, so many countries. He’s served as a negotiation advisor and mediator in conflicts ranging from Kentucky wildcat coal mine strikes to family feuds, from U.S. partisan battles to wars in the Middle East, Colombia, Korea, Ukraine. My focus in this series is primarily on the greatest battlefront, I think, which is the world we live in personally, in our homes and in our work, our personal relationships. And my muse for this, really the construct that we’re going to be going through is William’s brand new book. It’s called Possible, How We Survive and Thrive in an Age of Conflict. So, Bill, what a gift to have you with us. Thank you. A huge pleasure, Kevin. Well, I am, your book is fascinating. I do want to point that out. As much as we’re going to talk about this on an individual front for the most part, my gosh, what you have been involved in literally around the world is mind blowing. It’s intriguing, but it also is an incredible framework to put around these concepts. So thank you for that. Thank you for the book that you put in there. And I did want to start off where you start off in the book as you, and I appreciate this as we’re viable neighbors, a couple hours apart here in Colorado and you enjoy the mountains. It sounds like as I do. And one of your buddies is Jim Collins, who most people are going to know is the author of Good to Great. And you guys are out on a hike, which again, I can feel this and you’re having a discussion. It’s one of my greatest places to have discussions with friends and myself and God for that matter. And he says, all right, Bill, if you had to boil your life’s work down to just one sentence, you could leave behind, what would it say? I won’t read it. I’ll, I’ll ask you to recite that for us. The path to possible is to go to the balcony, build a golden bridge and engage the third side. And I can explain how I explained that to Jim at the time, but that that’s what it boiled down to Kevin. Well, I will say too, and this is relevant for my listeners that when this comes out, I will likely have, I don’t know where I’ll be, but about just a handful of days ago received a life ending diagnosis from my dad. And so when I read this in your book, I actually copied it and sent it to my family. And he’s pondering that right now. So that’s an acute thought to do. And so thank you for leading off the book with that. It was very appropriate. And yeah, so we’re going to unpack that and unpack the structure of that. I do want to ask about conflict in general. So I’m going to ask you for a 10,000 foot view on conflict fair. Sure. I just want to say, yeah, my, my heart goes out to you and to your dad and your family. It’s significant. Yeah. When this comes out along with your book coming out, I don’t know where we’ll be. He may not be with us at that point. So this is, this is acute. Thank you. Boy, what a time to resolve any conflict. I want to hit on that. Just conflict in general. And I know you unpack this a lot, but you got me again to thinking about why it is so volatile to us. If I say I like coffee and you like tea, okay, that’s fine. I’m not hurt by that. Now, if we’re going on a road trip and we only take a thermos of one, we might, we might have a discussion on that, but it’s so often feels like when there’s a difference, it is a threat. We’re talking about our faiths, our beliefs, our very beings and conflict has got to, where did, has it always been that way or have we let it get out of hand to be so much greater than it should be volatile again? That’s a really good question, Kevin. I would say, you know, I used to think conflict was a kind of a bad thing, but actually I’ve come to realize I studied anthropology, you know, I’m a student of human beings and human nature. And I would say conflict is natural. I’ve come to understand it’s natural. It’s part of life. And it even can be healthy. The key is how do we deal with conflict? Do we deal with it destructively as we often do, just the way you’re describing, you know, we get, we, we get small, we get fearful, we get angry, we get reactive. As the old saying goes, we make speeches we regret. And, and the key is to see if we can change our mindset, change, you know, go from reactive to proactive, think about what we really want, what’s really important in life and focus on that. That’s, that’s, that’s what I call going to the balcony. That’s that. It’s almost like you’re negotiating on a stage and part of you mind goes to a, goes to a balcony overlooking that stage and an emotional, a mental, a spiritual place. That’s kind of like, you get a larger perspective. You can see what’s really important. And from that perspective, you can put conflict in its proper place. Cause that’s the trouble is I think right now, why I wrote this book and why Jim Collins challenged me with that question is we’re living through times of pretty intense conflict and it looks like it’s intensifying. It looks like it’s polarizing us. It’s even poisoning some of our relationships. It’s paralyzing us from doing what’s important and what needs to be done. And so I wrote this book to kind of see if I could propose a slightly different way of looking at conflict where you lean into it, you treat animosity with curiosity and you, you change your mindset and you tap into what I think is a theme of yours, which is you tap into possibility, you tap into human potential. I, you mentioned this at the beginning of the book that it’s, it’s of course just elementary, but reasonable to wonder why, why do we have any more conflict? And you don’t necessarily give that. That’s not the focus of the book. We do have conflict. What do we do with it? But I know people are going to ask it. I thought that too. And you kind of ponder and go right now, when we look at the media, we look at the volatility out there and we keep using that word volatile. That’s what conflict seems to have gotten to. Uh, though I, though I’m also going to come to why you see it as not something that should be, but when we do, it is hard not to question why are we really more at odds? Is it just because we can more easily communicate our odds? Um, but as people ponder that any thoughts towards that, is it just a more, just a bigger proliferation of our, of our, it’s easy to express our opinions or are we really seeming to be more at odds than normal? I think we’re more at odds than normal, at least than I can remember. I can’t remember a time in my life when there’s been more conflict around us that’s manifesting, whether in families and workplaces in our democracy and in our larger world. And I think it’s partly the result of the fact that the pace of change is picking up and change brings all kinds of change brings conflict, um, whenever there’s change. And the other thing is, I think the way in which we communicate, like you’re mentioning, Kevin, increasingly through social media, where the algorithm is built in to actually increase engagement, since conflict increases engagement, anger increases engagement, the very way in which we’re communicating actually tends to amplify the conflict. That one is, uh, daunting. Yeah. We know that I’ve seen, you know, really wise statements. I think on that, so easy just to spout off an opinion that we wouldn’t, uh, no different than, you know, we act in our cars in ways we’ve never do in the grocery aisle, uh, as well. Your book, though, Bill, I will say, as I was reading it and again, considering myself and my own issues with conflict and then looking at the culture, I also, it got me to wondering, as you talk about being on the balcony, which we’re, we’ll get into here and, and being able to step back, having the personal awareness, awareness, having the confidence even, and the security, uh, of the, being able to step back on the balcony. When we have more conflict, I’m prone to wondering, is it because we’re less connected with ourselves? Is it an individual standpoint? I believe in the end, I mean, the, you know, the very first person you have to deal with in conflict is yourself. I’ve often found, I look at, you know, I think about negotiation, I think, you know, what’s the biggest block to us getting what we want in negotiation? And I can tell you, even though negotiation tends to focus on influencing the other side, the number one block to getting what we want is right here. It’s me. It’s us. It’s the person I look at in the mirror every morning. It’s my tendency to react. And if we can, if we can do some work on ourselves, we can learn to influence ourselves. We’re going to have a lot better chance of being able to influence people around us and, and the world generally. It did bring me back to thinking, uh, of a guy, another author, Andy Norman, he wrote a book called Mental Immunity. And the series we did with him, it’s been probably a year, if not two years, was on beliefs. And when we look at this again, I look at the conflicts and I’ve been doing a lot of study. I’ve been following the writings of Anthony DeMello lately, his perspectives on attachment and coming to Andy Norman’s perspective of our beliefs and how we don’t look at them as just something that we believe, or even say we have faith in, we really attach them to our identity. So now when you say, when I say, Oh my gosh, I love coffee. And you go, well, gosh, I like tea. Well, coffee, I I’ve made a stand by a soapbox. I really believe in coffee. I believe it’s best. I believe it’s a better thing for the environment. It’s better for our health. It’s better. Uh, I’m being facetious. I have, I’ve actually switched to tea lately, but, uh, point being, do you find that, that we are so it’s a, it’s a security, it’s a personal, it’s a self image issue as much as anything when we enter into conflict that we are so attached to these issues that we come into conflict conflict with. I think you’re right, Kevin. I think, uh, uh, increasingly things that weren’t part of our identity, maybe because we’re, you know, we’re in an age where there’s so much up for grabs. And one of the key questions, a lot of people asking themselves, who am I, who am I really? And, and so, and so, and a lot of the traditional identities are kind of under siege or weakening a little bit. And so individuals are a little bit lost. And so, yeah, so, so you attach a lot more to, to, to coffee and tea than, than you might normally, if you actually go to the balcony and see what is really important in life, what, what, who am I really? And what is, what is life about really? And that’s, that’s why I love to walk in the mountains because the mountains, you know, no matter what’s going on in the world, you know, I shut down the screen, I get out in the, in the mountains. They’ve been there for millions of years. There’s solid, there’s beauty, there’s wonder, there’s all there’s the grace. And so everything goes into perspective. And then I, then things that seem big to me when I was looking at a screen seemed tiny. Agreed. And my gosh, going back to where we started right now with my dad looking at an end of life diagnosis, same thing, everything that has seemed, you know, it’s pithy and elementary to say, but I’m living it out. And I’m looking and going, oh my gosh, the pithy things that I’m wrapped up in that, do they really matter? I do want to ask you, when you talk about, if we’re talking about personal identity, so much of your book or stories that you have experienced as a conflict negotiator around literally around the globe, that is it a similar thing? Is it even there? It’s the country they’re fighting because of the country’s identity that they’re holding onto. And they’re not able to step on the balcony with. For many business owners, the holidays can be super promising and also super challenging. My experience is buyers are more rushed and stressed and less rational and your sales process has got to be clear and streamlined. And I’m a big fan of Shopify who has custom features and tools geared toward holiday season purchasing. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. 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Then choose delivery to your home or pick it up at one of Carvana’s iconic car vending machines. Every car also comes with a seven day money back guarantee. So you can make sure it’s the right fit. Buy your car on Carvana. Delivery or pickup fees may apply. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven day return policy at Carvana.com. I would say yes. And you know, the thing is funny, because we, you know, when you think things are very big, you know, okay, they’re, they’re countries that are fighting about, you know, big things like who’s in power of the country and where the economic resources and the oil and everything. I remember being impressed by this years ago, I was working in the country of Venezuela, trying to mediate between the opposition and the president, who was the guy, well known guy by the name Hugo Chavez. And the thing I was struck when I met with Chavez was, you know, I asked him at one point, what could your, what could your rivals, your enemies do tomorrow morning? That would give you a sense that maybe they were worth talking to. And the first thing he said to me was, they could stop going on television and calling me a mono, which is a monkey in Spanish. And it was kind of like, he took it as a kind of racist allusion to some of his indigenous, you know, heritage and so on. It was like, but I could just see his face. And it was like, so much of conflict boils down to people’s sense of dignity that everyone wants respect. And the thing I found is that the cheapest concession you can make in any conflict, any negotiation is give the person a little bit of respect. In other words, treat them with the dignity with which you would like to be treated. That’s okay. And your other statement too, Bill, about change resonated that we are in, it feels hard. I think on one hand, everybody wants to say, oh my gosh, there’s been change for eons going on. You know, back in the day when our great grandparents got electricity, what could it be a bigger change than that? But it does feel like it’s more rapid. I mean, I think we feel pretty confident that it is now more rapid. And you’re saying with change comes conflict that in itself by proxy change period is often conflict in and of itself. Cause there’s a lot of times we just don’t want change. However it looks, that makes sense. So again, which is timely for your book to be here, that this is not going to slow down. If anything, it’s going to keep ramping up. These changes are going to continue. We’re going to continue to be in discomfort in the need to, gosh, ever since COVID pivots, one of my primary words, it seems we’re going to have to be able to pivot and deal with conflict. And so take us to, let’s break down the balcony. I’ve got some specific questions on that for you, but give us a definition of that. So here’s conflict. And this is, you know, you’re at your office and dealing with work. You’re with your spouse, you’re with your kid, whatever. And boom, there you are, you know, conflicts happen. You can feel it in you and you’re saying, okay, this is your opportunity for possibilities to go to the balcony to find that for us. So the balcony is simply that place of calm and perspective where you can keep your eyes on the prize and you can see the bigger picture. And we all have the balcony within us. In fact, you know, neuroscientists would kind of locate it more with the prefrontal cortex, you know, it’s the, it’s the part that can think, but can also feel and like, remember what’s important. You know, going back to that conversation with Chavez for a moment, you know, at one point, maybe it was a different meeting, he lost it. He’d asked me how things are going in the country. And I said, well, I think your ministers and your people, you know, in the opposite are making progress. He said, progress, what are you talking about? You know, are you a fool? Are you blind? You know, you third parties, you’re naive. And he proceeded to lean closely into my face and shout at me for approximately 30 minutes. And, you know, for me, that was the kind of a moment where I felt embarrassed. I felt like all my work had gone down the drain. I was thinking, rehearsing what I could say in response. I’m thinking I would have soiled myself. Exactly. Yeah. I was feeling why, you know, it brings back memories, you know, being like in a classroom when you’re 10, being ridiculed for the way I’m writing French or something like that. And, and, and then a friend of mine had taught me a very simple technique. He said, Bill, when you’re in a tough situation, pinch the palm of your hand. And I said, Adnan, why would I pinch the palm of my hand? And he said, well, because it’ll give you a momentary pain. It’ll keep you alert. And so that’s what I did at that moment is I pinched the palm of my hand to go to the balcony and then ask myself, which is something we can all do. And everyone, you know, whether it’s the president or whether it’s your spouse shouting at you or someone else putting you on the spot like that, your boss is, if you can just bite your tongue for a second and then ask yourself, what do I really want here? And that’s what I was able to ask is, is it going to do me any good if I get into a, an argument or shouting match with the president of Venezuela will throw me out, you know? So I just bit my tongue and I listened from a balcony perspective, from that place we all have inside of us, that place of calm and perspective where I could kind of watch it a little bit like a play. And I could then ask myself, what’s he doing? Is this, he’s trying to impress his cabinet ministers. It was, he was in front of what’s actually going on here. And by taking that and then by not feeding him, not feeding that anger, you know, he could go on for eight hours talking, but after about 30 minutes, I saw his shoulders sink slowly. And in a weary tone of voice, he said to me, so Bill, what should I do? And that is the faint sound of a human mind opening. And that was my opportunity to actually ask him to think about going to the balcony and asking his country to go to the balcony. So I think we all have that opportunity at any moment to, that’s maybe the greatest power we have, which is the power not to react, but to go to the balcony, think about what’s best for us. Think about what’s going to promote harmony in the family. What’s going to move the thing forward at work or what’s going to avoid a war in a, in a political situation. Let’s exaggerate it in the personal front. When you are with someone you care about and you have conflict, you have this, you have the yell, you know, like what you got with Chavez. And of course, naturally we’re going to have feelings. We’re going to have an emotion that comes up and it could be fear. It could be anger. It could be disgust. It could be even the fact of justice, like, Oh my gosh. And if they’ve gone further and if he did, and I don’t know if he did this, but if he just said, you’re, you know, you’re an idiot, Bill. How did you get the opportunity to get in front of me, get out? You know, so we’re thinking about justice and the unfairness and all these emotions and the reactions. Of course, you cover this well in the book. We are, our body is naturally wired, probably our survival to react. It’s doing what it’s supposed to do. It is. And you’re saying, yes, and we have, we have the opportunity, the possibility of evolving above that. Easy to say. And of course, when you’re in there and from a counseling standpoint and you get that trigger, let’s put it, and you talk about marriage in the book somewhat, let’s put it with your spouse, somebody who it’s the most, the most sensitive to, who you most want the opposite from. I mean, that’s a big, that’s a big call to jump out of self and to be able to step back and do that. And here’s my question for you with it, Bill, because as I’ve done that literally on my own, I know I can also have the tendency and cause somehow you stayed checked in with him. You still stay checked in with him enough that he was still with you and then came back to you as opposed to, and I’ll own this. Sometimes I can do that, but I’ve withdrawn even to, even to, again, go to counseling perspective. I’ve stonewalled. I’m just waiting for them to get, get finished so I can get out of there. And maybe that’s the point. So reconcile that with me. That’s, this is what, I mean, it’s, you know, the principle, the superpower that we all have is the power to go to the balcony. The question is how do we hone that superpower? How do we develop it? How do we use it? Particularly when it’s, you know, when our buttons are getting pressed, you know, like with, with, with our, with our spouse or in some kind of family situation or whatever it is. The, what I, what I think in conflict, we often fall into what I would call the three A trap. And one of the A’s, and which I also do too, I’m talking to is avoid. And that’s which, you know, when you withdraw, you’re avoiding, you know, you’re, you know, you’re sitting on it. You, what I mean, you know, and avoiding, you know, we, we tend to avoid a lot or we, or we attack, you know, that’s the other A, you know, which, you know, an eye for an eye, we all go blind or we accommodate, we just give in. And what I’m suggesting is a fourth, which is to engage. And it has a little bit, you know, it has a little bit of avoidance in that. And there was the ability to withdraw a tiny bit, but to stay engaged, just like you were saying, it has a little bit, it has the assertiveness of aggression without the destructiveness and it has the empathy that’s in accommodation without the submission. And that’s what you’re, it’s like a razor’s edge that you’re finding, but it’s that place inside of you, a presence where, and this is the tricky thing of simultaneously detach in order to listen. So it’s like, you know, there’s a kind of a two cycle there. You withdraw a little bit, you go to the balcony in order to pay closer attention to what’s going on on the stage. And what, what you’re saying that I’ve often found that myself is we get stuck in that first stage and we don’t go to the second stage, which is to re-engage. Well, that aspect of engaging, you know, I think about that again in our close personal relationships. So when you have that standpoint and you realize, okay, maybe you feel attacked right now. Okay. Conflict just happened and I feel attacked. I have feel that trigger. And what’s your body language. What was your body language to Chavez? I imagine it was still very respectful. You weren’t sitting there rolling your eyes. You didn’t clench your fist. You probably tried to keep your shoulders down. I mean, there’s some things back to your aspect of respect, but you still act respectful. So can we do that to our, our spouse, our kid, our boss, our employee, or whoever it may be. And from a body language standpoint, so that they know that we, we does, we step backward and let them do the thing, but we’re still engaged. That feels like a big, well, you said kind of a razor’s edge, but dramatically important. Very important. And maybe the easiest way to do it. Something we can all do, we do naturally is just take a deep breath. You know, cause oftentimes in conflict, our breathing gets shallow and we forget to breathe because we’re tense and just take a deep breath. Just take two, take three, you know, a little bit of silence actually is a good thing. We often treat silence like it’s uncomfortable, but actually silence is a real tool for us. A little bit of silence, take a deep breath. That’s like the easiest way to go to the balcony in the, on the spot. Obviously, if you have a chance to take a break, a coffee break, a tea break, go for a walk, go for a run, go for a workout, go for a bike ride, you know, all the better go for a hike up in the mountains. But, but if you don’t have that moment, just taking a deep breath, pausing, it’s that pause. It’s the power of a pause. It’s okay to pause. You don’t always have to fill up the space. And actually I have a colleague at MIT who’s been studying negotiation and all he does is measure the amount of silence in the conversation. And he finds there’s a high rate of correlation between the silence and how cooperative the negotiation turns out to be. Because it’s more, there’s more presence. There’s more balcony in that space. NBA fans, the race for the Emirates NBA cup is on. Let the games begin. 30 teams will start, but only eight will advance and only one champion will capture the cup. To finish first, they’ll have to put the pedal to the metal. Who will capture the cup? Well, let’s see what happens on the court. Basketball is back. It’s the final week of Emirates NBA cup group play on ESPN, NBC, Peacock, and Prime. This episode is brought to you by Total Wine & More. November’s all about gathering, Friendsgiving, Thanksgiving, and football weekends. With thousands of wines, spirits, and beers, Total Wine & More has everything you need for your table and your toasts. From bold reds to sparklers, smooth bourbons to tequilas, all at the lowest prices for over 30 years. You’ll always find what you love only at Total Wine & More. Curbside pickup and delivery available in most areas. See totalwine.com for details. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. B21. Because there’s more presence. There’s more balcony in that space. It’s funny. It’s one of the things that I focus on in the shows here because I have a propensity to talk very fast when I get excited and to jump in. And I know that I learned from Zig Ziglar the power of the pause. And it’s interesting, speaking of Zig Ziglar from a sales standpoint, we learned that early on to ask, make the ask, well, you know, so sir, it’s going to be, you know, $5,000. You ready to sign them down the line? And pause. And that uncomfortable pause. So that is number one is you break down balcony in your book and outline that you start with pause. That’s number one, which obviously drives us to be present. We’ve got to be present. We’ve got to not be stuck in our triggers. And that, you know, I looked at that again, Bill, in reading your book, and I thought that is something that we’re not going to hear. If you haven’t been practicing this, well, that’s the point, practicing, because you’re not going to hear this and go, oh, that makes sense. So next time I’m in this, I’m going to pause. No, you won’t. You won’t at all. If you have not planned this, if you have not practiced this, rehearsed it in essence, because as much as I have been doing this, there’s not, I’m afraid to say, I don’t know if there’s a week that goes by that at some point I realized, oh my gosh, I completely missed it. And I reacted. I reacted. This is, this is some Jedi training here. It is. And we all do it. We’re, you know, human beings are a reaction machine. So you shouldn’t judge yourself in that sense. It’s like, it’s that the key thing is building it in. And what I find is taking time beforehand, like before a difficult conversation, go for a walk, do whatever everyone has their favorite ways of going to the balcony. Some people like to go for a coffee with a friend, some people like to go for a walk, some people work out, some people meditate, whatever they do, pray. But you, you just take a moment, even if it’s a minute before you pick up the phone, you know, just take a minute to yourself, for yourself. So you can bring your full presence, your full potential, your full positivity, and, and bring, that actually allows us to listen to the other side and actually see what’s going on. Because the reason actually interesting you go to the balcony is to be able to listen first to yourself. What’s going on? What are the emotions going on inside of me? I’m feeling uncomfortable. I’m feeling tense, whatever. If you listen to yourself, the emotions tend to subside. They feel heard. And then, then you’re ready to do the same with the other, which is of course the key to success in sales, negotiation, anything, which is the ability to understand where they’re coming from, put yourself in their shoes. But you can only put yourself in their shoes. If you put yourself in your own shoes first. Well, and I appreciate that again. So in your book, balcony, number one, you say pause. Number two is zoom in. And it’s just, what do I really want? Which guys, I mean, building my own emotion, working on my own emotions. I learned how to perform early on. I’ve been doing that for a long time, but now to understand what is at the core of this, you know, what, what do I want? And helps me understand why is that bothering me so much? And as we know, it’s again, pithy to say, but it’s so seldom the issue at hand, the conflict at hand, the thing that we’re, it’s not about coffee or tea. It’s about why is that important to me? You know, am I, is this a vital thing? And so often, I think, you know, I told you that yesterday in here in the studio, I had Arthur Brooks on and we talked about some of those things that, you know, why is it that it gets under our skin? Why do we let that thing bother us and how the majority of our lives, the things that we are most struggling with in conflict are not big tea traumas. They’re not life or death. They’re more in the coffee tea arena. It may be a little more acute, but it’s so often that now, again, you’re saying this, you’re bringing this to us from literally back to that word volatile from situations that could have led to gigantic war even. And yet you’re saying it’s no different here in our home or our office. It’s the same. You know, I’ve, I mean, that’s one of the things I’ve enjoyed about doing this for, you know, 40, 45 years is that whether it’s in family context, whether it’s in a coal mine, whether it’s in a president’s office, whether it’s, you know, family feud or war, civil war, whatever it is, we’re all human beings. And it’s like, we’re, it’s the basic principles are the same and it all boils down to people. And if we can know ourselves and we can then help know the others, we have a much better chance of finding those possibilities where things get tough as increasingly they are. Well, you bring us from pause, which I would say to say it at whatever way resonates folks as you’re listening, you’ll pause, be present, be aware, and then zoom in. Okay. What is it? Yeah. As you said, I’ll stand in my own shoes real quick and go, what am I feeling? What’s up with me? Let’s make sure that I’m centered in essence. And then zoom out, look at the, in my paraphrasing, you, you unpack that is, is somewhat of step angle. Okay. What is the bigger picture? Can we say what is what’s really important here? How are you unpacking that? Yeah. When you zoom in, you find out what’s really important to you. You know, what’s actually going on inside of me. Listen to your, your, your emotions. Actually, sometimes we think of emotions as getting in the way, but actually emotions is emotional intelligence is the ability, emotions. They’re trying to tell us something. They’re saying some needs, some basic need of ours is not being addressed. And if we can figure that out, so emotions are signposts to those needs. So you can be curious about it. A lot of the quality of being on the balcony is being curious, curious about yourself, what’s going on. Once you zoom in and you figure out what does I really want? You know, it’s what drives you. It’s like, then you can zoom out and say, well, how am I going to even begin to think about getting there given all the obstacles in the way, you know, it’s like a, it’s like a life is often like a labyrinth and you can kind of go to a platform overlooking that labyrinth, that balcony and kind of, oh, I can see that’s a dead end. No, I can go this way. You can see aspects of the play that you didn’t see. You can see people that you’ve left out, maybe that you need to include. You can see, you can also see, we often think that we need an agreement. You know, we need an agreement. Well, do you really? What’s your, you know, when you, when you zoom out, one of the most important questions to ask yourself is what in negotiation lingo from getting to yes, we call your BATNA, your best alternative to a negotiated agreement. In other words, what are you going to do if for some reason you’re not able to reach agreement? What’s your plan B? What’s your best course of action? You know, if you’re not going to be able to resolve this issue right now, how are you going to satisfy your needs? And if you can answer that question, you reassure yourself, you get more confidence and actually you’re more likely to reach agreement. Yeah. Okay. I pulled that out of your book on that bill that you said, and I want to go to that because you said that earlier and I want to hit back on it. You said, we need more conflict, not superficial consensus. And so when we go back, so you’re just talking about emotions. You’ve got me thinking about that. So if we’re looking at emotions, if I’m aware of my emotions, and here’s my question, as I’m aware, when you say that we need more conflict, if we’re more aware of our emotions, and I have one that is negative, you know, a little red flag went up. It’s not that I’m just going off with, with every single thing, but you’re saying we’re probably more well-served relationally with ourselves and with others to win that negative emotions up. Talk about it. Have, have, enter into what should be reasonable conflict that even doesn’t even have to come to agreement, but it’s, well, I guess at the end it’s connection. Fair? It is connection. I mean, it’s like leaning into, you know, the year before last I went down the Grand Canyon and, and it’s like two weeks down the Grand Canyon in a raft. And there’s some of the, those are the biggest rapids in North America, and the water was pretty cold. It was, you know, it was October. And, and, and, you know, once you’re in the canyon, there’s no way out. There’s one place I think you can get out, but once you, there’s only one way. So you’re going to be in there, and you can either decide you’re going to resist the experience of getting wet all the time, because you’re going to get wet and cold all the time, or you can lean into it. And I felt like that was an aha for me around conflict too, which is we can either resist, get, you know, it’s coming, you know, conflict’s part of life. There are differences. People have differences in everything, but we can either lean in, be curious, be creative, be cooperative, be empathetic and dealing with it. Or we can resist it, get tight, which gets us angry, attack, avoid, you know, give in when giving in doesn’t really make much sense. So it’s, it’s that kind of oddly enough. This episode is brought to you by Disney. This Wednesday, Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde are back on the big screen. So grab your family and friends as Disney invites you to return to Zootopia for the phenomenal movie event of the holiday season. See all your favorite Zootopia characters plus new favorites in the most possum movie of the year. Don’t miss Disney’s Zootopia 2 when it hits theaters everywhere Wednesday. Get your tickets now. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Jay Kelly, the new film from Academy Award nominee Noah Baumbach. George Clooney stars as an actor confronting his past and present on a journey of self-discovery alongside Adam Sandler as his devoted manager. Critics are calling it a declaration of love to the chaotic art of filmmaking with the Wall Street Journal praising it as a transcendent comedy drama. Jay Kelly is now playing in select theaters and on Netflix, December 5th. Bracing conflict in order to transform it, to change it from a destructive form to a constructive form from, from fighting into dialogue, like you’re saying, you know, let’s talk about our emotions. And when you take it into that context of, and I read about that, you going through the Grand Canyon, I relate to that. I mean, from an athletic standpoint, I was a pro athlete and, and you know, out here in Colorado, like you, I’m doing rivers and I’m doing, you know, ski runs and I’m doing mountain bike trails. And not only do you have to go through it, it’s really the best part. I mean, that’s the stories, you know, we talk about, I mean, my last actually, I, I’m not a big river guy and I did stand up paddle boarding this year up in Deckers. And there was a couple rowdy sections to either, either you’re going to go hike around for an hour or you’re going to go through it. And of course that was the best part. And I got flipped and thrown and whatever. And that’s what we’re talking about at the tailgate afterwards. It’s great. I’m not so, I’m not so comfortable with that in relationships. And so I hear you in going through and yet, is that the opportunity to connect? Now I know from my standpoint, and this is part of my journey and what we talk about a lot here, I have not done that well. I have avoided, I’m the avoider. I’m the avoid, I avoid conflict. And when I do that, I am not connecting. If anything, I’m, I’m distancing. I’m putting up, I always think of it as I’m putting another brick in the wall is what I’m doing. It should be the glory, but in not doing it well, not perceiving it well, again, that’s why you’re here on the show. Yeah. We all have a learning edge and your learning edge is avoiding. Mine is too. I’m with you. I mean, from the beginning, you know, I find that I teach, you know, someone once said to me, you teach what you most need to learn. And so for me, that’s what that, that, that, that, when I write a book, I write a book to learn. And then maybe I’ve got something to pass on what I’ve learned, but it’s, you know, I wrote a book, I had troubles, you know, saying no. So I wrote a book years ago about the power of a positive. No. How do you say no in a way that’s positive rather than negative. And so I’m with you. So if you think of every one of your, the listeners, you know, if you think about it, every one of us has certain learning edges. Some of us are learning edge might be that we go on the attack. Some of it, the learning edge might be that we accommodate, we just give in. Some of us might be avoid. We all have our learning edges. And actually some of us actually have all three, because if you think about it often, you know, in a, in a, you know, we, we avoid for a while, we avoid for a while, and then we can’t take it anymore. And we snap and we go on the attack, you know, at some point, you know, if you just keep on suppressing that emotion, it eventually explodes, which is why engaging with it is, is, is a better way. I’m curious. I’m actually, I’m sitting here. I went back up to my notes. You talked about the three, a trap, avoid, attack, accommodate that you would think, okay, well, attacking is, you know, because you said, you know, the suggestion is number four is a fourth option is engaging. And you would initially think that, well, gosh, attacking that’s engaging. It’s not the right engagement, right? I’m just, I’m finding a word. It’s the path to possible is the fourth one. It’s to lean in. It’s to embrace it’s to transform conflict, transform, transform might be maybe that’s the fourth one’s better. It’s transform. It’s like, change the form of the conflict. You’re our biggest opportunity always is to, is to change the game because the game oftentimes like in conflict situations, we hunkered down. We start to think very small. We start to think it’s us versus them, me versus you, that kind of thing. It’s becomes zero sum more for me means less, less for you, vice versa. In fact, so the biggest opportunity I’ve found in negotiation is life is never a zero sum. It’s always like you can both lose, you know, like in a marriage, you know, if you’re asking who’s winning this marriage, marriage is a serious difficulty and we can both lose and, or, and everybody loses actually the whole family loses. So it’s a lose, lose, lose, or we can explore ways in which we can all benefit. And that’s the real choice in life. Goodness. Yeah. That is I love the, the looking at and transforming rising above that. I mean, again, I’m looking at my own, so I’ve, I’ve gotten to, you know, whatever levels there are of being able to hear it comes, we’re in it. Okay. I’m aware of what’s happening. I can kind of step back. I can see that, but it’s, it’s still, I’m really looking to avoid it. I’m really looking for it just to end. Can I weather it? That’s probably what I do. Can I, I’m just going to weather the storm, go away, hope that it resolves itself, whatnot. And I want to be the, you know, the Jedi, I want to be the, the enlightened, uh, enlightened guy on the, on the mountain who can hear it, who can say, again, probably like what you did, hopefully or what you, you, you ended up doing with Chavez, hear it, weather it for a moment and then engage. And it’s not about me. It’s not my self-worth. This is not, this is not good. This is not life or death usually, hopefully, but even if it is, my gosh, if you go into a, a terrorist, you know, um, aspect or a hostage aspect, we’re talking the same thing and it could be life or death, but you’re still, you’re saying, be calm, zoom in, zoom out. And now how can you transform it? I mean, that’s, uh, I’m playing with words and terminology, but that feels like, you know, there’s an aspect of enlightenment right there. Well, that’s, it is an aspect of enlightenment, I guess. And, and, but it’s something available to any one of us at any moment. It’s not like, and, and we’re all learning. I just want to say, Kevin, this is, you know, transforming conflict can be some of the hardest work human beings can do because in conflict, we naturally get reactive. Um, in conflict, we naturally get positional. We naturally get, you know, you know, into that kind of us versus them kind of mentality. And the biggest opportunity we have, which we all have inside of us is to change the mindset, change the game. You change the frame, you change the game. And if you could change the game, you can, there’s a bigger game of life to win here. Uh, and, uh, and, and it’s available to us. I mean, every one of us, if you think about it, you could probably think of occasions when you’ve gone to the balcony right now, you’re thinking of occasions when you’ve fallen off the balcony, but think of all the times you’ve gone to the balcony. And, you know, I remember, uh, you know, all of us, even people who are really good at this, we all fall off the balcony. The, the only question is how fast you can recover. Yeah. It’s funny. I, I, my vision at the moment was thinking, yeah, I’m up on the balcony and I’m looking for the escape door that out of there instead of going to, to, to that point, to going to step two, which is what you did with Chavez. And this is in the book is now it is transformative. How do I engage? How do I transform? Yeah. How do I build a bridge, which I know, let me list out the three aspects there. So he says, the next we’re building a bridge, listen, create an act and back to their listen. Actually my, I’m looking at my notes here that I just now hit on. And when I wrote, listen, I did write connect. This is the time. That’s it. Fair. Okay. Now that’s exactly, that’s the time to connect. Balcony is about connecting with yourself. Okay. Because what you know, what you’re talking about when you, when you avoid, you’re actually getting disconnected from yourself. Yeah. Cause you’re shutting down. Balcony is the opposite of that. It’s about taking a step back to connect with yourself, to listen to yourself first and ask, how am I feeling? You know, notice your feelings like you were saying. Yeah. That actually, once you really listen to yourself, you put yourself in your shoes, you’ve asked yourself, what do I really want? You’ve zoomed out and seen the larger picture of how you might get there. Now you’re ready to do what is the most important thing in negotiation, which is to listen, put yourself in their shoes, trying to understand where they’re coming from, what drives them so that you can then move to create, which is, can we create an option here, a way forward that meets their needs and meets yours at the same time? Is it relevant then to bring in, I mean, this is, you know, structured aspects of listening that I think a lot of people, a lot of us have heard. Doesn’t mean that we do it well, but we’re talking about really listening. Listen is not just cause I can do that. I can sit there and listen does not mean that I understand or I care to. And so in your, in your work, literal work, you’re listening and you are, when you’re sitting there with the president of a country, country, you got to understand. And so if you don’t, I imagine you’re asking questions. That’s absolutely, you know, negotiation, first of all, is much more about listening than it’s about talking. And it’s much more about asking questions than it’s about making statements. You get those two things straight, you’re a long ways down the road. And the listening, it’s not just listening. It’s what kind of listening, you know, the usual kind of listening is we’re in our shoes and we’re listening. And our mind is going, I agree with that. I disagree with that. And whenever it doesn’t that, you know, no, I’m talking about a listening where you put yourself in the other side shoes. You it’s like, there’s a, it’s like, there’s a, a, a, a beam of light. You know, the, the, the, the focus needs to move over from where you are to where they are and you are then tapping into them. You’re using empathy. You’re listening. You’re listening from within their skin. That’s a hard thing to do. And we can only do that if we’ve gone to the balcony beforehand, if we’re in a place of common perspective, you can’t do it if you’re reactive. And if you can do that, if you can start to put yourself in their shoes and connect with them as a human being, whether they’re a terrorist, whether they’re a hostage taker, whatever they’ve done, you can connect with them. You’re going to have a hundred times more ability to be able to influence them, to make the decision you want them to make. And Bill, the hardest place for me has been on the other side of what feels like an attack, an unjust attack. And then to take, to come out of that again, this is, this would be my, the hardest place for me to do this is to, I had somebody give, and this is probably an old term, but being on the other side of the beach ball, you know, beach balls that have the different colors, you know, and everybody’s seeing this happened and yet everybody said, can I get over there and see the different colored side that so-and-so saw? And especially with an attack, can I get over there and go, okay, holy smokes, I did not mean it that way. I did, I was not, but if I get on your side, could I have taken it the way that you did? Is that possible? Almost always it is, almost always I can find some aspect of, I don’t want to say a truth, but a validity. I can see how that perspective could have been possible if, you know, if it had been me as well, it’s not what I meant, but can I see that? And if I can give that, what are my opportunities to transform the conflict instead of just beating against it? That’s it. That’s exactly it, Kevin, because, and when you acknowledge, when you listen and you acknowledge the validity of what the other side says, that’s an act of giving them respect, of saying, I see you, I hear you. It doesn’t mean that you agree with them. You could acknowledge that they have a valid point of view without them saying, and I have a different point of view. It’s like the beach ball. Yeah, from your side, it looks red, from my side, it looks blue or whatever it is, but it’s like, it’s that, you know, what you see depends on where you sit. We all sit in different places. And that ability to do that turns out to be key. And you don’t have to, I mean, sometimes people think, I remember once a long time ago, I was giving a talk at the Naval War College in Rhode Island. And I was saying, you know, if we’re going to try and, you know, change, if we’re trying to negotiate with the Soviets, we need to put ourselves in their shoes and understand how they see the situation. And one of the captains got up and said, sir, you’re asking me to put myself in the Soviet shoes. That might distort my judgment. You know, and I got that. But, you know, even in warfare, the first rule of warfare is know your enemy, right? You’ve got to know them from inside to understand how they’re going to move, what they’re going to do. So that ability to put ourselves in the other side’s shoes isn’t just soft. It’s what we need to do in life to be able to influence people, to find good ways forward, you know, whether it’s our spouse, or whether it’s an adversary for that matter. But it’s like putting ourselves in their shoes is key. How are we going to be able to influence the other side’s mind? How are we going to change the other side’s mind if we don’t know where their mind is? It probably goes back to Zig Ziglar again, I’m sure in sales or whatever. I’m sure you need to know the customer’s mind. Yeah. I’m sure you need to know the customer’s mind. Yeah. I’m so enamored by your story there of the guy saying, what was it? You’re going to just, that could distort my judgment, right? And I’m thinking, my first thought was, I guess that’s the point, isn’t it? If you’re not, now, if you’re in a state of where the sole goal is to win, then yeah, I don’t want to hear, I don’t want to see anything, I’m here to win, which is not connection, back to that. So I am asking, in essence, I’m trying to let my judgment get distorted. If I’m going to connect with you, I need that. Is that fair enough? Well, exactly. I mean, you might have put it as distorted, but yes, you need to be able to be influenceable. If you’re going to try to influence people, you have to be a little bit influenceable yourself. You have to open yourself up to, okay, I’m going to expand my perspective of what’s going on here by taking in your perspective. It doesn’t mean that you have to abandon your perspective. You don’t have to give up your identity. You don’t have to give up what you believe to be able to go that extra mile, walk in their moccasins, and that ability to empathize, which is key. It’s a key core human talent. We all have that capability. Babies have that capability. It’s like the ability to kind of tune into where the other person is. Baby tunes into its mom, right? And it’s absolutely critical to dealing with conflicts in a healthy way. Well, tell me more about the aspect of a bridge. You’re trying to build a bridge. Again, I feel like I conceive of the balcony of doing that, staying engaged. I’m not going to avoid, I’m going to stay there. And now I’m going to come in, I’m going to listen, but your next two aspects are now to create an act. I have not done that well, Bill, the building a bridge. I mean, overall, I shouldn’t say that. I probably have in some ways, but especially in the acute places that are most dear to me, I don’t have a great history of always building a bridge. So listen, okay, I conceive of that. Now it’s create an act, go there. Right. Well, usually, oftentimes in a conflict situation, Kevin, my mind’s right here. I’m here, right? Your mind’s way over there. When I was walking with Jim Collins, I looked at the canyon, my mind’s here, you’re way over on the other slope. There’s a giant chasm between us, like the grand canyon. It’s filled with doubt, anxiety, my needs are going to be met here. What are people going to think of me? Am I going to look weak if I give in, all that. Our job, which is hard to do for a moment, is to leave where our mind is, leave where our thinking is for a moment and step over to where the other side is and look at where they are, start from where their thinking is, where they are and build them a bridge over that chasm, back to where we want them to be. In other words, build them a golden bridge, an attractive bridge. And that’s the key because in negotiation, what we tend to do, particularly in conflict, we tend to push. It’s like I’m pushing my hands against you. And what do you do when I’m pushing? You push back and we’re just at a stalemate. What successful negotiators do is they start from where the other side is, they listen and then they try to create options for mutual gain. Things like, are there ways in which we can meet your needs and meet mine at the same time? Because too often, we end up like those proverbial two sisters quarreling about the orange. We quarrel about the orange. One sister, they just divide the orange in half. One sister takes half the peel and uses it to bake a cake. The other sister takes half the fruit and uses it to make orange juice. In fact, you could end up with a whole peel and a whole orange for both. There’s double as much if they were able to think about, what is it I really want? I want, if you get to what’s underneath it, the interest underneath the positions, which are wanting to drink orange juice and wanting to make a cake. So the ability to expand, expand the pie, don’t just divide up the pie, expand it before you divide it up. And I’m sure you do that all the time in life. That’s the critical thing is, can we do something that addresses your needs, helps you get what you want, helps me get what I want? Well, you’re bringing me back to, again, this aspect of winning or not. You mentioned it in regards to marriage. If you’re in marriage to win, you’re already out of luck. In conflict, being honest with my focus, what drives you? Is it to connect? Is it for a mutual, as you said, a mutual win? Or is it literally just to win? I mean, I don’t think people are out on the football field and they’re not figuring out how to have a mutual win. No, they want to win. Okay. Different animal. Fair? Exactly. Oh, absolutely. No, I think on the football field, you want to win. That is a one side wins, one side loses. But in life, wherever there’s a relationship, particularly whenever there’s an ongoing relationship, which is 95% of the situations we get involved in, in the family, at work, there’s not just this one transaction. You win now, and you win by dominating, you’re going to get payback. So it’s actually in our interest because life is not zero sum. Life is an expandable pie. There’s always more to go around if you’re creative. And that’s the key thing is we have to tap a conflict. What we tend to do is we tend to think there are no solutions here. There’s nothing. There’s just no way out. And you shut off the creative part of your brain. But we all have that creative part of the brain that we use all the time. We have to bring that to bear in the situations in which and say, there’s got to be more than one option here. There’s got to be, you know, just brainstorm for a moment. Think about it. Okay. Well, that feels like it brings us to the next piece here, which is the third side, looking for more. And what I took from that, Bill, as I was studying it, and I’ll tell you, you know, conceptualizing balcony and bridge, I felt like as I was studying your book and the message, I felt like, okay, I can, I mean, I obviously had questions, but I can conceptualize that. Third side was more difficult for me. Now I got it from an aspect of kind of like that creativity. And I, and the concept of it’s not, it’s not just me, you, you know, me and them, it’s us. I’ve got to bring an us in that. But even to the aspect of other people. And now you, the three points you had on that is host, help, and swarm. And yeah, that was my notes, not me, them, but, but an us concept. So bring that into, give us again, a story or analogy or concept of what you’re talking about. Again, folks, he has, this is the third side and this is the third aspect of this concept of possibility. Yeah. So basically what we’re doing in, on the path to possible is we’re opening up potential. Balcony is about opening up the potential within us that exists inside of us, right? The ability, that calm, that perspective, really see clearly, understand what drives us. Bridge opens up the potential between us, you know, the potential for mutual gain, the potential to arrive at solutions that can work for both sides, right? Oftentimes that’s hard to do in conflict. It’s hard to go to the balcony. We’ve been talking about that. It’s often hard to, to build a bridge. I mean, you know, it’s not, not easy when things get tough. So we need help. And where does help come from? Help can come from what I call the third side, which is in conflict situations, we tend to reduce everything to two sides. It’s us versus them, me versus you, right? It’s always like two sides, Arabs versus Israelis, labor versus management, Republican, Democrats, you name it. It’s always two, right? And what we forget is that there’s always a third side, which is the larger whole. It’s all of us. It’s Americans. It’s human beings. It’s the family. It’s the kids. It’s, I mean, the third side could be, you mentioned God, you know, the third side is that larger whole that reminds us that we’re all part of that. We’re all part of one thing. And, and the way you activate it is, you know, you turn to the people around us, you get stuck, you know, we all get our blind corners. So you turn to someone like a coach, right? A coach is a third sider, someone who can kind of be on the balcony, who’s a little bit removed from the situation, someone around us who can help us think about how we’re going to transform this difficult conflict. And it, and, and oftentimes when things are really tough, you need to build a winning coalition of people around that third side. You know, I’ll give you really appreciated this once when I went to Africa, oh, many, many years ago, I went to work in South Africa on the whole situation, the whole war that was going on there around apartheid. But then I went up into Botswana and Namibia because I’d always wanted to spend some time with the indigenous people that, you know, the, the San, they’re sometimes called the Bushmen because they live as hunter gatherers, which is the way that human beings live for 99% of our time on earth. So if you want to understand human nature, you better understand hunting and gathering. And they live in these communities of, you know, families, like five families in a network, maybe, you know, 25 people, and then, you know, a group of 500. And I was curious about the way they deal with conflicts, because all the hunters use these poison arrows. And that is kind of a beetle dung that they, and, and the poison, you know, if someone gets angry, all they do is pick up an arrow and shoot someone, and it’ll take that person three days to die, they have time to pick up an arrow and shoot someone else. You know, you lose two, three men, you’ve lost, you know, you know, 50% of your little hunting groups capacity. You know, so what do they do, they all have the equivalent like of like, almost like a nuclear weapon there, you know, at that scale. And what they do is, they treat conflict, they, you know, it’s not just belongs to the individuals, the parties, it’s the responsibility, not just of the individuals, but also of the community. So whenever people hear emotions get high, and voices get raised, someone goes and hides the poison arrows out in the desert. And then they all gather around in a circle, all the men, the women, even the kids, and they talk, and they listen, and they’ll, they’ll go on for days, and they’ll ask, you know, the higher power for counsel, they’ll do everything possible. But they create a container, a community container within which even the hardest conflicts can gradually be transformed. So they have a whole system. And it’s based on the third side. And suddenly it was like a light bulb went on for me, that’s our oldest human heritage, that’s our birthright. And we forget it in our societies, because we often tend to think it’s us versus them. But there’s all of us, and, and around us that the untapped potential, so that in a conflict, you know, I think about, I don’t know, you know, my wife and I were having trouble, I don’t know, years ago with my teenage son, you know, he was falling over the wrong crowd, I don’t know, they’re all lost, and there’s some drinking water. And, and, you know, it was causing a lot of conflict in the family. And we were at our wits end, we didn’t know what to do. But, you know, was it, you know, we weren’t enough. So but we had to get a community response. So we, we sat him down said, you know, we can’t live at home anymore, because, you know, he was bringing, you know, having parties at home with breaking. So he said, we’re sending you away for a couple months, go spend time with family with your uncles, we’re part of the community, so you know, let them talk with you, you know, go to a, you know, kind of a workshop on self responsibility, self knowledge, with a therapist with a community of other peers. And there was a whole community response when he came back two months later. I mean, I’m not saying it works for everyone. But he was, I’ve never seen a personal transformation like that. I mean, he was like, he got into his music, he got into his tennis, his sports studies. And, you know, and it was a flip, but it wasn’t something we could just do alone in our little family that we needed help from the larger third side. Okay, so you got me thinking on a tangent, not a tangent, but but a piece of this bill with your story there of the the Bushmen, in essence of them. Here’s the conflict. Knowing the possibility that this could get ugly to the death. And actually, I’m correlating that with another story you told in the book that I can’t remember exactly where it was, but it was a war zone you were in. You know, some guys go by and want to ask a question, whatnot, and you find out that why did they started this? I think it was a border issue. And so you write about this in the book, and you know, somebody killed one of their guys, so they killed one of their guys. And you said, well, what’s happened since then? Well, they killed two more of our guys. And so they’re going to go back over. Okay, and you had a point on there. But I’m going to come back to this one, that with your Bushmen, I have this concept of them understanding the gravity of this. So here’s a conflict that could very likely lead to this person shooting this person with an arrow. They’re going to die. It’s going to take three days. In the meantime, they’re going to kill somebody else. So this is the gravity of a handful of lives right off the bat. That’s worth all of us stopping what we’re doing and coming together for three days to meet like this. Your son, there was enough gravity, or you gave it enough gravity to pull in other people. And how often in our lives, and I’ll own it in my life, look at something and if that were brought up, oh my gosh, come on, it’s not that big of a deal. Seriously, we’re going to call a family meeting or an intervention or get a counselor or whatever, and go, yeah, what could the cost? I guess the idea is counting the costs. Yeah. Well, that’s it. The thing is, it has to be worth it. But first of all, you don’t have to get the entire community involved in the smaller thing. Just talk to a friend or talk to a business situation. It’s like these two guys are going at it. Have a friend of each of them who serve as a kind of collective third side say, hey, what’s in your interest here? So the third side shows up in any kind of way. But it’s like, and you yourself can be a third sider all the time. In fact, parents are third siders all the time with their kids. They just don’t realize it. They’re always like, you’re always mediating between your kids a little bit. And sometimes your kids are meeting among the parents. In my family, that was a bit that way. So it depends on the cost. But just think right now of how much conflict is costing us in ways that we don’t even imagine. A lost time, a lot of emotions. It’s not good for our health. I mean, conflict actually, I’m sure if, I don’t know whether they’ve done studies of this, but it causes ulcers. It causes cancer. I mean, if you just sit on this, all this stuff all the time and you’re angry, it poisons your system. And so the conflict actually has all kinds of hidden costs. And then obviously destroys relationships, destroys marriages, destroys families, takes apart workplaces. So I think this is a time when we really, it’s worth it. It’s more than worth it to get, I know there’s a kind of reluctance to get others involved and whatever. And it’s not about getting others involved as busy buddies, but in a helpful way to say, hey, sometimes we need help. And where’s that help going to come from? Is it going to come from the third side? And it might come, you mentioned prayer and God, that’s the third side too. That’s the larger hole. But I do think that sometimes it’s not enough to go to the balcony. Balcony opens the way to building the bridge, but sometimes you need the third side and more often than you think. Well, I’m thinking again about myself. There have been times when even in some aspect of awareness, I’m not completely aware of it. Here we are. So I’ve done the balcony. I want to build a bridge. I just don’t see how. I don’t know how, or even if it’s all my own limitation, I just can’t get out of, and I’ve definitely been in places where I can’t get out of a me and them. I just, I know I should. I’m just, it’s just an admission. I can’t, we’ve got to get some help because I’m so far in a hole that I’ve got to get some help and there’s no option but a third side. Yeah. That’s it. And you know, I mean, in sports, right? As good as a champion you want to be, you benefit from coaching, right? Yeah. From having a coach. Yeah. Think of a third sider as a kind of coach, as a kind of like conflict coach, like, because as you say, I mean, right there, I mean, first of all, you’re, what I really appreciate about you, Kevin, you’re really honest about yourself. You’re honest about where you’re falling down. And that is, that’s the essential precondition to actually being able to learn and improve. And once you do that, there’s help all around us that we just don’t see. Yeah. One of the things, Bill, that stuck out to me on that note is it was a story. And at some point you said, we can, we created this. This is what I wrote down. At least we created this. We can fix this. So if we created this, we can fix this. And it brought me to that, I guess, an aspect of responsibility of saying I’ve got to admit that I helped create this. If it wasn’t for me, there wouldn’t be, if it wasn’t for me stating I like coffee, well, then you would have just had tea and we’d all be good. It’s my coffee that started the, I mean, I am a part of it. And so it has me just, I guess on the concept, just of responsibility of we’ve got to be able, I know it’s easy to go to a victim mentality, but we’re at that back to the self-image, self-awareness, self-confidence, even to be able to do this, I’ve got to be able to take, if I want to resolve or not to not, doesn’t mean we have to resolve it, does it? We’ll do that too, before we end, but we’ve got to have some aspect of taking responsibility. That’s got to come to the forefront here. Absolutely. And going to the balcony is taking self-responsibility. Third side is the community, the people who care about the thing around us saying it’s our responsibility to try and transform this conflict. And the biggest, one of the biggest obstacles in any conflict is the blame game. It’s like, we just get the blame game, you’re to blame, you’re to blame, you’re to blame. And that goes nowhere. And in fact, if we can take responsibility and say, look, I don’t know, maybe I’ve only got 1% of this or whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. I’m co-creating the situation. I’m co-creating this conflict. That actually gives us power. Once we take responsibility, we actually have power to influence it. When we play the blame game, oddly enough, we’re disempowering ourselves. Okay. I’m going to bring that out. And I forgot about that. That’s actually where I started off in the book. And it was my first note, but I got so into other stuff. One of your first opportunities came from something that you had done in your youth somewhat. And you were asked how to tell if negotiations were going poorly or well, or you came out with some thoughts on that. And you said, well, gosh, if you’re, so let’s take you a billion, you’re watching a negotiation. If it’s a business, if it’s within two countries, or if it’s a husband and wife, and you say, okay, how to tell if they’re going poorly or well, and you said, well, gosh, if it’s going poorly, there’s blame. Just what you said, blame mired in the past and focused on what’s wrong. If it’s going well, you said, not talking about the past, but talking about the present and the future. And instead of focusing on what’s wrong, focusing on what can be done instead of attacking each other and attacking the problem jointly. Honestly, that segment right there is, that’s worth the price of admission. Folks go buy the book just for that. That was profound. I mean, that covers so much of this right there. That’s it. That’s it. You know, so oftentimes when we imagine like a conflict negotiation, it’s almost like one person’s on one side of the table, the other person’s on the other side of the table. Why not be on the same side of the table facing the problem in all its difficulties, but actually attacking it together rather than attacking each other. You’re much more likely to get to a better outcome for all sides. It’s so powerful. One last thing I do want to hit here because it came out of my mouth a minute ago was conflict resolution. That’s what we, that’s what I have until I read your book. That’s what I’ve thought of. Okay. What’s the point with conflict? What’s conflict resolution? You said a little bit ago that the point is not always to agree or the opportunity. It may not be well, I know again, the book’s about possibilities, but sometimes there may not be a possibility for agreement, but we can still do something positive. So tell us about that in the aspect of, because that’s somewhat revolutionary or contradictory to our thoughts. Seriously, we can come in, you and I can go talk about coffee and tea and we may not have conflict resolution. Well then what the heck do we have? So. Well, this is the thing. We get fixated. I entered the field of conflict resolution. The idea of resolution is it’s all over. You end the conflict, right? And in fact, with a lot of the conflicts that we engage in, they’re ongoing situations. You know, there’s ongoing creative tensions between us because we have differences, right? And so we don’t always have to, we don’t have to resolve everything. We don’t have to agree on everything. We need, the key opportunity, the key choice we have is to transform the way in which we deal with it. Because if we can deal with it healthily by talking about it, by listening to each other, by finding creative ways forward, we can continue to live with these situations because a lot of these situations, you know, Republicans, Democrats, they’re always going to be in conflict in some sense. But can, the question is, can we deal with our differences in a healthy way that allows the whole country to do well? And that’s what I found in almost every, the war situations. The war ends, the conflict continues, but the war ends. In other words, you continue to deal with your differences by talking them out rather than by fighting it out. It’s so interesting. It makes me think of the little coexist bumper stickers you see on cars that we’re talking about. It didn’t say resolve conflict or agree on everything, but just figure out how to coexist. And as we’re sitting here talking, we’re a mere days away from Christmas where a lot of people are going to be with family members and friends that they’re, they are not going to resolve conflict. They are not going to agree on stuff, but for the love of God, can we, can we just coexist for a meal? So it’s high time for that. This is, it’s just great. I thank you. I mean, this is, I’m selfish with my show. Yeah. It’s, it’s Kevin’s therapy journey here and asking the questions that I want and feel like, gosh, I need, you know, for myself. So folks, as you’re listening, again, the book is called How We Survive and Thrive in an Age of Conflict. And as of this show being published, it will have just been just been made available. So you can go find that on Amazon and whatnot. And you know, is there any Bill, any other place that you would have people connect with you outside of the book, or is that the primary place to go? Well, I have a website too, if people want to go to it, it’s just my name, William at WilliamYuri.com. That’s U-R-Y. And, and yeah, I, I just want to say, Kevin, what a huge pleasure it is to have this conversation with you as you can feel your, your honesty, your, your desire to learn. And, and if we all had a little bit of that, I think we’d all be doing a lot better. Well, thank you again. That’s, that’s why I have the best job ever. I get to come and and grow in the areas from the people that I would most want the influence from. Your book is, is incredible how it’s structured. Yeah. I do want to say again, folks, it’s the stories, you’ll be fascinated. So not only are you going to learn, but it’s just the fact, I’d sell somebody, it’s just out of a, out of an entertainment standpoint or an interest standpoint to read the books and the stories, but then they so drive home these aspects. So folks, as you’re listening to this and you get value from it, let us know, let me know, let Bill know, and leave us a review on a rating on Spotify, a review on Amazon. And don’t just say, Hey, the show was great overall to say this show, this is what I got. And I’ll forward that on to Bill. So he can see that as well.

What Drives You is brought to you by Ziggler, your premier source for equipping life and leadership coaches. Visit Ziggler.com and let them inspire your true coaching performance. Welcome to What Drives You. I’m Kevin Miller, your host and guide to help you master your inner drive so you can live a driven, inspired, and peaceful life that sees you drive further and enjoy the ride. In this episode, we’re back with negotiation, conflict, and possibilities expert, William Ury. In our previous discussion, we dove deep into the focus of his brand new book, Possible, how we survive and thrive in an age of conflict. Here, of course, we go behind the scenes to hear what drives Bill in his personal and professional life, how he handles in this essence, conflict and pursues possibilities in his own world from where he then goes out around the globe literally to lead and influence others. William, again, is the co-author of Getting to Yes. He is co-founder of Harvard’s program on negotiation and consultant to the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, and so much more. But Bill, thanks for being back with me. It’s a great pleasure, Kevin. Well, I am eager to go through some of these because my gosh, what area in our life doesn’t involve conflict to some point. So this will be interesting. So to start off, as I always do, on the what drives you aspect, the concept is spiritual in nature, which came up a couple of times in our talks as far as how we view things and our beliefs and our identity and whatnot. So what drives you spiritually? Wow. I would say, if I had to answer that question, you know, there’s a phrase in the Bible that goes, the peace that surpasses all understanding. And that’s a quality of inner peace as well as outer peace. And it’s what I find when I go for hikes up in the mountains, the glory, the wonder of it all. And that feeling of connection and the feeling of connection with all that is and with all the creation. So I would say that’s what feeds me, feeds my heart, feeds my soul, and keeps me going. When you look at, we started off our first conversation talking about conflict, and I brought up the, here’s the aspect of belief and how we attach ourselves and our identity to that. And so it’s interesting when we look at conflict and even your focus here of possibilities, it seems I’m always enamored with the concept of spirituality at a foundational level of being about something beyond ourselves. And I would think that at a core that’s got to help conflict and possibility thinking. Without question, Kevin, that’s, I mean, in the larger sense, that’s what the third side is. The third side is the whole. And in conflict, which we often imagine is, you know, gets reduced to two sides, us versus them, you know, Arabs versus Israelis, husband versus wife, labor management, Republicans, Democrats. There’s always a third side. And in the largest sense, in the highest sense, that third side is spirit, it’s source, it’s the divine. It’s interesting. I haven’t thought about this in eons, probably because it kind of was a fad that went away, but it’s the, what would Jesus do? If nothing else, if you don’t have a tribe to bring around you or a coach or consultant or mentor or whatever, what a significantly grounding or centering aspect to if you give credence to any greater power that there’s the time to turn. So it’s not, I get that. And that is where you brought it up now that I remember was the, as opposed to me versus you. That’s it. Yeah. It’s an interesting aspect. And you spent so many times dealing with other countries, other cultures, whatnot, which we know through the span of time have had a spiritual underlining. So when they, as we ended the last talk talking about when they decide, the Bushmen not to take the spear and poison somebody to their death. And you talked about that, actually, that there was a time of coming around and they would talk and they would also lift their hands up and seek guidance. They would. Yeah. In fact, what they would do is they talk during the day and then at night around the campfire, there are gather around the campfire. I watched this and they engage in a kind of collective prayer, collective dancing, even called trans dancing, where they bring down visions from on high to ask guidance of how they should, how should they deal with the conflict that they have in their community. So they turn for guidance to, you know, the larger force of the universe. Well, it’s interesting as you look at conflict or even just negotiation aspects, which again, this is your pathway here. This is your arena that have you, it’s curious, have you found yourselves at times with acute conflict sometimes trying to draw them to, I mean, well, it comes back to your third way, to the bigger picture, like guys, come on, you’ve got to get, there’s more at stake here. What about your loved ones, your culture, your family? I mean, there’s, you’ve got to pull it back. That feels like a draw to, again, a concept. I don’t feel like it’s just semantics, but of spirituality. It is, it is. And you know, the interesting thing is, in these, in those moments when you have, as I’ve had the privilege of sometimes being, where you have like sworn enemies, you know, there’s been bloodshed, whatever, between these groups for years or decades, they’re sitting down, they’re working through their differences. It’s the hardest work human beings can do. You don’t want to listen to the other side, you know, you don’t, you know, it’s like, you know, you’ve got all these feelings when they work through, then there are these breakthroughs where you feel like, you feel like a heavenly presence kind of enters the room. I mean, that’s, that’s peace. And, and, and, and sometimes I think, you know, it’s, you can, there’s a stillness, like, I remember once I was mediating, facilitating conversations between leaders, Turkish leaders and Kurdish leaders, and they’d been engaged in a civil war in Turkey for, I don’t know, 30 years, thousands dead, many tens of thousands dead and, you know, 3000 villages destroyed and just a, you know, scorched earth kind of war. And, and at one point, you know, they couldn’t even actually meet in Turkey. We had to kind of meet in a very confidential setting in a kind of, in France, in an old chateau actually. And, and at one point, a retired Turkish admiral said, I want to say something. And he said, I just want to acknowledge the suffering that the Kurdish people have been through in the last 30 years. So many civilians killed, so many villages razed. I just want to acknowledge that. And on behalf of the Turkish armed forces, I want to offer an apology for all the innocents who’ve, who’ve died as well. Well, you could have heard, heard a pin drop in that room. There was a silence, just this utter silence for a moment before everyone, the Turkish participants, the Kurdish participants, you know, broke out in, in, in applause really, because, but it was like, there was a silence and that’s, that’s, that’s I think what you’re talking about. That, that, those are kind of divine transcendent moments of apology and reconciliation between former enemies. Because it’s beautiful. I’m, I’m drawn back even to the balcony concept, which folks, if you’re hearing this and you haven’t heard part one, go listen to it. But I’m drawn back to that too, if that’s the time to step back. And for me to consider, we talked about responsibility and to consider, okay, here’s conflict. Get out of myself. What’s my responsibility to, yeah, again, the greater purpose, the other people. That’s a step of spirituality. It is. Wow. Well, spirituality isn’t just, you know, just, it’s not just being in church or it’s, it’s, it’s actually, it’s real. It takes place in the midst of life, in the midst of conflict, in the midst of, you know, putting arms to rest and, and, and reconciling. Wow. Well, so on that note, a direct step from that is just relationships, which is what we’re talking about. So we’ll come to that aspect, but I’ll come back to you here that to say, okay, you’ve, we talked about, you know, we’ve got the holidays coming up and you’ve got family that you’re with and what has, what is driving you at this time of life relationally, friends, family, across the board? Well, I’ll come back to peace again. I mean, the thing that I feel grateful for is, you know, different aspects of the family. There hasn’t always been peaceful, you know, completely harmonious relations, but it’s like, this is a moment again, to remember what’s important in life. You were talking about what’s going on for you in your life. You know, it really puts everything in perspective. What is important? And it’s time to, you know, lower the walls, open the hearts, you know, welcome, welcome people and, and, and not only set aside differences, but just kind of like transcend the differences and, and, and remember the love of a family. So it’s, it’s, it’s that moment. And I, and I, I’m just feel intensely grateful at this moment for there being, you know, just that feeling of love and peace in the family, which hasn’t always been there. So it’s just, it’s, it’s that, it’s that, that really drives me that, that’s so, that feeling of healing, of wholeness. I want to take it then from, again, the amazing stories of your, in your book of your experiences with, you know, the higher powers, you know, tangibly of our world. And yet you bring that home to your, to your home, to your wife, to your kids. And we talked in the first show about, I mean, obviously it’s beautiful when we’re in agreement, you know, we joked about coffee and tea, but really you enjoy, well, you’re having peppermint tea. That’s my favorite too. That’s great. How fun. Let’s sit on the deck and enjoy peppermint tea together. And let’s say that we don’t, but then we get conflict resolution and we resolve and find a happy medium. How great is that? How has it influenced you as you’ve walked it out in your own life too, with the aspect, I’m going to come now to what we kind of ended the last show with was when there’s times when you don’t agree. You just, at the end of it, you don’t agree. You’re not going to resolve it. As you just said a second ago, you’re, but you’re going to, you want to transcend the differences. I’m going to live with you or cohabitate with you or partner with you or work with you. Even though here’s this, you like hamburger A, I like hamburger B. We do not agree. There’s no way to resolve it, but we’re going to go forth in peace anyways. That’s it. That’s, that’s exact. I mean, that’s, that’s what’s being called for. I mean, right now our country is at a time of conflict. Maybe as we were talking about before, like maybe more conflict than I’ve, or you’ve ever experienced before in this country. And it’s really easy to lose sight of perspective of remembering the whole, remember, I mean, what I like to do is I remember like the kids, you know, I actually just have, I have a grandson just, you know, there’s a year and a half, you know, we’re having Christmas with him. And and, and I call him my new boss, you know, his, you know, on the very first day he was born in May of last year, I had a chance to hold this baby in my arms for, for an hour. And I was just like feeling the innocence of that being, feeling the pure potentiality, the pure possibility of that being. And I was just asking myself, what, what kind of world, what kind of country, what kind of society are we going to leave him and his whole generation? And if he were, you know, 20 or 30, what would he want us looking back? What would he want us to be doing right now to kind of create the kind of world in which the children of the world can grow up in? That to me is like, that drives me. That’s, that’s, that’s a central driver. Suddenly I realized, okay, I, that I can visualize, I can tangibly, how do we protect this place for our children and grandchildren? That’s, that’s a tangible drive. You, I’m thinking a minute, and I don’t want to split hairs on semantics of words necessarily, but I’m almost thinking, so when you go forth, if you’re not going to have resolution, is it fair to say, yeah, but we want to figure out a way to reconcile our differences so we can coexist, cohabitate? Yeah, absolutely. It’s that, that, that’s what I call transforming conflict. You don’t have, you don’t have to resolve. You don’t have to fix everything. You don’t have to end, you know, you could still, you could like coffee. I could like tea. You could like this. I could like that. You have this set of values. I have that set of values. We can, we can agree to disagree. You know, we can agree to disagree and, and, and say, yeah, okay, that’s where we disagree. And, and then we can look for where we do agree. And, you know, I’ve been reading some, some polls lately, because a lot of the polls always show kind of antagonism and polarization, but I was struck that over 70% of Americans agree with the statement that we Americans have more in common with each other than not. Yes. We forget that. And we, you know, you know, if you go back to our basic values as a country, you know, life, liberty, you know, equality, the pursuit of happiness, you know, those are basic fundamental values that made this country great. And that I think almost that all of us really share, if we can go back and remember what we also agree upon. And then in that context, of course, we’re going to have disagreements. Healthy disagreement is good. That’s what makes for a vibrant democracy. You know, that’s what makes for, for progress, for change when, you know, okay. And that, and that, that’s an occasion. And then within that, it’s like, it’s really important to me. One of the principles of getting to yes, you know, coauthored so many years ago was distinguish or separate the people from the problem. You can be hard on the problem that you need to resolve, but you can also be soft on the people. You don’t have to be, you know, sometimes we think hard on the problem means being hard on the person, attacking them, the blame game and all of that. That doesn’t do any good. Or we think, you know, if I want to be soft on the person, I’d be soft on the problem. That also doesn’t solve the problem. So you want to be soft on the people, you know, respectful, kind, you know, to, and, and understanding, listening, all of those things. At the same time, you can be hard and saying, we got a real problem to solve. We really need to look at it. We can’t brush these differences under the rug. You can do both at the same time. You can separate the people from the problem. So you can be soft on the people, hard on the problem. In fact, the harder you need to be on the problem, the softer you need to be on the people. If the people that they’re, you know, their emotions and so on are not going to get away of solving that problem. I didn’t know that statistic. And I so appreciate that. I’ve thought before, if you had opposing sides and you force them to figure out what their, what their similarities were, what were the, I know one time we took the concept because gosh, what more divisive than abortion and said, you know, if you take the people though, and put them as you said, put them on the same side of the table, you see, I mean, they are both fighting valiantly for life. It’s the same thing. Same thing. Well, I love that. Again, it’s just one of those things. It’s easy to go epiphany and yet to walk it out is so counterintuitive. That’s it. That’s exactly. And you know, the thing is what I’ve found when I’ve watched those kinds of conversations, deep conversations about that kind of issue, for example, is, you know, everyone prizes freedom and choice and everyone prizes life. Right. So if we can just agree on that and then you say, okay, where can we agree? You know, everyone would agree on how important and vital it is, for example, to reduce teenage pregnancy. And that actually takes care of a huge portion of the problem. So if we could actually take some of that energy that we spend fighting each other and focus on solving the problem and just making sure there is, you know, just reducing those numbers as down to where they’re minimal, then, you know, everyone will be better off. Gosh, it’s significant. Yeah. I, I just, what a great exercise. I should do that with my kids. The next time they’re in conflict. Okay. You guys sit over here. If you want dinner tonight, I want you to come up with a list of the things that you guys agree on or the values that you, the similar values, you know, that you hold such a significant part. For many business owners, the holidays can be super promising and also super challenging. My experience is buyers are more rushed and stressed and less rational and your sales process has got to be clear and streamlined. And I’m a big fan of Shopify who has custom features and tools geared toward holiday season purchasing. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the U S from household names that, you know, to entrepreneurs who will be participating in their first black Friday and cyber Monday this year with Shopify, you can accelerate your content creation. It’s got AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, even enhance your product photography to help increase your reach during the busiest time of the year. If you want to give customers the best experience possible this holiday season, I’d ask you to check out Shopify this black Friday. You can join thousands of new entrepreneurs hearing for the first time with Shopify, sign up for your free trial today at Shopify.com slash Kevin. That’s Shopify.com slash Kevin. One more time, go to Shopify.com slash Kevin, make this black Friday one to remember. This episode is brought to you by 20th century studios, upcoming comedy, Ella McKay from Academy award-winning writer, director James L. Brooks. Emma Mackey plays Ella McKay, an idealistic young woman who juggles family and work in a story about the people you love and how to survive them. Featuring an all-star cast, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Loudon, Kumail Nanjiani, Iowa Debrie, Julie Kavner with Albert Brooks and Woody Harrelson. Ella McKay in theaters, December 12. Significant. Yeah. I just, what a great exercise. I should do that with my kids the next time they’re in conflict. Okay. You guys sit over here. If you want dinner tonight, I want you to come up with a list of the things that you guys agree on or the values that you, the similar values, you know, that you hold such a significant part. All right, Bill, the next one is health and wellness. Very tangible one. So if we look at just that, and I know you’re a hiker, you like me, like to head off in the mountains of our beautiful Rocky mountains, but tell me what’s driving you today in your pursuit of your own health and wellness? Well, I would say hiking is definitely, you know, my number one practice. I get out every single day. That’s why I live in Colorado is something about the mountains here, the magnificence, the air, the clarity, the, just the solitude often. And just the beauty just fills me with awe and wonder. And, and I find that it, it’s actually, it works physically for health. It works emotionally, you know, centers me. It works mentally. It gives me, you know, I have my best ideas, my most creative ideas out hiking. And spiritually, it fills me with that sense of awe and wonder. So it’s, it’s all in one. That’s one thing. And then, yeah, that’s, that’s probably my number one, you know, beauty, that natural beauty is my, is the balm. You know, people sometimes ask me, you know, cause I spend the day working on conflicts, you know, whether it’s, you know, Columbia, Afghanistan, the Middle East, you know, right now, just heartbreaking Ukraine. And what I use to just bring myself and feed myself and resource myself is those, is that, is that daily contact with, with nature. And if I can, I take two walks a day. And if I can have a meeting, you know, I’d much rather walk than sit. Do you live in a place where you can just take off from your door? Oh yeah. I take off right. I live right up against open space and there’s a lake right outside my door and we just go around the lake. And there’s an old saying that there’s no problem in the world so great that it can’t be solved with a walk around the lake. I have not heard that, but I appreciate that. I live by high mountain lake. That’s my playground that I go right from the, yeah, right from the door. What drives just your interest, your own personal? Why, if you look at health, so that’s, that covers a lot of things, but just as you look at Bill’s health and wellness, why do you want to be healthy and well? What’s driving it today? Um, that’s a good question. I would say the first word that comes to me is aliveness. I want, I mean, I want to feel alive, fully alive, fully present. And when I have a health issue, like, uh, last year I was working out with some weights, uh, doing some squats and I, and I, uh, herniated the disc in my back and, you know, I couldn’t walk for, go hiking for about five months, you know? And, uh, and so, so just to be alive and to be here for my kids, for my grandkids, uh, you know, I’ve got one grandchild, but it’s, it’s like, uh, to me, health is that is to give that feeling of fullness to really, you know, really feel fully enjoy the, the joy of, of living to the, to the day that I die. And that’s why, that’s why health is so important. Health is like the basic foundation without that. It’s hard to do. Yeah, absolutely. So I hear hiking, I hear, so you’re used to, at least to do some weights and whatnot. Yeah, I do. What about on the nutritional side? Anything that you ascribe to there? Yeah. And I also do stretching, you know, I, uh, a lot of, you know, like, uh, I’ve, I’ve, I realized that especially as I get older, stretching is really important. So I, I’ve taken up some yoga and some other things just to kind of balance, you know, weights, stretching, and then the, and then the cardio, of course, the hiking comes with that and nutritionally. Yeah. I, I also, um, I kind of have a, my philosophy is everything in moderation. And so, uh, you know, I, I, I, uh, I don’t drink a lot, very, you know, last night I had a little couple, I have a couple of wine, but, uh, you know, I, uh, it is the holiday season. I don’t smoke and I, I drink, I mean, I eat, I, I try to eat healthily. I try to eat, uh, healthily. I, I mostly, um, uh, don’t need a lot. I don’t eat meat so much anymore. Chicken, you know, I eat fish and stuff, but, but I, I try to eat a balanced diet of vegetables and things. So for me, yeah, diet, diet is, uh, it’s what I’m, I’m feeding my body with for health. So I try to pay attention to it. I’m, you know, not always, I don’t, I don’t try to do anything too much. I don’t go into radical diets or anything like that. But, uh, the other thing I find too, is I, um, I find, uh, intermittent fasting kind of helpful sometimes, uh, you know, just not just to maybe not eat until, you know, 11 or, or noon, have a, have a smoothie or something like that. I find that’s also, also helpful. Tell me you have already, the next category is mind and your mental health. And I even like to look at it as your mental state, which I appreciate that you just said it was interesting that you’re gosh, you’re dealing in conflict. You’re dealing with people and emotions and whatnot. And what I paraphrase from what I heard you is there’s a time to, you know, let that go. And obviously a favorite place to go is out into the woods, which I can’t, uh, I, I, I couldn’t align with more, uh, but tell me about that, about the efforts to put yourself in the mental state that you want to be. Yeah. Um, well, I’m fortunate to live in a place like in the mountains. You also get these wide views, you know, views for hundreds of miles. And I have a feeling that that actually helps you in your, it gives you that spacious perspective. You know, you look up at the big sky, you look up at the stars at night. And, uh, um, and I also find that, that, uh, instead of worrying about the world, you know, I used to, you know, as a boy, I used to, you know, like worry about like, like, um, I spent some time in Europe and, and as a boy, and, you know, you could see the evidence of world war one, world war two, and everyone was expecting world war three. I found that the best way to deal with the worries of the world is to turn towards them and actually do something about them. If you can, you know, whatever it is, it could be something small, but it’s like, it’s action and it’s putting your mind on it, but in a constructive way of what can, you know, asking myself, how can I help? Uh, and, uh, and that actually gives me a funny kind of immunity to worry because as soon as I’m in, in, in activity, uh, I’m doing something about it. It’s a, it gives you that kind of immunity that I imagine that surgeons have, you know, when they’re doing is like they’re acting. So they’re, you’re, you’re kind of immune to, to, to, to those things. So I, I find, um, I find action, that kind of mental action of like focused. Okay. Um, I’m worried about what’s going on in the middle East. Let me try and do something about it. It’s interesting. We talked, uh, off, off camera, at least about, uh, me having Arthur Brooks. Uh, he was, you know, on the show yesterday talking about happiness and talked about his research on what makes somebody happy and I’ll, I’ll boil it down. And you probably are aware of her, heard this too, but he said, you know, is it doing things for themselves? Go get a massage, go watch a movie, go have a great, you know, do the thing for yourself or doing things for others. And literally at the end of the day, their research was that you, that happier feelings come with serving others. So it’s interesting to hear you say that, that you’ve experienced, that that’s what gives you the mental state that you would rather be in. It does. And you know, I had the good fortune when I was young, like 20 or something, I decided to pick a question, like a life question that I was going to focus on. Um, what was I going to use my, my one life for, you know, and that was a larger, a larger mission, like the one you’re talking about with Arthur. And it was a question of, I realized I was really curious about is how we human beings are going to coexist. How are we going to live together? How are we going to work through our differences? Because we’re at a point in the evolution of humanity where our minds have devised all these amazing technologies that have enormous destructive potential where we can basically put an end to life on earth. And the question is, can we put that same kind of creativity into figuring out ways into the moral, the spiritual, the emotional, the political, the social ways in which we can live with each other? Can we do that? Because it’s like, there’s a race between those two now. And I decided to devote myself to that question of how can we learn to deal with our differences healthily so that we can create a, and it’s the kind of question you can never answer in your lifetime. It’s you can just work, you can live with, you can work on, you can study. So it’s been a lifetime of questing around the world, whether in families or in coal mines or in civil wars in Africa and Asia, Latin America, you name it. Always sort of looking and asking and learning about that one question. And it’s a question that has a larger purpose and it’s given my life purpose and it’s just brought. And as I like to say, some people, sometimes the mission’s impossible, but the company is good. You meet the most amazing people. Hi, I’m Jim. I’m not an actor, just a guy living with prostate cancer. My wife and I face each day head on. We asked my doctor about Xtandi Enzalutamide. Xtandi 40 milligram tablets treats men with prostate cancer that has spread to other parts of the body and responds to a medical or surgical treatment to lower testosterone. Xtandi may cause serious side effects, seizure, a brain condition called press, allergic reactions, heart disease that can lead to death, falls and bone fractures, swallowing problems or choking that can lead to death. Stop Xtandi and get medical help at once if your face, tongue, lip or throat starts swelling. 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I mean, the show is called What Drives You? And you just shared that at 20 years old, you’re asking yourself a life question. And it was how are we human beings going to coexist? My experience, when I was 20 years old, I was looking at how to win the next bike race. Or, you know, most are thinking about how to get the next date or a car or whatnot. I’m curious what drove you to that thought? Was there a life experience that you had had, something you’d been exposed to that brought you to that interest? Well, I’ve asked myself that same question, Kevin. And as best I can find, when I was like six, I grew up in the Midwest and we moved to Europe for a year. And we traveled around Europe a little bit. And it wasn’t that long after World War II. And you could see the ruins and you could feel it. You could feel the graveyards, you know, the cemeteries and World War I. Because there was World War I and then 20 years later, World War II. So these two cataclysmic wars. And then there was every expectation of a World War III that would be absolutely cataclysmic atomic. And so, and I could never quite understand what it was that I thought there has to be a better way of dealing with our differences. Even as a boy, I was kind of curious about it. And I’d put it away, studied history and things like that. But it came back to me. And that combined with the fact that there in school for a while there, I was in school with kids from all over, you know, from different countries, many different countries, different languages, different religions, different. And I could see that we could coexist. And I thought, well, if we can coexist here in school, why can’t we do this in the world? So I had that question in the back of my mind. And I think when I was looking to what am I going to study in college? What am I going to, what am I going to focus on? I wanted to have a quest of some kind, you know, that was larger than me, that was. And I realized, you know, something to do with humanity, like a question. And that was the one I settled on. I’ll tell you a story, too. I was like 23. I was studying anthropology because I wanted to understand what is it about this human creature here that we need to know for this. And I got a call one night, it was cold January in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was studying anthropology and it was 10 p.m. at night, and the phone rang. And you never got calls from professors, certainly on a weekend. And it said, you know, this is Professor Roger Fisher. And I just read your paper on taking an anthropological perspective on the Middle East peace talks. And I liked it. And so I sent the central chart to the Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East, because I thought he might be interested in taking a look at it. And would you like to come work with me? Well, I was just stunned. I was like speechless. I was like, am I dreaming? And because I never thought that like a creative idea, an idea I might have might be a practical use to someone working on what was widely perceived as the world’s most difficult conflict. And I got hooked. It was like I got hooked on the idea that maybe we could use our innate creativity to come up with ideas that could help people deal with their differences better. And I’ve been on that journey ever since. That’s tremendous. I mean, purpose. Well, OK, our next category is work, career and business. And of course, I’m supposed to ask you what drives you there? I think we just heard what drives you there, though. I’ll still go to I mean, I’m sure there’s been many evolutions of that, but that early on. Well, no, that’s an interesting concept, actually, Bill, because so so you knew the direction, the path. And of course, you know, again, just talking with Arthur Brooks about happiness and it’s that’s what we want to enjoy the path, not just have a destination. I imagine you’ve had plenty of destinations like, gosh, I’d like to achieve this promotion or this position or this opportunity or whatnot. And you’ve done that regardless of those. You have found purpose and I would assume enduring good to his standpoint, you know, happiness and you enjoy the path you’re on, period, regardless of the fruitions or not of that fair. That’s absolutely true. It’s like, you know, I learned early on and not, you know, to you, especially you work on these war situations, you know, the chances that you’re going to bring some of these situations, you know, you got to work on them for years, like decades, even, you know, like, you know, working on the Middle East is one example. So you can’t get too attached to the outcome. You have to really just prize the journey and the moments of success and the parts of things because there’s and there’s for every success or setbacks, there are failures and you just that persistence, but also just enjoying the process itself of human beings grappling with their most difficult situations. You know, my grandfather who came to this country at the age of 14 alone with, you know, from Europe without a penny in his pocket and just started washing windows. Eddie. Eddie, exactly. Eddie, his motto for his little company was wanted a hard job. And I feel that’s, you know, whether you’re in sports, I’m sure, you know, you’re bicycling, you know, there’s a thrill in having a hard challenge, something that’s really hard to do. And you can’t get just, just so fixated, particularly on these hard jobs, that there’s always going to be success, there’s going to be failures, there’s going to be setbacks, that’s all part of the process. The realities of work, I will ask you on today, that what’s driving you, you like most of my guests. I mean, you’ve got a book, you know, coming out, your reach continues to grow, your opportunities continue to grow. And within that, there’s usually cause to be clearer than ever on what is driving your work, what you want to do, what you don’t want to do. What are your parameters around there that help you stay, again, in the path that you know, you’re going to be enjoying this? Well, a few years ago, about the same time, or maybe a little later than I had this hike with Jim Cullens, in which he asked me to sum up everything that I’d learned in one sentence, he said, Darwin could do this, you could do it, you know, that might be useful in these times. I got a very strong, kind of like, message, you know, like, inner, from inner voice when I was out hiking up and high in the mountains, which was, you know, you’re not getting any younger. So pass it on. That’s just those three words, pass it on, whatever I’ve learned. And that’s really what was the genesis of that book was, because Jim also said to me, just good advice. He said, if you want to write a book, sit down and wait for the impulse to go away, because it’s going to drive you crazy if you really want to write a good book. So you wrote about that. I love that. Look for a reason to not write it. Right. Any reason you can have not to write that book. And only if you can’t not, not write the book, do you sit down and write it. And so, but in this case, that was a compelling drive was like a compelling, like inner instruction for my deepest self, which was pass it on. And that’s what I tried to do in that book is really pass on what I’ve had the privilege to learn from so many people, from so many different cultures, from so many different faiths, from so many different walks of life throughout my life, is just to pass on the essence of what I’ve learned in a way that could be helpful to the generation of our kids and our grandkids, or today for that matter, as we struggle with the hard conflicts that we face in today’s world. So that’s really what drives me. I just couldn’t honor that more. And again, as we’ve talked about, it’s timely. As I look at my dad, who’s been given literally mere months, and he’s a best-selling author and influencer, and it’s been interesting to spend time with him. And there’s almost this feeling of going, okay, I shouldn’t say almost, there has been within me. I’m grappling with a little bit of, okay, now give me your best. I mean, it just feels like everything’s going to culminate now. Everything’s acute. Give me your best. And to his credit, which I know as well, also he’s saying, I have been, I have been, you’ve been getting it for years. I thought, what a gift. And now with this finite time, it’s interesting. We’ll see what he does, but I know he’s feeling like, I don’t know that I feel called to, I’ve given my best. I’ve said what I want to say. I may just hold hands with my wife and enjoy the last days. That’s it. Well, that, that, I mean, that’s so touching, so moving. You know, I get a shiver when I, when I listening to you, Kevin, it’s like, that is the evidence of a life well-lived, is when you can come to that stage, when you’ve got a few months to live, and you can say to your son, whom you love, you know, I’ve done it. I’ve given what I have. And now I just want to hold hands with my wife and that, that’s it. That, I mean, what more could you ask for? And now I just want to hold hands with my wife and that, that’s it. That, I mean, what more could you ask for? It’s obviously dramatically convicting to me right now, but what you just said, your experience, even with this book and Jim’s question to you, what a gift to talk about relationships. That’s can’t get more profound than that. There’s your third way to a massive degree. The next category here, Bill, is money, is finances, is wealth, is possessions even. So as you look at that, tell me what’s, what comes to your mind about what’s driven you, what’s driven you, what drives you? Yeah. Well, again, this is all just me, so I can’t, I’m not offering this as a counsel to anyone else, but just my own learnings and lesson is when I was in my early twenties, I’m not exactly sure, but I kind of made a vow to myself that I would, I would pursue what I most wanted to do in life. And I wouldn’t sell my, quote, sell my soul. I wouldn’t just, if I could possibly avoid it, just work for just money alone. Because most people don’t even have this option, but it’s almost like, I remember reading when I was in my twenties, that there was a distinction between a lot of people, you know, what we have as a job and it brings in money and it supports the family. It’s really important, right? And then some people can get a career where in addition to just having money, you know, you get recognition of your peers and so on. And you’re lucky if you can actually have a calling, which is where what you do gives you meaning. And you could have, I mean, you could have a calling and sell peanuts. I mean, it’s not a, it’s not a thing. It’s like, it’s like, you know, there are people who on the street just can sell something and they’re, they have a, they’ve got a mission. They just connect with every client, every customer. So it’s not about doing something highfalutin, but it was like a calling. And for me, you know, I said to, I would rather, I said to myself again, this is the youth of saying this, but I’d rather reduce my needs than my material needs rather than, you know, in order to be able to do what my heart most wanted me to do. And the interesting thing that I found as I was lucky, people aren’t always that lucky, but I was lucky. I encountered some success early on, you know, I coauthored getting, yes, I was 28. So, and it, you know, and it became, and it kind of like, but for me, what I took it as is whatever monies came in for me, I took that as a sign from the universe that I was supposed to give back. And so I was, and so, so I adopted early on that a kind of a principle, which again, people might not be so fortunate, I’m not exact, is like, I’m not going to take money for doing anything that is my sacred work, the work on peace. I’ll take money if I’m doing work for businesses as I did, you know, helping them make money, I’ll definitely take money. But if, but for the work on peace in different parts of the world, I won’t, and I’ll use the money that I have in business to support the work that I’m doing for peace. That’s tremendous. I don’t know if I’ve heard a better testimony on money than that. Thank you. I’ll tell you one other, one other thing, Kevin is, and again, I can’t say this is universal, but I’ve found curiously that the more I give to the larger whole, the more work I do, you know, for that larger cause, like you were talking about with Arthur Brooks, the more prosperity comes in. In other words, the more I’m not attached to the money, but simply do the work for the meaning of it. And I’m not saying this works for everyone or whatever, but it’s just been my own personal experience. The more, the more abundance comes into my life. That couldn’t be more significant than that. And I think that’s what we tend to find. And yet, and again, culturally, that’s not where we’re at. You brought up the word attachment. We tapped on that in the first show, but attachment that, you know, money in and of itself, it’s not good or bad. And so that’s the old Dave Ramsey term, it’s not good or bad, but what we do with it, but in this terms, our attachment to it. And so, I mean, it’s powerful to say that as you have not attached to it and gone after the things that really matter without a financial mindset, that it has benefited you, well, financially, but in every way. In every way. Yeah. And, and, and again, I’m not, I’m not saying, I sort of sense that there’s, there’s some kind of principle in the universe that the more you give, the more you will receive. Yeah. And somehow, because we have this scarcity mindset of fear, naturally and understandably, we want to receive before we give. And, and somehow, if you can reverse it, there can be a kind of a cycle of giving and receiving, giving and receiving, that’s like a, an endless cycle. Well, you mentioned, I mean, it was the first talk together, a biblical reference, but the, you reap what you sow, the spirit of it. I mean, Bill, I got, I can say that sometimes I’ll, you know, and talking with the team and we’re looking at things and how do we do this with the podcast and promote it and whatever. And I’ll find myself, it’s almost kind of, you know, cold water. It’s like, okay, wait, what are we doing this for? I mean, if we’re just looking for downloads, then we could just, you know, talk about sex, apparently, or crime. That’s what seems to get the most, we got a purpose here. And man, bringing myself back to that is so, it’s like, it’s like the shoulders go down, the peace comes. And then I would say it’s probably when the opportunity unfolds. That’s it. Well, possibly. Exactly. That’s it, Kevin. And I would suggest, I would dare to suggest that actually, when your shoulders go down, you are at your best. Yeah. And when you are at your best and your very best is coming out of you, whether it’s in monetary ways or other ways, you know, you’re just, you’re going to be living a life of, of greater abundance. And, and if you go the other way of living in fear and scarcity, there is a little bit of a self-confirming prophecy there as well. I think I should have my team business meetings after we do a show like this, after we do a show. That’s when I’m the most centered on what matters is right here. Tell me about achievements. That’s one I get focused to in my book of how we find so much, you know, value and even our purpose and calling in, in some of the achievements, not in and of themselves. But as we look at that, as you look forward and you found your purpose, you found a calling, what drives you towards or is towards things that you may still want to, you still have out there, you still like to achieve? That’s a really good question. I mean, at this point in life, I would say, you know, my, right now, as I kind of reflect on where I am in life, I just, this year I just had my 70th birthday, just a couple months ago. And, you know, I was like, okay, you know, you’re at that biblical age of three score and 10, and maybe it’s not quite the same 70 as it was back in biblical days. But I just, I thought, what do I most want? Like an achievement, like you’re saying. And so I took a week by myself out in the wilderness, at the foot of a mountain, very high mountain, by a mountain stream in the wilderness, and just spent the week, just camped out. I didn’t do much hiking, just sort of sat there and listened to the stream. And, you know, just reflected with gratitude on my life and, you know, did a little bit of an accounting and just slowed down. Because that’s the thing is, life gets so fast and with social media and everything like that, but just slow down. And I actually have nothing to do. I didn’t bring any books. I brought a journal to write in. But I just like, okay, just let me sit with nature here and sit, sit. And, you know, in that moment, that’s all I wanted. I realized that right there under my nose was just like being able to just be, you know, the achievement of just to be and have my heart be full with gratitude for all the people I’d known, all the people I’d loved, all the people would love me, all the people I’d met, and just all the beauty. And funny thing is, I was afraid I was going to feel lonely. And in the end, I didn’t. I’ve had the company of the, obviously, the trees, the birds, the mountain, but mostly all the kind of, even the beings that, you know, the human beings, you know, they were present for me. And that was a kind of an epiphany for me that actually less is more. That actually, I was thinking of going away and doing something, a big trip. And I thought, no, just spend, give yourself, it was five days and five nights. And by the end of it, I was thinking, I could probably continue this. You know, I bathed in the stream. I just like, you know, did whatever, you know, just, but there was nothing to do. And it was just like, just pure gratitude. And that to me was, I don’t know if it answers your question of achievement, but that’s what felt to me like the achievement is as much inside myself right now. It’s not so much in terms of outer achievements. I know it’s beautiful. It’s alignment, it has alignment. I asked the same thing to Robert, Bob Waldinger. We talked about that and he said, you know, I’ve got things I want to achieve right now. I’m just more interested in enjoying the path that I’m on. And, and this term of being keeps coming up. I think I talked about it recently with Thomas Hubel. I saw you were on his show. Yeah. Yeah. He’s a friend of mine. Okay. Oh gosh. Okay. Well, I’m new, I’m new to his acquaintance and we did a series. Actually he’s still, he’s coming back on to do another show. I think right after the first of the year, but this aspect of being, and it’s, I’ll tell you, it’s interesting, Bill, this year was a big year of adventures. I did, I got involved with the guys group of adventurers and, and just, we went, we went out of country and we did all kinds of stuff and it was great. And I don’t feel that call at the moment this year. And I actually told a friend recently, I thought, I may just go to a monastery for a week or something, though your idea of just hitting a stream and not mountain biking, not hiking, not kayaking, not whatever. I may have to ask you where that was and yeah, go where, go where that is. Just over the mountains from where you are in the San Luis Valley, which is a huge empty valley with the Sangre de Cristo mountains. And, and the, you know, speaking of adventure, you mentioned that because that, when we were talking earlier, that word, you know, for me, life is an adventure and early on, that’s why I, as a quest, okay, what’s the question? You know, I’m, I’m on an adventure to answer this question. I became an anthropologist because anthropology was just for me, a license to be curious and wander the world and answer that question. And I became a negotiator because I wanted to get my hands dirty. I wanted to really not just observe, but participate actively in, in, in the process. And, you know, one, one thing that we haven’t talked about is about 20 years ago, after 9-11, after the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I was saying, wow, where’s the world going right now? And I was thinking, there’s so much separation, people are getting so separated. What can actually bring us together? What can connect us? And I was here on this lake here, talking with some friends, having a dinner under the August night sky. And they had just come back from the Middle East, from Syria, from, I don’t know, from Gaza, I don’t know where it was, and talking about all the pain there. And, and I had the idea of, like, because they, they were leading a kind of like pilgrimage there. And I said, well, has anyone ever retraced the ancient route of Abraham? You know, because as an anthropologist, I appreciate the power of story. And, and like, you know, walking through the Middle East, because he’s kind of like the legendary ancestor of everybody, you know, these, these three great face and half the world’s population. And, and it’s like, I didn’t know much about him, but that, you know, I, you know, you know, I thought, what if there could be a long distance walking trail, like the Appalachian Trail, or the Pacific Coast Trail, or there’s this path in Europe, the Santiago de Compostela, this pilgrimage. And I thought, what about that? And people said, that is the craziest idea. I mean, that, I mean, are you crazy? You get walking in the Middle East, I mean, there are wars going on there, and who’s going to want to walk there and whatever. And, you know, I let the idea go, but it wouldn’t, it just kept on coming back to me. And I felt like, okay, what do I know about creating a walking path, a long distance walking path? Well, you know, just, I decided, well, let me just go over and see what happens. And anyway, so I’ve spent the last 20 years working on that project, met the most amazing people, had the most amazing adventures going into what many people might imagine is the heart of darkness, you know, walking right through, you know, Palestine, places of Jesus and everything, and Mary, and those all the stories in Jordan, and Syria, and Turkey, and Sinai, you’re climbing up Mount Sinai, where Moses was. And now there are literally, thanks to the efforts, you know, that, you know, I got inspired by this. There’s thousands of kilometers of this path called the Abraham Path in many different countries. And there are hundreds and thousands of people who walk little sections of it. And it’s, it’s for the generations. You know, I said, this is a hundred year project, but it was kind of a crazy idea, foolish idea, but just, it just, again, to, to connect, you know, just to connect with yourself, connect with others. I am completely ignorant of it. And that’s profound to me. Where is there, where can you find information on that? Well, there’s a website, abrahampath.org, or you can just put Abraham Path in the, in Google, and you can find, I have a TED Talk about it called The Walk from No to Yes, that I did about 10 years ago. And, and it’s just been an endless series of adventures. I’ll go check that out. That’s tremendous. Thank you for sharing that. And you may have covered this. I do often like to end with just, just personal interests. Again, this is about you. Are there the things that you do that light you up, that you do for inspiration? And I can tell by your life that most all of it fits in that, but if you were to look at it from a nonproductive standpoint, an interest, a hobby, a things that you do that just give you joy, play, fun, even, what would be on that list? Well, interestingly, let’s see, what would I come by? I would, I, I, well, it’s just hanging out with family, and playing games, and laughing, and, you know, we had a game night the other night with the kids, and travel, you know, in the past. I’ve really enjoyed that. You know, and I would come back to walking. You know, you don’t have to walk, you know, like, for pace, but just saunter, you know, just walk, just, you don’t have to set a pace, just walk, enjoy, breathe, walk for no reason at all. But there’s something about walking in nature, you know, just, it’s just, it’s the simplest, it’s the most basic human activity. It’s made us human, and is walking, and, and I just find walking with a friend, walking with family, just getting out there, you’re side by side, and that’s why, that’s why, that’s probably why I created this, helped create this Abraham Path, is just get people out walking, because who fights when they’re walking? You’re side by side, you know, and there’s just something so simple about it that I, I love to do, but just, yeah, I would say spending time with family and friends. Last night, I went out with two close men friends, you know, I’ve known them for many, many years, but just hanging out, having a good meal, talking, I love that. Well, I appreciate the testimony, Bill. I am new to walking, if you can believe that. I have spent so many years, I was a pro cyclist, and speed, and you know, now trail running, and I do, I admit, I do love it. I love the adrenaline, and the flow of just going out, and, and going at a high rate, and then we’re at about three, actually just past three months, and I was on a big mountain bike, epic mountain bike ride with, with some guys, some buddies, and we were going full tilt, and I had the biggest wreck of my life, broke seven, seven bones, and partially collapsed the lung. So walking is about all I’ve been able to do, and I am growing in that, so I want to take your testimony. I, I, I feel called to it some at this point, too. I’m eager to go fast again at some point, it’s going to be a while, but to walk, and it’s, it’s a different, it’s just different. I, I’m taking that as a, an epiphany for life right now, of walking instead of running. I do want to ask about playing games, because that’s, I’ve got a big family, I got a lot of kids, and, and grandkids now, and so you say game night with the kids. Give me a couple games you guys play. Well, we, the other night we were playing a game called Catan. Oh, sure, we got that one. We have another game called Ticket to Ride. You got that one, too, okay. We have a, we have a big game closet here, but the thing, funny thing about games, I’m trying to think of other games that we play, but it’s like, it’s like everyone has a fun, they’re joking around, and it’s just a way of doing something together. You’re not just looking at a screen, you’re interacting, teasing each other, and it’s fun. I’ll, I’ll be doing it tonight. I think we’ve got 10, 12 people at the house, and I know that’ll be on tap. I’ll give you another one. We also play charades, you know. One that’s been almost the most agreeable one everybody wants to play is one, you can check it out, it’s called Telestrations. Oh, we play Telestrations, too. Yeah, absolutely. We’ve got, we’ve got the expanded. Oh, we love it. Yeah, we usually have 12 people. Oh, my gosh, the laughter that we’ve had on that, and taking pictures, it’s become part of our vernacular. Oh, yeah. Now, Telestrations is definitely one of our favorites, because it lends itself to creativity, and yeah, those kind of games where, you know, whether it’s charades or Telestrations, and where you’re drawing something, you’re creating something, you have to make something up. Yeah, it’s just, they’re great. They’re terrific. I agree. Well, this has just been a gift. Thank you again, Bill, and for everybody to connect. We talked about that. Your website is, it’s William Ury, it was .org, correct? .org, right? .org. William Ury is U-R-Y, and then, of course, the book is Possible, How We Survive and Thrive in an Age of Conflict. And if you want to see us having fun here and laughing through the conversation, check us out, and we’ll have a bunch of clips on social media. It’s KevinMiller.co, and we would really love to hear what you got out of this. Leave a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts as well. And as always, if you want to learn more about your own drive, get my book, What Drives You? And until next time, stay driven, and Bill, thank you. Huge pleasure, Kevin. Yeah.

Yeah Welcome to what drives you I’m Kevin Miller you have all the drive you need as much as anyone else But in each area of your life, you are driven by desire or fear So let’s get you aligned and driven by your authentic desires. So you are driving further Faster and most of all enjoying the ride every day What drives you is brought to you by Ziegler your source for coaching excellence If you’re a coach or are interested in coaching, please go to Ziegler calm Let the wisdom and sales skills of Zig Ziglar equip you to be an influential and successful coach I also invite you to join us in our community It’s called the drive tribe and we continue the conversations from these shows and topics and go deeper together to help Each other drive further faster and enjoy the ride. You can find it at Kevin Miller dot CEO Click the community button You can also connect with me on social media where you’re now gonna find postings of all these shows just really key clips and Messages, you could see the whole thing on YouTube if you want to and again find me at Kevin Miller dot CEO All right. Now I’m gonna talk to my brother Jared and if you enjoy this show, please give us a rating It’s Spotify and on Apple podcast as well And you can always go deeper into your drive by checking out my book what drives you wherever you get your books in This episode we’re continuing the series on Transforming conflict we began it with William Urie Williams one of the world’s best-known experts on Negotiation the world’s literally across the globe. He’s the co-author of getting to yes It’s the world’s all-time best-selling book on the topic with more than 15 million copies sold He’s a co-founder of Harvard’s program on Negotiation and his brand new book in our muse for part one of this series the book for you guys watching Over the left of my shoulder here. It’s called possible how we survive and thrive in the age of conflict Well here today I for part three. I brought on my brother Jared and Gaza He served many organizations stateside over in Africa and other places on this topic of negotiation or More so conflict resolution. So I want to dig further into this issue today Well brother man, I know that William Urie and his topic is a hundred percent up your alley and as I talked about in the intro, you know talking about conflict resolution Man, I got to be candid for anybody who knows me like you Not a strong point for my life as a very conflict averse guy. I don’t want to deal with any conflict I just want to run so there’s my premise Give me your thoughts on the show Well, I’ll give you I’ll let you off the hook a little bit in that you in this family came by it very naturally conflict avoidance Yeah, and for whatever reason Well, I shouldn’t say that. I think it’s largely just due to my work with being an activist you’re dealing with conflict and I had I had to figure I was in so much conflict all the time. I had to figure it out. I I Was saving this for when you and I get on the mic, but I think this might have been my favorite episode I mean, it’s hard to say that because there’s lots but man, that’s such a great episode and it’s so Who doesn’t get touched by conflict? Nobody, I mean the Dalai Lama gets hit with conflict Well, and I I did appreciate Williams Bill is what he goes by but you know his his take on if we didn’t have conflict We’d ultimately die. I mean if we didn’t have the ability to deal with it, we would all just pass away at some point I mean it’s needed as a natural correction, you know standpoint we get that I mean we can’t you cannot raise a kid without some conflict because when they walk over to the edge of the cliff And if it’s conflict to say no and they cry well, okay, but I’m not gonna let him fall off the cliff I mean it’s needed for survival. I get it there That’s something up actually that well that I thought of it with my with Taya my youngest daughter and she said daddy I think I know but would you ever lie to us and I said, yeah, and she said well, maybe I don’t know What do you mean? She’s eight And I said, well, baby if you were if something was happening and I thought I’d have to think remember I’m a strategist Whatever is the most likely thing to get you from doing the thing that might hurt you I’m gonna say in the moment and we can talk about it later if I had to lie, but that but I I care about Your safety in the moment and I’ll bring that back to what we’re talking about here with conflict This came up with Bill a few times both of you talking about needing to resolve a conflict or whatever and whether or not that was the goal and I I Often in a situation where I’m not necessarily there to resolve the conflict I’m there to create harmony So there’s a if I’m in an activist situation in Congo, you know where I’ve been there. I Have to figure out what do I do? I know these guys aren’t gonna agree. I already know that going into the deal So if I go in there with the idea of I got to get these people to agree on something and resolve the conflict I know I’m going in for a fail But if I go in and say look, I know these guys don’t agree. They haven’t agreed for say the last 200 years There’s gonna be a problem What if I could just create harmony in this situation for us to be able to move forward in some way? That’s almost always the goal and I realized that with my kids a lot too, you know, like with you know, where I’m saying hey, Saoirse, I know you don’t agree with Taya, but That’s okay. You don’t actually have to agree. You don’t even have to resolve the conflict But if you two could create peace, that would be great because we’re in a family So I think a lot of times maybe just I’m interested in kind of starting there and saying Conflict resolution isn’t always about resolution in my opinion It’s really about can I create harmony in this situation? and And you know me well enough to know that this topic is enough for me to just go off and my own the whole time So i’ll i’ll pause here, but I have some thoughts too just about the framing of it as well. Go ahead Well, maybe that’s what i’m going to get into because when you said That that did stand out. I mean I feel like you know, I feel like you know That did stand out. I mean, I actually I feel like that’s freaking huge. It’s like a mock mic drop In that we use that word. I use that word. It was a premise. I began the show with conflict resolution And that feels like we have to come to an agreement which sometimes it is not possible So we are stuck and so I hear you saying harmony and I wrote down. It’s all we’re almost saying conflict Progression we just we have to get past it. We have to be what can we do to move on? So if we’re not going to agree to agree we do have to keep Going forward and not be stuck. So it’s almost like let’s make a deal You know, let’s figure something out where we can continue but that feels Dramatically significant to people whether they’re talking about a political conflict or they’re talking about a conflict in the bedroom Or wherever it may be, you know at home with kids or spouse or whatever of saying you do not have to Agree and that’s that was big news again in the intimate relationships for me To realize or to have somebody said it was a therapist at some point I don’t know that said you don’t have to agree. You can agree to disagree and I was like, holy smokes That gives me a whole new world to live in Because I came under the guise that conflict resolution is you have to come to a point of agreement and at some point We’re not going to agree. I mean if you really like Celery I just don’t I’m not gonna and I don’t want to can can I be okay? I mean, it’s not like that. That’s that’s a good part of it I mean, that’s a good way to address it too because I i’m looking at it and saying I like celery. I don’t care if you like celery But a lot of people do it’ll be like no you gotta like it’s like coffee drinkers as you know It’s like oh you I think you did the coffee tea thing with bill. I did. Yeah and I we both know I mean I was in the coffee biz, you know with a bunch of coffee snobs and I know that That can be a serious conversation about what type of coffee or whatever, especially coffee versus tea but At the end of the day I can be at much more peace If I don’t need you to like coffee too, like so I like my coffee I can be You know over the moon about my coffee nerding out and everything And still not need you to also want coffee you can like tea and I go hey I respect your love of tea just as much as my love of coffee And so if we’re going up into space in one of your space programs and you can only take one thermos That’s when we have conflict Except that i’m going Not you Well, well if we were both going if we’re both going and we both have to share and there’s one thermos There’s one thermos now we have one and we’re saying and this is facetious because I really like coffee and I like tea Um, but we were at start disagreement. I like tea you like coffee and there’s no Way, we’re going to change. We got to come up with a deal a compromise something and you finally say look dude We only take one. How about if we take coffee, but the only food we can take you get to pick that one Okay, so we didn’t yeah That would be a normal kind of conflict resolution where we make a compromise That a compromise Yeah, we resolved to I don’t know who it was I wish I could give him credit but the person who long ago that I read by a therapist or somebody and it was in the idea of compromise and they were trying to bring it into you don’t compromise like you’re giving up if you both you want to You want to both get something out and synergize? Semantics maybe but there is you know, however, you look at it. We’re looking at how can we Come up with something because something equitable fair Yeah, I mean if you’re both sitting on some little seat And there’s room for one butt And somebody and you need to get two people on there The guy that’s already on there is gonna have to just go have these on it in order to accommodate the other person Which is not necessarily as comfortable or enjoyable as where he was prior to the Let him sit on his knees. So so you got a You got a compromise implies that both sides are Taken a little bit of a hit and saying i’m okay with that because the greater outcome we’re looking for here Is in fact greater than me having to sit on half the seat or whatever. So you’re weighing at that point There are lots of other little conflicts Most of the conflict that we deal with on the day-to-day Is not big catastrophic conflict stuff i’ve dealt with you know, there were guns involved uh in africa, you know, so so there’s a That’s a big conflict But on on the whole we have, you know relationships spouse stuff, you know Or stuff with our kids or or close friends or other family members, you know Parents brothers sisters that kind of stuff. We have those kind of relational conflicts Most of the time those times they’re based on some sort of opinion and an agenda There’s a formula there. It’s like I have an opinion about this and I have an agenda to Convince you to get my way to whatever it is. There’s an agenda attached to it a lot of times a conflict can be Dissolved i’d say probably better than resolved dissolved Dissolved i’d say probably better than resolved dissolved Conflict can kind of go away if the other person doesn’t need the other person or one person doesn’t need the other one to Acquiesce to agree to to whatever it is If you’re if you’re in in the kind of conflict so much of the conflict that we bring upon ourselves is based on some sort of uh preference and we talked about that you and I have talked about that I think many times in that Uh, there’s a buddhist philosophy something along the lines of it’s it’s a lot easier to reach enlightenment when you don’t have any preferences Which is kind of an exaggerated way to just say when you analyze things How often is the problem just according to one of your preferences or a result of one of your preferences? For many business owners the holidays can be super promising and also super challenging My experience is buyers are more rushed and stressed and less rational and your sales process Has got to be clear and streamlined and i’m a big fan of shopify who has custom features and tools geared toward holiday season purchasing shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the u.s From household names that you know to entrepreneurs who will be participating in their first black friday and cyber monday this year With shopify you can accelerate your content creation It’s got ai tools that write product descriptions page headlines even enhance your product Photography to help increase your reach during the busiest time of the year If you want to give customers the best experience possible this holiday season i’d ask you to check out shopify This black friday you can join thousands of new entrepreneurs hearing For the first time with shopify sign up for your free trial today at shopify.com Kevin that’s shopify.com Kevin one more time go to shopify.com slash kevin make this black friday one to remember This episode is brought to you by progressive commercial insurance business owners meet progressive insurance They make it easy to get discounts on commercial auto insurance and find coverages to grow with your business Quote in as little as eight minutes at progressive commercial.com Progressive casualty insurance company coverage provided and serviced by affiliated and third-party insurers Discounts and coverage selections not available in all states or situations Yeah Yes agreed Well, and that gets to the kind of the terry real so we had terry on the show he’s the author of us and famous for being gwyneth paltrow’s relationship expert and he You know somewhat famously says or he quotes and he repeats it a lot Something to the aspect of you know, it’s you can’t look at right and wrong My way’s right there what way’s wrong if you’re together and you’re trying to find something and be in harmony You just got to figure out what to do with the issue and quit arguing that it’s right or wrong And so what you said that it is a preference and take right and wrong off the table and do that But over here, I do want to I do want to go to the exaggerated not the exaggerated But the the place that I feel like most people are going to go They’re going to take it to the extreme and go to the worst conflict that they have with the worst enemy or you know the worst scenario Whatever where they feel i’ll never i’ll never forget a guy a friend of mine saying that man we all seek justice But if you come together seeking justice, it’s the assumption that everyone is just And sometimes they may not be so let’s just assume that everybody listening right now Is involved or has been involved in a conflict where you feel like the other person is not there for the betterment of mankind Or anyone they’re there Because of their wounding their fear their ego their whatever and they’re really not being just this is you know Fairness is kind of off the table and you’re left to figure out how to To some degree i’ve been in those you’ve been in those we’ve been in those together not between you and us But you know, we’re dealing with somebody else. It’s like man at this point. We’re just trying to minimize the damage What on earth can we do? because we’re not dealing with somebody who is we’re dealing with somebody who’s there to take care of themselves and not be Just that’s where it feels like the crap hits the fan for most of us in this yeah, I think there’s you know, there’s often a I mean typically i’m kind of checking myself as i’m saying this but I feel like there’s usually a preference for Uh You know There’s a situation when we’re coming into and say we have a conflict with an outside Company or something like that and we have to deal with that there’s a lot of times this idea that I’m doing this to win. You gotta win this thing this argument this battle this conflict, whatever it is I gotta we need to win this. How do we win? And I often will come back and say well, I need to adjust my goal a little bit Because again and I kind of got to this earlier but What if my goal is just harmony because if we’ve got some harmony then we can move forward. It’s kind of like if you’re You know, you’re in the car going somewhere together two people And you’re you’re all going the same way and then at some point somebody says hey I don’t like the direction we’re going. I don’t like the way we’re going there I don’t like I don’t even like this car, you know, whatever it is At that point you have a decision. Okay. Do we have to resolve all this? Or can we just say look we know we don’t agree, but can we just keep driving and talk about it while we’re driving? Now that’s a good idea most times in my opinion And a lot of times the situations that i’ve been in because of the nature of the conflict being so dire Or the consequences of the conflict possibly being very dire That’s the best i’m shooting for Okay, and that’s kind of can we agree to disagree, you know But there’s lots of situations where it’s like I could say this And take it up a notch or I could not and it may not make any difference in what i’m looking for If i’m just looking for harmony Saying this might take it in a different direction If i’m looking to win saying this might make me feel like i’m going to win more So again, if I have to kind of look at the goal here, it’s like what’s the goal when I go into that argument? um or whatever it is that’s coming at me is it to Win meaning I think in that point it is like a soccer game or a football game or whatever It’s to conquer the other side. There has to be a loser And if that and that’s our case Yeah And what I would say that’s our that’s our cultural programming. Oh, I mean my gosh you and I grew up Watching saturday morning cartoons and who was it? It was bugs bunny and elmer fudd. It was tom and jerry I don’t even let my kids watch that stuff anymore But that’s what it was it was it was conflict and it was right or wrong It was the good guy and the bad guy and then we watch star wars and then we watch, you know, name every epic show It’s all there. It’s the story of all time It seems to be and now we go on to social media or the news headlines and it’s the republicans and the democrats it’s the It’s that side and and this side it’s that’s what we’re used to and it is If you’re you’re on one you’re on the right side and everybody else is by proxy on the wrong side as opposed to the This is our preference. This is what we have decided to put our faith to the best that we know not right or wrong, you know, and how can we move forward and here william murray is and and you know, you have and you’re sitting with people who are about to go to War with each other. I mean, this is catastrophic And it’s the same principles that we deal with when we’re sitting across the You know table from our whatever our business partner or a lawyer or your spouse or whatever And it’s this feeling of oh my gosh, this seems right and true to me and this person wants something different And yeah, we get I think I think our our minds culturally if not genetically to some point We’re programmed to think we’re in the right. They’re in the wrong I’m a christian you’re a catholic so you’re wrong, I there’s not a space to go no, man, we can hang out together and most of our value we’re like 95 in line with the same values or 75. Somebody’s gonna be really upset. I said 95 with catholics and Christians, but you know to some degree And I brought that up. I think I did with william and I have with other shows because I know it’s such a volatile subject Is uh abortion And I look at it and go what is the stalwart? Bottom line value of each person the value of a life The woman’s choice the kids rights what but they still and i’m like man kudos to both of you you value life There’s a lot of people that don’t You’re both in my camp, you know, you value life now, then we get into the you know, the issues of it and everybody thinks it’s right or wrong Yeah, man, that’s that’s a hard place to come but it takes a reprogramming to get to this to even get on this platform Man, that’s that’s a hard place to come but it takes a reprogramming to get to this to even get on this platform Yeah, and I mean even the political kind of Section of conflict that you’re pointing to is very volatile as you know and I mean in not just The topic of abortion but all of the different political sides and all that there are There’s a lot of what we call triggers There people get triggered. I appreciate what gabber monte says about triggers says someone can trigger you but you’re the only one with the ammo And I really appreciate that because that has a lot to do with what we’re about to talk about next because this uh, William or bill talked about this quite a bit Um, he said That they’re well there’s this uh idea of Rushing to the plate, you know to to get this conversation like to to retort So you’ve said something and now i’m just waiting on the edge of my seat to say the next thing That’s how conflicts get really out of hand really quick. We see it on, you know, jerry springer or whatever that kind of stuff um There is something beautiful About creating a pause Between here and there man out of all all of my conversations I think i’ve even talked to you about this with my other another friend aaron We talk constantly we’re dads about the pause Can I create a pause between the time my kid spouts off about something or whatever and the time I go? Back or you know a spouse or a partner or whatever it is Anybody that’s coming at you about anything any conflict that’s coming at you for that matter Actually, it doesn’t even have to be an animate object. It could be inanimate inanimate. It could be like Something else that’s just happening to you in the day. It rained today and I didn’t want it to it’s conflict in my mind So I have to think about how is it that I? Respond and or react to that because I think there is a very specific difference My goal is to Be able to let’s say you just said something offensive to me I could pride myself on being able to come back With a really hard hit and response a reaction to that, right? I could react to that emotionally And just wallop you with words on the other side And I think a lot of people take a lot of pride in their ability to do that and Being wordsmith, I I am pretty good at doing that, but I don’t want to show up that way I what I want to do is create a pause and rather than reacting Emotionally, I want to respond Intentionally, which is literally on the opposite side of the pendulum at that point so The difference between the two typically is can I create a half a second pause before words start coming out of my mouth? Like am I able to do that? And you mentioned this in in the interview with bill and you said that, uh, you know It’s something the effect of your ability to do that is going to be reliant on your practice Are you practicing that all the time which is a great thing to point out? Even if you don’t remember it you did say it. I took a note. Um, I uh, I I it’s it’s Absolutely true that it takes practice usually To be able to then create the pause with the big thing that comes at you, you know usually that’s a spouse remark because you’re You know, you’re able to be freer in your reacting sometimes in a talk with your spouse Which is not necessarily something to be proud of but it’s true often um, so it’s like can I Can I create the pause before I come back and say the thing? I wanted to say or that I thought was deserved in that particular moment? Back and say the thing I wanted to say or that I thought was deserved in that moment or the just thing justice That’s a complicated scenario something i’ve dealt a lot with as an activist It doesn’t always apply in the home in that way in the same way Yeah, so I think the idea is can I practice enough? all day in the little things To be able to create a pause so that when something does come my way that feels prickly that’s a conflict I can pause for a moment connect with my higher self and what I and the way that I really want to respond And then I can do it It’s just that little bitty bridge there that I can create to be able to come from here angry You know triggered reacting in some way To being over here and saying I intentionally want to handle this this way and I remembering my goal is not to win It’s for harmony This episode is brought to you by 20th Century Studios upcoming comedy Ella McKay from academy award-winning writer director James L Brooks Emma Mackey plays Ella McKay an idealistic young woman who juggles family and work in a story about the people you love And how to survive them featuring an all-star cast including Jamie Lee Curtis Jack Loudon Kumail Nanjiani Iowa Debrie Julie Kavner with Albert Brooks and Woody Harrelson Ella McKay in theaters, December 12th Hi, i’m, jim I’m, not an actor just a guy living with prostate cancer my wife and I face each day head-on We asked my doctor about xtandi enzalutamide Xtandi 40 milligram tablets treats men with prostate cancer that has spread to other parts of the body and responds to a medical or surgical treatment to lower testosterone Xtandi may cause serious side effects seizure a brain condition called press allergic reactions heart disease that can lead to death falls and bone fractures Swallowing problems or choking that can lead to death Stop xtandi and get medical help at once if your face tongue lip or throat starts swelling Tell your doctor at once if you faint have a seizure quickly worsening headache decreased alertness confusion vision problems chest pain or discomfort Or shortness of breath xtandi can cause harm to an unborn baby or miscarriage use birth control during and three months after xtandi Common side effects include muscle and joint pain feeling unusually tired hot flashes constipation less appetite diarrhea high blood pressure bleeding Falls fractures and headache visit xtandi.com to watch my story. I actually just want harmony Yeah You can’t get there without the pause in between and you can’t get to the pause in between in a heated moment without a whole Lot of practice when it’s not heated the pause, yeah, uh, and i’m thinking about the big things and the little things and I’m, sometimes wondering if i’m better at it with the really big thing Usually we are so good it’s notice with the little stuff because the big thing requires a resolution um The big confrontation. Well, I mean take business and there’s lots of money on the line, man You’ve got to resolve it the little things relationally, especially I am Really good at Generally not reacting I can sit there I can take it But my pause is not just a pause i’m out i’m good Well, that’s the other one that came up when I was thinking because I was laughing I was listening to you and bill talking He talks about going to the balcony I love that. Yes, and and and i’ve always said hey, you got to create the pause You got to I think I’m going to say the balcony now because that’s so much better. Um, but to go out to the balcony I feel like in society we have two typical kind of reactions if you will one I’m going to come at you with all I got guns blazing. No pause whatsoever. Boom. Boom. Boom That’s common The other one maybe just as common is yeah, i’ll be right back. I’m out That’s nothing ghost like totally out of the conversation. I’ve been guilty of both actually, but And then there is Interestingly enough what bill would call what he said the third something Something um And I can’t remember because i’ve always said the third way. There’s a third way that’s possible And and you know our father dad was very into the third way discussion. He and I talked about endlessly about the third way discussion as You know, we’ve also heard from rob bell and richard rohr and lots of and jesus by the way He was he was the third way man. It was the balcony and then the bridge and then the third side. Yeah third side yeah, so it’s that there I Wrote in dad’s tribute that dad always believed in the third way There’s always another way to look at this. Okay. I want this you want that? What’s the third way that if we came together we might be able to find together? Yeah, and I do love that. I think that’s so important Even that you can’t get to the third way without a pause at the balcony. You don’t jump straight to the third way typically um It caught it takes going to the balcony Thinking about it realigning the conversation Possibly most likely realigning my perspective about the conversation Maybe remembering again. What is the goal here or what could be a new goal because this one’s not working or whatever it is Connecting with my higher self is kind of the easiest way I can say that it’s like I need to center myself and come back With a good response here. Hold on a second. I’ll be right back But then come back Because I know bailing on the conversation is not going to help any more than going at it, you know toe to toe Neither one are really a good way to resolve it or create harmony depending on the goal So I think that pause and going out to the balcony and maybe that’s a good place to think about your third way It’s like okay. Well, i’m gonna take a breather for a second What’s a third option here that maybe we haven’t made room for because we both came in with our own biases Which we always do And our own agendas, which we normally do as well That balcony pauses Yeah, that’s where it’s at. It’s It’s interesting. I mean as you’re talking i’m thinking I mean the book’s called possible how we survive and in parentheses and thrive in an age of conflict But it’s interesting that he used the word i’m now paying attention to that that he the first word he uses uses survive I mean I didn’t ask him. I wish I had to say man. Tell me a story of a negotiation that wasn’t that successful Because at some point you’re going to end up with somebody who’s not they will not stand for harmony They want their way in the story done And everybody listening. There’s a good chance that they’ve encountered that at least once in their lives And in that standpoint, we’re just looking about how do we survive through this and you and I have been in those standpoints You know looking about this is not gonna end up equitable Uh for every it’s it’s impossible because the person’s just not willing So we’re just looking to minimize our losses literally And that happens sometimes and then that’s where I I feel like practicing and now i’m man I’m about my inner self at the end of the day I mean, I think our next or the uh series we just did was on inner mastery with with uh, hitendra wadhwa and I want to be preparing myself now for when there’s Not going to be a result. There’s not going to be harmony. It’s going to be it’s going to be bad I’m gonna take a hit Um, and I don’t this isn’t fair because I know we could say the beauty of it But to some point we realized not long ago. Our dad got a An end-of-life diagnosis and at some point we I realized this is not we’re not negotiating out of this Um, he’s going to die So how do I and since then we’ve talked about, you know preparing ourselves for the big thing of you know The possibility someone else that we love, you know dying whether it’s a child or whatever Man am I doing the work am I doing the inner work? As hitendra would talk about the mastery to be able to survive that I want to be able there even as i’m optimistic That we can go in and increase the chances for good negotiation for harmony And that we can come together and be just people on both sides, but sometimes it’s just not going to happen Um, it’s it’s in your and so what can I do? So I want to one increase my abilities to thrive within conflict and then also be Strengthening myself To deal with the times when it’s just not and we are victimized. I mean that word exists We don’t want to be a victim, but we will be victimized something will happen And I want to be ready for I want to be ready for both I want to be the macgyver who’s there to you know, no matter what we got. There’s a possibility There’s a way out of this And it may be it may be by the skin of your teeth survival And I want to be ready internally for that as well Yeah, and I mean again We all deal with this and we are all reactive to some degree I think bill said that too um, you know the you know There’s i’m gonna Rejig a little bit here and that we you know, you and I have talked a lot about uh My love of the art of war the book And yeah, and the concept sun tzu um anyone that’s Studied the book knows that it’s not about Creating war it’s about Essentially avoiding war at all costs. Um, or I shouldn’t say at all costs, but it’s avoiding war period. Um, Sun tzu says, you know, if you’ve gone to war you’ve really already lost best you can do at this point is recover. Well Um, but but war is not is always the thing to avoid What he’s talking about and in the art of war is really kind of the art of conflict And how to deal with conflict? And ultimately it it is also more about harmonizing the situation rather than resolving the situation Which I really appreciate being involved with such crazy difficult complex political Battles and and social cultural battles like I have in activism Sort of forces you into a point where it’s like man If i’m stuck up on the details I’m gonna be here forever But if we can get a general movement forward that’s going to be good enough for what we need and i’ve had to do that a lot of times but there’s a He talked bill talked a lot about Uh creating golden bridge that that’s a sun tzu discussion literally those words he says, you know for your opponent when you’re going to battle make sure that you paint a or that you create a a beautiful Golden bridge. He usually he literally says golden bridge for your opponent to retreat And if you do not you certainly have not You’ve not gone to battle strategically Um, you’ve certainly not brought your best to the situation Because at that point all they have left to do is that they’ve got a wall And you’ve got you and them up against a wall That’s all they’ve got. But if you make a beautiful golden bridge on the other side That’s as attractive or more maybe even than the thing that we’re talking about They’re more likely to just slip out the back door and go that way I’m always looking in a situation before I go into a conflict in a in a conversation Like I know i’m going to go into battle and I think about all the things that are going to happen Again in going through combat training, you know The idea is to always prepare yourself go through all the scenarios go through as many as you can in your head resolve to them In your mind before you get there so that when you get there, whatever happens is muscle memory It’s just react it’s just coming out Because you already practiced it At home before you got there and you don’t have time in the battle to think about it when you’re there You’re gonna have time to contemplate whether or not you’re going to follow through so I’m always thinking about okay if I go into this thing with this person, you know joe over here I’m gonna have this conflict And I know joe’s gonna come at me hard. He’s he’s a hard driving guy I’m like, okay. Well, what’s the best thing that joe could get out of this thing? And and then I think okay well i’m not willing to do that But what else would I could I do what else could so i’m thinking about the third way when I get there? I think often the bridge in the back for your opponent to retreat from on through is The third way i’m thinking about what is the third way? I think the bridge and the third way are often synonymous at that point so man, I I like it because We tend to go again to the right or wrong the right or wrong and and I think about the aspect Of if you do that with a customer, I remember being taught that not the customer is always right but if you engage in a Argument and prove you’re right with a customer you lost If you do that with your spouse, I would say you generally you lost um this it’s it’s not helping antagonism man, we have seen so much of that when you antagonize You put somebody and I know this because i’m so sensitive myself of feeling like man You just painted me in a corner There’s nowhere I can go. There’s no bridge You didn’t paint me a bridge. You got me in a room where all I can do is fight back. Yep Yes, exactly. And I think we do that in conflict and i’m i’m guilty of that as well And yet I do like going to business Especially when you got money on the table and you got things happening that man you got to come up with something you’ve got to come up with a bridge and For you know anonymous, but candid, uh, you know, you and I have had some business dealings lately not between us But yes with other people together and going Oh my gosh, we got to come up with a bridge What on earth is it going to be and you’re sitting there brainstorming and coming up and you finally lob on over and go Okay, here’s one and you hear back and they took it. Yay. You know, we both win or they didn’t oh crap Okay, I’m plenty of times in that transaction But what do we do you and I spend a lot of time on the balcony In this yeah, you know discussion. We talked a lot at the balcony. We didn’t just react Had we no there was many times when we got the email and you’re like Holy crap. I’m not even gonna look at that till tomorrow just I need a new day for that one Yeah, well it was so sensitive and we had to handle it with kid gloves the whole thing Because it’s like one of those things it’s like the more you go after the worse it gets And we were very aware of that You know, so we had to pull back. Uh And we spent some time on the balcony thinking about the third way. I hadn’t really thought about it was a great setup But that’s what we did. We sat on the balcony. We thought about the third way Of how we could address this Not handle it not win it not whatever but it’s like we we needed to address this Kind of in that same analogy Like I said before we’re in a car going somewhere together and it’s like They want to stop or they want to turn around or whatever like can we just keep going? And talk about it while we’re going like without having to cause some big fight Uh, can we just agree that we’re both going in that general direction and and talk about it as we go? and i’ve done that I mean, I think even in I I Was married and am not married now And I have a hard time even saying the word divorce. It sounds so violent That is not where we were at, you know, where we’re at. We’re friends. I just hung out with her a minute ago We hang out we’re close. Whatever we found a way to harmonize our relationship I We moved to san diego six years ago and and I at the time was saying I want to move there to save my marriage What really happened? In the end, I know And in the end, I know is that what we did is we saved our relationship Our marriage didn’t make it But we’re closer and more harmonious and kind And peaceful to each other and for our children than most married couples. I know We’re also at more events together than most married couples. I know We all hang out. We’re together more than we were when we were married, I think so uh, especially in peaceful happy ways I Had if I when I came into that in the beginning it was just about We have to do this. We have to fix our marriage Oh my gosh, man It was when I let go of fixing my marriage and letting go is a key component to everything We’re talking about when I let go of that I was able to see this third way of like wow, what if we could just have this peaceful wonderful family And beautiful relationship between the two of us and again How that affects the kids if we could have that that’s a third option I had not previously entertained Or even been willing to go to at that point or before But then when it got to this point, I thought wow that that’s If what I want is harmony in my family, i’ve got a path to it Amazing. Yeah, and so that’s what we’re doing. It wasn’t necessarily Resolved in that we both got exactly what we wanted. We didn’t But what we did find a path this holiday discover meaningful gifts for everyone on your list at k Not sure where to start our jewelry experts are here to help you find or create the perfect gift in store online Book your appointment today and unwrap love this season only at k towards harmony And we resolved I think together at that point that it was more important to have peace in our family Than try to fix something or win something or whatever it was that we were caught up in trying to do before Then try to fix something or win something or whatever. It was that we were caught up in trying to do before And I say that again, I hear that’s a big one it it’s so Counterintuitive to our culture I won’t say it’s counterintuitive, but it is to our culture I’m looking back at my notes here with with bill and he talked about again, not conflict resolution, but transforming conflict, you know, I don’t necessarily well, but I haven’t had Cultural doesn’t have a file for that as one of my therapists would say what do you mean transform? He doesn’t have a file for most of the stuff we’re talking about today. That’s the whole that’s true well, and I I I haven’t either and And he talked about constructive negotiation and then the statement he made is when it’s larger That’s your i’m going to paraphrase now, but you’re the harmony. That’s larger than reaching an agreement And and then that’s all we think about is an agreement. I mean I entered into To use that you talked about marriage. I entered into that thing. That’s what marriage is You are in total agreement all the time on everything Yeah, that didn’t work. Ultimately. It didn’t work either obviously How can you be in agreement and that’s why again when the therapist said there are some times when you can agree To disagree and that’s okay. You’re different people with different flavors and different to you said preferences And can we get to that without and here’s the big word as I look at my notes here That came out of it if we could take you talked about preferences if we could take away the judgment But then again, we’ve got to let go of right or wrong And just say even though I cannot understand any way on the face of the planet that you could look at that and think that That’s okay If I have faith that mine is a preference And just take off Right or wrong, even though it’s almost beyond me if the point is Harmony here if the well, which again brings up you said this earlier. What is the goal? What is the goal now? I think I get lost a lot of times in conflict Sure, and if and if I I did not have the goal of harmony as a professional cyclist at all They just had the super bowl. I was they weren’t looking for harmony They’re looking to win at Just about any cost. Okay. Well, they want No, it’s great because you’re saying they wanted to dominate they wanted to beat. Yeah the other one Now when you think about your relationship with your wife, it’s like well, shoot don’t frame it that way I’m not trying to beat the dominate but sometimes we are caught in that energy unconsciously usually very unconsciously we’re there and we’re trying to win in this battle back and forth and There are times when you know, ilia and I get into that now for about Half a second before I go. Wait a minute. I’m not doing that. I don’t need to win here I just want harmony and I can do I probably cultivate more harmony in this moment by shutting my mouth And that’s what I do. A lot of times with saoirse is the same thing my daughter my 11 year old daughter She’s going at it with her sister brother or friend or whatever and i’m like, hey, baby. I got a secret for you you can win if you just just Just stop talking for a second. See what happens and and nine times and she’ll laugh She’s like, oh my god, I can’t believe that worked and i’m like it usually works if you’ll just pause for a moment Well, i’m thinking about connection then what is the goal is the goal to win? Or create harmony into that i’m thinking retain some form of connection So if we’re talking about our spouse our kids or whatever at the end of the day For the most part we’re still striving to have some level of connection And now to get into I don’t care what arena we’re in business politics, whatever In today’s day and age even if I took out my soul That cares to be Love in any way If I took that out And just said okay. How about just best business practices i’d say today man. It is really hard to justify A disconnection with about anybody go back to the business stuff that we are that we’ve dealt with recently That man, there’s too much of a glass house Stuff gets around It’s unwise To just try to blow something up and win at all costs Again i’m sure somebody’s going to take an exception and say well if you’re a trial lawyer or whatever Okay, that’s that we’re not in the super bowl We’re in the the general life that most of us lead and in business and relationships whatnot There’s very I look at it and I generally end up feeling like man. I can’t I can’t afford to just blow this up and try to win Yeah, not it’s gonna sever connection with people and there’s bad blood. I don’t want to live with that I I I fear living with that What is worth it unless there’s somebody’s life on the line And It is worth harmony and I find myself looking at that more and more That’s kind of where the inner mastery that I want to get to is that harmony is above Is above all? At at any time it comes back to that Excuse me I read it jared. We were talking about it on a show recently And it’s called I think I think the term is the monk and the baby That was the story we were looking for where they were in the village And you know a girl gets pregnant and she doesn’t want to rat out her boyfriend. Oh, yeah, totally Yes. Yeah. Yeah, and she blamed and so that she blames that on the monk and everybody comes in outrage and said you dirty old man You knocked up this girl and you know later on she gives birth to it and they go back and say okay you did it So, you know old man you you raised the kid and he said and everything when they first blamed him He said is that so? And they came back and said well it’s you know, you did it so it’s your kid you take care of it Is that so and so he took the kid and took care of it and a year later and the girl’s feeling guilty And whatever she finally fesses up and they all come and say we’re so sorry Oh, was it? Okay, we’re but we’re so sorry and and we wrongly accused you and we’ll take the child and care for it And he says is that so? Man, I want to be that guy Yeah, I want to be that guy and that’s hard though Because you think he got stuck with taking care of a kid that was unjust and they’re exaggerating the point But what if you lose the money? What if you lose the deal? What if you lose what is it you’re holding on to now? We’re in an attachment. Yeah, I can see you thinking Well you because we’re creeping into our territory for our our father was very clear About asking in the moment of conflict in the challenge in the difficult thing whatever on in his case on his deathbed What does this make possible? And I think that in the monk discussion in that parable In that moment he was saying, you know, is that so Okay, what does that make possible in the back of his mind, you know? And what it made possible was him to have the opportunity to raise a child for nine years as the story goes Um, right, which he would not have had otherwise so he said Okay, i’ll take that challenge. He’s a monk. I have no to some degree at least studying what the monks are agreeing to in that, uh in the lifestyle that they’re agreeing to and it it has a lot to do with Taking what comes at you and immediately? In essence i’ll i’ll sort of use our own family kind of uh phrase here But what does this make possible is to say? Okay, i’ll take that. What does this make possible? and I think that’s a That’s an important part of the conflict stuff too is that Actually, it’s a really important aspect of the third way thinking Because the third way thinking is really saying instead of me being angry about this. What could it make possible? Let’s look at a third way. That’s kind of the transaction there maybe and I think another Is we’ve you’ve touched on this a little bit as we’ve been speaking But there the cultural aspect you kept saying like we’re not geared for this We’re not why you know, this is in our culture. You’re absolutely right. It is not and that’s a very important point to bring up It is culturally acceptable to go toe-to-toe with conflict or to be in conflict all the time to be stressed out Although we live in that kind of culture, especially in the west now It’s worth looking at and bill pointed this out indigenous cultures not just of the past but even present That lives it live in tribes You know We have our drive tribe community and part of the reason we chose the word tribe is because the way that a tribe interacts They’re there to support to Push to challenge to inspire To keep accountable all those things are in a tribe now the tribe looks at a conflict an illness Someone that has is dealing carrying trauma i’ll just stick with those three any of those three things and things like them If one person has it the tribe looks at it as the tribe having it. It’s a fracture in the fabric of the tribe and When you look at that, it means that no one can suffer on their own No one has trauma on their own That’s a larger discussion even with trauma because it doesn’t typically happen solo. It happens In interaction with other people um the with conflict In a tribe if there is a conflict Everyone’s going to come around that conflict and say all right Like they said like he talked about in the in the story with with the poison, you know Arrows and things like that you take the poison arrows take them way far away and then everybody sits down and has a conversation It’s kind of like being in the car and say okay. We’re not going to stop the car. We’re going to keep going We’ll stay here together even we haven’t agreed on anything yet. We’re just going to Well, maybe we’ve agreed to continue going forward. But otherwise we haven’t agreed on the con, you know what the conflict material is and I think that’s important to to realize That is representative of a third way to our current society where it is right or wrong We fight or we don’t we’re passive or we’re fighting, you know, one of those two things There’s always a black and white situation in the tribe it was just like hey, here’s a conflict that has arisen that’s natural Now as a community collectively, we will address it The understanding is also that it came about collectively not just by one person or whatever And sometimes it’s easy to say. Oh, you know joe blow over there was a jerk and caused this problem or whatever Then I can say fine. That’s probably true I’d like to know a little bit more about joe’s parents And about joe’s surroundings and all the other things that contributed to joe acting that way just now it isn’t just one person It’s always collective That’s getting into thomas hubel’s discussion, which we’ve had on here as well uh So I think it’s We have plenty of precedent. We just don’t look at it or maybe apply it to our own world as much there is precedent for Harmonizing conflict on the regular and having mechanisms within your culture to continually harmonize conflict If that’s the goal yeah, i’m Not not stuck in a bad way, but in a good way i’m i’m Thinking about the third way and how i’m a visual person so, you know, i’m thinking visually that as opposed to Here’s a table And i’m sitting across from it and you’re sitting across from it that we just don’t do that anymore from now on it’s a Triangular table And you’re on one side I’m on a side and there’s a third one That’s the only reason we’re there. This is conflict We don’t agree Right now or we have different desires And so by proxy of coming together, we are not sitting across from each other We’re sitting at a triangular table one one and we’re trying to figure out the third way. That’s the only reason we’re there Otherwise just grab a gun and point it at each other Uh, if that’s if that’s the goal if it’s a super bowl, it didn’t go go nuts Yeah, what is the goal? And if the goal is okay, we’re not here just to I guess that’s it There’s there’s your goal. That makes it pretty simple Okay, you guys have conflict is your goal to win and annihilate the other person if the answer is yes You don’t need william. Urie’s book, right? There’s no negotiation Just go nuts And you know the strong survives or the the smarter or the clever or the devious or the whatever If that’s not the case which in most of our lives 99.99% of the time it’s not Then let’s sit on You know a triangle sides of the two sides and look at the other one. That’s the point That is why we were here. We’re not here by proxy. You’re saying okay Obviously if you’re not sitting across from the table directly, you’re not there to convince You’re not there to win you’re not there. This is the one that gets me because in Hard conversations hard conflict I realized well, it was stark to me because uh, A therapist brought it up And she said are you there and now i’m paraphrasing are you there to connect? Are you there to lawyer up? Make a case Are you there because she was saying i’m not the judge man. It’s not it’s not what that’s not the placard I’m a therapist doesn’t say judge over the top of my door. So i’m not in here, you know to to figure that out I’m here to help you find a third way But again, so what is your point if it is to win then lawyer up then lawyer up ammo up weapon up Whatever strengthen up and go pummel each other to death If that’s not then by proxy that is what we’re talking about I mean the book could have been he called it possible. He’s saying possible third way There’s got to be a third way and when he’s sitting across the table from two warring countries There has to be a third way. Otherwise the button’s gonna get pushed and we’re all gonna get blown up So yeah, there’s stakes on the line and there are for all of us right now and those stakes are money or Relationship or oh my gosh our very soul being ripped apart We’ve got to come up with The third way and so it is it’s back to reframing and you said something a minute ago Well, you’re just talking about the reality that we do live in this conflict Conflicting it seems like more and more world of polarized people and it’s raining down And bill is out here trying to give us an umbrella so that we’re the one person Holding up an umbrella saying it’s not gonna rain here. I’m gonna find another Way, but it’s a different goal And I just I do feel like with these issues when we see the culture awash in something else That man to realize that we are bathing we keep using this word bathing like forest bathing Or uh, it came up in another show recently and I can’t recall what it was But bathing we are being bathed in unless we’re living in a hole somewhere If we’re online if we touch social media if we touch the media if we touch just movies and tv shows We are awash in black and white right or wrong judgment conflict That’s what we’re watching And so we’re we’re really taking a different tangent to step out of this and say wait, wait, wait No, i’m i’m gonna think of myself now. I want to be the triangle guy. I’m the triangle guy I like that at framing i’m thinking of the the triangle table I never thought about I was always you know knights the round table or whatever, but I really like the triangle That’s true. Yeah Yeah, I might get a triangle table. I do I like the visual of it. Yeah Yeah that again that there’s again if setting the goal is it to? Man because I just I find myself in those situations and You could just hear Myself or the other person they’re making a case. That’s what we do You and I dealt with it recently with business. There was one desire. They had a desire We had a desire and the propensity is to make a case. That’s mine, man I’m, i’m ready to sit down. I can write a novel man. I can make a great case And it’s and then I find it’s irrelevant if the other person is not there To be convinced they’re not saying hey, you know, i’m a little open to being convinced to your side They’re not Yeah, they’re not they’re but they’re open to a bridge now. We’re back to that They’re not open to being convinced rarely Are we in a conflict but I might be to a bridge if you could show me another way You get to take coffee up in the one thermos. I get to pick dinner or one meal. All right, that’s fair That’s good. I didn’t get my tea But I got something else that’s a bridge as opposed to you going No, we’re taking coffee unless you can beat it out of my hand, right two different goals Yeah, and I mean the last note maybe on that is that I I feel like and I I feel like this comes up a lot actually well, I look in a situation but just to just to make it easy to you know for an analogy, it’s like say there’s two guys in a room with a conflict And they’re going to go at it A lot of times our society is going to look at that and think okay that guy Oh, man, that guy just decked that guy or he kicked his butt or whatever. He won. Awesome. And I think that was kind of dumb actually like What if The the guy had like jedi’d the guy into like peace and they walked out like high-fiving each other that would have been awesome But we don’t do that as a society we sort of Put up on this pedestal that this you know The guy that can beat the other guy or whatever and I am saying guy specifically on this because it’s usually dudes do You don’t find women having those kind of content i’m thinking of mma right i’m thinking about mma right away which which I Again, no judgment. I got respect for it I can’t really watch it because it’s just too hard for me to see somebody get annihilated Uh, and I don’t watch it outside of you know Some movies like the warrior one of my favorite movies of all time Very great love that and it’s around mma. Um There’s somebody sent me though Jared and it was an mma scene. It was like a clip you would see and I wish I could do better justice to it and this one guy he was I think it was two guys that were both asian uh, and he got in the ring they’re like starting to fight and then the guy’s like He figured out who the guy was and it was somebody that he revered and respected for some reason And he backed off and he’s like no no, no. No, I won’t i’m not gonna fight you and he’s out And it was a bigger story than that, but I just love that I love the you know the honor and the context of that of looking he had a there was a big back to what Uh william said there was something bigger. There was something larger At work, and I want that always to be the case Yeah, I think that’s the question to ask ourselves. What’s the larger thing that could happen here? And that really is a third way question It’s like what’s the thing that could be bigger and better than the thing that we came into the room with? Well, and you brought it up so i’ll go ahead and breach it when you talk about uh, you know divorce and marital strife What is it? Usually if there’s kids involved, it’s the kids That oh my gosh at the end of it. We cannot risk all-out war And you know little lives here yeah, I mean, you know personally my my choice and the discussion that we had for the audience here was Let the children guide us But they’re and the the exact words that we used was the vitality of our children will be our guide period So if if the kids are, you know, struggling, I mean that’s on us. We’re their parents and i’m With that goal in mind It’s important maybe to point that out too. The goal used to be fixing our marriage When it became the vitality of the children only We were able to let go of the marriage stuff and then we got to be really great friends like we are now Yeah Uh, and that was beautiful and that was a third way option. I had never ever contemplated Yeah it’s i’m looking at my last notes and I think the last thing I have written on bill he said, uh, He’s not an optimist or a pessimist. He’s a possibility possibilityist And And then his and then the last thing I have written is he says less about the method it’s more about the mindset That’s it. That’s what we’re talking about. What is our conflict around mindset? Yeah, I might I might get like a triangle medallion or something like that. I just I love the I love the thought. I love the thought of it, man, brother. Thank you. I knew that we would unpack this well that you would bring greater insight Uh into it and man great. Thanks to William urie. Yeah, he’s put possible on this. What a what a gift and what a oh my gosh, and he you know You got to love it. He he embodies it. He embodies the energy I mean, I don’t know if he has a way and an inflection in his voice you notice it He is the third way man. He’s embodying it uh inside well um, man again folks Thank you, and I will i’ll be wrapping this up i’ll be i’m thinking myself about the highlights of this which i’ll hit in In part four and again i’ll invite you guys to keep to continue this discussion with us in the drive tribe That’s where we take these and come in and I want to hear where you were inspired I want to hear where you’re heard things and you go man. I really struggle with that come talk to us It’s not about uh being right in there It’s about the third way and figuring out how we can take this take these concepts and we can all Benefit we can drive further we can drive faster and we can Enjoy the ride. Thank you for being with us again Love to join you in the community find me anywhere at kevinmiller.co And today thank you for letting me letting us drive with you today.

Yeah. You are driven. You’ve got all the drive you need within you, but is it in alignment with your true values and your core desires? So we’re on a journey together to unearth what really drives you and me too. What matters most so we can drive further, faster and enjoy the ride when you know what drives you, what you want becomes inevitable. This is what drives you. And I’m your host, Kevin Miller. What drives you is brought to you by Ziggler. If you’re a coach or interested in coaching, go to Ziggler.com, let the wisdom and sales skills of Zig Ziggler equip you to be an influential and successful coach. And I invite you to engage with me and other driven people go to my website or social media. It’s KevinMiller.co. And if you want to connect with us, we’ve got a community, the drive tribe, you can see that the website and where we talk further on these topics and about our drive overall. And if you get value here, it would be a gift if you would leave a review for the podcast. All right, here are seven key highlights that I got from this series on transforming conflict. Well, this is my big idea and action episode where I pull out the key highlights from our series on transforming conflict. Our catalyst was William Ury, one of the world’s best known experts on negotiation. He’s the coauthor of getting to yes, it’s the world’s all time bestselling book on the topic more than 15 million copies sold. He’s co-founder of Harvard’s program on negotiation and his brand new book and our muse for this part one or for this whole series is possible. That’s the book name possible, how we survive and thrive in an age of conflict. I also had a conversation in the previous episode with my cohost and brother, Jared on Gaza. He’s served domestically and overseas as a conflict negotiator himself. It was in that conversation that I really had an epiphany, which I’m about to share and what turned out to be seven key highlights that stood out to me. All right. Number one, a big point of this, we’re looking at conflict is you do not have to agree. You don’t have to agree. If you heard episodes are the last episode, part three with my brother that came out and man, that is not the way that I looked at conflict specifically relationally, you know, you find friends where you agree, you find a spouse where you agree. That’s what my perspective was and I think it is a very common perspective culturally that we don’t have to agree. What we’ve got to do is just figure out how to honor each other’s differing opinion, perspective, belief, faith, whatever it may be, but we don’t have to agree. We can agree to disagree. And that sounds goofy. You probably heard it before, but for real, could you come to a conflict with someone, with someone’s and say, Hey, we can agree to disagree, but let’s at least understand each other and honor each other. Terry real. I mentioned him before. Here’s the quote that I paraphrased. He said, there is no room for objective reality in personal relationships. Who’s right or wrong doesn’t matter. It’s about two subjective realities that have to negotiate with each other and make things work for themselves as a team. And William Urie said, the problem is not conflict, but the destructive way we deal with it. We do it poorly. I’ve done it poorly. I still am struggling. It’s why we’re doing this series. I’m going to be learning for a long time, I think on this one. But if you think about the relationship, most of us, when we have conflict, it is within a relationship that we want to maintain. Whether it’s with a spouse, with a child, family, friends, whether it’s at work with coworkers, managers, employers, employees, different business relationships, vendors that you have part in different partners that you may have, and you’re wanting to maintain the relationship or at least some level of civility. Very few of us are looking to just blow it out of the water and we’ll get to that. So you don’t have to agree. It’s a big point. You don’t have to agree in conflict. You just have to figure out how to honor each other. Number two, this was a big point of Bob’s or Bill’s, that you got to pause. You’ve got to pause. We are so reactionary as a culture, and we get in that habit just from relationships. Somebody says that, you say this, somebody says that, and you are arguing, you are debating, you are in conflict, it’s now emotional, and he’s just putting so much weight on you have to pause. And he calls it going to the balcony. Go to the balcony and take a moment. Don’t react. Zig Ziglar was big on responding, healthfully responding with thought and awareness. Thought, boom, reacting, man, that’s hard. When you get triggered, we’re not going to go down the psychological aspect of this, but when you get triggered, which means you are threatened, you are frightened, whatever. And I look at that and I go, I don’t want anything to be able to trigger me. I want to always be able to pause. You hear me say, I want, that is not, I have not arrived there. I’m better, and I’m better in some relationships than others, some instances than others. But to pause. I mean, if that was just number one, we need, I wish that we could have a red flag that came up, you know, or a little buzzer on me that showed where my emotions were, my heart rate that starts going, Kevin, Kevin, and it’s like, whoa, whoa, okay, wait, deep breath, stop. We don’t do that relationally. It even seems goofy, like I’m not going to do that. Can I just be real? Well, yeah, you can be real and you can have bad conflict. Destructive conflict, as he says, that’s why he wrote a book for it. That’s why he’s, you know, goes around the world helping people with this. We do not naturally do this well, it is a very learned thing to do it well. And you got to pause. Number three, number three, it is a big deal. I almost feel like to some degree, treating any conflict like this is a big deal, not to blow it out of proportion. In some ways, you know, you could, you could play with the semantics of this, but bear with me because I’d also say it’d be, it’d be helpful to also say, it’s not a big deal. Oh my gosh, can we just not get our panties in a lot? As they say, it’s not a big deal, but relationally it’s a big deal. And if I would treat it as such, not with my own emotions, but just given it gravity of going, okay, it seems like a little thing, but what’s at risk here is the relationship, right? So let’s, let’s call it a big deal and treat it as such with rules and guidelines. Back to Terry real. I mean, any marriage therapist is going to have rules, guidelines, structure, strategy, call it what you want. Take whichever one works for you. Yeah. I have a strategy for conflict. I have structure. I have rules. I have guidelines. Whatever works for you. But I thought about that. I mean, anything that we do well, we prepare for. I don’t just jump on my bike and go out. I put on certain gear, make sure I have things with me. You don’t, they don’t just go football. We just had the super bowl and there’s no sport that doesn’t have rules and guidelines. You can’t do that. You can’t grab the other guy’s Jersey and hold him. You’ll get a penalty. You’re allowed to play the game, but to play it fairly, there’s rules and guidelines. It’s makes so much sense, but we don’t do it. I struggle so much because you’re just right in the conflict in the moment. If I would number two, pause and then number three, I say, man, this is a big enough deal. I care enough about this. If I do care enough about the relationship that there’s rules and there’s guidelines. It’s interesting. And I think it was, um, it was the guy who wrote born to win or born to run, I’m sorry. And it was like natural born heroes. I think is what is, I can’t recall the, the, the writer’s name, but in there he talked, one of the subjects in his book was a guy, or I think it was a couple of guys who were, they trained people to fight like in wartime, like to fight, to win period. And it was, it was like the, the kick to the side of the leg that destroys your knee. It was the thumb in the eye. And they said, and I’m paraphrasing, but they said, you know, if it’s a real fight, like a street fight where you’re out for blood, it’s over fast. It’s over fast because one person maims the other and they’re out. That’s it. They said MMA or boxing, but even more so MMA has rules. Otherwise you would destroy each other and there were the fight wouldn’t last and the fighter, the fighter couldn’t continue, which is why you don’t see them kicking each other sideways in the knee and destroying a knee or breaking each other’s bones or something like that, which you can do or gouge in an eye. They make rules to make it well, and all truth to make it go longer, but also to make it fair so that they can come back to fight another time. That’s what we’re talking about here is having some structure going, okay, we’re not going to blame. We’re not going to label each other. We’re not going to call names. We’re not going to raise our voices. You know, you can go down that line of, okay, here we are, we’re at conflict. We paused. Now we’re here. Let’s prepare with some guidelines. William Ury said this, how to tell if negotiations are going poorly or well, they’re going poorly. Blame is happening. We’re mired in the past and we’re focusing on just what’s wrong on the problem. What’s wrong? If it’s going well, we’re not talking about the past. We’re talking about the present and the future, and instead of focusing on what’s wrong, we focus on what could be done. What can we do? Instead of attacking each other, we attack the problem jointly. I’ll speak more to that in just a second, but we attack it or we attack the problem jointly. He also said the way in which those in conflict talk with one another could either close down or open up new possibilities for agreement. You know that. The people that you struggle with, you know right away how they’re feeling, what their attitude is, what their demeanor is, what their mood is, and if they’re there to hurt. The way that we talk back again to the guidelines, the structure, some strategy. Number four, know what you want. This is what you can do on the balcony or when you come into the conflict is know what you want and why. Really why. Why is it important to you? Why is it such a big deal enough to have conflict? Because if it’s not a big deal, really, you might just go, whatever, do what you want. Obviously it’s a big deal. You would not be in conflict with each other. What do you want and why? That’s another one that we don’t often do. This is why you do take that pause and say, man, I may need a minute. If you’re right in it with somebody, say, you know what, can I just have a minute? Make up an excuse. Go to the bathroom and think about what is it that you really want? What is at the core of this issue for you? All right. Number five then is establishing the goal. And this was interesting as this came up during the conversations of what is the goal? Are you there? It’s conflict. And are you there literally just to win period? And we talked about that. So if you’re on a sports team, you’re there just to win. You’re not there to compromise or necessarily connect with anybody. You’re there to win. So in the conflict that you’re in, is that it? Are you going to get lawyers? Are you going to get a swords or are you going to whatever, but you’re there to win. It’s relevant to establish that I am here to win and be honest with yourself, question yourself. But if you say, you know, at the end of the day, man, that’s it. I’m here to win. Okay. It changes. I changed the rest of my points that I’ll get to here, but that changes the whole thing. You know, it really changes everything. Obviously. Are you here to win? Now, the other side that we talked about was, or are you there to connect, you know, especially in a relationship with somebody you care about, you know, to connect or even a business relationship where you want to maintain connection. Now I’ll come back to that because another one that came out during this series was there is an aspect of compromise. Like you may sit there. Okay. I’m not here just to win and blow the other person out of the water, but I’m not necessarily looking to connect, you know, it’s a business deal or whatever, but I’m looking to be civil and find some kind of a compromise. So again, I’m not necessarily connecting necessarily. This isn’t a relationship I want to keep long-term, but even that’s good. So Hey, I’m here to compromise. This isn’t going to be some deep connection or whatnot, but I am, but I do want to compromise. So when blow them out of the water, compromise, let’s just find something amiable that we can go forward with or connect, or is it actually, I do want to connect. So establish the goal for yourself and you can do that with the other person too. I mean, with anything, I mean, what would be great is to be doing this, going through this kind of stuff with somebody you’re in conflict with, and both of you having these parameters around. Number six, depending on the goal, then you can arrange yourself accordingly. And this came up in part three, it was really interesting as we talked about the sitting across the table. That’s the kind of thing we talked about, right? Conflict. One person’s on here, one person’s here, and we’re trying to work this thing out, but we’re against each other. We’re on opposing sides. That’s what we culturally tend to have the perspective of. If you’re not in agreement, then you are on opposing sides. They talk, I mean, my gosh, from a lawyer standpoint, it is opposing counsel, right? But with opposing sides, again, sitting across the table, the other idea is the triangle table. Man, I really liked that. It’s so interesting as we talk about the round table, like knights of the round table, that was Lancelot or King Arthur, and there was no head. Pretty cool. I like that concept, but for some reason, as we’re often in conflict with another person specifically, or even if it’s a group, but to think, okay, if we’re here to compromise or to connect, how about a triangle table, you, me, and then there’s another side. And that’s what we’re trying to come to terms with is that third way. That’s where it came up with talking to my brother, Jared, about the third way. And I like that concept with it. It’s almost like, okay, we’re going to conflict. Let’s sit at the round, sit at the triangle table or take a triangle out. I may do that. I may play with that. Take a triangle out and go, okay, this is theoretically, here it is, here’s a piece of paper. One side is you, one side is me, and then we are looking for the third way. I love the concept of that as a visual. It feels powerful. I like word pictures. I like the concepts to be visualized in my head. And I really like that idea of setting it out. And it makes me think of Bob Bodine. He wrote the book called Two Chairs. And it’s from a spiritual standpoint about you taking a seat and then having this visual of next to you or across from you of God and that you are there and you’re not just praying and asking for stuff. You’re there to listen. And his premise is, is God, do you believe God cares about you? If you do, say yes. Do you believe that God’s powerful enough to deal with your problems? If you say yes, okay, now listen. Listen. Books sold a ton of copies, incredibly popular book, but again, it’s that visual. So that’s what I’m playing with here with the triangle table is that we have a commemorative spot here for what we’re really trying to do. We are not opposing each other. We’re working this out. And again, unless you’re there to win, then you just have a regular table, sit across from each other and duke it out, whatever you’re going to do. Jump over the table and beat the other person up, if that’s your point. But generally I don’t think that is in our lives. So arranging yourself accordingly. Are you across the table or are you at a, as opposing sides or are you on a triangle trying to figure out a third way? For many business owners, the holidays can be super promising and also super challenging. My experience is buyers are more rushed and stressed and less rational and your sales process has got to be clear and streamlined. And I’m a big fan of Shopify who has custom features and tools geared toward holiday season purchasing Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the U S from household names that, you know, to entrepreneurs who will be participating in their first black Friday and cyber Monday this year with Shopify, you can accelerate your content creation. It’s got AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, even enhance your product photography to help increase your reach during the busiest time of the year. If you want to give customers the best experience possible this holiday season, I’d ask you to check out Shopify this black Friday. You can join thousands of new entrepreneurs hearing for the first time with Shopify, sign up for your free trial today at shopify.com slash Kevin. One more time, go to shopify.com slash Kevin, make this black Friday one to remember. This episode is brought to you by 20th century studios, upcoming comedy, Ella McKay from Academy award-winning writer, director James L. Brooks, Emma Mackey plays Ella McKay, an idealistic young woman who juggles family and work in a story about the people you love and how to survive them. Featuring an all-star cast, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Loudon, Kumail Nanjiani, Iowa Debrie, Julie Kavner with Albert Brooks and Woody Harrelson, Ella McKay in theaters December 12. Are you across the table or are you at a, as opposing sides or are you on a triangle trying to figure out a third way? And then last number seven is, is the why, is communicating your why. Have you done that as opposed to saying, Hey, I want this, you want that? How can we find a conversation? Why do you want that? Can you do that with yourself and get to the, get to the why, and then communicate it with the other person? I talked about that a minute ago, your why, but have you communicated it saying, man, I want this because this is what it means to me. This is what’s really in it. This is the emotion behind it. Can you get to that? And then can you work to get the other person too? And they may not, but to the best of your abilities, this is where you get into some of the therapy language of hearing somebody and say, okay, so I understand that you want X and this, this is why. And they go, well, no, that’s not why. Oh gosh. Okay. Why then? And you can lead them into that. I say that it’s very difficult to do. It’s very difficult to do when you yourself are triggered already and you’re struggling with it. It’s, it’s maybe difficult to try to do that with somebody. You may get criticism from them or pushback. I don’t know that any of this is easy, but that aspect of I’ve heard the concept of, can you understand the other person? Can you stand on the other side of the mountain? Can you see from the other side of the mountain? Can you put yourself in there? Or I had a therapist one time talk about a beach ball because each side is different colors and we’re always looking at different color. Can you try to see it from their standpoint? I like the idea of if you had to make a case for the other person, you can do this by yourself with a journal or just thinking through it and go, okay, if I put myself in their shoes, can I have some understanding for how they’re seeing it? You may think it’s a dumb understanding of, okay, I, you know, if they want, if they’re looking at it with this way in this heart, can they see, okay, I, you know, that’s, that’s relative to some degree and have some understanding and compassion for that. Or again, you know, to ask them what it is at the, at the end of all this conflict, what is it that they are wanting and why? Do we really understand them? Because so often back to William Ury’s standpoint of how destructive we are, because we are arguing, well, and to tell you real, we’re arguing about the objective reality. We are trying to convince, we are trying to make a case. I just, how often have you had that work? How often have you entered into conflict and somebody else just went and made a case and tried to convince you and you realize all of a sudden and said, oh my gosh, now I get what you’re saying. I totally, I totally agree with you. How often has that happened? Maybe it has. Um, but I would imagine if you’re interested to conflict in conflict to the degree that you’re listening to this right now, you’re probably having a lot of times where that does not seem like the case and you are not, you know, understanding each other. You’re not seeing eye to eye and you are convincing and making a case. I do this. I have in my journal venting, right? Making my case. Sometimes I can do that, kind of get it off. That’s some of my balcony work and kind of get it off my chest. Go, okay. That was the raw feelings. And now, okay, but what do I do? How can I come around now? Let me think about it through the other person’s lens, uh, strive to at least, but those are red flags to me when we are convincing and we’re making a case. And of course you can explain why, why it is, um, that you see something a certain way and share, but share it as this is, this is how I saw it and this is how it makes me feel. And this is how I want to feel. This is what I want as an outcome, as opposed to saying, this is the way I see it and convincing. What we do is convince the other person to see it that way. Yeah, but come on, but if, if this is what happened and this is how I saw it, can’t you see that? And that’s the, that’s the spirit that we generally take. And this is what William Urie is, you know, whether he’s working with people, individuals, or whether he’s working with two warring countries and it’s the same scenario. He’s got one and they are dead set on their perspective. They’re dead set on their perspective, but they’re here at the table because they got to do something. They got to compromise at least, uh, for the most part there. If they were just about winning, then they’re just going to pull out guns. They don’t need him. So they’re there at the table by proxy because they’re looking for help and he’s got to get them seeing the other person’s side to some degree, to some level, uh, or at least to come to a compromise, at least it comes to, to, to get past. Probably no side is going to get exactly what they want, but can we come to a compromise that at least ends this so we can go forward again? Don’t have to agree, but you gotta find, you gotta be able to agree to disagree, but find something equitable for both sides. It’s a big topic. It’s a big topic folks. And one that’s going to take, this is one of those that you don’t just hear, uh, you and things change. This is when you have to work out for me on the simplistic side, I, I’m literally thinking about pulling out, having a triangle around somewhere that reminds me and using it. Even if I’m just by myself using it and just looking at it going, okay, this is not opposing sides. I’ve got to help come up with a third way. That may be my personal red flag or reminder is the triangle. You’ll have to find your own friends. Thank you so much for joining me on this journey. Uh, I would love to talk with you further in our drive top tribe. Go to kevinmiller.co and click on community, a big thanks to William Urie. And this book is significant. It’s called again, possible how we survive and thrive in an age of conflict. Also thanks to my brother, Jared Angaza for joining me to discuss this, uh, further guys. And I don’t want to forget too, that, uh, William joined me to do part three with, uh, on Thomas Hubel. That was such a joy. And we’re already looking at doing a kind of a round table of sorts in a new series, new, new episode format we’re going to do with, uh, William. So hopefully we’ll have him back here again. Well, Hey friends until next time, I hope this episode has been beneficial to you and helps you drive further and enjoy your ride.