Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Standing Together in Divided Times With Rob Volpe
[INTRODUCTION]
[00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 480 of Live Happy Now. As we head toward the end of summer, many of us are talking about this contentious election environment. But this week’s guest is teaching us how to change the conversation using empathy.
I’m your host, Paula Felps. This week, I’m joined by Rob Volpe, an empathy activist, consultant, and author of Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation at a Time. Rob’s here to talk about how we can avoid some of the hazards that come with discussing differing opinions, particularly when it comes to politics, and how that can change the way we interact with one another for the long run. Let’s have a listen.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:00:45] PF: Rob, welcome back to Live Happy Now.
[00:00:48] RV: Paula, thank you. It’s so great to be here. What an exciting time.
[00:00:53] PF: I know and I always love talking with you because you have such wonderful insight.
[00:00:57] RV: Oh, thank you. I love talking to you, too.
[00:01:01] PF: It’s a love vest. As you know and as our listeners have probably figured out just from our little intro that I just did, there’s been a lot of turmoil the last few weeks around politics. That’s why you and I need to talk. I wanted to start by you framing the situation and talking about how all this turmoil is affecting people and the conversations that they’re having.
[00:01:24] RV: Chaos probably defines the last four years, maybe eight years even, but in particular since the pandemic and all the things. Now, we’re just in this constant churn of like what unexpected news event is going to happen next, whether you’re thinking of politics or you’re looking at geopolitical, Hamas attack in Israel, war in Gaza now and Ukraine, and all the things. It’s really got people overloaded. There’s too much that’s going on. Nerves are frayed. I think there’s pain and trauma from the pandemic, from the lockdown, from the murder of George Floyd, from January 6th, that election four years ago that we haven’t fully processed either as a society or as individuals. All of these things just keep adding up, and it just becomes like, “Okay, what fresh hell is this?”
When you’re waking up and if you think about in the last couple months the number of never before seen events in presidential politics from a conviction of a former president to clearly something happening with a sitting president with cognitive ability and full presence at one of the most critical junctures, to assassination attempts, to Supreme Court rulings, to suddenly now, oh, one with the cognitive abilities got a moment of clarity and said, “Okay, I’m out. I’m not going to run this race.” Then you’ve got somebody new coming in, and there’s only so much people can handle. You start to get this sense of overload and confusion, and it causes more stress. All of that stress actually then impacts how we talk to each other and how we interact.
One of the things I keep hearing from people in a longitudinal study we do is how mean everybody’s gotten.
[00:03:22] PF: That’s something I really wanted to talk about because I’ve not ever remembered a time when there was so much just animosity toward people that you know. Why are we treating each other like this, and how is it worth sacrificing these relationships?
[00:03:40] RV: Yes. There’s something about that anonymity or that distance that you get on social media. People just feel like they can say whatever without any sort of repercussion or responsibility to the other person. I think it’s too easy to fire off quick thoughts, and then feelings end up getting hurt. But in short sentences, feeling tone never comes across very well. A lot of these issues are really huge, and you need to take the time to actually talk to somebody and listen and have a dialogue. Not just post things up on a wall basically. That’s like the wall behind you. If people just wrote thoughts and put them up on Post-it notes and stuck them on the wall, that’s what social media is in a digital format.
[00:04:32] PF: How is it kind of reinforcing this mentality of, “I’m right. You’re wrong. You need to listen to me.”?
[00:04:39] RV: We’ve been living in a society for the last, God, how many years of decades really where it’s winner takes all and zero sum game. People have been taught through reality television and all the other things around us, even in politics, that it’s, “I’m right. You’re wrong.” That’s not how the world works. You’re never going to get there, reach compromise, figure out how to collaborate if you just dig your heels in and stay on one side versus the other. It’s really detrimental to having productive conversations with people.
[00:05:21] PF: You wrote a blog post called Divided, We Stand, and that is part of what sparked me wanting to have this conversation with you. We’re going to share it on the Live Happy website. We’re also going to put it in our newsletter because you brought up such wonderful points. One thing that you shared was that there was a survey that shows 62% of adults in the US consider our inability to overcome our differences opinion as one of their biggest concerns. If we are so concerned about it, why are we still taking these approaches? Why aren’t we working to bridge that gap, but we’re just seeming to dig a divide that’s deeper?
[00:05:59] RV: Well, because they haven’t listened to this podcast or read that blog post yet, Paula.
[00:06:03] PF: Here we go. Well, we’re going to change that, aren’t we?
[00:06:06] RV: Honestly, it’s because we don’t know what to do, and that’s part of what with Divided, We Stand and some of the other posts I’ve been doing, I’m really trying to help people understand and give them the tools so that they can have more productive conversations with other people and realize that, hey, at the root of it all, we want to be happy. We want to have the freedom to live our lives. We don’t want a lot of interference one way or the other. We want to just exist. How do we work together to make that happen? It takes communication. We’ve got to turn that paradigm around where it isn’t winner takes all. It’s united we all win, and how do we actually do that?
[00:06:52] PF: Oftentimes, we can start a conversation with every intention of, okay, I’m going to listen, and I’m going to be calm. I’m going to be cool and collected. Then I’m going to logically present why I feel the way I do. Shocker, that’s not how the conversation goes.
[00:07:09] RV: Yes. It’s really hard. Every conversation that you go into with somebody, you’re carrying all the triggers from your past experiences with them. A lot of these situations are coming up with a friend from high school that you’ve known for 20, 30 years, a family member. There’s a lot of emotional baggage, if you would, that goes along with that, and so it can be very easy to get triggered by that. Then, yes, that’s when the conversation goes off the rails.
What I wrote about in Divided, We Stand is the idea to keep in mind where – remember the human element. Remember that this is a person that you in theory care about on some level, and treat them with that sort of respect. Remember as well that all these issues that we’re talking about out today in politics are highly personal. Someone is really affected by this, whether it’s immigration-related issues, whether it’s about access to puberty-blocking medications for trans-identifying kids, whether it’s access to reproductive health and abortion rights. This really affects people’s lives and very deeply.
Some people it doesn’t and they may be having more of a theoretical argument about it. A man arguing with a woman about abortion access, who’s most affected by that? The woman. So you have to keep that in mind. These are really personal issues. Of course, when they’re that personal, they’re going to get really heated very easily. How do you keep things at a more intellectual but no less passionate level, if that makes sense?
[00:08:57] PF: It does and I know you use empathy. You are now, Rob, going to give us the million-dollar answer of how we do that. How do we keep it from getting heated and raw and vicious?
[00:09:11] RV: Well, Paula, are you ready to take a curious breath?
[00:09:14] PF: I love your curious breath. Tell us about the curious breath. This is the thing. When I do trainings around empathy, hands down – I have the five steps to empathy is kind of the framework. But before you even take a step, you’ve got actually take a curious breath to get yourself into that mind space. I include that in all of my trainings, and that’s the thing people come away with like, “What was the most useful thing?” They’re like, “Oh, it’s the curious breath. I’m going to just do that over and over again.”
Then I hear back like, “Oh, yes. I was taking a curious breath, and it helped me see that sales negotiation differently. It helped me interact with my child differently. It’s useful everywhere.” The idea behind the curious breath is that, cognitively, there is a space. There’s a gap between stimulus. Somebody’s saying something to you, and then your reaction to it. Neurologically, those two things do not actually touch. There’s a little tiny gap that’s very, very small, but it’s there. The goal is to try to get into that space and widen it so that you can actually decide how to respond rather than react to someone.
Clap back to somebody that said something to you. That’s a reaction where if you take a curious breath, it gives you the space to actually respond. The beautiful thing is the breath is actually a big inhale and exhale. If you can imagine, as you take that big inhale, you’re going to feel your lungs press against your rib cage. When you’re taking one of those big deep breaths and you’re feeling everything kind of push out, imagine that that’s what’s also happening in your head. When you do that big inhale and then that exhale, it actually makes space. Just like it’s made space in your lungs, it’s making space in your head. Shall we try one together?
[00:11:10] PF: Let’s do this.
[00:11:11] RV: Okay, okay. We’re going to take a nice – and everybody please, everyone listening, please join us. You’re just going to take a nice big inhale on three. One, two, three. Maybe hold it there at the top for a second. Feel the ribs pressing and then exhale. Let’s do one more just to make sure we got it. I want to pull people’s attention to what’s happening with your lungs and your rib cage and just make sure the breath is deep enough that you’re feeling that expansion happening. Here we go. One, two, three. Inhaling, hold it for one, and exhale.
This does have the ability to calm our nervous system as well a bit. That’s why in yoga and other practices, breathing is so important. That calming actually helps also, I think, create space in the mind. That’s the benefit of a curious breath. If you’re in a conversation and somebody says something and it’s just got you, “Oh, my God. I want to rip their –” Pause because you’re reacting in that scenario. Pause. Just take a breath, and that’s going to give you the space to decide how you’re going to respond. You can even then use some filler words to give yourself even more time. Say, “That’s an interesting point you brought up. Huh, let me think about this.” You’re breathing all the way through all of that moments. It’s, again, giving you a chance to figure out how to respond instead of just merely reacting.
[00:12:50] PF: Now, do you have any tips for practicing that beforehand? Because just like you’re not going to go play a game, you’re not going to go play pickleball without practicing first.
[00:13:02] RV: Absolutely.
[00:13:02] PF: This kind of the same thing. It’s very unlikely that if you’re putting that in your back pocket and waiting until that conversation takes place that you’re going to be like, “Oh, wait. I’m supposed to take a curious breath, and then I’m going to do all these things.” How do you start incorporating that into activities that aren’t potentially heated?
[00:13:20] RV: Paula, that’s a great question that you’re asking.
[00:13:23] PF: Why thank you, Rob.
[00:13:24] RV: You’re welcome. I just filled a little couple of seconds of time. I knew what I was going to say, but I’m filling that time as an example for people to like, “Hey, that gives me a sec to gather my thoughts and figure out what I’m going to say.” I think it’s really important to that idea of practicing. If you’re going into a conversation and it could be a family gathering or something and you know that person, Uncle Bill or whoever, no offense to the Bills in the world. But let’s say Uncle Bill is coming, and he has a very different point of view. Ask yourself ahead of time like, “What if –” Well, first, if the conversation even comes up because you don’t know that it will. But you can think, okay, if the conversation comes up, what am I hoping to get out of this? Is it even realistic that you’re going to change their minds? Or is it really that you want acknowledgement that they see you as a person and they understand where you’re coming from and, hopefully, that you’re understanding where they’re coming from.
Identifying what that out is that you’re looking for is really helpful. That helps you prepare. Then you can think about, okay, he’s going to say – Uncle Bill’s going to say this. Then how do you respond to that in a way that is going to help him see your perspective? An easy thing to do is to work into that conversation as you’re responding. Uncle Bill said the thing. You’re like, “Whoa.” You take in a curious breath.
[00:15:04] PF: Or 16.
[00:15:05] RV: Or 16 while you’re saying, “Huh, thanks for sharing that, Uncle Bill. You know, I have to tell you that.” I just filled so that I can figure out what I’m going to say. Then you can say it like, “I have to say that I hope you can see where I’m coming from. By using that phrase I hope you can see where I’m coming from or I hope you can see how I’m feeling about this or my point of view. It’s actually asking them to have empathy with you. You’re setting it up to take this into a different place. You’re not pundits on Fox or MSNBC or CNN debating or really yelling at each other. You’re not doing that. You’re actually asking to have more of a conversation and see me as the person that I am and how this is affecting me.
[BREAK]
[00:15:54] PF: This episode of Live Happy Now is brought to you by BetterHelp. We’ll be right back to talk more with Rob Volpe. But right now, I’d like to take a moment to talk about self-care. Self-care is so important, especially during stressful times. But even when we know that, it’s often hard to make time for it. It seems like there are so many other things that take over our calendars, and we end up making time for everyone but ourselves. One way to practice self-care is through therapy, and that’s where BetterHelp comes in.
Therapy is a great way to discover new coping skills if you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed. It can also teach you how to give yourself more of what you need to become the best version of yourself. If you’re thinking of starting therapy, I encourage you to check out BetterHelp. Because it’s online, it’s completely flexible and works with your schedule. All you have to do is fill out a brief form to be matched with a licensed therapist. You never have to skip your therapy day with BetterHelp, so visit betterhelp.com/livehappy today to get 10% off your first month. That’s betterhelp, H-E-L-P, .com/livehappy. Now, let’s get back to the show.
[INTERVIEW RESUMED]
[00:17:09] PF: How important is it for us to determine now to make up our mind, “These are people that I’m not going to have that conversation with because I know we disagree, and I don’t want the turmoil.”? We have two situations on each side of my family. One is two family members to decided like we are just not going to agree on politics, so we won’t talk about it. Then I have two family members who decided they would try to hash it out, and now they’re not speaking to each other. It’s been about three years. How do we make that decision of, yes, I have an opinion, and it’s very important to me? It’s not just an opinion. It’s a belief, and it’s very important to me, but it’s not worth losing this relationship over.
[00:17:57] RV: That’s an individual decision for every person listening and then every person that they are thinking about. They may prioritize those relationships differently, depending on all the different situation, how close they are, if it’s blood versus friend, and how tight the connection is, how old are they. If we’re in hospice, it doesn’t really matter. I don’t need to have this discussion. Let’s focus on the ultimately much more important things which is appreciating your life in general.
Anyway, you have to have that individual decision. I can’t just tell people, “Oh, do it this way.” But you have to think about it. If you’re like, “You know what? This relationship is valuable to me, but I don’t want to get into it with them,” I think that’s a fair conversation to have. Let them know how you feel and that, “We’re on different sides of the political spectrum, but I love you dearly. You’re very important to me. I don’t want to get into a situation where this is going to tear our relationship apart because you’re more important to me than these political issues,” or whatever the debate is. How do we move forward? Is there a code word we can come up with when we’re veering into the that —
[00:19:20] PF: We need a safe word.
[00:19:22] RV: We need a safe word. We need a safety deposit box that we can just put all that crap into and come back to it. You can have that conversation so that both people know where the other person stands without getting into all the things. You can also have the conversations. Again, this is where the emotion comes into play and can you kind of pull yourself up out of. Take those curious breaths to pull yourself up out of that reaction.
There’s a woman I wrote about in one of the most recent blog posts. I wrote about a conversation I had with a woman in South Carolina. She’s part of this longitudinal study Navigating to a New Normal. We’ve been talking for four years. I talked to her on January 8th, 2021. She had a very different – I was traumatized by January 6th. That’s one of the things that I have still not healed from, and I’m trying to figure out how to do that. She had a very different perspective and take on the whole thing when that was really hard.
As we were moving into the conversation, this guy around was like, “All right. We were planning to talk about all the things.” But we ended up having a really good conversation that we didn’t change each other’s minds, but we shared – I asked questions on how her perspective. Because I’ve been talking to her for four years, I share a little bit more about myself and clarify. We had the conversation about JD Vance and the childless cat ladies. She’s a mom of three kids. Her perspective, she’s like, “Yes, I get that.” She’s like, “I’m constantly thinking about my kids in the world that they’re going to move into and all of that.” I said, “I hear you. I get that.”
I as a childless cat dad of three cats, I still have nieces and nephews, and I do think about the world that I’m leaving maybe in relation to them but just the world in general and that my understanding of that. I was able to talk about that situation. I helped her see where I was coming from and say I acknowledged. Yes, I can see where parents would feel that way, and that was Illuminating for her. She was like, “Oh, okay.” She said, “I get it. I see your point.” That doesn’t mean she’s going to change her vote or anything, but we at least developed some empathy with each other. We understood each other’s points of view. We agreed to disagree, but we kept it very kind of civil, if you would. We didn’t get into a knockdown drag out. So, yes, you can do it, but you’ve got to choose how you’re going to approach the conversation and if you’re going to even have it.
[00:22:02] PF: Once you do that, does that change how you then approach other conversations? Say you’ve had this successful conversation with somebody, and you are a little bit like, “Okay, I don’t agree with you. But now, I do understand why you have that belief.” Does that then change how you approach others?
[00:22:19] RV: Absolutely. Because then if you’ve got that understandings, let’s say – let’s go back. Let’s bring Uncle Bill back into the conversation.
[00:22:27] PF: Come on, Bill. Come on back.
[00:22:28] RV: Bill’s sitting down here, and we’ve had this good conversation, and he’s – I’ve gotten some empathy. I understand where he’s coming from now. If I go have a conversation with Aunt Sally on the other side of the family, who also seems to have that same belief, I can share. I may not want to name names, but I can share like, “You know, I’ve heard from other people that have that same belief that this is what’s behind it, why they’re feeling that way. How does that sit with you? Is that how – do you feel that way? How does that sit with you? What do you think of that?” Then you let them kind of respond. You’re starting to go, “Oh, okay. This really is this sort of underlying belief system.”
Then if you really want to do something about it, you can start to take that information and figure out what might persuade them, what might solve the problem in a way that we’re all happy with it. Obviously, we’re individuals in a much larger political situation. But if you think about other familial disputes or conflict with family or friends, you can use the same approach and apply the same principles.
[00:23:43] PF: I love it. Now, I know I have to let you go, but I have one more thing you talk about that I really want to bring up. That is you brought up recently the point to stop othering people. Oh, I love this. How does it help when we stop referring to someone as being on the other side and instead we just accept them as having a different opinion? What change does that make?
[00:24:07] RV: I hope people do take a moment to read Divided, We Stand because I do write about on the other side. An industry, a research industry colleague, Susan Fader, I want to give her credit. She reached out to me afterward, and I love hearing from people. Anyway, Susan reached out. She was like, “You know, word choice is important.” She really focuses on that in her work, and she’s like, “When you say other, it immediately others them, and it creates that difference and distance, rather than they’re just people with different viewpoints.”
That was such a huge, “Oh, yes. Dang, I did it myself, and I’m an empathy activist.” They’re not other. They’re not aliens from another planet. They are human beings. They have a pulse. They have thoughts and feelings. You’re going to find that you have things in common with them. It’s just that you have some different viewpoints. It’s staying open to that and realizing that with people.
Related to that and what else we were talking about, there’s a chapter in my book called Fear, which was when I got to go to the NRA gun show and was there on behalf of a client to talk to people about why they have carry conceal permits. What I found is I really started to just be open. Not think of, “Oh, they’re other. They’re weird. They’re gun [word: toting — inaudible 00:25:32] and everything.” Just be curious about their viewpoint and where they were coming from. The title of the chapter is Fear. As we kept talking, that’s what was revealed was that they were afraid of the world that they live in, and they want to keep themselves safe.
Similarly then, my Liberal Leftie friends here in San Francisco, as I was talking to them about the project and what I was hearing, it was the exact same issue for them. It’s a scary world they happen to be afraid of people with guns because they don’t know if they’re trained or what they’re going to do with it. It’s like, “Oh, okay. We’re all afraid. So how can we use that then? If we understand that we’re all afraid, what’s going to make us feel safe and secure in the situation? How do we collaborate and compromise?” That’s how empathy can work in all of this.
[00:26:17] PF: Tell me what kind of differences will we see in the next few months if we can learn to approach our conversations with calm and empathy.
[00:26:27] RV: I think – so we were talking at the top of the show about that stress and the chaos and the frazzled nerves and the meanness. You’re going to see a lot of that for yourself diffuse. That’s going to dissipate a bit. You’re going to have, hopefully, a calmer sort of presence and understanding of where people are coming from. It’s giving you knowledge. Once you have knowledge, then you can actually do something about it. Hopefully, people will be able to also recognize what are the things that they can influence and what are the things they just need to let go and say, “That’s how this person is, but at least I understand how they appear.” Or we have had a nice conversation with a code word where we’re just not going to talk about these things, and we’re going to talk about some other stuff.
[00:27:16] PF: I love it. Rob, you always have such wonderful insight. I appreciate you taking time to sit down with me, and we’ll be talking with you again I’m sure. In the meantime, we’re going to run your Divided, We Stand blog post. Tell people how they can sign up for your newsletter. Thank you again. I appreciate you.
[00:27:32] RV: Paula, thank you. It’s always awesome. Just keep taking those curious breaths, and it will get us through this election madness.
[00:27:40] PF: I love it. Talk to you soon.
[00:27:42] RV: Okay. Thank you.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[00:27:47] PF: That was Rob Volpe, talking about how we can learn to listen and use empathy to better understand one another. If you’d like to learn more about Rob, follow him on social media, read his article, Divided, We stand, or check out his book, Tell Me More About That, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on this podcast episode.
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That’s all we have time for today. We’ll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one.
