Just Connect: Tony Silard on Love, Loneliness, and the Wounds That Teach Us

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0:44 Thanzel Washington, Welcome to Inspire Vision. Our sole purpose is to elevate the lives of others and to inspire you to do the same. Hey, Tony, welcome back to the show. Thank you. Doug. Happy to be here and back with you. Yeah, you know, it's so interesting. You've written a couple of really great books, and I want you to talk about it a little bit. But what's interesting is last one we got off on a topic and we spent the whole time just talking about suffering and how that can be a value if you look at it their appropriate way. And we didn't even get into a lot of the other topics that I think are so important. So let the audience know a little bit quick background to who you are and talk a little bit about your books.

1:25 Okay, sure, well, thank you, Doug. So Okay. So I'm Anthony Sillard. I'm I'm a writer and a professor at Luis Business School in Rome. I also direct their Center for Sustainable Leadership there. I've been a leadership professor, educator, trainer, coach for over three decades and worked with a lot of fortune five hundred CEOs and senior leaders also from most of the world's largest nonprofits like Save the Children, Care World, Wildlife Fun, a lot of political leaders, mayors, G twenty cabinet ministers and uh uh. And what I what I discovered in all of this coaching I've done with leaders is that whenever they're stuck, and they have to be stuck in some area to come to see me for a coaching, generally, whenever when when they're stuck, it's it's always attributable to a person in their life that they've never forgiven. And that became sort of the genesis of my latest book, Love and Suffering, Break the emotional chains that prevent you from experiencing love. We talked about suffering because that's where we started in our lifetst session, Doctor Doug, and then from there we went into you know, really deep into suffering and trauma. Well, suffering is really the the beginning of what I call the love progression model, which has four plateaus uh in this, in this, this progression toward love, their their acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, and love,

2:57 and then four obstacles, each of which has to be overcome to reach that plateau. So we reach We reach acceptance by overcoming suffering, we reach forgiveness by overcoming resentment, gratitude by overcoming judgment, and love by overcoming what I call incarceration. So I integrated a lot of the latest psychological research, a lot of stories, people that I'd coached or known, some of my own, my own life's work in these areas I mean, ranging from acceptance to to love, and I'm well, I really I really enjoyed it because I felt I felt like so many of us are struggling to form what I call CMSRS Compassionate meaningful sustainable relationships with other people today, and so that's what I really wanted to make a contribution around and really wanted to help in the in in that area because I actually, right now, along with Sarah Wright and New Zealand, she and I are the leading researchers in the world around loneliness and organizations, loneliness and leadership. And I see so many people lonely today and I just want to do something about that, probably because I felt lonely at different times in my life and it's not a great feeling.

4:14 And I want people to have more meaningful relationships in their lives. Well. And it's interesting, and that's what we're going to talk about today a little bit more is you know, the rest of that process of love but also loneliness and helping ourselves and others to learn how to become But you know, it's interesting. I saw on a Facebook post months ago a couple of people who were complaining about they were so lonely and they didn't know what to do and so forth, and this whole concept of loneliness versus solitude, and it's just a matter of mindset. You know, you can either be lonely or you can experience the value of solitude, at least in my mind, but I know it goes a lot deeper than that, and you're the expert on it, so I want to talk about that, but also I want you to kind of go beyond the suffering part of it and talk about love. My one of my daughters in law sent me a message and said, hey, could you She's in a sociology class getting her degree and they're talking about love, and so her question is can. She had about four or five questions about love, And as she was asking the questions, I'm thinking, you know what, in America, in the English language, we only have the word love, and yet if you look at the Greek aspect to it, all of a sudden, you've got what four to five even more, but four to five main ones, and they're different. You know, you've got the love for a friend or a family member,

5:45 You've got the love for a spouse, You've got that erotic love. You've got all these different types of loves. And it's interesting to me that people are seeking love, but I'm not sure that they're able to oftentimes die, you know, define what's the type of love that they're looking for? What's the type of love they're experiencing and could be grateful for, and then what are those other types of love that they're missing and how could they achieve that? So that's my verbiage. You go on this now for whatever what can you do on that? Well? I really appreciate what you just shared, Doug about about looking at kind of the not just loneliness, but the positive side of it. When we don't feel lonely, it tends to be because we have love in our lives and we recognize that love. And just as there are different types of love, you know, emanating from ancient Greece, there are also different types of lonliness is which we've discovered.

6:42 So first, let let's talk about the difference between lowliness and solitude. You already hit on it pretty well. I'll just go and share a little bit more and say that think of it this way. There's actually being alone, like if you're physically alone, if you're being in a room alone tonight, you're physically isolated at night, right, So that would be that would be that would be what we call what we call objective isolation. Loneliness and solitude are different, and that they are subjective isolation. It's not being alone, it's feeling alone. And and the difference between loneliness and solitude is do you experience a negative or positive emotion associated with being alone? So the way I like to I like to say it, and in my research, the way I tend to put it is that loneliness is a negative, distressing emotion associated with being alone. Solitude is a positive, strengthening emotion associated with being alone. So just as you know, we have that that that common proverb that you know, one person's trash is another person's treasure, and being alone for some people that's there, that's true, that's their trash, that's the relationship that they with themselves that they don't feel comfortable with others, that's their treasure.

8:02 Being alone is this wonderful experience. And I think, and this doesn't get said enough or written about enough, and it's just one thing I'm trying to change is that when you hear people say, oh I love being alone, I want to say to them, Okay, that's great. Why don't you go spend a month alone and then let's keep talking about this. And so being alone is wonderful as long as you like enjoying being alone, is great as long as you have someone to tell that you enjoy being alone. If you're alone and you don't have anyone to share it with, then you can very quickly become lonely. So I think it's this, it's this balance of togetherness and separateness that we all as human beings need.

8:49 So if we have too much separateness, too much aloneness, we feel I mean, that leads to a lot of mental illnesses. In fact, that that's why solitary confinement in many prison systems is not considered a form of rehabilitation. It's the opposite where actually people end up often having like irrevocable mental difficulties after extended periods of solitary confinement. Now let's take the other togetherness. Too much togetherness can also be challenging for people because it's kind of like their actions or they're interacting with people all day long, but their thoughts and feelings they're not processing processing them sufficiently, so they kind of start to feel out of sources.

9:34 They've discombobulated, they feel like unaligned, they feel that they're interacting with the wrong people. That's why some of the loneliest people are in a crowd. So it's not loneliness. Again, it's not being alone. It's feeling alone. And if you're in a crowd of people with whom you don't feel values aligned, you don't feel values congruent, that can be some of the worst loneliness ever. I was just having a conversation last week with someone sharing with me that is just very very poignant and sad that they feel so so so lonely sleeping next to their spouse, and that's you know, so that can be some of the worst kinds of loneliness. That's why in my wife is from Mexico, and there's a saying in mexicoch is major solo camlo companiello, which means it's it's it's better to be alone than poorly accompanied.

10:27 Well, and you know, as you're talking about that, we're really talking about in the emotion. As you say, there's a physical being alone, and then there's the emotion. And one of the questions I have that just came to my mind because I get very involved in behavioral analysis and one of the one of the tools that I use is a very highbred disc personality test a d I S, and and what I find, for instance, I'm very much left brain di I, which is an introvert extrovert, and what I find is there are times that I have to have that quiet aloneness to be able to just survive. So, you know, I can be in a busy thing and it's like, you know what, I've got to go into my office and just be alone for a while, just be quiet, and that really helps. Whereas I think when you have people who are more on the other opposite side of that, as you say they need to be with people, they need to be with people.

11:29 Have you looked at. Personalities at all as to which ones tend to experience that challenge of aloneness emotionally more than others or is it pretty much across the board from what you see. Well, in fact, one of the big five personality traits is agreeableness, and agreeableness is about wanting to feel a sense of harmony with others, harmony in the group. And there's actually a really interesting study by one of my leagues, Heaven von Cleief at the University of Amsterdam, and what he found is that angry leaders tend to do to do just fine with subordinates who are low in agreeableness.

12:17 So in other words, they for them, it's not so important about getting along with the leader and the harmony in the relationship. It's about other things. In fact, I'll give you an example of this. I was coaching an engineer who worked under Steve Jobs at Apple, and this engineer told me that after six years of working with Steve, Steve Jobs came into his kind of cubicles, kind of an open office environment at Apple when he was working there. And you know, you know, Apple has what they call this sort of one what Google is called Innovation Time Off. It's similar at Apple, but it's one day per week where their engineers can work on whatever they want. At Google, that's how Gmail and Google Earth were created, so at least to a lot of innovation, and similarly at Apple, and Jobs came up to him in front of a lot of people, looked at what he was working on and said and said this is horrible. Stop working on it, and then walked away. And he worked for Steve for another six years. So I asked him, well, why did you stay there? Why did you stay at Apple after being publicly humiliated like that? And he looked at me and he said, I got to tell you, Steve was never the most kind of emotionally intelligent person. He wasn't always great with people, But there's no one in the industry I could have learned more from than him. And so some people are really looking to their leader to

13:52 learn from them and to feel like they're growing in their career. Intellectually, that's more of a cognitive pathway to the leader, whereas other direct reports of leaders, our team members are looking more for that emotional connection. And so similarly, in relationships, there are some people who can spend much more time alone than others and they don't feel lonely, and then other people who they are alone for ten minutes and they feel lonely. So you're right, it depends on that. Of course, it also depends on extraversion and other Big five personality trait where some people really prefer to be around others a lot. Some people are more the introverts prefer to be alone. Although it's interesting is that there's been some recent research in psychology about how extraversion introversion that distinction is kind of kind of overinflated, that there's actually there's Actually what's more important for a lot of people is autonomy. Some people like to feel a sense of independence and autonomy, whereas others that's not so important to them. And they found that actually, you can have sometimes sometimes extroverts when you know that extroverts being being around people, can be around people but still can feel there's there's there's a lot of meaningfulness in their lives, whereas introverts sometimes by staying away from people, they're not actually doing that always because they don't want

15:25 to be around people. Often it's because they feel social anxiety, they feel uncomfortable to go and approach people. And and actually some of these recent studies have found that when you do like a psychological intervention in you, and you start rewarding people for going out and interacting with others. For example, one of my one of my colleagues, Juliana Schroeder at Berkeley, she's she's run these studies where you go on you go on like the Chicago Metro or the London Tube, and you ask people, Hey, would you rather write alone or would you rather talk with someone you don't know? Oh, I'd rather write alone. Actually introverts, right, And then you say would you enjoy the ride if you were talking with someone else or riding alone? Or I'd enjoy it more alone? Would you learn more? Which way alone? I can be on my phone? And then they offer people a Starbucks gift card and say, well, okay, we'd like you to talk with someone you don't know on the ride and then fill out this survey send it to us. And so people do this, and across the board, people tend to enjoy the ride more, learn more if they're talking with a complete stranger than riding alone.

16:33 And even introverts, it's just the introverts it takes. It's like more of a threshold they have to overcome to be able to get themselves to approach someone. But we all need human connection. I think that's probably the greatest driver for me in all the work I do, is this need we all have for social connection, for meaningful relationships. Let's talk about that inner imprint, those subconscious imprints that we have experienced from childhood on that are affecting that sense of loneliness versus solitude. And what have you found are some of the major ones, And how do you help people to ultimately push those And I don't say overcome, because I'm not sure we ever really do that, but to push those to the side and develop a new processing within the brain and the neurological system to where they start to eliminate those imprints and thus are able to experience a greater sense of friendship and lack of loneliness.

17:37 Well, I don't think that anyone really eliminates the imprinting that they've experienced. I don't very you either, right, But I think what some people are able to do is to acknowledge it, and acknowledge it, embrace it, accept it. That's really the first plateau of love and suffering. So accept the trauma, the challenging experiences they've had, and by accepting it, it's like that now they're no longer fighting this internal battle with their memories. They're accepting, embracing what they've experienced, and then from that they're really more in a place where they're poised for growth. And so, you know, there's a saying like once bitten twice shy. I think for many people with trauma, it's once bitten a lifetime shy.

18:29 And so that's where the lonliness comes in. A lot of people don't pursue relationships because they're scared, and so that's why you know, calling it introversion. I think is often a mistake. It's often that people have had negative experiences, especially with people they really counted on. I mean, when you're when you're a baby, you're a toddler, even a young child like you cannot survive without without caretaker or caretakers. You need other human beings the other to look out for you, or you just won't make it. And so a lot of children often subconsciously compelled to accept and not just accept, but but embrace really dysfunctional characteristics qualities in their parents, in their caretakers, because they need them in order to survive in life. And so they start they grow up with this sense, Okay, well people can be really cold and heartless and callous, but that's those are the people. That's what people are like, because that's what I've experienced. And so I have to learn to subordinate what I really feel because every time I share it, I get cut down. And they grow up like that, and then it's just the loneliness comes in because Okay, that's what people are like, and so I guess I don't want to be around them so much. And and and I think that creates a lot of the dysfunctional personality,

20:00 you know, and personality behaviors that creep in. And so it's really it's really being able to say to yourself, okay, like I'm not going to avoid what I've experienced. In fact, if you look at like Freudian analysis, if you look at psychopathologies, most of them are based on what's called experiential avoidance, like avoiding thes, the emotions, the real conditions that your life has been. And and so I think acceptance is about saying, Okay, I'm not going to avoid what I've experienced. I'm going to It's kind of like what roomy the the the Afghan poet once wrote, which is your wound is where the light enters you. It's like, here's the room, here's here's the wound.

20:46 Sorry, And I'm going to accept that this is the wound that I that I have inside me, and slowly the light starts to enter and it actually can become your superpower. You know, I'll say, I'll see you in my own ext like why why why am I here talking with you? Why why am I writing books? Why am I coaching teaching leaders and and and the other work that I'm doing. It's it's because of the wounds that I've experienced it is because I know what it feels like growing up. I know what it feels like to feel a sense of powerlessness, to feel a sense of of not not having a lot of agency in my own life, and I don't want that for myself or anyone else, So that that produces my passion for how I want to contribute to the world to help others.

21:34 Well, and I think you've really hit on a key point. And as I've talked to hundreds of people about this on the podcast, what really has hit me, and I think you've just hid it really hard, is the fact that you know, there's the saying that which we resist persists, and you know the fact that if we resist those things, it's going to continue to persist. But if we can accept it, understand it, even discover some gratitude for what that has created in a positive way for our lives. As you said, for you and I've experienced the same thing, it it's amazing how that changes our whole approach to life and our experience in life when we can accept it, acknowledge it, and then continue to use it as a basis of moving forward in a positive way.

22:24 Well, you're you're absolutely right, Doug, and let's let's let's let's let's take a deep dive into that that that which we resist persists, as you shared. So why why does that happen? I think there's well, first of all, we resist what we tend to be afraid of, Yeah, and fear. When we think about about fear, I always like the the metaphor for fear of barking dogs, that like, you have these barking dogs that if you run from them, you know, it's the animal impulse, the chase impulse. They're going to chase you, and you'll spend your whole life running from them, whereas if you face them, they'll they'll if you're well, depends on the dog. But you know, but you have to know when to do this, when not to do this, then the dog's gonna gonna leave you alone. And I think fear is like that, is that we spend our whole life running from fear rather than confronting it, and and and and and even the way the way what we've been told growing up and even as adults, about how we should see forgiveness, how we should how we should how we should see forgiveness love as you shared that a lot of it is just not not it just doesn't work. So, for example, forgiveness.

23:36 You know, there's a number of theologians and psychologists that would call forgiveness the highest form of love, and I just don't agree with that. You know, forgiveness is so so let's suppost someone says to you, Hey, you've really hurt me. I've really had a difficult time from what I've gone through with you. I want you to know that I forgive you. Like I don't know about you, Doug, but I don't want anyone saying that to me. Oh that that just hits me the wrong way. Yeah, So, so forgiveness is a power play. It's actually, hey, I hold propriety over what's right and wrong. I have this moral rectitu that you do not, and I forgive you for not having that. And and I think what's what's what's wrong with that is that it's it can be paternalistic, patronizing. It's like, oh, I forgive you, I forgive you for what you did, Whereas whereas it's very different to say to someone I'm grateful to you for what happened, even even if it wasn't so positive, even if something in the interaction like it led, you felt betrayed, you felt cheated on, you felt hurt, you felt the other person was insensitive. That gratitude is very different. Gratitude is saying, hey, you know, I'm grateful that, instead of staying home and and and letting that trauma inspired fear prevent me from going out into the world, I've gone out, and I've tried relationships, and I've been hurt. But I'm

25:06 grateful for those experiences because I learned from these people. It's like Neil Donald Walsh and is in his book, Yeah, I forget which book, it's not. Conversations with God is another book that he wrote where he has this example of these two angels in heaven and one of the angels. One of the angels goes up to God and says, hey, I'm here as a guardian angel to protect these human beings, and I feel like I can't really do my job because I've never suffered. I don't understand human suffering. I don't understand what they're going through. I'd like to go down to Earth and experience what it is to suffer so I can do my job better, so I can understand these human beings better. And God listens and says okay, and then he turns to all these other angels that are around him and he says, okay, here's the situation.

25:58 We need an angel to go with this angel down to earth and help him to experience suffering, and would anyone be willing to do that? And another angel says, oh, yes, I'll do that. And so the first angel goes to the second angel says and says, wow, like you're going to do that for me? Why would you do that? And the second angel says, because I love you? And I think what we need to understand about when others hurt us, when others wrong us, sometimes in other ways that are unforeseen, they're actually writing us. They're helping us to understand an area of ourselves that's that's a dimension, a part of who we are that's underdeveloped and helping us to develop it. So, you know, I shared this before, but I think in a previous conversation, Doug, but I think I think when I look back back on the stepfather I had, who is physical, abusive. You know, man comes into your home, beats you up, sleeps with your mother.

26:53 You don't feel much of a person that low self esteem that I had when I you know, when I was you know, like eight, ten eleven years old. When I think about that, it took me a long time to not just forgive him, but to be grateful that he was in my life because I connect with the suffering of others in ways I never would have without having gone through that. And I know the way I think, I have a kind of a strategic way of thinking, strategic mind. I really have this feeling that if I hadn't gone through that, I right now would be on Wall Street driving a red convertible having my third affair on my fourth wife, and I wouldn't know my children.

27:35 I'm just actually, I'm writing a book on leadership, and I'm going through all these interviews with CEOs who who say, yeah, I never I never knew my kids. It was just I had to make a choice, and I chose to be successful. And I am so grateful. That is not my experience that yeah, go ahead, better. So you bring something interesting that comes to my mind because as you were talking about forgiveness and gratitude for what happened, and I look at it from a slightly different perspective and I'd love for you to to, you know, understand this part and then help me to understand how you move to what I think you're talking about, which is a higher level for me. When I have talked to people, I understand that, you know, one way to handle those traumatic events, whatever they happen to be, is to, rather than taking it upon yourself, recognizing that, you know what, that person has experienced something in their lives that has caused them to behave this way, and therefore I can appreciate the fact that I don't have to be angry, I don't have to blame them, because quite frankly, I can experience some sense of grace that, you know what, I'm sorry for them that they have experienced this, that this is how they have to react. Now that's that's more of a non emotional level, and yet you're raising it to a higher life level where you know, you get to that point and then you move up to And I want to be grateful because that experience in

29:07 me has helped me in this particular way. How do people move up? I mean, originally, how do they move up to the fact that, hey, I understand this has nothing to do with me, It has everything to do I when when my boys. I have one son that came back from a trip with boy Scouts and he was a he was one of the youth leaders and he had just been berated by the by the Scout leader. And as I sat down with him, I said, look, here's the bottom line. This has nothing to do with you. This has to do with the fact that you know he's he's had these experiences in his life. These are the proficiency's had. And if you look at that, you're going to see that he's on that emotion and emotional intelligence level.

29:50 He is down in anger, frustration. That's where he's at. And therefore what you're experiencing is his experience in that And if you can recognize then that it has nothing to do with you, has everything to do with him. And when we went through that, it made it made a big difference for him. So how do you move from that perspective up to the perspective of appreciation and gratitude for those experiences, because that's to me, that's a little bit more difficult. Wow, this is you ask wonderful questions, Doug. I gotta say, and I think the way you counseled your son was just stellar. Really really, when someone like his scout leader is being judgmental toward us, it says much more about their need to be judgmental than it says about us.

30:39 And I think you instilled that in your son. I'm sure he's never going to forget that. I think one thing I do is I do I do visualization with people where where you know, at my conferences and so forth. And I asked them, I say, so, I want you to think back to the teacher in your life that most helped you, that most taught you what's really helping you and to live your life today. So go back to high school, go back to that dance troupe or sports field or or acting studio. And what I want you to do is to imagine that you're back there, and this is going to be your last interaction with that teacher before you turn at the at the last class or practice or competition or game or play, and you're you're about to turn and go and move on with your life. And what you have the opportunity to do in this visualization is turn back toward them and say something express what you'd like to share with them.

31:48 And I asked people so what would you like to say to your greatest teacher? And what invariably people say is I want to say thank you. And this is where the gratitude comes in, because sometimes the person who has hurt us, even that Scout leader for your son, potentially is one of our greatest teachers. We learn from them. Some people, the way I see it, Doug, is that people bring joy or and or learning into our lives. Some bring joy, some bring learning. You know, So the people who bring joy, it's an opportunity to reinforce what we already value. It's an opportunity to say, Okay, this is my vision for how I want to live my life.

32:30 I'm experiencing joy from connecting with this person as part of this vision, and keep on moving forward. Some people bring learning where it's like, Okay, there's something in me that's not quite right here that I need to develop from what I'm experiencing from this person. Instead of being an opportunity to live my values in life vision, this is an opportunity to refine my values in life vision. There's something I want to change because of what I've learned from this person, and maybe a negative exam but it's still learning, and it's kind of like gratitude that this person has come into your life as an interaction partner to help you access this learning. And so I think where we can be we can be grateful for people who bring joy into our lives. We can also be grateful for people who bring in learning, and as we can be and as you said, we can also offer a measure of grace that you know, given this person.

33:30 Let's take the Scout leader, given the social psychological and emotional like the emotional intelligence you mentioned, given the social psychological emotional resources that he had at that moment in time, that was what he could do and what your son can realize. Given the social emotional psychological resources that that I have right now, I wouldn't act the way he did at all. I would act very differently and may at some point in time that Scout leader may go through some therapy, some personal development, and he also may have social emotional psychological resources later in his life that he didn't have at that moment where he acted so horribly.

34:16 And so in many ways, what we're seeing is judgment is this massive disconnect. It's a temporal disconnect because you're judging another person today for what they did yesterday, which is a difference in time, maybe they would act differently today. And then it's also a values disconnect. You're using your values to judge their actions rather than letting them judge their own actions from with their own values. And I think what often happens is that people become disconnected from themselves. Probably that Scout leader was so busy and so resentful that he didn't get something he really wanted from his wife or that others society. You're not awarding him for all the what he considers to be the great work he's doing, whatever it is, that frustration kind of mounts, and then it can, it can just the floodgates open and it spills out.

35:14 Let me interrupt you there for a minute, because here's what's interesting. I think when my son experienced that understanding, rather than develop a resentment towards that Scout leader, it just became an understanding. And fifteen years later, eighteen years later, they are still good friends. They stay connected. That Scout leader is still one of his mentors. And it's interesting that that occurred because he was able to avoid the resentment by understanding again that it had nothing to do with him necessarily, maybe he needed to learn some things. Yeah, you're absolutely right there, But the main point was that it was something that the Scout leader was experiencing, either at that moment or another times that had caused him to be that way. And with that understanding, it allowed my son to remain connected to him.

36:08 Well, that's a beautiful story. And what your son did, I'm speculating is that he practiced one of the strategies in love and suffering around forgiveness, which is to forgive is to give for. To forgive is to give for. So when you forgive someone, you're giving for them to yourself what they themselves couldn't at that point in time give. And so instead of saying, okay, what most people do today is that with this massive polarization we're having in the US and worldwide and where people's not even talking to others with different views politically or you know, and so forth, to forgive is to give for is saying, Okay, I wanted something from this person they couldn't give to me, and so I'm going to give for them to myself, knowing that at that point in time they couldn't do that.

37:04 And so instead of using and and and invoking what I call enemy images like Okay, this person's the enemy, they're bad, I'm good. This sort of dualism, it's more of this sort of what we see in a lot of Eastern forms of spirituality, this non dualism, like we're all connected, and just as he had a bad day, well I have bad days too. In fact, one of the exercises in love and suffering around forgiveness is I ask the reader, and I'll ask your listeners here to think of a person in your life you've never been able to forgive, Like, try to try to imagine that person and write down all the behaviors that they that they took, or that they they acted out, all of their actions that you've had trouble forgiving. So just write them out, one after the other. Then that's going to be the first column, and the second column write down what character quality is associated with each of those behaviors. So, for example, for your son Douget, maybe the behavior was well, well, screaming at at at at me unnecessarily and then okay, so at you know, at that at that scout meeting.

38:13 So then what's the character quality associated with that? Well, that could be insensitivity. It could be insecurity, it could be callousness. Uh, and and and you know, lack of empathy and so forth. And then that's so. That's so the first column, the behavior is the second column the character qualities associated with the behaviors. The third quality. The third column. Now is who in my own life do I know that at some point in my life would attribute those that same character quality to me? And this is this is the sort of the showstopper. It's wait a second, Okay, so insensitivity? When have I been insensitive?

38:54 And so I I did this myself. I I I thought about my ex stepfather, and I think out about, you know, you know, when he would beat up on me, and how and the and how insensitive he was being. When have I been insensitive? When have I been callous? When have I even been aggressive? Right like that, like unnecessarily? And I think about times where I've I've heard others when I was a kid even later where I could have been more sensitive. And what this does is is it builds this connection between ourselves and the other person. And at the same time, there's another piece of conventional wisdom again that I think that really doesn't make much sense. Which is forgive and forget. We're told forgive and forget. And what I tell people and what I write about in Love and Suffering is forgive and remember. Now, I don't mean remember like every Saturday night, you know, put a sticky you know, put one hundred sticky notes around your house reminding you what this person did every Saturday night.

39:48 Go through it again. No, But I mean that each person is like a file and a file countenant, and in that file you want to put like, Okay, well what is it I got to look out for with this person? And also what are I really enjoy about this person? And keep that in your mind, and and so you don't kind of trip over the same wire again. So so I don't I don't think anyone would think it's good advice that if if you walk home at night and fall into a ditch, if someone were to advise you, okay, forget the location of the ditch. No, you want to know where that ditch is. But but again, what we're doing is we're not collapsing all the character qualities of this holistic human being into this one quality or there's these these there's one or a few behaviors they did that you didn't like, But instead we're seeing that just as I to forgive myself, I have to accept the entirety of all the character qualities that I contain.

40:42 It's like, well, Whitman right, I'm I'm large, I contain multitudes. Well, so does everyone else contain multitudes, and we need to grant them that grace, as you put it, Doug, well, and I love that. And so as we as we come to a close, what what would be how how would you put everything together in a little short comment that you could share with the people that might get them to think a little bit differently for themselves. I think my comment would be two words, which is just connect, Like find people, like in that study on the on the on the metro or the London Tube. When someone looks like they could be an interesting person and you feel safe approaching them, go and do it.

41:26 You know, we need to break through the social barriers, the invisible social barriers that we create, because connection is everything, you know. I think about I think about one time I was in a department store, and I was in the restaurant in the department store, and this girl went through this door to the little sort of child playground, children's playground they had right off the restaurant. And when she came back through the door, her arm got wedged into the door, like between the between the glass door and the hinge, and it was literally like her arm was turning blue. I thought her arm was gonna was she was gonna lose her arm. And I saw this happening, and I pretty much started screaming. I was like, I was like, okay, we need we need anyone here know how to unhinge this door. Anybody here with construction experience or and so forth. And and then we got this guy who was working on He was up at the top trying to trying to unscrew the bolts of the door, and in the meantime, her father she's on one side of the door, and her father's on the other side, and she's just kind of seeing him through this glass, but she can't really hear him. And I go around to her side of the door and I just started talking with her and saying, hey, you're strong, You're gonna be fine. We almost have this off. In the meantime, I'm telling the guy like and there's like seven guys

42:57 now holding different parts of the door you guys were gonna have to take the door off very slowly. Otherwise it actually it could be it could be very dangerous for her. So we have take it off very slowly. Once he has it ready with the balts off, and so this all takes about about four or five minutes. Finally, this brilliant guy who was able to unscrew the bolts on the door, which I never would have been able to do, he pulls it off and she's, you know, and she her arm. She it saves her arm. Okay, And I'm with my wife. My wife's a psychologist, and we're driving home and she tells me, she says, that girl will never be able to forget you because you were over there right next to her talking or talking her through this. And and this is the thing about trauma.

43:44 We can't just transcend our trauma alone. We need other people. It's the connections we have with others that enables us to move through the trauma that we've experienced. So I would say, just connect, and I'll i'll and I'll say to your to your listeners, I would love it if you bought a copy of my book, Love and Suffering. It's available on Amazon or wherever books are sold. Now, if buying a book's not top of mind for you right now, I know times are very difficult. Don't worry. I've got two free books for you there, The Myth of Happiness, How your definition of happiness creates your unhappiness and the Myth of Friendship, How your misunderstanding is about friendship Keep you Lonely? And both books you can download them you just go to the Art of Livingfree dot org slash Free Happiness and Friendship Books once again, the Art of Livingfree dot org slash Free Happiness and Friendship Books.

44:43 We thank you for having me on your show, Doug. I really love our conversations. I appreciate you inviting me back on. Oh I do too. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And folks, I hope you've gained a lot from this, because quite frankly, I have. I find that the more I get a chance to talk to folks like you, Tony, I learned so much more in my life. It's just amazing. So thank you, folks, thanks for listening. Hope you enjoy it, and I hope you join. Us again soon. There is doctor Duck saying, Noma, stay