How To Have Uncomfortable Conversations w/ Emmanuel Acho

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0:53So go to growthday.com forward slash ed. That's growthday.com forward slash Ed.

1:06This is the Ed Myron Show. Welcome back to the show, everybody. So I'm excited to have this man on the show. I think he's got the best energy on all of television. In fact, I was just watching him on Speak on FS1 about, I don't know, an hour and a half ago. I was just literally watching him. So he changed out of those beautiful clothes he was on. He's got a sweatsuit for me. That tells you what he thinks of me. I'm just kidding. I've had his brother on the show, Sam. He just comes from a remarkable family. Former NFL linebacker. This guy's done so much. Emmy, a win-winning series that he's got that he produced called Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man.

1:44He had a great book called Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Boy. So I figured I need to have him on so we can just have an uncomfortable conversation and change some lives. So Emmanuel Acho, welcome to the show. My brother, I've heard nothing but good things. I call you a brother because you've had my brother on, my blood brother, Sam Macho. Y 'all's conversation was fantastic. So I am looking forward to this dialogue, dude. I don't talk often outside of my sports show, but when I find genuine people and meaningful people, dude, I'm excited. Well, I'm grateful for that. And we're going to skip around a little bit today, guys, because I told him before we started his personal development, what I'd call like self-help, improve your life content is incredible.

2:29And you could miss it because he's such a cultural figure now and talks about such heavy issues, important issues. And then, of course, he's got his sports background. But in there deep is his personal development stuff, which is outstanding. So we'll move in and out. But let's talk about these uncomfortable conversations first. What happened to I just got to ask you this. What happened to don't discuss race, religion or politics? That's what when I was growing up, it's like, hey, your family's coming over. Let's have some peace. No race, no religion, no politics. And yet you go completely the other direction.

3:00Man, we live in a world at where that's life now to to not discuss it. I feel like would be to not discuss humanity. I feel like it would be to not discuss you and not discuss me, Emmanuel, because we are individuals who have a racial identity. We're individuals who have a religious identity. We're individuals who every four years more potent than others have political identities. So I personally don't discuss politics because of how convoluted that particular conversation gets. But to not discuss race, to not discuss religion, that's to not discuss humanity. So I just think we're deeper humans than that.

3:42Although we're not going to discuss politics, you and I both know we're about to enter a six or eight month window coming up that I worry about our country. And to be really honest with you, I worry about the nature of the dialogue, the vitriol. I worry about that a lot. So, A, why do you think most people avoid it? And then B, what could you help us understand that we need to know to prevent, frankly, what could be like a really chaotic next six to eight months of most of our lives dominated by the noise and the division and the people really digging into their positions? Well, I think the first thing I try to do and I've been advised to do is just be cognizant of who you converse with.

4:26Not everyone is worthy of your time. Oftentimes, Ed, back with my show, Uncomfortable Conversations, you mentioned I won an Emmy for it by the grace of God. People say, hey, Emmanuel, you should have a conversation with this person, or you should have a conversation with that person. I said, Ed, they're not trying to have a conversation. They're trying to have an argument. I'm not looking to have uncomfortable arguments. I'm looking to have uncomfortable conversations that will quickly become comfortable. I also think, Ed, bro, we far too often as people, we miss the aspect of listening to understand.

4:59We just listen to respond and listen to respond, But did you even hear what I was trying to say? And I think that's why people avoid it, because they're not particular enough or prudent enough with who they have conversations with. And as a result, they exhaust themselves. You know what? You're right about both those things. My one thing has changed as I become older is I do. I never did before. I approach conversations more now. I just enjoy them more to understand more than I do to be understood. And I actually have uncovered that if you feel as if I understand you, you're more open to understanding me and I can feel understood.

5:43My dad, before he passed away, my favorite man in the world was my dad. But like about every issue, he and I were on different sides of or different perspectives. And I actually, I got to tell you, this is how I'm saying something I've never said on the show before. I wanted to say to you, because I just think your work's so profound. My dad was in chemotherapy, like really struggling for his life. I know I'm losing him in the next six months to two years. And even at that, I had that ugly a conversation. It just, it literally wounded my soul when we did it. And what I did is what you just said.

6:21To give you an example, I called him back. I said, let's do this again. Let me understand you. Just let me understand you. And it was like it became a beautiful conversation because I made that shift. You have this amazing piece of content, brother. I hope you remember it because people ask me sometimes and I don't about looking at people as if they're part of your house. The house analogy. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Windows, you got doors and you got floors. This is legit because I think it helps us see people at different places in our life, whether they are worthy of these conversations or not.

6:52So give them this this example. This you guys will not forget this. Listen to this. So I view my people in my life as aspects of a house. In a house, you have windows, you got doors, and you got floors. And the thing about your door friends is that a house, it has more windows than it has doors, and it has more doors than it has floors. Your door friends, they may come in and out of your life. They'll enter your life. They'll leave your life. They'll be there for a moment. Your door friends are people who you will have friendships with for months, maybe even years. Then you have your window friends.

7:31Your window friends, they can see inside of your house. Your window friends text you on your birthday. They can see inside your life. They text you on Christmas. They text you on Easter. They text you when you lose a loved one. They text you for the birth of a child. but your window friends, they don't really know intimate details about your life. Your door friends come in and out of your life, depending on the season of your life. If your life starts to get a little too cold, they might leave. If the life starts to get a little too hot, they might leave, but you have to have grace for your door friends because they weren't dressed for the season.

8:04But then you have the oh so special floor friends. And though your house might only have one or two floors, upstairs, downstairs, depending on your house, Your floor friends are there for it all. They hold you up quite literally. They're there to catch your tears. They've heard all of your conversations. They've heard your darkest secrets. They've heard your fears. And so I view in my life, my door friends, my window friends, my floor friends. But, Ed, I think the sweetest part of this all is understanding you need windows, you need doors, and you need floors. They all play parts in your house, which is your life.

8:44Let me ask you about your floor friends. I wrestle with this. Do you think your floor friends have to believe what you believe? I've always navigated this. Like, I want my friends to share my value system. But I think a value system is different than necessarily beliefs. And I think a lot of times people just, they conflate that. So like, the only people around them agree with them on almost everything. And then that's to me, like, I like people that disagree with me. It challenges me, expands my horizons, makes me think out of the box. It's actually stimulating conversation. If we're all just, yeah, man, yeah, I agree.

9:20You're right. It seems to me like not a real fruitful existence. But what's your take on that? Floor friends have to share your beliefs or just your values? Man, I believe and I love how you define beliefs and values. I think people might define them differently in their own unique way. I would say it like your floor friends should have similar roots, but they might have different branches. You feel me? like your floor friends, the roots should be the same. And if you can visualize everybody listening and watching, if you can visualize a tree and a tree has several branches and it has different leaves, but it has a root.

9:56And from that root, it has the base of the tree. And then it has branches. Your floor friends should have similar roots. If y 'all got different branches, yo, that is what it is. I do believe floor friends should share similar roots because, because if they don't, there will come a time when the sun exposes that friendship and then it comes down to, uh-oh, were they really a floor friend or did they just become a door friend? Life will happen. We might have Roe v. Wade situations. We might have wars in the Middle East. We might have elections. We might have a racial tension. And all of a sudden, it's like, wait a second.

10:42I didn't realize you were. And now all of a sudden, are they a floor friend or they a door friend? Wow. My gosh. All right. Tough one. Here's one of the things I reason why I think people have a hard time being persuaded. I want you to speak to this. And it's that if they change their point of view, they've disrespected their tribe or the group they're a part of. And there's a lot of pressure on certain you're really smiling there's a lot of pressure on certain people there is for me in my role Stephen was telling me goes look man I'm on television and an issue that comes up about race he goes while I'm on the air I'm getting text messages from different people very significant people tell him you better say this you better do that and he said it's difficult for me because if I vary from what my whatever it is you could have a political tribe a racial tribe a religious tribe whatever that might be if I change my mind or I take a position that's not part of my group somehow i've disrespected or i may lose that group in terms of their loyalty to me and i really feel like there's a lot of that in life right like now because these these window friends or these other people around it's like wow if i if i change my mind about this or i let them know i've changed my mind about this i've disrespected or i could lose this group of people and i think that's one of the reasons people neglect to change their mind sometimes you see some of that?

11:59And do you struggle with that? That's well said. I see a lot. The reason I do not struggle with that is because I believe that maintaining an ignorant opinion is to disrespect your own intellect. And I would rather disrespect my quote unquote tribe if my tribe is being ignorant than disrespect my own intellect if I have now unlocked the aperture of my mind to a new way, to a better way, to a more righteous way, to a more honest way, to a more just way. There is a lot of peer pressure to maintaining ignorance, but how can I maintain ignorance? I believe it was Maya Angelou who said, to know better is to do better.

12:39Like, once you know better, do better. When do you know if you should disengage from a conversation? I disengage from conversations when I realize the intention of the other person isn't actually to draw a conclusion. One of my favorite questions to ever ask anybody in life, and it came from Oprah. After I recorded my second episode of Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black man, I sat down with Matthew McConaughey. He called me from a no-caller ID number. This is a true story, ladies and gentlemen. McConaughey says, hey, I want to sit down with you for your second episode of Uncomfortable Conversations.

13:15Mind you, I was producing it myself, Ed. I rented out a studio space in Austin by myself. I was not yet a mainstay television personality. I literally hired a wedding videographer because I had no video team. I found a friend who shot weddings. I said, please stand in, shoot this for me. McConaughey watches the first episode. It had been seen by 25 million people in five days. And he says, hey, I want to have a conversation. I do not know to this day how he got my number. Me and Matthew McConaughey, we sit down for a conversation. Five days later, after that conversation airs, I get a call from another no-call ID number.

13:48I pick it up. Hi, Emmanuel, Oprah Winfrey speaking. I say, Oprah, she says, yeah, are you free to FaceTime later today? I FaceTime her later that afternoon. Again, true story, ladies and gentlemen. She asked me one simple question, Ed, one very simple question. And I live by this. This brings this conversation full circle. She said, Emmanuel, what is your intention? I said, Oprah, my intention is to change the world. And I truly believe I can. I said, I'm currently working on writing a book. She said, books, I love books. And that's why Oprah and I partnered together to write the first several of the Uncomfortable Conversation series.

14:26Now, bringing this full circle to answer your question. What is the intention of the person I'm talking to? That is how I know when to end a conversation. If the intention of the person is a gotcha moment, I'm out. What do I mean by gotcha moment? Let's speak plainly. If the person just wants to try to make me look stupid, I'm out. If the intention of the person is to, figuratively speaking, dunk on me, if the intention of the person is to be like, boom, I got a manual, I'm out. If the intention of the person is not reconciliation, I'm out. If the intention of the person is not to hear what I have to say while simultaneously allowing me to hear what they have to say, I'm out.

15:08So the best question we can ask anyone during the course of conversation is the question that Oprah asked me first. first what is your intention when i was uh really young i won my first incentive trip to go to hawaii i'd never been there before as a kid we didn't do that kind of thing and maybe you know who this guy is but i'll share this with you about intention so i'm i got up no one worked out back in those days i'm old enough and i read this book called the corporate athlete this guy named gropell and i'm like i'm gonna be an athlete businessman man, right? I'm going to be one of the first ones who's like fit and jacked, but in business.

15:45And so I'm running on this beach in the morning, sun's not up yet. And there's this guy running towards me coming the other way. And I see him, how old I was. I had a Sony Walkman on playing a cassette. So did he. That's how old I am. Anyway, this dude's running by me and he's getting close. I'm like, oh, he's a bald dude. He's got like this hairy back and I'm like, he's sweating. I'm like, I don't want to bump this guy. And as he runs by me, I look, it's Dr. Wayne Dyer, who was a hero of mine at the time, one of the great thought leaders, good men of all time. And I turn around, I go, Dr. Dyer, to just do your point.

16:18And he turns around, he's about maybe like 20 feet from me. I said, you changed my life. And he goes, he had a deep voice like me. He goes, I doubt that. He goes, I bet you changed your life, but how did I help you? And he walks towards me and I end up sitting on the beach that day, brother, with Wayne Dyer watching the sun come up. At the end of the conversation, just to validate your point, he says to me, he goes, Ed, I think you're going to change the world. Now I'm a young guy at the time. Probably he said that to a hundred people, but to me, he had only said it to me. And he goes, it's not because you're a talented guy or brilliant or a great communicator, but he goes, I think you are.

16:52But he goes, it's because of your intentions. He goes, I think you have a good heart. I think you're a good man. I think you want to make a difference. And he said, would you do me a favor the rest of your life? Would you attach all of your confidence and your worth, not to your abilities or your results, but to your intentions? Because if it's about your abilities and your results, you'll be chasing your tail and letting yourself down all the time. And then he wrote a book called The Power of Intention. I've never been more convinced of what someone has said on my show than what you just said right there, than any point ever made on the show.

17:23Because that has literally been the key to whatever limited success I've had in my life is focusing on my intentions at all given times. So I just want to acknowledge what you said right there. It's profound and it's brilliant. The other thing that I think a leader has, I'll let you finish this quote, but what if you've had a bad conversation with somebody and it's ended like I did with my dad and you said a leader isn't the first in line, a leader is blank. Ah, the first to apologize. you guys all hear that right there let that sink in for a minute first to apologize why do you say that of all the things a leader could be the first to apologize chuck klosterman wrote a book but what if we're wrong and i believe we've gotten leadership wrong in society not just in america i think we've gotten leadership wrong in the world hopefully those listening hang on to the next few words, because in society, we're convinced that leaders are the first to yell.

18:24Leaders are the first to be followed. Leaders are the first to make an authoritative decision. But what if leaders are the first in humility? What if leaders are the first to say sorry? What if leaders are the first to recognize their own wrongdoing? What if you can lead in that? And I don't say that facetiously. And I also don't say that for the intention of being counterintuitive. I say that genuinely, like, what if we're wrong about leadership? What if we've gotten it all wrong? What if this whole time I thought leading was who's the loudest, but leading is who can listen the best? Like, what if we're wrong?

19:05And I believe that leadership is who can be the first to apologize. I was in a conversation earlier today, Ed, and I was talking and my friend was talking and then I was talking and my friend was talking. And I was like, you know what? Neither of us are hearing the other. So I'm just going to be quiet and listen. Go ahead. Because I was like, we've gone back and forth seven minutes now and I'm talking about A and you're talking about B. And then I'm talking about A and you're talking about B. So I said, you know what? Let me just talk about B. We can get to A later. I want to talk about A, but we'll just talk about B for right now.

19:41And I believe that leaders have to be the person to acknowledge, hey, let me be sacrificial for a moment.

19:53So last night, I'm talking with your brother. And I said, give me something to ask him that you would want to know about your own brother because the two of you were very very close and he goes I need to think about it seriously and so then he messaged me back I was surprised by his question your own brother wants to know this answer so and I'm curious too when I watch you like you're very busy you were literally just on television I don't know an hour and a half two hours ago he asked me to ask you and this is very basic but I think it gives insight into an elite performer. He said, ask him actually what motivates him.

20:31What is it that actually motivates him? I was surprised your own brother was curious about that answer. And it made me like super curious about someone who achieves at a level like you are. What is it that motivates you?

20:45I think I want to exhaust my life. That's what motivates me, man. I want to exhaust my life like I'm not gonna get emotional here and if I do I'm gonna close the camera cuz I'm not gonna get emotional in public but um okay I I don't want to leave anything unfulfilled you know and

21:20And God's given me a lot. Yes. And so like, I would be a terrible steward to not, to not maximize it. He's made, I mean, I don't, I tell people all the time, I'm like, I'm good, but I'm not that good. And like favor is not fair, but like, dude, I picked up a football. I made it to the NFL. I picked up a microphone. I won two Emmys. I picked up a pen. I was a number one New York times bestseller. Like, God, I got, I'm not that good guy. He's just, he's, he's made me, he's, he's made me so gifted.

22:07so I have an obligation to myself to be the best because he gave it to me so how could how could I come back empty-handed you know I love that you're emotional brother that's a real answer that's the actual answer you dug deep right there and pulled the real one out. That was the real answer. Do you ever feel like, I'm just curious, you get to this level because all you just said, you are talented. Do you struggle from either one of these two things or both or neither? When I started to climb pretty high, and by the way, same thing, I'm like, I'm not this good. This is clearly God. Sometimes when I speak, I'm like, that's the Holy Spirit because I don't even know where that came from.

22:55And sometimes like some of the successes I've had are almost some of the great confirmations of my faith because I know I'm not that good. But as I climbed higher, I struggled with two things from at different times in different doses that suppressed my expansion until I started to overcome them. The first one was a little bit of imposter syndrome where, wow, they're going to figure out I don't know everything they think I know. maybe I'm not this good I did not have that in sports when I played baseball I did have it in life and in business when people started to look at me for counsel and advice so I had a little bit of that and then the other one was comparison as I climbed higher I'm like wow I'm in a whole different league here and I start to watch what some of my peers were doing and it would rip my joy rip my energy like wow they did the higher I climbed ironically I compared more than when I did when I wasn't climbing high.

23:55Either one of those affect you, and if it didn't, which ways? You know what's fascinating, man? It's like... The real thing that I would say affects me is definitely not comparison. It's trying to be better than my former self. Back to the other answer. Yeah, that's what the heck affects me. It's like, you were so good then. Why didn't, why weren't you as good this time? After, after my first episode of Uncomfortable Conversations, remember I said McConaughey called me, but I didn't want to do a second episode. I didn't want to do a second episode. And you might be thinking, Achua, it's crazy.

24:37Your first episode got 25 million views. I didn't want to do a second episode. Cause I was like, you can't beat the first one. And I can, how can you beat the first one? And, and now if you do a second one, it doesn't beat the first one. Well, why'd you do the second one? That's, that's what affects me. What affects me is like, is, is competing again. I don't compete really against other people. I compete against me. You know what I mean? Like, I don't, I don't really compete against other people. I'm just, I'm more so like, be better than yourself. Be better than yourself. That's, that's probably what flags me.

25:10I will though say, dude, the higher you climb, the more you're like, wait, I gotta keep, I gotta climb higher. It's weird. It's like this. It is a dichotomy of success. the more successful you are the less successful you feel it's it's a very strange paradox it's so true do you think the reason you're so emotional about some of the questions we're having is a how grateful you are for the blessings that are in your life or be a fear that you're going to miss i mean you bring up my brother i get emotional i just i love my brother like it just you know i mean um he loves you yeah um man i'm i do think i was talking to kamar uzman kamar uzman was uh like a three-time ufc champion one of the baddest men in the world oh one of the baddest men in the world i asked him a question one of my maybe my favorite question i ever asked him and i asked him to some degree what you asked me at i asked him i said before you enter into a ring, before you enter into the octagon and you realize like you could die in there.