415 - Dread Family Holidays? How to Disagree & Get Along Anyway with Kirsten Powers

0:00Let's face it, family gatherings can be challenging to say the least. That's why this episode with Kirsten Powers is perfect for right now. She gives us simple but powerful tools for getting along with others, even when we disagree. So you never got to dread those holiday get-togethers again. Enjoy. Kirsten Powers is a USA Today columnist, bestselling author, and senior political analyst. Her writing has been published in The Washington Post, El Salon, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, among many other places. Powers was raised in Fairbanks, Alaska, and currently lives in Washington, D.C.

0:35Her newest book called Saving Grace, Speak Your Truth, Stay Centered, and Learn to Coexist with People Who Drive You Nuts is available now. Kirsten, thank you so much for coming on the show and congratulations on this beautiful book. I know it is not easy to put one of these together. It's not your first one, but how do you feel now that it's done? Oh, well, it's so nice to have it done. It's like now the baby's going out into the world. And so of course you're like, be nice to my baby. Yes, of course. And it's honestly coming out at the perfect time, both what we're experiencing and have been experiencing, right, collectively for years now, but I think seasonally.

1:14As I was opening the show, I was talking about, you know, we're coming up on the holiday season and most of us are going to see folks, whether family members, neighbors, friends, friends of friends, right, that are going to come to our parties or we're going to be at a dinner or we're going to be at some kind of gathering. and inevitably conversations may pop up that involve people who have very different and opposing views. So we'll get into the tactical stuff in a few minutes, but for people who don't know your work, what inspired you to write this book to help all of us navigate times like these?

1:50Well, to a certain extent, my daily life was kind of like Thanksgiving dinner every single day. so you know I'm a political analyst at CNN and so I would have to go in every day and be around people who are saying things where I was like what and I have to talk to them and have to interact with them and one thing I noticed really post 2016 which was very different than before where I was around people who thought things different than I thought but we need to acknowledge that that things have changed right it is harder we're not imagining that like that's happening And what I realized was that I was taking it all on, right?

2:31I wasn't just having the conversation. I was basically leaving the studio, fuming all the way home, coming in the house, ranting and raving, laying in bed at night, like just stewing. And eventually I got to a point, and it was around 2018, and I wish I hadn't taken quite so long, but I got to a point where I hit a wall and I just said, this is unsustainable. I can't live like this. I'm miserable. I'm anxious. I'm tired. My body hurts. This is just, I can't do this and I'm not helping anybody. Right. That was the big thing. It's like, who is this helping? I don't understand. One of the things I know about our audience, you know, we have folks who pay attention to the show in 195 countries.

3:15So they're not all in America. They're not all on this continent. And, but I think with the rise of social media and just with the rise of 24 seven cable news, no matter where you are around the world, you have witnessed this intensifying division, this intensifying dehumanization, this tearing each other down. When I hit that wall, the first thing I did was I got off of Twitter and I got off. I wasn't really on Facebook that much. And I was on Instagram, a little bit Instagram, just, I wasn't having that experience there, but I got off of Twitter and I, I, within days I felt like a different person.

3:50Uh, because one thing I noticed was it's not just when I was on Twitter that I was agitated and hating the world. Um, and, and dehumanizing people. I mean, I really just wasn't even seeing other people as humans. And, um, I, even hours later I would be agitated, right? I would be like, why am I snapping at my fiance? Like he didn't do anything. And it's like, Oh, he just spent two hours on Twitter, you know and so yeah and so i think that it's not all bad we have to get you know it's a both and kind of situation social media can be incredibly toxic and incredibly horrible and it gave us black lives matter and it gave us me too right so there are good things about it and there are it gives a lot of people a voice and a seat at the table who didn't have a voice or a seat at the table before so i don't want to say like it's it's all bad i'm just saying that if you're looking at yourself and if you want to have grace for people, you're going to have to probably dial back your social media use.

4:47Yeah. So let's shift gears and let's go into what I think are these really practical, real situations that we're going to find ourselves in over the holiday season, right? So social media isn't going away. Most people aren't going to necessarily stop using it. And this moment they might start, I think a lot of people have actually started to dial back their use, but let's say we're walking into a situation we've all experienced before, which is you're sitting around a holiday table, right? Everything's going well. And then there is a relative or a friend who starts saying a bunch of stuff that either starts making you angry, roll your eyes, want to kind of engage in some type of conflict or just like shut it down or walk away.

5:31How do we begin to engage in a way that both honors our values and also honors the the humanity of the person that we're in the room with? Yeah. Well, first of all, you have to want to do what you just said. And I can tell you that before I really hit that wall and started rethinking things, if I was being honest, I didn't really want to do that. So you have to kind of get real with yourself. And I'm glad you brought up, how do you align with your values? Because that's what, when I had my aha moment, I was like, wait, this doesn't align with what I say I believe. I don't believe this. I don't believe that it's okay to despise and have contempt for people and judge people and all these other things.

6:14So you do need to get clear about what your values are. And then I think you need to get very clear if you're going to use the grace paradigm. And I do talk about grace as a practice. It's like you have a yoga practice, you have a grace practice. It's something Rome was not built in the day. Probably this Thanksgiving isn't going to be the one where you nail it, right? But you could probably do a little better. And if you just do a little better, we're all just a little better would make everything way better. Right? So I think that if you get clear about what does it mean to have grace for somebody, and we have so much confusion around this word because people often think it means just being nice or being polite or not arguing or not challenging people.

6:53And that's not what it means. It means exactly what you said about seeing the humanity and the wholeness of a person. So when you use grace, space, it kind of creates a little space between you and the other person. And it really lets the other person to not be you and then not get demonized for not being you. So you see it and you recognize it and you're discerning about it, but you also see that that person is more than the thing that they're saying. They're not just that. And you don't immediately go to that binary, you just said something really bad and really problematic. And that actually can be very harmful to a lot of people.

7:28So I don't want to downplay the things that people are saying, you know, but I also know that you're more than that. And I also see the potential that you could actually, you actually could understand this differently, but you're doing the best you can with the tools that you have. Real quick. Are you on the dream club VIP list yet? If not, what the hell are you waiting for? If you want to make 2025 your best year ever with me as your mentor, go to marieforleo.com slash dream club now and get on that VIP list. I also think there's a certain level of arrogance and that's something I've been thinking about as though any one of us has the lock on truth.

8:06Do you know what I mean? Or any one of us has that collective set of ideals or beliefs or viewpoints that everyone else must then bow to how we see things. And it just feels so incredibly arrogant. So I love this conversation because obviously we all know, again, across the political spectrum, there is misinformation out there. That's just the nature of the internet. You don't even have to be talking about politics per se. You don't have to be talking about social issues per se. You could be talking about health. You could be talking about art or movies or basic things about where a house is located or what's going on in a particular neighborhood, that the facts could be absolutely off.

8:49And you wrote about this in the book. We Yes. And that's so hard, right? It's because we're right. I mean, we know we're smarter and we have all the information. So why can't people just fall in line? I mean, that, that really was my attitude. But one thing that really helped me and that people, I would recommend to people, even though it's a horrible experience to go through it, is to kind of do an audit of your own life. Go back and look like, what did you used to believe? What did you used to think? Like what, who did you use to trust? What, how have you hurt? Who, you know, who, what, when, what do you look back on with regret and think, oh my gosh, how could I have done that?

9:27Right. And, and you, and, and, and then have grace for yourself because you have to have grace for yourself too. And then, and say like, look, I was doing the best I could with what I had and I didn't know any better. That's what my parents taught me, or that's what I learned at school or whatever it was, or I had some trauma and I was acting it out on another person. and I should not have done that. And now I'm a different person and I know better. When you can do that for yourself, then it makes it much easier to do that for the other person. Because you can say like, I've been there. Like I have thought the thing that I didn't.

9:59But we have to acknowledge that, you know, we're not inherently better than other people. That's correct. That we, you know, that if we have reached this conclusion, then it's because we've been exposed to things or we've been exposed, you know, to experiences. or facts or education or whatever it is, and to have grace for the person who's not there. You know, I mean, and not, and not, and what I would say, because you want to really get practical, I have a whole chapter on boundaries. And so instead of demonizing and labeling and shaming and all the things that sometimes you do out loud, but most of the time you do in your head, right?

10:35Use boundaries. Like you actually can just say no. Like someone, when somebody does something that's, I mean, that's what I ended up having to do at work, right? Rather than taking on what everybody was saying and like becoming entwined with them, I just would be like, no, no. So let me ask you this. I want to interrupt for a second because in what we've done for me personally in my family and when I'm around, you know, when it's people that I know and I'm like, Hey, look, here's how I want this to go down. If it's like a family kind of holiday or get together, we actually decide in advance the topics that are off limits.

11:13And it allows us, and I wanted to talk to you about that because I'm like, is that backing out of it? But we've had so many conversations and I still love all the people that I love and I want to be around them and I want to be with them. And that kind of creates this container that's worked for us where it's like, hey, look, these are the little areas that we're going to say we're not going there because we have all these other things to talk about and connect about, and we don't want the entire thing to devolve. And so - Yeah, you're not really going to solve the world's problems over Thanksgiving dinner.

11:45Right. And also, I think Thanksgiving dinner is this very specific thing, and it has a very specific purpose. There are other times you can interact with your family around these issues if you feel that you need to do that. And so I would say that's a boundary. Like you said, a boundary up front. You said, here are the things that we're not going to talk about. That's a boundary. Let me ask you this. What about when, say, we go back to that original situation, right? Where there were no boundaries set. Let's say you were invited and it's not even if folks don't celebrate Thanksgiving, let's say, you know, they're outside of the US.

12:16It's just a holiday table, right? And they're at a holiday table and someone says something that you personally disagree with vehemently. and you've kind of heard, read, seen that you're supposed to speak up, say something, you feel like you would be a bad person if you didn't address it. I'm curious your take on how we can respond with grace in a situation like that. Is there any little sentence stem? Is there something that you would suggest that people do? And by the way, I just want to underscore for everyone listening, what Kirsten said first was you have to want to come at this with grace, right?

12:56So that was like the big starting line kind of differentiator here. So assuming that you want to engage with grace, what would you suggest is something that someone might be able to say or do in that situation? So I always go right immediately to boundaries. And so each person decides in that situation, you know, and unfortunately you're going to have to kind of make it on the fly? Am I going to be somebody who tries to enter into this situation and help this person see it differently? I'm sensing that it's possible that they could be open to that. And then you basically don't take on what they're saying.

13:36You just see them as a person who's expressing an opinion and then you engage and you engage empathically. You listen to what they're saying. And I talk a lot about the social science of how people change their minds. It's not yelling at them. It's not calling them names. Shocker. And it is empathically listening and then sharing experiences. So you don't bombard them with facts and tell them how dumb they are and all those things. You just say, well, maybe they're saying something about undocumented immigrants. Say, well, I have a friend whose parents are undocumented immigrants. Can I tell you a little bit about what it's like for them?

14:10And whatever the issue is that they're raising it, they say something misogynist, say like, Hey, I'm a woman. And I, can I tell you like some of the things that I've had to deal with and people, they say now with the social science and our post fact world that you can't really use the facts because like no one will agree. They'll say, well, where did you get that? And he'll say in the New York times and they'll say fake news. And so you, you just can't have a conversation, but people do believe that you have authority and knowledge over your own experiences and around the experiences of people around you.

14:43So if the person's going to be able to hear something, then I think, you know, that's how they're going to hear it. Sometimes people just want to argue. And so I think when that happens, then the boundary is, look, let's, we can't talk about this. This isn't going anywhere. And, you know, we're going to change the subject and you have to hold that boundary. And if they continue, you get up and you leave the room and you don't, and then you come back maybe in a couple of minutes, but you're not obligated to have a crazy making conversation that's going nowhere. I do talk about in the book that I think we have to be very clear about not wanting to be uncomfortable versus being in a toxic situation.

15:26And so - Talk to us about that distinction because that feels like it can get very muddy and like a very kind of gray situation. And for most of us, again, you talked about the fact that you hit a wall, given the fact that you're a political analyst, you're in these situations every day. And I think for most people listening to the show right now, while they don't have the intense daily barrage of that necessarily, they might feel like, oh, I'm so exhausted. So tell us about how we can tell the difference between those two. Yeah. I think that if somebody... So for example, if you have a cousin at dinner and they say something racist and you're just like, I know if I come back at this, it's going to get really uncomfortable and everyone's going to be really uncomfortable.

16:11You need to be uncomfortable because if you're not willing to do that, you're not the one that's going to suffer if you're a white person. It's going to be the people that they're demeaning, right? And so I think that in that case, you do have to kind of push through that and try to be a peacemaker. And a peacemaker, peacemaking, if you think about it, involves conflict. So it involves you having to enter into disagreement and trying to create peace between people who do not see things the same way versus peacekeeping, which is just, I'm just not going to challenge anybody because I just want to keep the peace and I don't want to have any disruption or I don't want anybody to be uncomfortable or I don't want anybody to be mad at me.

16:54But I do think it's also really important. I have a chapter on embracing healthy conflict that you learn how to do conflict in a healthy way. And again, the person that you're talking to you has to be willing to do that as well. I don't think getting into a crazy making argument is anything that anybody's obligated to do. The other thing that you could do, Marie, is you might be a person who says, you know what? I'm getting divorced. I'm depressed. I don't have the capacity. I don't have the emotional capacity for this. I just don't. And I'm going to lose it if I try to engage here. My family's driving me crazy.

17:29I don't even want to be here. So what can I do? And so that's when I say with boundaries, figure out what your no is. And so you're like, I'm just a no to this. I am a no to what this person is saying. And so say they're saying something about undocumented immigrants. What would your yes be in that situation? Your yes could be, I'm going to leave this table after dinner and I'm going to go donate to a group that helps undocumented immigrants. I'm going to volunteer for a group that helps undocumented immigrants. If you're me, I'm going to write a column about how can I help raise awareness around undocumented immigrants.

18:03You could write a Facebook post that's not incendiary. That's just, Hey, here's some organizations that are helping undocumented immigrants, right? There's a lot of things we can do that actually will help change the world and address the issue that we're upset about that doesn't involve screaming at our relative over Thanksgiving dinner, which isn't going to change their mind anyway. Um, but it certainly isn't going to help anybody like that. Who's getting helped by that? Yeah. I think it feels to me, if I'm hearing you correctly, it's about discernment and it's about understanding and kind of choosing your battles in a certain regard, like honoring your own capacity in this moment.

18:40Goodness knows that outside of what's happening globally, what's happening for people personally, whether they've got a health challenge, like you said, they're going through a divorce, there's something really challenging happening in their own life with their career or their family or themselves. Um, I think it is really important for people to hear that when you are in that depleted state, it is okay. And it does not make you a bad person to say, I am not engaging in this. Like race for yourself. It always comes back. It's like cut yourself some slack, you know, just cut yourself some slack.

19:13You're doing the best that you can in the situation. And, and I think that that's, you know, that's important. And I also think when I was talking before about people are doing the best they can understand understand that people, I have a lot in the book about brain science, like really understanding how people's brains just want to keep them safe. And so people will find information, they'll gravitate towards information that make them feel safe. So that person that you're arguing with, you know, they're looking for the monster. They're looking for the bad guy. They need that to feel safe, especially people who have unintegrated trauma.

19:47And so, and that was something I really struggled with. And until I did the work of integrating my trauma, I just couldn't, my brain wouldn't let me. It just immediately went to what made me feel safe was sorting people into good and bad baskets. Because then I was like, well, I know now I know where the good people are and the bad people are. So recognize the person you're talking to might be doing that. And it's totally unconscious. Like they have no idea. I had no idea I was doing it. Well, I think too, like I'm a person as a coach, Kirsten, who always tries to bring it back to myself, right?

20:20So rather than looking like, oh, this person, it's like, oh, what's my stuff? Like, what's my part in this? And I love that you said that, that you said, you know, recognizing for yourself that there was unresolved trauma in you. And as a result of that, you wanted to pop people into these simple buckets of good and bad. And I think the only chance we have, you know, speaking about this particular country, and then of course, globally around the world, is if we have to elevate our thinking and our empathy skills to stop putting people into these very simplistic buckets. You could like one thing about a person or several things about a person, and they may have other beliefs, points of views, ideas in their mind that you can completely disagree with, and they're still a completely amazing, valuable human that you can love.

21:12It's like we have to be able to hold. Yes. You have to be able to hold all of these things at once together. And that's why I wanted to have this conversation with you because I don't think people are having the conversation enough. They want everyone to kind of say, oh, look at how whatever you are. And it's like, actually, those ideas are really dangerous. They feel terrible. And they're often motivated by the wrong thing. It's people who - And they also make us feel bad. That's the thing that people don't realize is that almost every single person you talk to who's doing that will tell you they're miserable.

21:47Yes. And so it's like you're actually, it's actually, you know, it's like MLK said, hate is too great a burden to bear. Like you are bearing all this. When you judge people, the other person doesn't even know you're judging them because you're doing it in your head. You're the one who's having this toxic, like brew in your body about thinking about this person versus just being discerning and clear. Right. And so it sounds like if I'm hearing you correctly, what you're affirming is it is possible to love and respect and maintain relationships with people who have very different views than you have.

22:23Yes, absolutely. Now there are some things I think if somebody said it would be pretty hard for me to move past, but that's my boundary. That's okay. Grace does not say you have to be in relationships with people who believe or say things that you just, you know, that cross a boundary that you're just like, I just can't, I'm just a total no to that. And that's okay. And that's, again, that's the misunderstanding. So in my role, I have to sometimes criticize people, right? I'm asked about something on TV and I say, I think this person is doing this, that, and the other thing. And already people are coming to me and saying like, well, you're not showing them grace.

22:59And it's like, that's just a category mistake. Like Like you can criticize, you can speak your truth, as I say in the title of my book, and have grace. And again, bringing it back to ourselves, I think every single human on planet Earth, you've had ideas that at one time you were like, oh, I thought that. And then your ideas evolve as you grow as a human being. That's the whole point of being human, right? Is to grow and evolve. I want to wrap with something, actually two things. So you wrote on Instagram, it's possible to care and not be crushed by hopelessness, anxiety, chronic body pain and fatigue, and all the other fun things that come from being upset all the time by discovering grace as a practice.

23:39So I'm curious for you personally, what do you do as you're moving back into the world? Obviously, you've got this book, so you want to walk your talk. What do you do to practice grace daily when you're walking into your job now? Well, for one thing, I take very good care of myself. I get enough sleep. I meditate. I pray. I stay very grounded. And I think that honestly, writing this book changed me. I am a different person than I was when I started it. And so because this is always my paradigm, it doesn't mean I'm never going to have contempt or that I'm never going to judge somebody. The difference is that I notice it and I go, oh, like that's a little off.

24:21Like it's a little discordant. Whereas before I just did it and I didn't think anything of it. And if anybody had said anything was wrong with it, I'd be like, you're the problem because you can't see how horrible everything is. And it's like, no, things are still horrible. They're still really bad. I'm still really worried about what's happening in this country. I'm still very concerned about the future of this country. But my therapist was the one who first said that to me. She said, do you know it's possible to be empathic and care about other people and care about social justice and not be miserable?

24:49And I was like, no, that's impossible. How could you do that all the time because people are suffering and I can't be happy. And she's like, but how is that helping anybody? And the truth is I'm way more helpful to people now because I had legitimately chronic fatigue. I was diagnosed with chronic Lyme, Epstein-Barr, all the things, fibromyalgia. I was exhausted. I was sleeping like 14 hours a day. I had brain fog. I had anxiety. A person like in that state, it's just not that helpful. They're just not. And now I'm, I don't have any of those things. I'm completely physically healthy. I'm yeah.