It’s not easy. It’s not simple. It’s not comfortable. It’s definitely not fun. But it’s good for you, and in times like these may be one of the most important skills to cultivate.
Transcript
All right, team. Welcome back to the ManTalks Show. Connor Beaton here, and today we’re gonna be talking about one of the most important skills that you should develop – just as a human being. This is an incredibly important skill far too few people have been able to develop in their life. And I’m gonna share with you why I’m talking about this.
So recently, I have had a couple guests on my show that are a little bit more controversial, and it has been very fascinating to watch, observe, receive the responses of having those guests on my show. Everything from, “I can’t believe that you would platform this person, and how could you believe what they believe,” making wild assumptions, to questioning why I had them on the show, to thanking me for having them on the show to saying that they were somebody’s favorite guests on the show. So this massive gamut, having these controversial guests on the show.
But one of the interesting things that really stood out to me was how many people threatened to unfollow me, or threatened to never tune into my show again, or made some type of threat saying: “Oh, you’re going off the rails by having this person on your show, or having these people on your show,” and never throughout any of that questioning whether or not I agreed with them, whether or not my belief system and my value system is the same as theirs. Never inquiring as to why I actually had these people on the show.
And so I’m going to give you what I think every single man especially needs to develop in our modern time. This very skill, I think, is incredibly important, and I’m just gonna tie it in, and this will be probably pretty brief, but one of the biggest skills I think that we can develop as a man is the capacity to be relational with people that we disagree with.
I’m gonna say that again: be relational with people that we disagree with.
I have been running my podcast for seven years. I’ve had hundreds of people on the show, and I haven’t always agreed with them. I wouldn’t always agree with their perspective. I haven’t always agreed with their religion. I haven’t always agreed with their politics. But the point of me being a good moderator and host isn’t to always agree with everybody that I’m communicating with. That’s not the point.
The point is: can I better understand their worldview?
Can I be curious enough and inquisitive enough and impartial enough to understand their perspective that maybe has value to a large subset of people? Even if those people are different in their belief structures and systems than me?
I remember working at Apple for a number of years, and I tell you why this is so important, both within your intimate relationships and out in the world.
I worked at Apple for a number of years, and eventually, one of my roles, one of my positions was a market leader for the company. And part of my role within that company was to deal with some of the most unsavory, disgruntled customers that had come into the ecosystem, right? They were pissed off, they were entitled. They thought that they deserve something that was just nonsensical sometimes. They’re super angry, they’re super upset with you, and so automatically, there’s a massive disagreement, right? They want something. They believe they’re entitled to something that is just false. It’s just not possible.
So there’s automatically this discrepancy of agreement between you and this person. That’s how the conversation is starting. And over the years of doing this job, I got very good at being able to de-escalate people, at being able to understand their perspective, at being able to set more realistic expectations, and at being able to maintain, and this is the important part, a relationship with somebody who was coming in armed to the teeth right, ready to destroy, pissed off with the company who I happen to represent in that moment.
And the reason why this is so important is that when you look at our culture today, when you look at the political landscape, when you look at the media landscape, it is awash in the just dumbfounding incapacity of people who are able to maintain some type of relational conversation with other human beings that they happen to disagree with.
You can go online, and as soon as people, as soon as you see people disagree with one another, the communication and the conversation and the relationship dissolves instantaneously. It evaporates. And the problem with this is that this has turned people into very fragile, very psychologically weak people who can’t have proper disagreements.
And so if you are somebody who is so wildly susceptible to getting so reactive with somebody that you disagree with online or you tune into a podcast, or your favorite show, or news station, and they have somebody on the show that you disagree with, and your immediate response is, “I’m never tuning into this show again,” that is going to filter in to your life. That’s gonna filter into how you have conflict with your wife or your girlfriend. That’s gonna filter in to how you show up at work. It’s gonna filter into how you raise your kids. It’s gonna filter into how you deal with your friends. And this notion that we should just ban people and exile people from our lives because we disagree with them, or because they maybe believe something that’s different from us is a very damaging notion – both on a community and social level, but also on an individual level.
Because here’s the thing about human beings: we thrive off of a sense of resiliency and being robust. And the more that you are able to be in relationship with people, and again, I’m not saying surround yourself with people that you just disagree with and hang out with them constantly and go out to the bar and do that kind of stuff.
But the more that you’re actually able to converse and be around people that you disagree with and have meaningful conversations with them and say, “I don’t think I agree with you, but that doesn’t make you a bad person. I don’t think I agree with what you belief is around this political thing, or whatever it might be. But I can see your point. I can see why you believe that, because I’ve done the legwork to understand why you came to that belief, why you came to that value, why you came to that decision.”
And when we lack that capacity, we actually begin to operate in such a way in our relationships, not even in society or culture or in the world, but in our relationships, we begin to operate in a very fragile way that says, “you can’t disagree with me because otherwise I can’t be in relationship with you. You can’t disagree with what I’m saying or my beliefs or what I want or what I desire, or what I want things to look like. Otherwise, I won’t be in relationship with you.”
And so this impending and background threat of I’m going to unperson you, I’m going to cancel you out of my life in some capacity becomes the sort of guillotine that we use to get people to conform to what we want. And this does not create psychologically, emotionally, physically, spiritually, robust and resilient human beings.
And so one of the best things that you can do, and I wish I had done this sooner, I wish that somebody told me in my twenties, “look, If you really want to be a resilient man, go and talk to people that you just fundamentally disagree with. Go and have some type of relational conversation with them where you’re not attacking their character.”
You’re not trying to dismantle them. You’re not, trying to take them down a peg or change their mind. You’re actually just being in a relational conversation with them where you’re saying, “I don’t understand your perspective. I don’t get your opinion. I actually don’t understand your belief. Tell me more. Why do you believe that? Tell me how you came to this conclusion. Give me some information about your worldview and what formed that.”
I’ll just wrap this up with one final piece, which is, I just interviewed this gentleman named Sterling Cooper, who is a former porn star, and I got some heat for having him on the show because of some of his beliefs and some of his views; but one of the things that I found very interesting was I asked him very openly: what got you into this in the first place? What was your defining moment?
And he opened up and told me about a story that I don’t think he’s told on any other show, about losing his mother, about his mom. I think she had some form of cancer and then she passed away and it dramatically altered his life in a way where he began to question – life is short, and so what do I want to do? What do I wanna experience? How do I want to live?
Now you might not agree with what he came up with in terms of the life that he’s chosen and the life that he’s built, but it’s wildly fascinating to see how somebody losing a parent, how that’s going to alter their life, because I’ve interviewed a number of guests where that has been the case and it’s pushed them into all kinds of trajectories, all kinds of decisions, all kinds of experiences and adventures.
And so take the time in your life to develop some type of capacity to have deeper conversations with people that you disagree with. Listen to perspectives that you disagree with. Engage with people that you disagree with.
Stay grounded, stay rooted, stay curious, ask better questions. Try and see if you can build some type of understanding of what led them to that decision, to that choice, to that perspective in the first place. And probably what you’ll find is one that will help you maintain the relationship, which is an incredibly valuable skill in trade.
If you are a man who can maintain relationship through disagreement, you are going to have a kind of superpower at work and at home that is just invaluable because so many men do not know how to be in disagreement with somebody and maintain the relationship because we move into this “I gotta be right. I gotta prove you that you’re wrong. I gotta fix this problem. I gotta solve this solution.”
And the relationship goes out the window and then everything breaks down. So if you are a man who can be in disagreement with somebody and maintain the relationship, you have developed something so foundationally important, not just to us as human beings, not just to maybe your marriage or your relationship, not just to your work and your colleagues and your friends, but to culture and humanity itself, because when you look at out the world right now, when I look out at the world right now, what I see are a whole bunch of people that cannot disagree with somebody and still maintain a relational, ethical, and moral way of interacting with that other person. And that, to me is wildly dangerous. It’s brutally terrifying because I think it’s going to lead to a lot of tremendous – a lot of horrible stuff. It already is, right? The way that we interact and treat with – treat each other online is despicable. Often, it’s really not a moral thing. It’s not a moral way that we’re interacting with one another.
Let me know what you thought about this. Do you agree? Do you disagree? What would you add to it?
Please don’t forget to Man It Forward. Share this. This is how we’ve grown. We’ve never done any marketing. I’ve never marketed this show. This is all through word of mouth, so share it, Man It Forward, and until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.
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