Join us in this captivating episode of Life in Transition as we welcome esteemed guest Eric Sirotkin, acclaimed author and visionary behind the Ubuntuworks Project. Delve into Eric's remarkable journey, where he recounts his pivotal role in South Africa's transition from apartheid, offering profound insights into his personal transformation and professional evolution.
Embracing Humanity: A Journey of Connection and Unity
Welcome back to the latest episode of Life in Transition. Today, we have a special guest, Eric Sirotkin, author of the book "Witness: A lawyers journey from Litigation to liberation" and founder of the Ubuntuworks Project. Eric shares his fascinating journey of working with the Republic of South Africa during the ending of apartheid and the impact it had on his life and work.
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The views and opinions expressed on the “Life In Transition” podcast are solely those of the author and guests and should not be attributed to any other individual or entity. This podcast is an independent production of Life In Transition, and the podcast production is an original work of the author. All rights of ownership and reproduction are retained—copyright 2024.
00:00 - 00:20
Speaker 1: In this world today, it has become my strongest transition point because it taught me the saving grace for our planet, for our divisiveness and otherwise, is if we can shift our perspective. Václav Havel said this too, can we move from what separates us to what unites
00:20 - 00:21
Speaker 2: us? Right.
00:22 - 00:43
Speaker 1: And recognizing the commonality, the I am because we are, and can we recognize that we are not separate? And I think Planhovel said this too, I am because we are, and can we recognize that we are not separate. ♪♪
00:44 - 01:23
Speaker 2: I'm Art Blanchford, And this is Life in Transition, a podcast about making the most of the changes we're given. As a married father of 3 teenagers, a long-time global business executive and adventurer, I've been through hundreds of transitions in my life. Many have been difficult, but all have led to a depth and richness I could never have imagined. You'll get to hear all about them on this podcast so that together we can create more love and joy in our lives, no matter what transitions we are going through. Welcome to another episode of the Life in Transition
01:23 - 01:50
Speaker 2: podcast. I'm really excited today to have my friend and cousin-in-law, Eric Srotkin, who's a human rights lawyer, mediator, and founder and executive director of the Ubuntu Project. Fascinating story, which I really look forward to getting into. And first of all, Eric, I just have to say also, thank you for coming on, and thank you for being such an important part of my life and my family in these last few years. I've really enjoyed getting to know you.
01:50 - 01:51
Speaker 1: Thank you, Art. Same here.
01:51 - 02:14
Speaker 2: So most welcome to the Life in Transition podcast. Really glad you're here. I'm gonna start the way I always do, which is what is 1 of the transitions that you've been through in life that you feel has been the most transformational, most meaningful, maybe most difficult, brought about the most change? What is a transformation that's been really pivotable for you in your life?
02:15 - 02:58
Speaker 1: I think the greatest transition for me has been as a lawyer, as a trial lawyer, as someone caught up in the us and them dynamics of conflict resolution, or conflict, if you will. I think I've learned and transitioned a lot in my approach to conflict and the way I practice law, as I still have a trial practice. And a lot of that came from experience I had in South Africa, where I transitioned in a way that helped me to become who I am today. And that related to being a small part of the transition that was
02:58 - 03:18
Speaker 1: taking place post-apartheid in South Africa in the 90s. And so those experiences and how I took an experience and translated it into my life and into my practice and into my approach to the world. So that is a major 1.
03:19 - 03:44
Speaker 2: So you say, yeah, it's a fascinating story, but I'm curious because you said that this was a transition that really led you to who you are today. So what is that transition? Like what happened? Take us back there in the 90s and right around apartheid South Africa, the end of apartheid South Africa. What were you doing there? How did you get there? What was the tipping point? What was the chrysalis that you went through at that point?
03:45 - 04:30
Speaker 1: Well, I had been a very active progressive trial lawyer in the 80s, and I had taken on corporations in the government and assisted demonstrators who were protesting first strike nuclear weapons or other things, and defending people's right to free speech. And I was a gung-ho, rabid lawyer, if you will, in the sense of I felt I was doing good and doing right. And I had My first experience just prior to going to South Africa in the 1980s that made me start to wonder was working with the sanctuary movement and helping and assisting churches and particularly people
04:30 - 05:05
Speaker 1: of faith who were helping provide refuge to people fleeing the wars in Central America. And they were being charged with aiding and abetting people who were helping people who were fleeing the violence there. And I met children and really committed people who had either left their country under a great fear of persecution or simple people in the United States who were willing to put their life on the line to just help another human being. And so it had-
05:05 - 05:07
Speaker 2: So just sort of quietly do the right thing.
05:07 - 05:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, and to give sanctuary, to invite someone into your home, to say you need safety, I'll provide you safety, very basic human principles. And the experience left me a lot with a more open heart. And I think it gave me a perspective to look at the world differently, not just through a political lens, which is very caught up in the dynamic of us versus them at the time. And in the 80s, of course, it was the US and the Soviet Union or the demonstrators or as a kid, the Vietnam War and the soldiers or the demonstrators
05:45 - 05:55
Speaker 1: and this pattern of us versus them that I was involved in, always assuming I was doing the right thing, but for the right side of things.
05:55 - 06:01
Speaker 2: Right, you were the us, therefore you're okay, but you were not the them, but the them thinks they're the right side as well.
06:01 - 06:02
Speaker 1: No, I wouldn't align my… Right,
06:02 - 06:03
Speaker 2: that would be bad.
06:03 - 06:05
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't associate with them very much.
06:05 - 06:06
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
06:06 - 06:15
Speaker 1: It was the kind of subtle demonization that we all do when we isolate people with different views. So, in 1990…
06:15 - 06:18
Speaker 2: this was the foreground before you went to South Africa.
06:18 - 06:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I think when you have certain experiences that kind of pry open your heart a little and take us out of those polarities, I think it helps us become more receptive to transition, if you will, and to change. And so in 1991, I got invited with a group of lawyers to come to South Africa to help the ANC on a proposed bill of rights that they were developing. Mandela had been released from prison just a few months before. And we were going into a very uncertain situation. Nothing had been negotiated yet.
06:58 - 07:05
Speaker 2: Right. Hey Eric, a question, how did you get invited to that? Like, that's a big statement. I got invited to come help solve apartheid in South Africa.
07:05 - 07:52
Speaker 1: H.Y.K. Well, it wasn't to... Yeah, it was an invitation from some other lawyers I knew who had been supportive of lawyers in exile from during the apartheid period. There were lawyers within the National Lawyers Guild, within the National Conference of Black Lawyers and groups in the United States who had actively supported people in exile, particularly lawyers and others. And so they invited us to put together a delegation and a group to come to this constitution-making conference in Cape Town and to share our experiences in democracy, our experiences in constitutional rights, and our experience in freedom, if
07:52 - 08:36
Speaker 1: you will, something that we're always is a constant struggle, but that is something that we had some experience with. So those weeks in South Africa with people who had struggled so much, who had come through so much, and meeting L.B. Sachs and Dela Omar and Cyril Ramaphosa and Joe Slovo and these people who had been part of the anti-apartheid movement within South Africa for so long. There was a thirst for outside input because of the embargoes there. And so you see South Africa represented at that time this notion of separation. That's how it became my life's
08:36 - 08:37
Speaker 1: work, is this idea.
08:38 - 08:47
Speaker 2: Right, absolutely. Wow. And in twofold, because they had separated themselves from the world, but they also had separated society inside the country as well.
08:48 - 09:29
Speaker 1: And separated by race and separated by class. It was a very economic system, apartheid, not just a racial system, where they took men and separated them out for 10 months of the year, working in hostels hundreds of miles away from their home to be a workforce. I mean there were all kinds of aspects of separation. And here was a deep yearning for connection. A deep learning to connect with others outside of the world of South Africa and apartheid and connecting with the whole personal connection between people. And so in those experiences, and we also were invited
09:29 - 10:05
Speaker 1: and went to the one-year celebration of independence in Namibia next door to South Africa. And we were guests of President Nyoma there, and we were involved with seeing a new liberated country and an emerging 1. And I laid there in my last night, I remember very specifically, I'm laying there in bed, I'm watching the ceiling fan go around and around, and I'm thinking, I need all this courage there, all this creativity, all this foresight there. I need to change what I do or how I do it. And I came back, I had 7, 8 people working
10:05 - 10:23
Speaker 1: for me in this law office, and I announced I was gonna do things differently at that time. I was going to work on resolving conflict, representing people, but approaching employers at that time and saying instead of, dear bigot, do you want to talk? Which doesn't always get you in the door.
10:23 - 10:26
Speaker 2: Right. Hey, let me have a word with you.
10:27 - 10:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, I decided I was going to do things differently. It involved a scaled down staff, and so there was a little uproar with all of that. But I was determined to do what I did differently in a more connecting way. I didn't know quite what that would look like.
10:42 - 11:11
Speaker 2: And do you remember, Eric, in your time there in South Africa, which was obviously so impactful on you, Do you remember a particular tipping point where you had that realization? Was it there laying in bed with the accumulation of all this stuff? Or was it like at a particular meeting or watching somebody or seeing somebody forgive somebody? Was there some tipping point that changed you? You said you went in already starting with a little bit more open heart, like you weren't just us versus them already from your experience that you were having in the States before
11:11 - 11:28
Speaker 2: you went over there, working with these people that were housing migrants or, you know, political or terror refugees, if you will. But do you remember a particular moment that was the tipping point while you were there that opened your heart another, whatever it was, 15 degrees or 50 degrees?
11:28 - 11:52
Speaker 1: Okay, maybe about 12 degrees. It was a ways to go. But it had 1 evening, we were invited to a braai. It's a barbecue there. It was a celebration. And we were there that evening as political prisoners had been released from Robben Island that morning and had...
11:52 - 11:55
Speaker 2: Holy cow, where Mandela had been held for 27 years.
11:56 - 12:19
Speaker 1: Yes, and they were just had been released and they came to the gathering. It was a celebration of their release. And it was so powerful to see them embraced by their community, to talk with them and see their continued vision, regardless of the hardships they endured.
12:20 - 12:27
Speaker 2: So no retribution, but just saying, hey, let's continue to have a best and peaceful South Africa going forward.
12:27 - 13:10
Speaker 1: Yes. I think there were debates on that. We got to really debate those issues because there were people who wanted justice, which they saw as outside of reconciliation. But it was the embrace, the tears, the excitement, and the dancing that took place, and the music and dancing that took place in that gathering that I think further opened my heart to what freedom was about. And that if you work, these are people who, some of them had been in prison 5, 10, 20 years and sacrifice that it takes sometimes. And I think that was a moving point
13:10 - 13:11
Speaker 1: for me.
13:11 - 13:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, and obviously whether some of them are thinking they need to have justice or not have justice, it wasn't the top point on their agenda, was like retribution or paybacks. It was let's connect and let's be in community and celebrate where we've come.
13:24 - 14:04
Speaker 1: Absolutely. And I think that notion of celebration came through in my next South Africa experience in 94, when I was an international election observer when Mandela was elected. And in those experiences, going into communities that were voting for the first time ever, and then I was in voting booths where people were asked by the monitor who might bark at them in Afrikaans to who do you want to vote for? And because if someone said they needed help, which a lot of people did, they'd never voted. And they would scan this big ballot with all the faces.
14:04 - 14:30
Speaker 1: And they would come most all the time next to Mandela's face. And they would say Madiba, his name. And they would put an X next to his face there. And then you would see them leave the booth in a transitional way, because you could see they felt lighter. It was as if an elderly person with a cane was skipping down the road after.
14:30 - 14:30
Speaker 2: It
14:30 - 15:13
Speaker 1: wasn't as dramatic, but it looked that dramatic. And there was that strength there. And then we looked at...we were traveling in the countryside with a monitor. There was an election, independent electoral commission, whose goal was to create a free and fair election for South Africa. Sure. Not just set up booths, have an election, and vote on 1 day. They were setting up 3 days of voting. First day for military people, for people who were infirm or pregnant, couldn't wait in line. Second day, they had a whole way you could vote. But the question was, how do
15:13 - 15:52
Speaker 1: you create a nonviolent election? I mean, when we arrived, a bomb went off in the airport after we had just been there. The week before we arrived in this homeland called Bopo Tsoana, where we were working, this group of Afrikaner resistance movement, people went through with their cars and were randomly shooting people along the streets. I mean, this was the atmosphere. And so we went out to this village. There was a township and a village next to each other. And townships tend to emerge because of re-forced relocation, and villages have been there a while. So there's
15:52 - 16:27
Speaker 1: an inherent conflict there. A police officer had been killed there a couple of weeks before, and people were on edge. So we went out there with a couple soldiers and the mediator from the Independent Electoral Commission. And she was amazing. And we gathered in this hall, and there were 12 men on 1 side and 12 men on the other side, and they were there to mediate a peaceful place to have the voting booth in the township or in the village.
16:28 - 16:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, after all that it's been through in the last 20 years coming up to that point, or 30 years.
16:32 - 17:15
Speaker 1: Where everyone felt safe to vote. And it was a big to-do, and there was a lot of tension because the policeman was from the village. It became a lot of tension. And so the mediator, her name was Vivian, she was about 4 foot 11, and she's tiny. But she just commanded the discussion, listening to both sides, mediating this conflict. And at the end of having people give voice to their words, to their fears, and what their needs were. They all stood up together and sang a prayer, a song together. And it was just chilling to watch
17:15 - 17:54
Speaker 1: them come together and they decided they would have a voting in each place and a booth and this and they agreed to work together. And they were doing this all over the country to diffuse divisiveness to hold an election as a free and fair election requires that. And of course, in this era we're in now, we know those complications. And so, at this point, the elections are held over those 3, 4 days. There was not an act of violence reported in all of South Africa in those days of the election. And so if you're going to
17:54 - 18:25
Speaker 1: transition, the lesson I got from this is that it takes work. It takes effort. It takes us acknowledging our differences. It takes us giving voice to people's needs and being a good active listener and creating an atmosphere for freedom. And I think if you're going to transition in any dispute, large or small, you have to recognize that you have to put in the work.
18:25 - 18:32
Speaker 2: Oh, wow. Okay. So not a place that would intimidate 1 side or the other. I mean, 1 side more than the other because of the history. Yeah.
18:32 - 19:12
Speaker 1: Yeah. And it didn't. And I think that, I mean, those peaceful days were stunning and amazing. Oh, wow. I think there was a lot to learn from that. But what I learned about violence really came 2 years later. I was asked when I was there if we would, they were starting to develop this Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. And people I knew who I was friends with had helped develop that through there and through parliament. And so they asked me if I would set up with some lawyers I knew a international monitoring project of
19:12 - 19:28
Speaker 1: the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And I thought, that's cool. Sure. And I could see from the election process how having international eyes there, having the world looking, made a big difference.
19:29 - 19:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to put in the work and then have the space. I mean, it's pretty amazing if you think about that. In that small area where you were, there had been a policeman shot the week before. There was a bomb at the airport when you landed. So this is, I mean, violence was everywhere. And then for those 3 days during the election when it could have been a crescendo of violence, that there actually wasn't. So there must have been a million Vavines around that were giving space, holding space for people from both sides to be
19:54 - 20:14
Speaker 2: able to come together and talk and work out a way that they, you know, cause it clearly, it could easily be seen from the outside that there's 1 side that's losing this. You know, they had all the power and their privileged life of power and abuse is going away, and somebody else is taking that power. So it'd be easy to see how that could create a lot of flashpoints.
20:14 - 20:48
Speaker 1: David Schawel Exactly. And so we set up this international monitoring project and Archbishop Desmond Tutu was the chair of the TRC, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And so we got to work with him and learn from him and also learn the stories of people, because this was a truth telling that was televised across the nation at times, that had such an impact, because no longer could people deny what had happened there.
20:48 - 21:11
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Anything where the light is shining, it's hard for evil to grow, right? So Eric, I've read about this in your book and other places, but give people just the framework of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. What were the ground rules? Because I think it's still unique in my, like when I think about all the different places of conflict around the world, I don't think of any off the top of my head besides that that had that type of approach to mend and heal at the end.
21:11 - 21:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had 3 prongs. It had a human rights commission where people came forward to tell their truths of what happened and they had thousands and thousands of people doing that in various ways. The second was an amnesty component. We will give you amnesty for your crimes If you come forward and tell everything you
21:36 - 21:36
Speaker 2: did, it
21:36 - 22:13
Speaker 1: wasn't blanket amnesty. So there were amnesty hearings. And if you found out you were hiding a lot of crap you did, you didn't get amnesty and you could be prosecuted. And the third 1 was reparations, which kind of ran out of steam, didn't quite have the money it perhaps needed in the end. But it was providing some form of reparations to the victims connected. And So they started with hearings. I was at the first hearings in East London. And East London is in the Eastern Cape in South Africa. And Archbishop Tutu was the chair there. And
22:13 - 22:56
Speaker 1: he's such a unique guy. I remember being back in a back room with him, and he leaned into me and said, I have butterflies in my tummy. It was so real. And just that beautiful sense of humor and all of that, and the way he carried himself, this made a big difference. The co-chair was Alex Borain, who was a white Methodist minister, I believe. And so there was this overlying religious component to it that I could talk about. I think it had an impact, positive and negative, connected. But we were in church the night before and
22:56 - 23:37
Speaker 1: the archbishop was white and black together and stomping up the aisles and trying to build there and sitting there were the victims' families, people who'd been tortured and killed, and all of these stories. And so they came in and they started telling the stories. And I remember the archbishop, I don't remember which day it was, but at 1 point this person was describing with such horrendous detail the kind of torture that he received. And the archbishop just stopped, and he put his head down on the table there and wept and wept. He just had to stop
23:37 - 24:17
Speaker 1: and wept. And this is on national TV going across the world. And he just cried and cried and then gathered his composure and went on from there. And we were back, I talked to him after about this, and he said, oh, he said, Eric, I shouldn't have cried. I'm the chairman, you know, that I shouldn't have lost my composure. But I told him I thought it was totally appropriate, and it was. The whole nation was weeping to hear these stories, and he so represented that. And so the next day, I was set up to meet with
24:17 - 24:51
Speaker 1: him, and this is 1 of my key transition moments in all of this that has come to define some of my work since. I was meeting him in the cafeteria there before the hearings, And, you know, I was so appreciative of his time, and I was doing a recording from him that he could invite people to come over and be monitors at the TRC. It was like a recruitment video for me, or a tape recorder, I want to say, you know, cassette recorders, anyone? Yeah. All right.
24:51 - 24:52
Speaker 2: A little mini cassettes.
24:53 - 25:21
Speaker 1: Yeah. And just as a side thing that pops into my memory is, when we arrived for that first trip, 1 of our hosts had been assassinated. And he was assassinated because they sent him a cassette tape that said evidence of death squads. And he put it on and he pressed the button and it blew him up and blew out his house. And he was supposed to be with us the next week when we got there. So that's an aside, but it's an important.
25:22 - 25:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, but just again to show how raging the violence was and how much more amazing it was than that you had 3 days of peaceful elections with that coming right up to it.
25:31 - 26:09
Speaker 1: And so at this point, I sit down with him to record, and I push the button of the tape recorder, and I say, Archbishop, I want to record a statement for monitors. And he puts his hand over on mine, And he says, yes, yes, yes, but first, let's say hi. And I was like, oh my god, I was blown away on several levels. First of all, I was putting him up here and me down here and I knew I was bothering him. I mean, this is the first weekend of these mega hearings across the country and
26:09 - 26:14
Speaker 1: he's taking time. I wanted to get him on his way. I wanted to be all business.
26:14 - 26:17
Speaker 2: Right. Not bother him. Right. Not hold him back. Yeah.
26:17 - 26:56
Speaker 1: And at that point I said, hi. And we kind of went like this. From just that greeting, that idea of connecting, it balanced the scales out there. And then he did his recording, and then I wanted to ask him about something. Because in the law that created the Truth Commission and the interim constitution at the time, it said there shall be ubuntu rather than victimization. And I wanted to know about this. What does it mean? Archbishop, I said, what is this term Ubuntu? And a little smile came to his face. And he said, there's no direct
26:56 - 27:37
Speaker 1: translation in Western terms, he said. But Ubuntu means we are human through our relations with others. What I do to you, I do to myself. He said the solitary individual is a contradiction in terms that we are corporate. And he said That's why people have been able to come before this commission and cry, but still show joy and laughter. And he said, that is Ubuntu. So we're not victims and perpetrators. We're kind of in the soup together. There shall not be victimization. There shall be Ubuntu." And from that time on…
27:37 - 27:39
Speaker 2: That's a really strong sentence, right?
27:39 - 28:08
Speaker 1: And in this world today, to me, it has become my strongest transition point because it taught me that the saving grace for our planet, for our divisiveness and otherwise, is if we can shift our perspective, our angle of vision from – Vaclav Havel said this too – can we move from what separates us to what unites us?
28:08 - 28:09
Speaker 2: Right.
28:09 - 28:55
Speaker 1: And to me, recognizing the commonality, the I am because we are, Ubuntu is what we find as, And can we recognize that we are not separate? That when I kill an Israeli concert goer or other people and slaughter them, it is impacting me. When I bomb someone in Gaza and I kill a Palestinian, it is not separate from me, it is not separate from them. Can we engage in bombing and killing if it takes a part of us. And this is not a new notion. I began to look into it. I discovered Ubuntu exists in all
28:55 - 28:58
Speaker 1: non-dominant cultures around the planet.
28:58 - 28:58
Speaker 2: Yes.
28:58 - 29:25
Speaker 1: Whether it's the Mardu in New Zealand, whether it's the Native American, the Takwe Oeasin, to all my relatives, whether it's from principles in Buddhism of interpersonage, interbeing, All these cultures and cultures that have not been dominant in the world order, if you will, have recognized that interconnectedness.
29:26 - 29:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this principle of we and being eye to eye instead of a hierarchy.
29:31 - 30:03
Speaker 1: And in that vein, it became for me an aha moment. We're not reinventing the wheel. We are rediscovering something. This is why Archbishop said to me, he said, It's the essence of being human. I'll never forget that. He said, that's the essence of being human. And you can't look at our country right now and our planet and just assume that we're really skilled at the essence of being human.
30:03 - 30:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, if we pause on that for a second and think about that, the essence of being human, you know, we all have a certain amount of us and them in our thinking. Some of us less, some of us more. But it's when somebody from the them camp is in our humanity circle, usually it's family, friends, someone that we really love, then all of a sudden we recognize the humanity in that person anyway, right? So it is, I love what you said, the essence of being human. And the only way that we can perpetrate any type of
30:40 - 30:48
Speaker 2: injustice all the way up to violence against another human is to not see them as being human, that we don't recognize that essence of being human.
30:48 - 31:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I've started developing a list of, I call it 100 commonalities. And the idea here is, you know, we see issues in black and white, We see issues in pro-choice against abortion. We see issues, very singular issues sometimes. And as far as I'm concerned, I can't even be in the room with that person because they hold X view.
31:14 - 31:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, for Trump or against Trump is the biggest 1 in the country today, probably. Right. It's like
31:18 - 31:52
Speaker 1: and some of those principles underlying it. And so I can't even talk to that person. And so in reality, the way to begin to step out of that, we do this in mediation as a mediator as well. I try to do this, Do up a list of the things we have in common. We want enough food. We want to be healthy. We want to see our children thrive. We want to be safe in our streets. You can go through this whole list and I could be sitting with the most rabid person left, right, whatever, on maybe
31:52 - 31:54
Speaker 1: the opposite side of
31:54 - 31:55
Speaker 2: us, right?
31:55 - 32:03
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, I can come up with 50 75 100 things that we actually share in common.
32:03 - 32:04
Speaker 2: I have in common.
32:04 - 32:37
Speaker 1: And we forget that so much. And so when I came out of this TRC experience, I really began to wonder how can we begin to change the way we operate as a society? And I began to think, okay, our institutions, it's our schooling, it's our workplaces, it's our corporations, it's the way we develop our communities. All of these areas, the way we resolve conflict, could use a little more essence of being human. And so
32:37 - 32:43
Speaker 2: I- Eric, are you familiar with the Arbinger Institute? Anatomy of Peace and Leadership and Self-Deception of the
32:43 - 32:44
Speaker 1: Humane Book. Oh, Harbinger with an H.
32:44 - 33:12
Speaker 2: Harbinger, not H, it's a play on words, but it's Arbinger Institute. It's a play on the Harbinger, but not with the age. It's called the Arbinger Institute. They studied the root cause of human violence for a long time. And it was a mix of professors from US and England colleges. But the thing that they said in there, because you mentioned all these different areas of where we either train the essence and practice seeing the essence of being human or practice not seeing it in all these different cultural pillars, if you will. The thing that they talked
33:12 - 33:36
Speaker 2: about, which I really love that they said, and this book had a huge impact on me because the guy that started the boys' ranch where Alex was, he was a professor for 1 of the universities that knew these other professors, so he studied this anatomy of peace. But in there, they said that the root cause of all human conflict is when we have a sense about how to treat another person as a human being. And we have that sense. We have this, you know, any interaction you have with anybody else, something comes up in you that
33:36 - 34:03
Speaker 2: tells you the right way to interact with that person. And when you don't follow that sense, they call it self-betrayal. When you don't follow that sense as an individual, then what do you have to do? You have to justify it. And how do you justify it? By making yourself better and making them worse, right? Or you can go the other way too. That's the most common. You can also make yourself worse and make them better. But you put this hierarchy instead of the eye to eye. And then if you extrapolate that enough, you can justify anything.
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Speaker 2: Once you choose not to see the essence of being human and you don't follow the sense you have, the right thing to do, then you can extrapolate that long enough. They're no longer human, you can do anything. You can kill them, you can rape them, you can sell them into slavery, it doesn't matter. Because you no longer see that essence of being human. But the beginning of that, they say, and this rings true to me, is our own choice of whether to listen to that small still voice that tells us this is the right way to
34:27 - 34:54
Speaker 2: interact or whether we betray that in an individual level. Yes, there's all these other constructs that we as human beings have built into our culture, but I get to look in the mirror and say, hey, where is my heart when I'm interacting with my child? Where is my heart when I'm interacting with somebody on the street that I don't know a homeless person. Where is my heart when I'm interacting with somebody who has very different political views than I have? Right, and do I still see the essence of humanity and then do I still see the
34:54 - 35:03
Speaker 2: essence of human being and then am I following my sense, that's the right thing to do, or am I ignoring that and then having to justify it by making us different, by making us separate.
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Speaker 1: I love that, Art. I love you sharing that, because I'm going to add that to what we call it the resource hub at our ubuntuworks.org. Awesome.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I highly recommend it.
35:15 - 36:03
Speaker 1: Because I want the audience just to pause for a moment and feel how you felt hearing that story. Because 1 thing that came to mind for me is, ah, suddenly I felt hopeful. That hope comes up when we recognize we're not alone in this. And what I have discovered through research over the last years with the UbuntuWorks project is that all of these areas where people are doing amazing work that rings so true that gives you solutions to human conflict, human relationships, and it's out there. The studies are out there. We're accumulating the data, Because we
36:03 - 36:44
Speaker 1: want, when you go to a school board and say, I want a curriculum that's Ubuntu based because Ubuntu-type principles, I want students to learn active listening, I want them to learn compassionate understanding. I want them to learn certain skill sets. We want to provide the data and the science to show these kinds of things and it's there just as you talked about. It's there to show how successful it is. There are studies that show that when you teach kids mediation skills in these types of things, that violence goes down in the schools, that test scores go
36:44 - 36:53
Speaker 1: up. And if I'm a school board member who I'm a little fearful of change or thinking, are you teaching religion or something that like that goes,
36:53 - 36:53
Speaker 2: I
36:53 - 36:57
Speaker 1: don't need to go there at all. I'm going with the science to say,
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Speaker 2: look, this
36:58 - 37:29
Speaker 1: is those hundred common things. Do you want less violence? Do you want your kids to excel in school? Do you want them to come out of school? Know how to interact these are all things That we can do and a lot of times it's about communication How we Communicate and I really value and what we're trying to do is be a megaphone For all these great resources and stories because you come out feeling hopeful All right, whereas I'm watching the news and I'm hanging out on CNN
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Speaker 2: it's never gonna make you hopeful watching it.
37:32 - 37:35
Speaker 1: Or Fox News and then feel all this stuff is coming at
37:35 - 37:35
Speaker 2: me.
37:35 - 37:42
Speaker 1: And I'm feeling like, oh my God, the world is a shit show. And I don't.
37:42 - 37:53
Speaker 2: And if you watch the news, you see the shit that is in the world. But if you go for a walk in your neighborhood, you see the beauty that's in the world, or you look at your partner, right? I mean, so both are true. We
37:53 - 38:18
Speaker 1: have to share these stories. We have to share the wisdom of other cultures and respect that how it could apply to us today. Technology has interconnected us in harmful ways and in helpful ways. But it isn't necessarily, like you say, the walk in the woods, the walk in the street, the watch the sunset. Do You remember that amazing sunset we saw?
38:18 - 38:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was thinking of that. I went in Santa Fe there near your place up on the hill at the house we were renting. Wow, yeah, it was amazing. And it lasted so long, it was so beautiful. And being with people that I love, you know, there's something about physical proximity to people that is really, you can't replace with technology, there really is.
38:35 - 39:04
Speaker 1: But can you bottle that? Can you take that forward? Can I take that to the person checking me out in the grocery store line? Can I take that to the person who's upset and angry with me? Can I listen without judgment and approach it differently? And these kind of communication skills, I know you help people in companies and other people with these things. These types of communication skills are so valuable
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Speaker 2: to
39:05 - 39:13
Speaker 1: increase productivity, but they increase the peace and the relationship base of our planet.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely. And
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Speaker 1: that's why I'm always hopeful.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, no, absolutely.
39:16 - 39:25
Speaker 1: I'm always hopeful Because we're like that far away from shifting if it's really is an angle of vision if it's really our perspective.
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Speaker 2: I think it's actually about this far away. It's from here
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Speaker 1: to there. Yeah,
39:30 - 39:31
Speaker 2: right From the head to
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Speaker 1: the heart.
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Speaker 2: We can
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Speaker 1: find some more things this week. I think we're getting closer.
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Speaker 2: Oh, there you go.
39:36 - 39:41
Speaker 1: But it is not as far as you think. It is not about moving a mountain.
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Speaker 2: Right. Now, that's
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Speaker 1: about approaching human relationship differently within our communities and our institutions?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. And that shift in our own mindset, right? Our own, like, how do we see people? Are we treating people the way that we feel is right to treat them, or are we justifying why we are not? Right? That's the very fundamental question and the intention that we have that where our heart is is even more important than the action, right? I could see in my experience of being a father. There were times where I was checking all the boxes. Like if you had had some social worker looking and watching, yep, he did this, he
40:20 - 40:47
Speaker 2: tucked him in, he kissed him, he told him he loved him, right? But my heart was not in the right place. It still doesn't work because I was seeing them as a little bit of an accessory to my life. Like I was a little bit superior to my kids. We weren't the essence of humanity. When that shift happened, made all the difference. Right, Kaylee even talks about it now as, you know, the bad dad and the good dad. But on paper, like a video camera wouldn't record anything different, but it's where my heart was, right?
40:47 - 41:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's a lot to learn. And what I want to add is you don't have to go halfway across the world to South Africa to have these experiences and to open your heart and to practice these skills. You don't need to be in a hotbed of Ubuntu. You don't have to be in a Navajo Peacemaker Court session. You don't have to travel the world. What you do...
41:13 - 41:18
Speaker 2: So what do you do, Eric? What is the action that our listeners can take and start to practice this today?
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Speaker 1: I think 1 is learn the language of feeling.
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Speaker 2: What does that mean?
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Speaker 1: That means, well, as a guy, particularly early on, I always thought bad was a feeling. How are you feeling? I feel bad. I feel good. Well, good and bad aren't really feelings.
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Speaker 2: No, they're not feelings.
41:34 - 42:15
Speaker 1: I can feel calm, centered, peaceful. I can feel amazed, blissful, energetic. But on the negative side or the stress side, I can feel burned out, depleted. I can feel angry. I can feel despair. I can feel alone. I can feel isolated. We're either scared sometimes to name someone's feelings, or we don't even have the skillset to remember what a feeling is. So there are some wonderful lists on the internet of feelings. You can get some off our site, the UbuntuWorks site, but you could, I know there's some that this Hoffman Group, Hoffman Institute Foundation has.
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Speaker 2: I'm doing that in June.
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Speaker 1: Okay, well they have a whole list of those feelings and I think when you learn those you then learn how can I practice this and if I'm a manager in the business and I have people working with me and I want to listen on a deep level? It's not about fixing the problem necessarily for them. They come in stressed or in anxiety or feeling alone. It's that something's going on. And when you say, oh, are you feeling a little spacey, anxiety?
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Speaker 2: Anxiety or fear, yeah.
42:55 - 43:19
Speaker 1: Are you feeling stuck? Are you feeling frozen? All of these kinds of things, a person could say, yeah, I do feel that. And then just by being heard, when you help people in your everyday life to be heard, and you don't try to just jump in and fix it, you've taken a big step toward building that Ubuntu connection, that essence of humanity.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely. Then- Can I say 2 things on that, Eric? Because 2 things come up for me. 1 is I love this quote, I don't know if it's a quote even, but if it's something I made up or I've heard it somewhere else, but what you said, people love to be heard, which is right. And I love this differentiation. People love to be seen and not to be watched. Right? Like I think the power of the Avatar movie was where they were in my mind, I've replaced I love you with I see you. Because I love you
43:41 - 43:56
Speaker 2: is like, got all this connotation and it's all right. But if I see you, not trying to fix you, I just see you completely and right where you are. That's recognizing the essence of humanity, right? So people love to be seen, not to be watched. It's really important. The other thing I would say is that- I'm
43:56 - 43:59
Speaker 1: gonna attribute that to you, Art. Okay, I don't know if
43:59 - 44:23
Speaker 2: I made it up or I got it from somewhere else, but it's really true. I know like when I feel loved by my wife, it's when she sees me. And I often, half the time I even stop and we're running around and I say, hey, I see you, right? And you can see her continents change, you know, like, because she knows that it's true that I see her. So, you know, that's 1. The other thing I would say is for a practice of how to start speaking this feeling language. I've done a lot of training on
44:23 - 44:46
Speaker 2: this recently. And, you know, the talk, latest in emotional intelligence says there's sort of 5 buckets of emotions. Yes, there's all these feelings you can have, but There's 5 buckets. And when I do my morning practices each morning, 1 of the things I do is I check in, what am I feeling right now? And if I can't name it, if I'm struggling with it, and I say, okay, what bucket is it in? Is it in the joy bucket? Is it in the sadness bucket? Is it in the shame bucket? Is it in the fear bucket? Is
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Speaker 2: it in the anger bucket? And then some people say there's a 6 with this like shock or surprise, which is very short term, but that fits in between all of those. But at least I can name it, what bucket it's in, right? And that's part of my morning practice I do every day to create feeling literacy for myself. So I know what's going on with me. And therefore, I can be better at doing that with other people as well.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that brings in that self check-in. I think you check in with other people. You make the dialogue comfortable so that people can begin to truly get used to the language of feelings. And then I think you begin, or another thing you can do right now is check out ubuntuworks.org. This is my promotion for the UbuntuWorks project. And look at some of the skills. We have free mini courses on mediation skills for everyday life or workplace, Ubuntu principles for the workplace. Begin to see how you can take these skills home, how you can take
45:48 - 46:15
Speaker 1: them into your classrooms or into just your way you talk to 1 another. I think that's important, how we can start to dialogue with people who we have profound differences with and not have to agree. But can we dialogue? Can we start the dialogues with, okay, let's popcorn what we have in common.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that. That's a new idea for me. And that's really great.
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Speaker 1: And popcorn back and forth. And what do we have in common? This kind of thing. Oh, God, I love when I get a good night's sleep. So do I. I love, you know, I love when my daughter comes in and gives me a kiss on the cheek and just walks away. Oh, don't you just love that? I love that. You can feel, oh my God, and all of a sudden you're like, the human hearts are interacting.
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Speaker 2: And
46:42 - 47:07
Speaker 1: then you can get down the line and talk about Trump, Biden, whoever, if you want to, and that's okay too. But at least recognize the humanity in each other. And if we can reduce anger in the world, it starts with ourselves and wherever we have control in our workplaces and our communities or wherever, and I don't mean control, but input.
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Speaker 2: Right, influence, input, yeah.
47:09 - 47:30
Speaker 1: Influence that, can we find those tipping points to where we can learn some of these skills to, I do a thing called relational activism, which I'm trying to build these principles into activists, because the activist community can be very us versus them.
47:31 - 47:31
Speaker 2: I got
47:31 - 47:40
Speaker 1: into there where the anger to the other side is so much that it just clouds the vision in so many ways.
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Speaker 2: Right.
47:40 - 48:02
Speaker 1: And when we walk in someone else's shoes, we come up with more creative solutions. I urge people could go online and watch, you can read the book too, but you can watch the very short RSA whiteboard video on the empathic civilization with Jeremy Rifkin. And it's not-
48:02 - 48:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, you had me watch this. I watched it while I was on the phone with you a couple months ago. It's fantastic.
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Speaker 1: It's 10 minutes for a book that's this big that it reduces it, but it begins to say, uh-huh, Are we wired for violence and competition? Or are we wired for connection and empathy? And the scientific studies and the other things show us that we're actually wired for empathy and compassion.
48:29 - 48:30
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
48:30 - 48:47
Speaker 1: And if we are, that's hopeful. If we learn that and these skills, then maybe we are heading in a very indirect line, but heading to be an empathic civilization. And it's- Where's
48:47 - 48:50
Speaker 2: that website again? I want to make sure we get that in the show notes too.
48:50 - 48:53
Speaker 1: You just put in RSA and Rifkin. R-I-F-K-I.
48:57 - 49:02
Speaker 2: RSA and Rifkin and Google and it'll pull up. I watched it, I think, on YouTube. It was, yeah, it's fascinating. We'll make sure that gets in the show. I'll link it so
49:02 - 49:17
Speaker 1: that gets in the show notes. I have another book I could shamelessly plug called Surviving and Thriving at Work, What Every Employee Needs to Know but is Afraid to Ask. And all these are on Amazon or my book Witness, Lawyers' Journey.
49:17 - 49:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the 1 I will plug, right?
49:19 - 49:20
Speaker 1: Because it's
49:20 - 49:34
Speaker 2: a fascinating story. This book has all the stories that Eric shared here and a lot more and it's a lot more depth. Very good and useful book here, Eric. So again, that's available everywhere. You guys can pick it up, but it's a very good book. It was sitting on my stack still next to my bed where I reference it.
49:35 - 50:12
Speaker 1: And when we talk about transitions, I do want to mention writing a memoir because I had no idea that little journals I'd scribbled in and never finished filling them out, but they're really cool-looking books. And the few points I remembered from certain times really helped me reflect to write Witness. And the process of looking back at your life and going deeper, because we rarely have time when we're in the experiences to have that level of reflection sometime. Unless you're like art and you reflect every morning, which I love, but a lot of us have.
50:12 - 50:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's been all of the last 2 years or 3 years, right?
50:15 - 50:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we've not all have put those skills into our skill box. But if you reflect and you go back to your experiences and with the wisdom you have now or the experience you have now, you go deeper into experiences that have already happened in a way that you kind of get these wow moments. And so that- You
50:38 - 50:42
Speaker 2: get new realizations. Going back and reflecting on them, you get new realizations from where you are now.
50:42 - 51:02
Speaker 1: And the process was a transition for me because I looked at my life differently. I looked at experiences that I didn't see were connected. All of a sudden I saw the web and the links between them. And so it gave me a different perspective on the way we are as human beings. Right, so
51:02 - 51:15
Speaker 2: let me ask you a question, Eric, on this. I mean, we could talk forever. It's the stories you have and the wisdom you have, both are limitless. Question, do you feel like transitions ever stop? Or is that something that's part of life, from your perspective, what do you think?
51:15 - 51:37
Speaker 1: I believe that transitions, the word transition is about growth. Whether you are transitioning in this day and age, you know, transition, there's a sexuality related to transition for people. But those people feel like they're growing into their true selves and in different ways. They're transitioning
51:37 - 51:38
Speaker 2: Yeah,
51:38 - 51:42
Speaker 1: they're growing and does growth ever stop? Hopefully not.
51:42 - 51:43
Speaker 2: I
51:43 - 51:52
Speaker 1: think that these points of transition The exciting thing about the term transition, I think, is that we acknowledge the change.
51:53 - 51:53
Speaker 2: Right.
51:53 - 52:41
Speaker 1: Because we're kind of going through these little changes popping around us in our everyday life. And when we reflect back to transition points, which your show does so well with people, it helps us to remember that it kind of is always happening. And the bigger transitions are often courage points. They're often points of I got connected with what was behind that, like you said, the shame, the anger, the other principles, sadness. I look back at that time without judging myself, without being hard on myself, and I began to feel that I could, then I recognized, huh,
52:42 - 52:58
Speaker 1: okay, at that point in time I acknowledged my sadness. I wept, alone maybe even, and maybe I never even told anyone of that But that release at that point can be the transition
52:58 - 52:59
Speaker 2: Yeah
52:59 - 53:11
Speaker 1: That takes place And I think that those are going on in the small popping ways that they are deeper transitions when we do reflect on them, even though they already happened.
53:12 - 53:12
Speaker 2: Right.
53:12 - 53:20
Speaker 1: And then they help us solidify where we're at now and where we may want to go to next.
53:20 - 53:20
Speaker 2: And we
53:20 - 53:27
Speaker 1: can use the power and strength of those earlier, smaller transitions to build a really large 1 now.
53:28 - 53:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, you know what, I love the distinction you made about growth. Because some people ask me, what's the difference between a change and a transition? And to me, it's a change is anything. It can be geographical, new job, even new spouse, whatever, is a change. If it didn't affect who you are, it's just a change. Right, and then you recreate the same problem because of your own stuff. The transition is related to the growth, right? You have a change, but then it also changed you inside, which allows you to have a different trajectory in your
53:56 - 53:56
Speaker 2: life.
53:56 - 53:58
Speaker 1: Beautiful, yeah, I love that.
53:58 - 54:20
Speaker 2: So I like that a lot. I'm curious, Eric, if you hadn't had that experience of going to South Africa at that time, or maybe it's even the start of that before dealing with asylum seekers here in the US. But where do you think your life would be all these years later, if you hadn't gone through that transition, if you hadn't taken that opportunity for change and really made it into a transition of yourself? Where do you think your life would be today?
54:21 - 54:47
Speaker 1: I think I would be, I think as a young child, my parents were supportive of us being activists in our community, being aware. So I think I had that as a base. I think I would be working within communities. I would probably be a little more in the political system to kind of duke it out in certain ways. I think I would be a lawyer whose focus,
54:47 - 54:48
Speaker 2: right, it's
54:48 - 55:01
Speaker 1: always been on how can we make the world better, has been my focus as a lawyer even before the transitions. But I think it would have been bigger lawsuits, bigger takedowns if you would.
55:01 - 55:27
Speaker 2: Right, so more combative, more if you will, ego driven, success driven in a sense, even if it's for what you're thinking is the good of the world. Yeah. And so how would your beingness be? We talked about feelings and stuff, like how would that be? Like if you imagine extrapolating along that line, which I have a pretty clear picture from what you've painted, how would you feel inside your body, inside your spirit right now versus being affected by the way you were back then?
55:27 - 55:48
Speaker 1: I think the difference for me now is, and I ask this of clients, I ask clients, what brings you joy? And not a lot of lawyers ask their clients that. But I think it's super important if you're gonna work with someone and have a relationship with someone. I think for me, I think things roll off of me
55:49 - 55:49
Speaker 2: in
55:49 - 56:18
Speaker 1: a way that might not have otherwise, that might have been more argumentative, debating in your face a little, because I'm right, or I know this, or I'd be very academic. And I think I would have been more troubled by someone else's stuff which I now have a really calming sense of okay acceptance that this is where you're coming from.
56:19 - 56:19
Speaker 2: And
56:19 - 56:43
Speaker 1: that's because maybe we are Ubuntu and not separate. Maybe I don't have to judge it. Maybe I don't have to see you in that. And so I think it's made me less judgmental and willing to let certain things roll off me, and then I still see things a little clearer, perhaps, which is, I think, a powerful strength. And the second thing is I have found pockets of joy.
56:43 - 56:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
56:45 - 57:12
Speaker 1: I find them, like you said, in that sunset, in that moment when I'm driving home or in the view of the mountains or the smile of my partner or the hand on my shoulder or I can just feel that joy of that hug with my child. It's those simple joys seem to show up more because my head isn't all wrapped up in the judgment, the anger, the other types.
57:13 - 57:32
Speaker 2: And to me, that's a difference. I mean, that's a huge difference. It may not sound like that much, but to have lived a life where it's predominantly joy and connection versus fight or flight, right? Versus, you know, showing and so forth, it's a completely different experience of the years that have run under the bridge of the water that's run under the bridge since then.
57:32 - 58:10
Speaker 1: Thank you for asking that, Art. That took my heart to a deeper level of awareness and appreciation and helped me, because we have to appreciate ourselves. And if we only appreciate ourselves by certain milestones like the promotion or money or whatever it is, then we're very limited and those are often out of our control. But what is in our control is to live from a different angle of vision, to live from the point where we see joy, to live from a point of non-judgment and connection. And when we do that, when I do that for myself,
58:10 - 58:11
Speaker 1: I'm happier.
58:11 - 58:35
Speaker 2: My goal is right now, no matter what happens, to keep my heart open. It's hard, but that's my whole thing. Like Michael Singer says, there is nothing worth closing your heart over, nothing. Right? And that's my goal because my life is so much better when I do. So 1 last question, Eric, I think we've already talked about where people can find out more about you. Obviously you have a lot of things going on, a lot of good things, and we'll make sure all that's in the show notes. And you've mentioned some of these already, but if
58:35 - 59:06
Speaker 2: you could leave 1 takeaway, 1 call to action with our listeners that you would like to see them do or like to see them apply, or maybe that's not even the right question, Eric. Maybe it's more, what have you found, the 1 action that you do, that really makes a difference toward living in Ubuntu, toward living in this shared humanity, that if other people could apply, that would really make a difference in their life and their relationships, which as we know from this continuing humanity study from Harvard, that this is the number 1 thing for good
59:06 - 59:15
Speaker 2: life is the relationships. What would that 1 thing be? What is the 1 thing that you have found that's enriched your life so well? And it's something simple and that people can take with them and start to apply today.
59:15 - 59:19
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah. 1 thing is, is hard to,
59:19 - 59:26
Speaker 2: Is it the feelings that we talked about earlier? I mean, you mentioned that on your own earlier as a really powerful thing to speak the language of feelings or...
59:26 - 01:00:00
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I can mention that as a takeaway, but to me, What I hope people take away from this, that I take away from living my life, is that we can do better. The problems are not just out there that we have to ignore, and we don't have to be a full-time activist to make something happen. If we make a conscious choice to live as a human being from a different angle of vision,
01:00:00 - 01:00:38
Speaker 1: That recognizes the humanity in someone else, sees them, and begin to feel that it isn't a world of battle and us versus them, or that It doesn't have to be. I like the analogy of a tug of war. You know, 2 sides, I'm sure your family's engaged in those with the rope and pulling across the line. If I let go of the rope, in a tug of war, what happens? It ends. And I think the thing to take away is let go of the rope.
01:00:38 - 01:00:44
Speaker 2: And that's beautiful. I mean, let go of the rope. Quit resisting what you don't want to persist, right? And let go of the rope. I love, on a personal level,
01:00:45 - 01:00:45
Speaker 3: If I had
01:00:45 - 01:01:10
Speaker 2: read your resume 20 years ago, 40 years ago, 30 years ago, I would have said that's a horrible liberal guy. Right, that's what I would have in my programming, you know, said, because that's the way I was at the time. And yet I got to know you as a human being without any of the labels. And I fell in love with this guy. I mean, this is so cool, interesting. And then talking about your level of, you know, what do we have in common versus what do we have different? And we have so much more in
01:01:10 - 01:01:31
Speaker 2: common than we have different, right? Both really want to make, you know, have people open their hearts. Both want to make a huge difference in the world, even if we come from very different ends of the political spectrum, right? Even though I don't know where I am on it these days, because there is no spectrum in this country anymore. It's just the craziness. But I want to just put that in there as a personal example. And I love hanging out with you. I love our conversations. I love the light you've brought to our family. And I
01:01:31 - 01:01:35
Speaker 2: really appreciate you being on today too, Eric. It's really good.
01:01:35 - 01:01:46
Speaker 1: Thank you, Art. The idea that you are doing this just warms my heart. And you are contributing to a new world. And bless you for that, man.
01:01:46 - 01:01:50
Speaker 2: Thanks. Really appreciate it, Eric. Thanks for being with me today, and look forward to seeing you next week.
01:01:51 - 01:01:53
Speaker 1: Yes, in Nuevo Mexico.
01:01:53 - 01:01:54
Speaker 2: So,
01:01:54 - 01:01:56
Speaker 1: all right. Thank you all.
01:01:57 - 01:02:35
Speaker 3: I can't wait to hear what action you are taking. Connect with me on LinkedIn or our website, lifeintransition.online, and let me know. Let a friend know too. It could be a huge encouragement to them and keep you on the track. Thank you so much for joining me today. Make sure you subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, and it would mean a lot to me if you left a review and shared this episode with a friend. If you want to learn more about me And what I do when I'm not podcasting, please visit me at artblanchford.com. Thank you