Tribute to Daryl Davis

Posted on October 25, 2019 by admin
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Daryl Davis

Daryl Davis is an incredible person. He has done so much to promote empathy, understanding, compassion, and dialogue on some of the most controversial subjects while simultaneously showing the dangers of fear, assumptions, ignorance, hatred, and rigid ideologies. In the process, he has done what many consider to be impossible: persuade others to change views which have been cemented in their minds for most of their lives.

Davis was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1953. A decade later, he moved with his family to Belmont, Massachusetts. According to one of his amazing TED Talks, this is where he had a brush with racism that made him desperate for answers. When he couldn’t find them through relentless research, he started talking to members of the KKK. Davis avoided insulting them or engaging them in violence. Instead, he slowly gained their respect and their trust by treating them as his equals and having open conversations with them. This caused many of them to rethink and even renounce their racist views as they got to know him as a person and became his close friends. As they left the KKK, some of them gave him their robes and hoods, which Davis keeps as reminders that people can, and do, change their ways.

To this day, in addition to being a professional musician, Davis continues to encourage open communication between people who consider themselves to be enemies. He is fond of closing his speeches with the following quote: “When two enemies are talking, they’re not fighting. They’re talking. It’s when the talking ceases that the ground becomes fertile for violence, so keep the conversation going.” Accordingly, he hopes that everyone will spend more time talking with each other and less time talking about, at, or past each other. Respectfully listening to one another is the way to go. Even if you disagree, at least hear them out. That’s the way to get to the root of the problem, which, according to Davis, is fear that arises from ignorance: “If you don’t keep that fear in check, that fear will breed hatred. If you don’t keep hatred in check, it will breed destruction.” Once you know how a problem originated, you can then figure out a solution to eliminate it as well as all the harm it causes.

Daryl Davis is a wonderful role model and one of the best communicators I’ve ever seen. His approach of humanizing those who hate him and gradually guiding them away from their views through interacting with them has been extremely effective and, I hope, will become commonplace. Other approaches that involve yelling, insulting them, using violence against them, and trying to pound a certain point of view into their heads have consistently failed to change anyone’s mind. The harder someone is pushed, the more they dig in their heels and push back. Davis’s approach, which works due to psychological principles described in this video, is so much more effective and has caused people to not only change their behavior but also to change their minds. He has done what many consider to be impossible and he is an excellent example of leadership that anyone who hopes to make a positive difference in the world can and should look up to. I hope he continues inspiring people and changing hearts and minds with his work. We’re all in desperate need of it.

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Let Go and Dance

Posted on October 24, 2019 by admin

This passage from Letting Go is a wonderful illustration of what it’s like to get lost in a dance. David Hawkins perfectly describes the feeling I’ve felt on many occasions; that feeling is primarily why I stuck with swing dancing after I started and why I continue to dance at least once a week. I loved reading this last night and I knew right then that I had to share it with you.

After about a year of working with the mechanism of surrender, he was at a party with someone who kept insisting that he get up and dance. “You know I can’t dance,” he said. “Ah, come on and try it,” she entreated. She persisted and said, “Forget about your feet. Just watch me and do what my body does.” Reluctantly, he agreed, and he kept letting go of his feelings of resistance and anxiety.

On the dance floor he let go completely. In an instant, his inner feelings ascended the scale from apathy to love and, to his amazement, he suddenly began to dance like he had always dreamed of and envied! The realization of “I can do it!” hit him, and he went from love, to joy, and even to ecstasy. His delight radiated to everyone. Friends stopped to watch. From a sate of high joy, he suddenly went into the experience of oneness with his dance partner. He suddenly saw his own Self looking out of her eyes and realized that there was actually only one Self behind all the individual selves. He and she became telepathically connected. He knew her every step a split second before she took it. They were in perfect harmony and danced as though they had practiced and danced together for years. He could hardly contain his joy. The dancing became effortless and began to happen of its own, without any conscious thought on his part. The longer they danced, the more energy he felt.

It was a peak experience that was to change this man’s life. He went home that night and danced some more. Free-style disco dancing had always terrified him more than any other because there was no form to be memorized. It necessitated spontaneity and a free feeling, which is just what he had specifically been unable to experience previously. At home he turned on the disco music and began to dance for hours. He watched himself in the mirror, fascinated by the body’s surrender and the inner feeling of freedom.

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The Daily Stoic: “It’s Easy to Get Better. But Better at What?”

Posted on October 23, 2019 by admin

This entry from The Daily Stoic is a good reminder to keep my priorities in check. I want to strike a good balance between taking good care of myself (which includes pursuing and improving at my interests) and having good relationships with those who are close to me. What that looks like, I’m still figuring out, and I hope to have it someday.

“So someone’s good at taking down an opponent, but that doesn’t make them more community-minded, or modest, or well-prepared for any circumstance, or more tolerant of the faults of others.”

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.52

Self-improvement is a noble pursuit. Most people don’t even bother. But among those who do, it’s possible for vanity and superficiality to corrupt this process. Do you want six-pack abs because you are challenging yourself and committing to a difficult goal? Or is it because you want to impress people with your shirt off? Are you running that marathon because you want to test your limits or because you’re running away from your problems at home?

Our will shouldn’t be directed at becoming the person who is in perfect shape or who can speak multiple languages but who doesn’t have a second for other people. What’s the point of winning at sports but losing in the effort to be a good husband, wife, father, mother, son, or daughter? Let’s not confuse getting better at stuff with being a better person. One is a much bigger priority than the other.

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Making a Difference

Posted on October 22, 2019 by admin

People who talk about something they’d clearly like to change and then say “But there’s nothing I can do; that’s just the way it is” drive me crazy. I see this attitude on a fairly regular basis. It doesn’t take long to find some idea, institution, or practice that most people you ask will say is always going to exist and will never look much different than it currently does. Try suggesting changing or eliminating that particular thing and see how they react. They’ll probably look at you like you’re insane, insist that your suggestion is impossible, and do everything they can to avoid seriously considering your proposal for even a second. That gets old fast.

To a certain extent, I can understand their reluctance to think outside the box. I sometimes can’t think of a solution to a particular problem until someone else presents me with one, especially if it’s in an area that I know little to nothing about. I always appreciate whenever someone points me toward a solution because it reminds me to think in terms of possibilities rather than limitations. My entire attitude can be summed up this way: “I’m sure this can be done, I just don’t know how to do it yet.” This, along with regular practice at coming up with as many different potential solutions as I can to all kinds of problems, has honed my creativity and allowed me to see things that lots of other people miss. My curiosity and appetite for knowledge constantly introduce me to all kinds of things that help me put the pieces together in ways that, to my knowledge, nobody else has.

I used to argue with people about dismantling current societal systems and replacing them with better systems or even replacing them with nothing. Once I realized that this was a big waste of time and only served to make everyone involved upset (including me), I stopped arguing and started focusing on ways to bring my ideas to life. There are a lot of things that I’d like to see changed and I hope to be directly involved in as many as I can. The best way I can think to do that is to help as many people as possible get into solid, stable life situations so that they can live as they like and turn their dreams into reality. While I’m not yet in a position to do that to the extent that I have in mind, I still find ways within my current means and abilities to help people where they’re at. This is much more meaningful and rewarding than arguing over things that haven’t happened yet.

There is too much talk of how things could be and not enough action to make them that way. Meetings, planning sessions, discussion forums, and the like keep us all trapped in our current reality by using up a lot of our time, energy, money, and other resources that we could be using to make the world a better place. Some things require extensive planning and brainstorming before they’re carried out, but plenty of things can easily be done by starting from scratch, trying different possibilities until you find something that works, and making adjustments on the fly. Direction action is within the reach of nearly everyone. You don’t have to make a major change right out the gate; just find some small ways to make a positive difference, such as random acts of kindness, and put them into practice as often as possible. Kindness and goodness spread, so your example will inspire others to pay it forward. I started the Joker Challenge last week and, in addition to getting an overwhelmingly positive response, someone I know completed the challenge before the day was up. It cost me hardly anything to come up with the challenge and put it online and it’s already started making a difference for mental health. I’d like to see more of that with anything worth doing. How about you?

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A Lesson in Letting Go

Posted on October 21, 2019 by admin

Saturday night was the roughest part of a difficult two weeks for me. When I got home after work, I spoke with a friend who helped me work through a lot of stuff I’ve been feeling lately and that was a huge relief. I felt much lighter and freer afterward, read for a bit, and then got the most refreshing sleep I’d had in days (and I didn’t wake up during the night like I had the previous several nights).

That wonderful feeling stayed with me all of Sunday. I was off work and decided to just stay home and have a day to myself. Among other things, I slept in, had fun with some of my regular hobbies, started learning how to use an abacus, stretched, took more time away from social media and electronic devices than I usually do, and, perhaps most importantly, had plenty of alone time to recharge after a lot of social interactions during the week. Essentially, I spent the day sharpening the saw and moving at my own pace through everything I did. I’m glad I had plenty of time that day to rest and recover from everything I’d recently experienced. It was a much-needed change of pace and it did me a lot of good.

The past few weeks showed me the importance of letting go each day. Even though I’ve been reading Letting Go by David Hawkins for almost two weeks now, I still faced a lot of resistance whenever I thought about following its recommendations. I could feel that resistance inside me saying “I’m not ready yet, I want to hold onto this for a while longer.” Each time I did, the pain within me grew until it got so painful that I had to let it go. Before I did that, my usual life hacks did little to nothing to make me feel better. Even floating for half an hour just gave me a temporary break from my emotions rather than removing them or helping me work through them. Once I let go, however, I felt much better than I had in a long time. If I hadn’t let go at that point, who knows what would have happened? I probably would have been hit even harder later on with an even more painful experience. Moving forward, I hope that I’ll remember to let go and surrender before my emotions accumulate to the point that they cause a lot of trouble for myself and those around me.

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The Daily Stoic: “Give People the Benefit of the Doubt”

Posted on October 20, 2019 by admin

The Daily Stoic has once again touched on a subject I find incredibly difficult when I’m in the heat of the moment, although I’m pretty good at doing this when I’m observing a situation from the outside. Still, when I manage to do this, it makes everything easier for everyone involved. I’ve gotten better at doing this since I really started focusing on it so I hope I continue improving at it as I keep working at it.

“Everything turns on your assumptions about it, and that’s on you. you can pluck out the hasty judgment at will, and like steering a ship around the point, you will find calm seas, fair weather and a safe port.”

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12.22

“Even a dog,” Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked.” Yet if you’ve ever accidentally stepped on your dog, you know that the first reaction is usually a bark or a yelp or a quick snap of the jaws. In the instant, there is no distinction – just pain. Then it sees who it was, hears your soothing voice, and goes right back to wagging its tail.

A virtuous person does not jump to hasty judgments about other people. A virtuous person is generous with assumptions: that something was an accident, that someone didn’t know, that it won’t happen again. This makes life easier to bear and makes us more tolerant. Meanwhile, assuming malice – the most hasty of judgments – makes everything harder to bear.

Be deliberate and accommodating with our assumptions about other people and you’ll find, as Marcus says, calmer seas and fairer weather.

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Some of My Thoughts on Discipline

Posted on October 19, 2019 by admin

I’ve been thinking about discipline lately and the way I see it, discipline has to come from within. You might be able to force someone to do something but once you’re no longer around, will they keep doing it? If not, then they lack discipline and were only doing it to get you off their back.

To be disciplined, you have to have a desire to develop good habits, build them into routines that allow you to accomplish your goals, and then work at them consistently. Nobody else can do this for you; you have to develop it within yourself. The best thing someone else can do for you in this regard is show you how discipline will get you where you want to go. They can lead by example, use their past experiences as illustrations, and point out examples of discipline in your own life that you might have overlooked or never recognized in the first place. They might even let you experience the consequences that stem from a lack of discipline (provided you’re not severely harmed or killed as a result). These approaches are much more effective than trying to force you to be disciplined and then punishing you for noncompliance.

My experience with discipline is that it’s difficult to develop initially but takes a relatively short amount of time to become second nature. Once it’s developed, it’s easy to apply in a number of different areas so that it becomes a way of life. This doesn’t mean that I’m never without discipline or that I never regress; both of those things happen from time to time. However, when that happens, I’m now capable of picking myself up, getting back in the game, and picking up where I left off. This has been a long journey for me but I’ve gotten better at walking it and I think everything I’ve learned about discipline is going to serve me well in the years to come.

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Good Stuff from Letting Go

Posted on October 18, 2019 by admin

Letting Go by David Hawkins contains a lot of good stuff. I’ll probably end up rereading it several times so I can get the most out of it. Here are some of the things that have resonated most strongly with me so far and given me a lot to think about.

  1. Thoughts don’t hurt; the emotions underneath them do.
  2. Depersonalizing thoughts, emotions, and opinions (such as saying “an opinion” rather than “my opinion”) makes it easier to let them go.
  3. Suppressing unwanted thoughts and emotions doesn’t make them go away, it just causes them to build up within us and results in a lot of problems, including physical ailments.
  4. Allowing ourselves to fully feel our emotions without resisting them is how we let go of them.
  5. Surrendering to a lower emotion allows us to move up to higher emotions.
  6. Through daily practice, we can overcome our conditioning and choose how to respond to whatever happens to us.
  7. Even with the best life hacks for handling emotions, pain, and other challenges in life, we can still suffer if we don’t practice them regularly.
  8. People project what they don’t like about themselves onto others.
  9. Regularly working on releasing the built-up negativity within us is essential for healing and being free from the past.
  10. Some things that we thought were healed actually require more work before we can fully move on from them.
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Hard Times, Good Communication

Posted on October 17, 2019 by admin

I once heard Jocko Willink say that on nights before he records his podcast, he tries to get less sleep than he usually does. This keeps his emotions closer to the surface and helps him during the recording. I’ve noticed something similar in myself. I seem to be more genuine when I’m sufficiently tired or stressed. I don’t try to act differently than how I feel or pretend that I’m ok if I’m really not. Maybe I just don’t have the energy to fake it or care how I come across when I feel like that.

Additionally, I have an easier time talking to people when I’m feeling off. I’m less concerned about how they’ll react, so I feel more free to say what I’m thinking. This seems to work well overall; contrary to my expectations, most people appear to be fine with me being more straightforward and assertive. I think this is because I still have some filters in place, I’m not intending to be rude or hurtful, and, as I’m finding out, people seem to appreciate direct, open communication.

These have all been fascinating revelations about myself as well as other people. I’m still trying to figure out what to do with all of this stuff. I don’t want to feel bad all the time just so I have an easier time communicating and being genuine. Since I now know that I can be straightforward without running into trouble as long as I remain mindful while I speak and maintain good intentions, I think I can work on making this the norm for me in every season of life. As with many other things, getting out of my head appears to be the answer. Now it’s just a matter of practicing this regularly, and I’m going to do my best to make it happen.

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Avoiding the Ideology Trap

Posted on October 16, 2019 by admin

I spent most of my life trapped in one or more ideologies. Although some of them were beneficial to me in certain ways, they all kept me from seeing as much of the big picture as I could have without them and caused me problems in many other areas, especially in my interactions with people in my life. By the time I realized how much I let other people and their ideologies think for me, I was horrified and knew I had to change that. I still struggle at times to avoid being an ideologue but I can mostly avoid it at this point.

Trying to make everything fit into one specific ideology, narrative, agenda, or worldview with no contradictions whatsoever is maddening. I did that for years and I’m tired of it. Now I’d much rather take an honest look at something and come to my own conclusions about it. I quite enjoy finding new ways to look at the world and seeing many things differently than I once did. It’s wonderful to have changed my mind on a number of topics and given myself permission to feel however I like about anything without being constrained by any ideology. Sometimes I’ll have contradictory thoughts and I’m ok with that. I’ve never gotten better at something without making a lot of mistakes along the way, so if some of my thoughts contradict each other, that may mean that I’m getting better at understanding the world. Or it may mean that life doesn’t fit perfectly into a box and that contradictions are not only possible but rampant throughout the universe. Both of those possibilities are fine with me.

Sometimes I can tell that another person is stuck in an ideology from the way they behave since I used to behave the same way. If someone speaks as if they could never be wrong, automatically disregards anyone who disagrees with them, only looks at information that supports their positions and ignores information that casts doubt on them, speaks badly of and makes assumptions about people who think differently than they do, and is unwilling to consider alternative perspectives, then chances are good that they are deep in an ideology. When I’m in a good state of mind, I feel bad for these people and hope that they get out of their ideological traps so they can see some amazing things that they’re currently missing. I also check myself during those times to see if I’m thinking for myself whenever possible; if not, I make sure that I resume taking ownership of my thoughts. The mental peace and freedom I receive from doing this is well worth the effort. I look forward to receiving even more peace and freedom as I get better at freeing myself from ideological traps.

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