How to Coexist with People Who Drive You Nuts According to Kirsten Powers

Kirsten Powers:

If you get clear about what does it mean to have grace for somebody… And we have so much confusion around this word because people often think it means just being nice or being polite or not arguing or not challenging people. And that’s not what it means. It means exactly what you said about seeing the humanity and the wholeness of a person.

Marie Forleo:

Hey, it’s Marie Forleo, and welcome to another episode of The Marie Forleo Podcast and MarieTV, the place to be to create a business and life you love. I’m very excited for today’s conversation, especially as we are coming near the holiday season, it’s likely that we’re going to be around family and friends, and there’s a high probability that they don’t always share our beliefs and our values. And my guest today is here to give us some of her hard one experience, tips, and advice on how to coexist with people who frankly drive you nuts.

Kirsten Powers is a USA Today columnist, bestselling author, and senior political analyst. Her writing has been published in The Washington Post, Elle, Salon, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, among many other places. Powers was raised in Fairbanks, Alaska and currently lives in Washington DC. Her newest book called Saving Grace: Speak Your Truth, Stay Centered, and Learn to Coexist with People Who Drive You Nuts is available now.

Kirsten, thank you so much for coming on the show and congratulations on this beautiful book.

Kirsten Powers:

Thank you.

Marie Forleo:

I know it is not easy to put one of these together. It’s not your first one.

Kirsten Powers:

No.

Marie Forleo:

But how do you feel now that it’s done?

Kirsten Powers:

Oh, well, it’s so nice to have it done. It’s like now the baby’s going out into the world, and so of course you’re like, “Be nice to my baby.”

Marie Forleo:

Yes, of course. And it’s honestly coming out at the perfect time, both what we’re experiencing and have been experiencing, right, collectively for years now.

Kirsten Powers:

Mm-hmm.

Marie Forleo:

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

Kirsten Powers:

Well, to a certain extent, my daily life was kind of like Thanksgiving dinner every single day. So, you know, I’m a political analyst at CNN, and so I would have to go in every day and be around people who were saying things where I was like, “What?” And I have to talk to them and have to interact with them. And one thing I noticed really post 2016, which was very different than before, where I was around people who thought things different than I thought, but we need to acknowledge that things have changed, right? It is harder. We’re not imagining that. That’s happening. And what I realized was that I was taking it all on. Right? I wasn’t just having the conversation. I was basically leaving the studio, fuming all the way home, coming in the house, ranting and raving, laying in bed at night, just stewing.

And eventually, I got to to a point, and it was around 2018, and I wish I hadn’t taken quite so long, but I got to a point where I hit a wall and I just said, “This is unsustainable. I can’t live like this. I’m miserable. I’m anxious. I’m tired. My body hurts.”

Marie Forleo:

Yes.

Kirsten Powers:

I can’t do this. And I’m not helping anybody. Right? That was the big thing. It’s like, “Who is this helping?” I don’t understand.

Marie Forleo:

One of the things I know about our audience, you know, we have folks who pay attention to the show in 195 countries. So they’re not all in America.

Kirsten Powers:

Mm-hmm.

Marie Forleo:

They’re not all on this continent. But I think with the rise of social media and just with the rise of 24/7 cable news, no matter where you are around the world, you have witnessed this intensifying division, this intensifying dehumanization, this tearing each other down.

Kirsten Powers:

When I hit that wall, the first thing I did was I got off of Twitter and I got off… I wasn’t really on Facebook that much and I was on Instagram a little. But Instagram, I wasn’t having that experience there. But I got off of Twitter, and within days, I felt like a different person, because one thing I noticed was it’s not just when I was on Twitter that I was agitated and hating the world and dehumanizing people. I mean, I really just wasn’t even seeing other people as humans. And even hours later I would be agitated. Right?

Marie Forleo:

Yeah.

Kirsten Powers:

I would be like, “Why am I snapping at my fiance? He didn’t do anything.”

Marie Forleo:

Yeah.

Kirsten Powers:

And it’s like, “Oh, you just spent two hours on Twitter.”

Marie Forleo:

Yep.

Kirsten Powers:

You know? Yeah. And so I think that it’s not all bad. We have to get… It’s a both/and kind of situation. Social media can be incredibly toxic and incredibly horrible. And it gave us Black Lives Matter. And it gave us Me Too. Right? So there are good things about it, and it gives a lot of people a voice and a seat at the table who didn’t have a voice or a seat at the table before. So I don’t want to say it’s all bad. I’m just saying that if you’re looking at yourself and if you want to have grace for people, you’re going to have to probably dial back your social media use.

Marie Forleo:

Yeah. So let’s shift gears and let’s go into what I think are these really practical real situations that we’re going to find ourselves in over the holiday season. Right?

So social media isn’t going away. Most people aren’t going to necessarily stop using it in this moment. They might start… I think a lot of people have actually started to dial back their use. But let’s say we’re walking into a situation we’ve all experienced before, which is you’re sitting around a holiday table. Right? Everything’s going well. And then, there is a relative or a friend who starts saying a bunch of stuff that either starts making you angry, roll your eyes, want to kind of engage in some type of conflict or just shut it down or walk away. How do we begin to engage in a way that both honors our values and also honors the humanity of the person that we’re in the room with?

Kirsten Powers:

Yeah. Well, first of all, you have to want to do what you just said. And I can tell you that before I really hit that wall and started rethinking things, if I was being honest, I didn’t really want to do that. So you have to kind of get real with yourself. And I’m glad you brought up how do you align with your values, because that’s when I had my aha moment. I was like, “Wait. This doesn’t align with what I say I believe. I don’t believe this. I don’t believe that it’s okay to despise and have contempt for people and judge people and all these other things.” So, you do need to get clear about what your values are. And then I think you need to get very clear if you are going to use the grace paradigm. And I do talk about grace as a practice. It’s like, you have a yoga practice, you have a grace practice. Rome was not built in the day. Probably this Thanksgiving isn’t going to be the one where you nail it. Right? But you could probably do a little better.

Marie Forleo:

Yes.

Kirsten Powers:

And if you could just do a little better… Just a little better would make everything way better, right?

Marie Forleo:

Yeah.

Kirsten Powers:

So I think that if you get clear about what does it mean to have grace for somebody… And we have so much confusion around this word because people often think it means just being nice or being polite or not arguing or not challenging people. And that’s not what it means. It means exactly what you said about seeing the humanity and the wholeness of a person. So when you use grace, it kind of creates a little space between you and the other person. And, you know, it really lets the other person to not be you and then not get demonized for not being you. So you see it, and you recognize it, and you’re discerning about it. But you also see that that person is more than the thing that they’re saying. They’re not just that. And you don’t immediately go to that binary.

You just said something really bad and really problematic, and that actually could be very harmful to a lot of people. So I don’t want to downplay the things that people are saying, you know, but I also know that you’re more than that. And I also see the potential that you actually could understand this differently, but you’re doing the best you can with the tools that you have.

Marie Forleo:

I also think there’s a certain level of arrogance, and that’s something I’ve been thinking about as though any one of us has the lock on truth.

Kirsten Powers:

Yes. Yes.

Marie Forleo:

Do you know what I mean? Or anyone who…

Kirsten Powers:

I do. Yeah, a thousand percent.

Marie Forleo:

…has that collective set of ideals or beliefs or viewpoints that everyone else must then bow to how we see things.

Kirsten Powers:

Yes.

Marie Forleo:

And it just feels so incredibly arrogant. So I love this conversation because, you know, obviously, we all know, again, across the political spectrum, there is misinformation out there. That’s just the nature of the internet.

Kirsten Powers:

Yeah.

Marie Forleo:

You don’t even have to be talking about politics per se. You don’t have to be talking about social issues per se. You could be talking about health.

Kirsten Powers:

Totally.

Marie Forleo:

You could be talking about art or movies, or basic things about where a house is located or what’s going on in a particular neighborhood that the facts could be absolutely off. I know you wrote about this in the book, we got to come with some humility.

Kirsten Powers:

Ugh. Yes. And that’s so hard, right, because we’re right. I mean, we know we’re smarter and we have all the information, so why can’t people just fall in line? I mean, that really was my attitude. But one thing that really helped me and that I would recommend to people, even though it’s a horrible experience to go through it, is to kind of do an audit of your own life. Go back and look. What did you used to believe?

What did you used to think? Who did you used to trust? Who have you hurt? What do you look back on with regret and think, “Oh my gosh, how could I have done that”? Right? And then have grace for yourself because you have to have grace for yourself too. And say like, “Look, I was doing the best I could with what I had. And I didn’t know any better. That’s what my parents taught me or that’s what I learned at school,” or whatever it was. Or, “I had some trauma and I was acting it out on another person, and I should not have done that. And now I’m a different person and I know better.” When you can do that for yourself, then it makes it much easier to do that for the other person.

Marie Forleo:

Yes.

Kirsten Powers:

Because you can say, “I’ve been there. I have thought the thing that I didn’t…” But we have to acknowledge that we’re not inherently better than other people.

Marie Forleo:

Correct.

Kirsten Powers:

You know, that if we have reached this conclusion, then it’s because we’ve been exposed to things or we’ve been exposed, you know, to experiences or facts or education or whatever it is. And to have grace for the person who’s not there, I mean, and not… And what I would say, because you want to really get practical, I have a whole chapter on boundaries. And so, instead of demonizing and labeling and shaming and all the things that sometimes you do out loud, but most of the time you do in your head, right, use boundaries. You actually can just say no when somebody does something that’s… I mean, that’s what I ended up having to do at work. Right? Rather than taking on what everybody was saying and becoming entwined with them, I just would be like, “No, no.” And…

Marie Forleo:

So let me ask you this.

Kirsten Powers:

Yeah.

Marie Forleo:

I want to interrupt for a second.

Kirsten Powers:

Mm-hmm.

Marie Forleo:

Because in what we’ve done personally in my family and when it’s people that I know, and I’m like, “Hey, look. Here’s how I want this to go down.” If it’s like a family kind of holiday or get together, we actually decide in advance the topics that are off limits.

Kirsten Powers:

Yes. Perfect.

Marie Forleo:

And it allows us… And I want to talk to you about that because I’m like, “Is that backing out of it?” But we’ve had so many conversations and I still love all the people that I love and I want to be around them and I want to be with them. And that kind of creates this container that’s worked for us where it’s like, “Hey, look, these are the little areas that we’re going to say we’re not going there because we have all these other things to talk about and connect about. And we don’t want the entire thing to devolve.”

Kirsten Powers:

Yes.

Marie Forleo:

And so…

Kirsten Powers:

Yeah, you’re not really going to solve the world’s problems over Thanksgiving dinner.

Marie Forleo:

Right.

Kirsten Powers:

And also I think Thanksgiving dinner is this very specific thing and it has a very specific purpose. There are other times you can interact with your family around these issues if you feel that you need to do that. And so I would say that’s a boundary. You set a boundary up front. You said, “Here are the things that we’re not going to talk about.” That’s a boundary.

Marie Forleo:

Let me ask you this. What about when, say, go back to that original situation, right, where there were no boundaries set. Let’s say you were invited and it’s not even if folks don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, let’s say they’re outside of the US. It’s just a holiday table.

Kirsten Powers:

Yes.

Marie Forleo:

Right?

Kirsten Powers:

Yeah.

Marie Forleo:

And they’re at a holiday table and someone says something that you personally disagree with vehemently, and you’ve kind of heard, read, seen that you’re supposed to speak up, say something. You feel like you would be a bad person if you didn’t address it. I’m curious your take on how we can respond with grace in a situation like that. Is there any little sentence stem? Is there something that you would suggest that people do? And by the way, I just want to underscore for everyone listening, what Kirsten said first was you have to want to come at it with grace. Right? So that was the big starting line, kind of differentiator here. So assuming that you want to engage with grace, what would you suggest is something that someone might be able to say or do in that situation?

Kirsten Powers:

So I always go right immediately to boundaries, and so each person decides in that situation. And unfortunately, you’re going to have to kind of make it on the fly.

Marie Forleo:

Yep.

Kirsten Powers:

Am I going to be somebody who tries to enter into this situation and help this person see it differently? I’m sensing that it’s possible that they could be open to that. And then you basically don’t take on what they’re saying. You just see them as a person who’s expressing an opinion and then you engage, and you engage empathically. You listen to what they’re saying. And when I talk a lot about the social science of how people change their minds, it’s not yelling at them. It’s not calling them names. Shocker. It is empathically listening and then sharing experiences. So you don’t bombard them with facts and tell them how dumb they are and all those things.

You just say… Well, maybe they’re saying something about undocumented immigrants, say, “Well, I have a friend whose parents are undocumented immigrants. Can I tell you a little bit about what it’s like for them?” And whatever the issue is that they’re raising, if they say something misogynist, say, “Hey, I’m a woman. Can I tell you some of the things that I’ve had to deal with?” They say now with the social science and our post-fact world that you can’t really use the facts because no one will agree. They’ll say, “Where did you get that?” And you’ll say, “In The New York Times,” and they’ll say, “Fake news.” And so, you just can’t have a conversation. But people do believe that you have authority and knowledge over your own experiences and over the experiences of people around you. So if the person’s going to be able to hear something, then I think, you know, that’s how they’re going to hear it. Sometimes people just want to argue.

Marie Forleo:

Yes.

Kirsten Powers:

And so I think when that happens, then the boundary is, “Look, we can’t talk about this. This isn’t going anywhere and, you know, we’re going to change the subject.” And you have to hold that boundary, and if they continue, you get up and you leave the room, and then you come back maybe in a couple minutes. But you’re not obligated to have a crazy-making conversation that’s going nowhere. I do talk about in the book that I think we have to be very clear about not wanting to be uncomfortable versus being in a toxic situation. And so…

Marie Forleo:

Good. Talk to us about that distinction because that feels like it can get very muddy and a very kind of gray situation.

Kirsten Powers:

Yes.

Marie Forleo:

And for most of us, again, you talked about the fact that you hit a wall, given the fact that you’re a political analyst, you know, you’re in these situations every day. And I think for most people listening to the show right now, while they don’t have the intense, you know, daily barrage of that necessarily, they might feel like, “Ugh, I’m so exhausted.”

Kirsten Powers:

Yeah.

Marie Forleo:

So tell us about how we can tell the difference between those two.

Kirsten Powers:

Yeah. I think that if somebody… So for example, if you have a cousin at dinner and they say something racist, and you’re just like, “I know if I come back at this, it’s going to get really uncomfortable and everyone’s going to be really uncomfortable.” You need to be uncomfortable. Because if you’re not willing to do that, you’re not the one that’s going to suffer, if you’re a white person. It’s going to be the people that they’re demeaning. Right? And so, I think that in that case, you do have to kind of push through that and try to be a peacemaker. Peacemaking, if you think about it, involves conflict. So it involves you having to enter into disagreement and trying to create peace between people who do not see things the same way versus peacekeeping, which is just, “I’m just not going to challenge anybody because I just want to keep the peace and I don’t want to have any disruption, or I don’t want anybody to be uncomfortable, or I don’t want anybody to be mad at me.” Right?

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

So what can I do? That’s when I say with boundaries, figure out what your no is. And so you’re like, “I’m just a no to this. I am a no to what this person is saying.” Say they’re saying something about undocumented immigrants. What would your yes be in that situation? Your yes could be, “I’m going to leave this table after dinner and I’m going to go donate to a group that helps undocumented immigrants. I’m going to volunteer for a group that helps undocumented immigrants.” If you’re me, I’m going to write a column about how can I help raise awareness around undocumented immigrants. You could write a Facebook post that’s not incendiary, that’s just, “Hey, here’s some organizations that are helping undocumented immigrants.” Right? There’s a lot of things we can do that actually will help change the world and address the issue that we’re upset about that doesn’t involve screaming at our relative over Thanksgiving dinner.

Marie Forleo:

Yeah.

Kirsten Powers:

Which isn’t going to change their mind anyway, and certainly, isn’t going to help anybody.

Marie Forleo:

So it sounds like…

Kirsten Powers:

Who’s getting help by that?

Marie Forleo:

Yeah. It feels to me, if I’m hearing you correctly, it’s about discernment.

Kirsten Powers:

Yes.

Marie Forleo:

And it’s about understanding and kind of choosing your battles in a certain regard.

Kirsten Powers:

Yes.

Marie Forleo:

Like honoring your own capacity in this moment. Goodness knows outside of what’s happening globally, what’s happening for people personally, whether they’ve got a health challenge. Like you said, they’re going through a divorce. There’s something really challenging happening in their own life, with their career, or their family, or themselves.

Kirsten Powers:

Mm-hmm.

Marie Forleo:

I think it is really important for people to hear that when you are in that depleted state, it is okay.

Kirsten Powers:

Yes.

Marie Forleo:

And it does not make you a bad person to say, “I am not engaging in this.” It is… Yes.

Kirsten Powers:

Grace for yourself. It always comes back. Cut yourself some slack. Just cut yourself some slack. You’re doing the best that you can in the situation. And I think that that’s important. And I also think when I was talking before about people are doing the best they can…

Marie Forleo:

Yes.

Kirsten Powers:

…understand that people… I have a lot in the book about brain science. Really understanding how people’s brains just want to keep them safe, and so people will find information they’ll gravitate towards information that make them feel safe. So that person that you’re arguing with, you know, they’re looking for the monster, they’re looking for the bad guy. They need that to feel safe, especially people who have unintegrated trauma. And that was something I really struggled with. And until I did the work of integrating my trauma, I just couldn’t, my brain wouldn’t let me. It just immediately went to… What made me feel safe was sorting people into good and bad baskets, because then I was like, “Well, now I know where the good people are and the bad people are.” So recognize the person you’re talking to might be doing that.

Marie Forleo:

Yeah. And…

Kirsten Powers:

And it’s totally unconscious. They have no idea. I had no idea I was doing it.

Marie Forleo:

Well, I think too. I’m a person, as a coach, Kirsten, who always tries to bring it back to myself. Right?

Kirsten Powers:

Mm-hmm.

Marie Forleo:

So rather than looking like, “Oh, this person,” it’s like, “Oh, what’s my stuff? What’s my part in this?” And I love that you said that, that you said recognizing for yourself that there was unresolved trauma in you. And as a result of that, you wanted to pop people into these simple buckets of good and bad.

Kirsten Powers:

Yeah.

Marie Forleo:

And I think the only chance we have, you know, speaking about this particular country and then of course globally around the world, is we have to elevate our thinking and our empathy skills to stop putting people into these very simplistic buckets.

Kirsten Powers:

Yes.

Marie Forleo:

You could like one thing about a person or several things about a person, and they may have other beliefs, points of views, ideas in their mind that you can completely disagree with. And they’re still a completely amazing, valuable human that you can love. It’s like we have to be able to hold…

Kirsten Powers:

Very hard for people to understand that.

Marie Forleo:

Yes.

Kirsten Powers:

Yes.

Marie Forleo:

We have to be able to hold all of these things at once together. And that’s why I wanted to have this conversation with you, because I don’t think people are having the conversation enough.

Kirsten Powers:

Mm-hmm.

Marie Forleo:

They want everyone to kind of say, “Oh, look at how whatever you are.” And actually, those ideas are really dangerous. They feel terrible, and they’re often motivated by the wrong thing. It’s people who… Yeah.

Kirsten Powers:

And they also make us feel bad.

Marie Forleo:

Mm-hmm.

Kirsten Powers:

That’s the thing that people don’t realize. Almost every single person you talk to who’s doing that will tell you they’re miserable.

Marie Forleo:

Yes.

Kirsten Powers:

Right? It’s actually… It’s like MLK said, “Hate is too great a burden to bear.” You are bearing all this. When you judge people, the other person doesn’t even know you’re judging them because you’re doing it in your head. You’re the one who’s having this toxic brew in your body about thinking about this person versus just being discerning and clear.

Marie Forleo:

Right. So it sounds like, if I’m hearing you correctly, what you’re affirming is it is possible to love and respect and maintain relationships with people who have very different views than you have.

Kirsten Powers:

Yes, absolutely. Now, there are some things that I think of somebody said, it would be pretty hard for me to move past.

Marie Forleo:

Sure.

Kirsten Powers:

But that’s my boundary. That’s okay. Grace does not say you have to be in relationships with people who believe or say things that cross a boundary that you’re just like, “I just can’t. I’m just a total no to that.”

Marie Forleo:

Yeah.

Kirsten Powers:

And that’s okay. Again, that’s the misunderstanding. So in my role, I have to sometimes criticize people, right? I’m asked about something on TV, and I say, “I think this person is doing this, that, and the other thing.” And already, people are coming to me and saying like, “Well, you’re not showing them grace.” And that’s just a category mistake. You can criticize, you can speak your truth, as I say in the title of my book, and have grace.

Marie Forleo:

And again, bringing it back to ourselves, I think every single human on planet earth you’ve had ideas that at one time you were like, “Oh, I thought that,” and then your ideas evolve as you grow as a human being. That’s the whole point of being human, right, is to grow and evolve.

Kirsten Powers:

Right.

Marie Forleo:

Yeah. So I want to wrap with something… Actually, two things. So you wrote on Instagram, “It’s possible to care and not be crushed by hopelessness, anxiety, chronic body pain, fatigue, and all the other fun things that come from being upset all the time by discovering grace as a practice. So I’m curious, for you, personally, what do you do as you’re moving back into the world? Obviously you’ve got this book, so you want to walk your talk. What do you do to practice grace daily when you’re walking into your job now?

Kirsten Powers:

Well, for one thing, I take very good care of myself. I get enough sleep. I meditate. I pray. I stay very grounded. And I think that, honestly, writing this book changed me. I am a different person than I was when I started it. And so, because this is always my paradigm, doesn’t mean I’m never going to have contempt or that I’m never going to judge somebody. The difference is that I notice it. And I go, “Oh, that’s a little off.” It’s a little discordant.

Marie Forleo:

Yes.

Kirsten Powers:

Whereas before, I just did it and I didn’t think anything of it. And if anybody had said anything was wrong with it, I’d be like, “You’re the problem, because you can’t see how horrible everything is.” And it’s like, no, things are still horrible. They’re still really bad. I’m still really worried about what’s happening in this country. I’m still very concerned about the future of this country. But my therapist was the one who first said that to me. She said, “Do you know it’s possible to be empathic and care about other people and care about social justice and not be miserable? And I was like, “No, that’s impossible. How could you do that? How could you not be upset all the time? Because people are suffering, I can’t be happy.” And she’s like, “How is that helping anybody?”

And the truth is I’m way more helpful to people now, because I had legitimately chronic fatigue. I was diagnosed with chronic Lyme, Epstein-Barr, all the things, fibromyalgia. I was exhausted. I was sleeping 14 hours a day. I had brain fog. I had anxiety. A person in that state is just not that helpful. They’re just not. And now, I don’t have any of those things.

Marie Forleo:

That’s incredible.

Kirsten Powers:

I’m completely physically healthy. Yeah. And it was through learning to take care of myself and have grace for myself and cut myself slack, because I was so mean to myself. I had the most vicious inner critic. And dealing with my trauma, and unlearning binary thinking, which I did very intentionally. I really spent a lot of time working on that with my therapist about how to stop doing this.

I’m just a person doing the best that I can but at least I want to do better. And at least I have some framework that I can go back to. Right?

Marie Forleo:

Yes.

Kirsten Powers:

That I can say, “You know what? You’re kind of dehumanizing this person.” That’s not a real person. And one of the tools in the book that social scientists talked about was, think of one person who belongs to, say you’re a Democrat, belongs to the Republican party who you like and respect. Doesn’t even have to be a friend. It could just be a neighbor down the road or your dry cleaner or something. They said people immediately depolarize.

Marie Forleo:

I love it. So the tip there is, for whatever side of the political spectrum that you’re on or whatever the issues happen to be, think about someone that you know or even that you might know, perhaps from the media…

Kirsten Powers:

Yeah, exactly.

Marie Forleo:

…even if you don’t know them personally, someone that you respect, who they are, how they see the world, and you actually like them and want them to win, and then the brain starts to depolarize and get you back into that connection with humanity. Is that right?

Kirsten Powers:

Yes, exactly.

Marie Forleo:

As we wrap up, is there one thing that you would want everyone to know or understand or practice to keep tapping into our compassion while we know that there’s a lot of forces out there that continue to try and suck us into this polarization and this dehumanization of the other?

Kirsten Powers:

Yeah. I think that in this country, we have an idea, we misunderstand what it means to be strong, and that somehow, by telling people off or getting in their face or saying something really awful on Twitter, you’re strong. Practicing grace in my experience has taken the most strength of anything that I’ve done. Right? It requires maturity. It requires empathy and compassion. And it’s very robust and muscular. It’s not the way I sort of thought about it. And it’s something that is good for you and it’s good for your relationships. And I think it actually would be good for the world. Right? And so rather than thinking the way I show I care is to go beat up on somebody, even if it’s just metaphorically, it’s like, no. The real strength is doing all the things that we’ve been talking about here. It was hard. Right? Kirsten two years ago to Kirsten today was a lot of hard work, but it was so worth it. It was so worth it. Oh, my gosh.

Marie Forleo:

Kirsten, thank you so much. I’m so happy for you. I’m happy that this book exists in the world. It’s brilliant. Thank you for just using yourself as such a prime example. You’ve been in the trenches for quite some time, and to come out the other side and to have a whole new way to stay deeply rooted in your faith and your humanity, and then to show it with us all, it’s really inspiring.

Kirsten Powers:

Thank you, Marie.

Marie Forleo:

We appreciate you.

Kirsten Powers:

Thank you so much and thanks for having me. You know, I just love you.

Marie Forleo:

Oh, I love you, too.

Kirsten Powers:

You’re so great. And I love your voice in this world.

Marie Forleo:

Wasn’t Kirsten awesome? I really appreciate who she is as a human being and all her experience. So I’m curious, what out of today’s conversation resonated most for you? And how can you put those insights into action, especially as we’re coming up into the holiday season? Leave a comment below and let us know now. As always, we’ve got some amazing conversations happening over at marieforleo.com, so head on over there and leave a comment now. And if you’re not yet subscribed to our email list, I don’t know what you’re thinking. We send out amazing, inspiring, motivating emails every single week, and I don’t want you to miss out. Until next time, stay on your game, and keep going for your big dreams because the world really does need that very special gift that only you have. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I’ll catch you next time.

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