Do I want to be right or be in a relationship? Acceptance versus agreement. If we can accept others and see their perspective, we have the potential to solve problems together. What does it take?…listening and understanding.
Tune in as Adam J. Salgat, Leader of Curriculum Improvement & Development for Our Community Listens, Sarah Weisbarth, and Big Brothers Big Sisters, Angel Moore discuss how these concepts come into play in our lives.
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Adam Salgat:
Hey listener, we would love it if you could take a quick moment to give our podcast a review, on iTunes, Spotify or leave us a message on our Facebook or LinkedIn pages. Hello and welcome to the, Our Community Listens podcast. My name is, [Adam Salgat 00:00:29] and with me is [Sarah Weisbarth 00:00:31], Leader of Curriculum of Improvement and Development for Our Community Listens. Sarah, how are you doing today?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Adam, I always say that I’m doing well, but I kind of joked with you earlier that, I am just walking life and struggling to understand people and connect with people and really face what’s going on in our world. Like everyone else is, regardless of my title and my knowledge.
Adam Salgat:
That’s totally fair. I think you said it as you’re just another person struggling.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah.
Adam Salgat:
And I totally relate to that. We do have a guest with us today. I’m super excited to welcome in [Angel Moore 00:01:11]. She is the Director of Mentoring Programs for Big Brothers, Big Sisters in the Great Lakes Bay Region here in Michigan. And she’s also an, Our Community Listens facilitator and has been for a couple of years now. Angel, how are you doing and welcome to the podcast?
Angel Moore:
Hey, thanks for having me, I’m super excited. Any day that I can get up and spend time with good friends discussing important topics that will help change the world is a good day for me. So I’m feeling pretty excited about this today.
Adam Salgat:
Our listeners can’t see it obviously, but behind her she has the word Inspire on her office wall and I’m really looking forward to what we bring you today. Hopefully it does bring you a bit of inspiration on how to handle acceptance and agreement. Sarah, why don’t you tea us up a little bit more?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah, those are some really, really big words, they’re really big concepts. Even just as we go to google what they might even mean or be defined as, it is hard. It is hard to get our hands around or our heads around or even our hearts around this concept of acceptance and agreement. The way we present it in our core curriculum is that we don’t have to agree with the position of another. We don’t have to agree with their behavior, we don’t have to agree with their belief system, their values, we don’t have to agree or be in alignment or truly just agree with their opinion.
But if we want to value that relationship, if we want to value that person, if it’s important enough to us. If we’re going to address problems in that relationship or even grow in that relationship. What we do have to do is the hard work of figuring out how to accept that person for the amazing individual they are. For the value that they bring, for their perspective, for their knowledge, for their experience and accept that their truth is theirs, regardless of our opinion and where we’re coming from. And even as I try to like explain it, I just feel like I just made it sound bigger than I even started out talking about it being.
Angel Moore:
I feel like it is such a big concept though. On one hand it sounds simple. Okay, if I love you, then I can accept you. But all I keep thinking over here is, it’s so easy until you’re upset. Right? Or until, your need isn’t being met or until somebody… Something is happening that is affecting you directly. And then it’s like, “okay, how do I still be aware of caring for that person first and then addressing that issue second together?” I don’t know, it is a big concept, but such an important one I think.
Adam Salgat:
So let’s talk a little bit about breaking it down maybe. Because when things get so big, my sister always says, how do you eat an elephant? And she says one bite at a time. So the concept here is just simply look at it in small increments and in the end, hopefully you’ve completed your task. So let’s talk a little bit about what does it take? What does it take to accept someone or get to a point of agreement. Potentially if your mindset needs to change or… Not if it needs to change, but if you choose to change your mindset about something after being educated. What, does it take to get there? Sarah can you talk a little bit about that.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Well, there’s two things I want to share and one’s a story.
Adam Salgat:
Sure.
Sarah Weisbarth:
And one ties back to a concept we have in our core class that we love to call the Onion Slide. First, I’ll start out with the story. When I share this concept in class, this is actually a story that I share and it involves around my step son, [Zach 00:04:58] and his dad, my husband, [Greg 00:05:00]. And back when Zach was a young man in his late teens and early twenties, he was making some choices and behaviors that his father and I could not agree with. They didn’t align with our values, they were very concerning to us. Yet, we came to this understanding that we could not control his behavior. And I’m using my fist right now, kind of pounding against each other. We were spending a lot of time, just butting heads and arguing and fighting and struggling. And we realized that, we were struggling against Zach. And we weren’t really able to come together in a way that addressed maybe the real problem.
Adam Salgat:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Sarah Weisbarth:
And I vividly remember, looking at my husband and saying, “if we don’t stop battling Zach as a person, if we don’t shift towards just accepting that this is where he’s at, these are the choices he’s making. We might not agree, but if we don’t come to a point of accepting him for who he is and the value that he brings, we will lose him.” And if I’m talking about it conceptually, I would say we would lose the relationship. But the truth is we would lose Zach. My step son, my husband’s son, an amazing individual, incredibly creative, wonderfully brilliant. And we would lose him if we could not come to this point of just accepting that this is where he’s at right now. Whether or not we agree. That’s what acceptance and agreement is about. Do you want to keep the relationship and address the problem. Or do you want to be right and keep the struggle.
Adam Salgat:
It sounds like you guys really had to look inward, than to think about what it is that you knew you wanted to keep, which was the relationship with Zach. And what it meant for you guys then to be able to move forward, to keep that. And in some respect, I’m sure you were kind of looking at it as trying to learn more about what… Why he was making decisions he was making and to understand. Right? So, what does it take? Education? Well, I guess first thing it takes is the want. Right? And looking with it inward and then education.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah and you’re really tying back to, Angela and I had a conversation yesterday morning about all of this. As it relates to people’s needs and their values. And so when you say taking a look inward, right? We had to take a look inward and say, “why are we so upset about his behavior? What need of ours, what value of ours is not being met?” And if we remember going back to our core content, we talk about the Onion Slide and it starts out with that core of, at the center of all of us are our needs and our values. And those needs and values can shape our attitudes about the world, life, how things should be. It really shapes our opinions. And the short form is from our opinions and our attitudes, we then have behavior. We always have a choice. That’s probably a topic for another conversation. But that’s what drives behavior.
Every behavior is an expression of a need. So if my needs and values are different than yours or different than Angels or different from all of the people that I am going to interact on any given day in any type of environment. The chances are really, really low that all of our needs and values are going to line up equally. Which means our opinions about things, our attitudes about things are going to be different and so is our behavior. So yeah, the first thing is I have to look inward. I have to also check my motive, what’s my intent. Do I want to address the relationship? Do I want to address the problem? Do I want to be right? What’s my motive? And then some knowledge and understanding of, what is that other person’s needs and values? Where are they coming from? And it sounds so easy and I have a really cool graphic that can describe it. And am like, its freaking hard work.
Angel Moore:
Yes, it is.
Adam Salgat:
Angel, is there anything you’d like to add In this kind off… In this Space right now?
Angel Moore:
The one thing I’ve been… I like writing notes over here, because I always learn so much from Sarah and you too Adam. So I’m like, “Oh, I just want to capture it all.” But two things that really stood out to me, especially when it comes to this whole concept of acceptance versus agreement is, am I really listening? Because I think sometimes, I think that’s the first step. Is to really just be in a space where you’re able to and willing to listen to the other person. To even be able to hear and learn about those values and where are they coming from. Like you keep talking about it Sarah. Because I think sometimes we focus so much on that small detail of, the behavior or the problem, that we turn our ears off and we don’t even listen to hear, what are they going through?
What got them to that point of that behavior. Right? Where’s our empathy to try to see, I love that new expression instead of asking people, “what’s wrong with you?” Asking them, “what happened to you?” And so coming at things from that place of empathy. And then the second part, the second point that I wrote down that I thought was kind of funny is, thinking about your relationship with your step son and how important that is. Right? So that gives you a reason to want to seek that acceptance even more. But then it’s like, okay, what about in situations where we have to interact with people and we need to learn to accept them for who they are, when maybe we’re not as close to them or maybe we don’t have that warm and fuzzy relationship that we might have with other people. And so how can we still keep that front and center, even when we’re dealing with people we don’t know. Just as like human to human. How do we accept others that maybe aren’t in our inner circle, but they’re still a human and they still matter.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Gotcha. All I’m thinking right now, Angel is, Facebook, the news, media, I would never… Well, I can’t say never, depending on my ability to choose wisely. But I feel like I would choose better, about firing off my opinion toward someone that is close to me. Right? You and I can have conversations that could be from a different point of view because we’re willing to try to understand and our relationship is important to us. But that person on Facebook, that’s got a running commentary. It’s easier to fire off on that. It’s easier to yell at the news and it’s easier… We see it all the time. It’s easier to call people names and assert our rights and tell them that they don’t matter and just spew judgment, which is really just our opinion on everything. We’re seeing it happen. And the struggle and the division that’s happening because of it, it bothers me.
Angel Moore:
Yeah, me too.
Adam Salgat:
It does. A lot of people sum it up as keyboard courage. It’s the idea of you’re at a keyboard and you’ve got the courage to say whatever it is, because they’re not in front of your face. They, first of all, couldn’t physically touch you, if they decided to be that type of person to do that kind of thing. So you have the opportunity to say whatever you want and go about your day a moment later and not really think about that person again, if you don’t want to. Because you won’t see them. But a lot of people… And I heard a sportscaster talking about this when he was talking about what his kids put on social media. And he’s like, “would you say that to your grandma?” And if more people took that to heart, we could live in a much happier space on social media where maybe it wasn’t so vicious and rude. And unnecessary name calling and a lot of vitriol.
Angel Moore:
It’s really intriguing. We were talking earlier about, are we addressing the relationship? Are we addressing the problem? And I feel like so often the quick answer I was going to say easy, but I don’t think it’s an easy answer. The quick answer is when someone within our social media feed is sharing something or even someone that might be in personal interaction with us. If they have a different opinion, we just cut them off. We unfriend them, we unfollow them. We stop showing up to their house for family gatherings. That seems to be the quick response. Instead of saying, “okay, well, how can we grow in this relationship so that we can address the problem together and bridge that divide.”
Adam Salgat:
My wife and I have talked about that same kind of thing. The idea that you could just unfriend somebody. And why keep them in your newsfeed if they’re bothering you or maybe they’re saying things that might be overtly racist. And you wonder to yourself, “well, I don’t need to accept that because I perceive that as being racist.” But if you try to look at it from their angle, it’s difficult sometimes to know if they are truly stating something that they feel is racist or if this is just the general belief that they have been raised in. And so, what I’m trying to say is we have had this discussion about this blurred line between accepting what they believe and what could potentially be defined as racism or a bigot, being a bigot. Though it’s difficult at times to know, when do you need to drop out and when do you need to fight for it. And those are some pretty heavy topics.
It’s a lot different than just do you like strawberry jam or grape jelly. It’s deep seated, personal beliefs that come into play. And so I’m not expecting a definitive answer from either of you about this. Because I don’t know if there truly is one. But it’s hard sometimes to know the difference between, do I need to move this person away from me because I simply don’t believe what they believe because I believe it’s racism. Or is it simply just, they have a differing opinion. And it’s not necessarily meant to be against a certain culture or against a certain race. It’s a tough conversation that her and I have had.
Sarah Weisbarth:
It is a tough, tough concept. And next month’s topic is on choice.
Adam Salgat:
Right.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Because where this leads to then, is you do get to decide how you want to address those situations and those relationships. And it all stems from… It’s still going to stem from your needs and your values and a conversation with your wife about hers. And how do those align within your relationship. And then how do you address others that you interact with. Then it’s doing the tough work. Angel’s, nodding because she’s like, “we just talked about this yesterday. [crosstalk 00:16:44]. I get it. You want to elaborate Angel.
Angel Moore:
Well, it’s just… Yeah, I think Sarah nailed it. With the whole concept of, you still have a choice, right? No matter what each of our values and beliefs and in our backgrounds are, we still have that choice on ultimately how we’re going to show up in the world? And so it is interesting. And I do think it’s a hard time right now. Right? We said, it’s a complex topic, but I would just love to share just a little personal. My personal reasoning for, why I’m so passionate and so excited we’re having this conversation. So I grew up biracial, my mother is Caucasian and my father is Italian and African-American. And so I grew up, they were divorced. And so I had a very unique perspective on being exposed to different cultures and different concepts and different ideas.
And so right now, it’s really interesting to see, how things are kind of playing out in the world. And so something that keeps coming back to me that is so important is right now, what people need is empathy and people need love and they need understanding. And I feel that for people on both sides of all offenses and I know sometimes that’s a really hard concept. Right? If somebody does something wrong, oftentimes we want to punish them or we want to yell at them or lash out at them. Especially right now that the word racism is being thrown out a lot. And I think we have to be careful and I think that we still have to… Even if we really disagree, like fundamentally disagree with somebody. How do we still show up from a place of empathy and understanding to try to see it from their perspective.
And I know even in my own family, we’ve been having a lot of these tough conversations about, how do we challenge our own thought processes and our own biases. We all have biases and sometimes we don’t even know. And so I think the best thing we could be doing is having these conversations that may be tough, that may be uncomfortable, but really coming to it from a place of understanding and humanity. I guess, is kind of my thought and I know I have so many. So that’s what I have for right this second.
Adam Salgat:
It’s really great advice though, it brought up the word challenge. And that’s kind of what I was alluding to. The idea of trying to challenge myself and the idea that I can’t just write someone off completely until maybe I know a little bit more. And so that’s where I’m trying to come from. Now, if you start learning and you get that education, you might decide it would potentially be time. And you would have to move away from accepting their behavior as something you want in your life. Right? And that does happen at times.
Angel Moore:
And then that’s what just towards choice, which we’ll talk about next month. Right? You can’t accept it, can you change the situation or can you ask them to change their behavior? That’s all it comes down to. It sounds simple, super simple, right? Again, I can diagram it for you and I can bullet point it and even kind of flowchart it for you. But it requires us to do some tough freaking work. And the change begins with me. I think we actually mentioned that last month.
Adam Salgat:
We did. [crosstalk 00:19:56].
Angel Moore:
At the end of the day, the change has to begin with me and that word challenge that Angel brought up. Do I have to challenge my bias? Do I have to challenge my belief system? Do I have to be like, “Ooh, Hmm, I wonder why I’m valuing that. Is that how I was taught? Do I still agree with that? What’s my need? Is that, where… Am I getting that need met healthy, effectively?” There’s so much stuff going on. There was a comment about an image of a politician holding up a Bible. And I was in that conversation and the individual said, “I was trying to find out on Google, what their intent of having that image taken was.” And I said, “well, I don’t think we’d ever understand anyone’s intent for the behavior until we started to understand what need they’re trying to get met and what value they’re expressing.”
As simple as that is, that’s where people are coming from their needs and their values. And they’re all different. So how do we come in? Angel’s talked about it several times. We, listen, we empathize, but we also move towards an understanding of one another. So we can go somewhere together. Adam, you said something before we started recording about standing on one side of a bridge, shouting at the other person. Help us understand what you were talking about in that imagery.
Adam Salgat:
I’ve always loved the phrase about meeting someone where they are and then taking them where you want them to go. In certain cases, I think taking them where you want to go as a little bit more of a parental guideline, because we’re trying to guide our children more than we are trying to guide adults. But this idea of meeting them where they are, is if you visualize you’re standing on two sides of a river and there’s a bridge between the two of you. You could stand on the other side of the river and just yell at them and tell them to come over across the bridge, get on my side. But you could also cross the bridge to their side, listen to them.
And if you decide, once you have sat and you’ve listened and you’ve done your best to accept what they believe to be true, what their truth is. You can decide if you want to stay with them where they are or if the two of you want to head over to the other side or maybe you just want to head to the other side. I mean, it’s really the concept though, of giving the opportunity to say, “I’m not just going to stand on the other side of the river and yell. I’m going to come over and we’re going to talk. We’re going to give each other the opportunity and the space to do that.”
Angel Moore:
Well and it’s where we place… It’s where we place the problem, I think. I don’t know if I run with this imagery, if I’m seeing the river is the problem. Right?
Adam Salgat:
Sure, interesting. [crosstalk 00:22:37].
Sarah Weisbarth:
I’m picturing it like this major rapids and uncrossable and just dangerous. It’s this horrible problem, which I think we could all come up with an example happening in our world right now, that could be the river. And if I just stand on one side and shout, chances are, you can’t even hear me because the rapids are so loud. The problem is so big. And all I’m doing is screaming and yelling and my need’s not getting met because you’re not hearing me, you’re not understanding me, so I scream louder. You’re screaming from your point of view, from your side of the river and the problem is still there. The problem’s still there.
Adam Salgat:
Angel, Is there any more you’d like to add when it comes to, why does this matter?
Angel Moore:
I think for me, I always kind of laugh. Sometimes they struggle with judgment. Right? I think a lot of us by nature, we think we know why people behave and act the way that they do. But at the end of the day, we really don’t know. Until we get curious and we even try to sit down and listen and find a way to accept them and learn more about them. And I feel like in my own life, since having, learn some of these skills and have tried them out, it’s amazing to see how much closer you can grow to people. Right? And I think for me at the end of the day, I can’t help, but keep… In my head, I keep hearing, all people are hurting. Right?
We all hurt and maybe we don’t all hurt at the same time or in the same ways. But just thinking about the fact that other people are hurting, I remember what I feel when I’m hurting and I wouldn’t want other people to feel that way. And so it’s so important to me, how can you find more ways to accept others for who they are, because I would hate for anybody to ever have to feel alone or feel attacked or feel defeated or whatever those emotions might be. Simply based on my behavior or my refusal to try to accept them as a human being. And so that’s something like, I have a thing right here actually, in fact. It says a griever’s accept and I have a name of a person on my desk that I’m working on that with. Is like a personal reminder to me, that I love this person and I accept this human. So my behaviors and my words and my actions need to show that.
And that’s why I just think this topic is so cool and so important because we all want to be loved. Right? We all want to connect with others. And so if that’s what we’re looking for, how can we give that to other people? And I just think it would really help us make a lot of progress on a lot of problems. If we cross that bridge together, like you said, Adam and really try just to attack the problem together. I think there was a good show and it was like… One time they said something about, it’s not us versus each other, it’s us versus the problem. And I love that line because it’s so true. And if we can view problems like that more often, I think we’d be a lot more successful.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Oh, my gosh.
Adam Salgat:
That is a really great line. [crosstalk 00:25:31].
Sarah Weisbarth:
I loved… Absolutely, I am like, “yes, that. Let’s do that.” And if we get everyone to do that we would solve the world’s problems and everything would be fine.
Adam Salgat:
I think at times, society or people in general, we struggled to be able to identify what is a problem and what is not. And the fact is what’s a problem to someone else may not be a direct problem for you, but it doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. And I think that’s a… I think that’s a pretty big indicator of what is going on in the world right now in my mind. There are problems that are happening for a lot of people that aren’t happening for others that we need… Doesn’t mean we get to just write them off.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Wow. I’m literally observing that whole concept right now. Especially as it relates to the concept of community, humanity, society, whether it’s my problem or not, it’s still a problem in society of which I’m a part of. And there’s all kinds of things. I’m almost picturing an image of the problem in the middle and then everyone trying to address the problem. There’s all kinds of words we could put in the middle of what our problems in our communities, our societies or even in our family units, in our organizations and our relationships. But if we start coming together and in a collaborative way to address the problem, I feel like they would go away. I don’t know, am I naive? I feel like all of a sudden, if we could all put the focus on the problem, instead of fighting each other. And work on the problem together from our individual points of view. And accepting that others have different points of view about this problem, but still work on it together, then the problem would shrink.
Adam Salgat:
It’s a good visual concept. And to me, it would make more sense. It’s kind of… It’s almost of the mind that a more hands make the less work. If you’ve got to dig a hole and you got one person digging, it’s going to take a while. You got 12 people digging, it’s going to go much faster.
Angel Moore:
Well and I think too, just to piggyback on that real quick. I think when we think about like, I’m picturing your image that you’ve painted. Right? Like we’re all working towards the center and towards that problem. I think something just to really point out right now is, how important and how much we should celebrate the differences of each other. Because everybody doesn’t think like me and some days, yeah, that might be frustrating. But it’s a really good thing because people are going to think and see things from different angles that maybe we’re not. We all come from different backgrounds, different levels of experience. And so how cool, if we could take all of those different levels of just, values and beliefs and dynamics and really like tackle a problem. How much progress could really be made.
Sarah Weisbarth:
I’m going back to Adam, starting off this whole conversation about how do you eat an elephant. Right? Is one bite at a time. Right? But if we all… The poor elephant right now. But anyway, if we all came out there… [crosstalk 00:28:29].
Adam Salgat:
We can call it a pound cheeseburger if you want. One pound challenge burger or something like that.
Angel Moore:
But it doesn’t… I mean, what I’m hearing is it doesn’t have to be just overwhelming for me or for one group of people to address a particular problem if we all came together then. And with the different perspectives. Right? I’m going to stop using the elephant analogy, but it’s totally in my head. But, are we approaching it from the head or the tail or the feet? Or where are we approaching it from? And our view is different. Right? I’m looking at this trunk. Apparently am going to keep using the elephant analogy. I’m looking at the trunk, someone else might be looking at the tail. I don’t know what’s happening at the tail, because I’m busy looking at the trunk. But we’re still addressing the same problem.
Adam Salgat:
Right. Am still trying to get to the center goal, which is, finish the elephant or fix the problem.
Angel Moore:
Yeah. And I have this whole like, “okay, let’s tell the world that this is what we’re going to do. This is how it’s going to work.”
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yes. [crosstalk 00:29:29].
Angel Moore:
And just coming back to Adam’s point of, but what does that take? What does that practically really mean.
Adam Salgat:
Right, Angel, as we Get near end time here, I’d like to ask you a little bit about your role with Big brothers, Big sisters. And what it means working with youth and utilizing acceptance and agreement and how much are you seeing different kids from different walks of life, trying to connect with them. Talk a little bit about that.
Angel Moore:
Yeah. That’s a great question. I think it’s huge. That’s why we love, the skills from Our Community Listens so much. At our agency, we’ve tried to infuse it with our matches, with the bigs, the littles, the parents. Because we really are serving people from so many different walks of life. It’s something that I think we really notice and that this concept really helps us with, our bigs in our families. Because oftentimes they’re coming from very different experience levels, very different backgrounds, very different needs, different circumstances. And so being able to help our mentors, to maybe sometimes accept a situation that maybe a family is in. Even though we might not agree with it or maybe we want to make it better and we can’t right this second. How do we help them to accept the kids and to love on them where they’re at?
I think it has been really huge for us in seeing that growth in those relationships. But even for our staff, we help in navigate difficult situations all the time. And how do you continually show acceptance for the people that you’re serving, even though you might be coming from different opinions and different viewpoints on something. And I think with youth it’s really important because, these kids are looking for acceptance more than anything. And I think that if we can help to create an environment and create situations where they can be with adults who are truly accepting of who they are, while they’re figuring things out themselves. I don’t know, I just get really excited to see what their futures might look like. Knowing that more and more kids are having that space to be truly accepted as an individual by somebody in their life. So I guess that’s really kind of the way I look at it at Big brothers, Big sisters.
Sarah Weisbarth:
One of the strategic initiatives within Our Community Listens has to do with inspiring youths. And that’s through mentoring organizations. And we just recently had a webinar about being, awesome role model. Even when sometimes you screw up. And we know that we can teach these skills to adults. Youth is a different story, about how do we help them understand these skills or maybe have the environment with which they’re experiencing these skills. But what I hear you saying Angel, is that you’re really helping people be those role models for those youth. In a way that is going to create an environment where they have the opportunity to be inspired. Just like your word on the back of your wall there.
Angel Moore:
Yes, absolutely. We have so many amazing mentors and role models that come to us from, like I said, all walks of life. That all have that one shared common goal. So our new mission at Big brothers, Big sisters, is that we are defenders of potential. The potential of all youth in our community and I can’t think of any better way, to help defend that potential, than to equip our mentors with skills. Like empathy and how to really listen and how to accept versus agree with people. Effective confrontation, all the different things that we focus on. If our mentors are able to role model those skills and create situations and environments where these kids can feel listened to, they can feel heard, they can feel empathized with, they can feel loved.
Imagine what the world would look like when that generation is… They become adults. If that’s how they’re reading our world and how they’re communicating with each other as they navigate those problems in the center, like we talked about. And I think that’s what gets me so jazzed and so excited. I could cry right now because it’s really inspiring to see it. And I don’t know, leaves me with lots of feelings of hope.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Absolutely. I am feeling hopeful and inspired, just listening to you. And it’s doing it one person in one relationship at a time. But knowing that it will have the impact on problems that we may never ever see the realization of. But it’s because we’re investing in that relationship and the value of that person here and now.
Adam Salgat:
Sarah and Angel, thank you both so much for being on today’s podcast. As always, we like to give our listeners a couple of key take aways. Sarah, why don’t you go first.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah, I will start us off. I would like to hear from all of us, because I think this has been a real, just, collaborative learning conversation together. So, I will share one key takeaway and look forward to hearing both of yours. Mine, maybe it’s just a theme in my life right now, but the big thing for me is it starts with me. And if I am going to really do that acceptance versus agreement, Angela, I’m actually going to take your tiny habit with me and put people’s names in that space and say, “if I am going to work towards acceptance of this person and value this person, that means I have to do some work. I have to take a look at where is my opinion, where’s my judgment, where is my need, where’s my value.” The work starts with me first, if I’m going to be able to work towards acceptance in that relationship. So thank you for that tidbit angel. And that is my key takeaway, but also my commitment.
Angel Moore:
I love that. I love that you’re making a commitment to do better as we wrap up this podcast. I always love action items. Right? Like what’s our takeaway from this. And so that’s fantastic. I think my key takeaway, I really just always go back to empathy. I feel like if we’re ever going to be able to accept other people, empathy is our greatest tool and it being able to do that, how do I see it as they see it and feel it as they feel it. And so even in those moments where maybe I really disagree with their opinion or my emotion starts taking over.
My takeaway is going to be trying to keep empathy front in mind and really asking myself, “what are they experiencing right now? And where are they coming at this? How are they coming at this problem? Why are they coming at it this way? And what has kind of made them who they are, that’s kind of got gotten to the spot where we’re at. And just continuing to focus on empathy and love. Because I think that that is the most important thing we can do is love one another. And so that’s going to be really my big focus. Is having empathy to be able to accept the people around me.
Adam Salgat:
So, Sarah has put me on the spot. I don’t normally do key takeaways, but I will piggyback on Angel and say, my key takeaway is education. Educate yourself on what other people are going through. That could be on a one-on-one basis, where you just take the time to sit and listen to one person, one story and get to know them. It could be at a larger scale where you start reading about movements and trying to understand it and just take the time to do your due diligence before forming opinions. And listen, as she mentioned also. Just take the time to listen and be there for people. Thank you both again, for being on the podcast. It was a pleasure.
Angel Moore:
Thank you, Adam. You create a space for us to have the tough conversations, so that we can grow and vulnerably share that growth with our listeners.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yes, thank you for letting me join you guys this week. It’s been an honor to be here. So this is awesome.
Adam Salgat:
If you have any suggestions about subjects for our podcast, feel free to reach out through our Facebook page. And if you’re interested in taking a class, visit ourcommunitylistens.org. Thank you again for listening to our podcast and don’t forget, each word, each action, each silent moment of listening sends a message. Therefore, you are the message.
