Transforming Conflict: The Role of Mindset and Emotional Balance.

Do you struggle with managing your emotions during conflicts and wish you could handle them more effectively? What if you could move beyond basic emotions and achieve self-mastery in conflict resolution? If you're ready to delve into the depth of emotional identification and management, this episode is for you.

In this episode, Joel Lee and I explore conflict resolution by delving into the depth of emotional identification and management. We emphasize moving beyond basic emotions like anger or frustration and using scales to measure and reduce emotional intensity effectively. Our discussion covers the vital role of confidence in conflict resolution, tied closely to mindset and aligning beliefs with actions. We address how our inner critical voice can impact self-belief and how Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques can reshape this narrative, fostering confidence and a positive mindset.

Imagine resolving conflicts with confidence and a balanced emotional state, leading to personal growth and improved relationships. 

By listening to this episode, you'll discover:

1. Emotional Identification and Management: Learn how to move beyond basic emotions and use scales to measure and reduce emotional intensity effectively.
2. Building Confidence: Understand the role of mindset in conflict resolution and how NLP techniques can reshape your inner narrative to foster confidence.
3. Achieving Self-Mastery: Gain insights into the interconnectedness of thoughts, emotions, and body posture, and how balancing these areas leads to successful conflict resolution.

Three Benefits You'll Gain:

1. Enhanced Emotional Well-Being: Discover techniques for identifying and managing emotions to achieve a balanced emotional state.
2. Improved Conflict Resolution Skills: Learn strategies to build confidence and a positive mindset, essential for resolving conflicts effectively.
3. Personal Growth and Mastery: Understand the importance of self-mastery in conflict resolution and how it contributes to personal growth.

Are you ready to master conflict resolution and achieve emotional well-being? Scroll up and click play to join our insightful discussion with Joel Lee. 

Learn valuable techniques for emotional identification and management, building confidence, and achieving self-mastery. Start your journey towards effective conflict resolution and personal growth today!

Joel Lee's contact info:
LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-lee-0a03b9b/
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/joel.lee.5070
Book:  https://store.lawnet.com/an-asian-perspective-on-mediation.html

Joel Lee's Bio
Joel Lee is a Professor at the Faculty of Law, the National University of Singapore. A graduate of Victoria University of Wellington and Harvard Law Schools, Joel specializes in Negotiation and Mediation. Joel co-pioneered the teaching of Negotiation and Mediation in the Singapore Universities and has played a significant role in furthering the development of mediation in Singapore. 

Joel has taught overseas at the University

Transcript

Transcript

[0:00] Music. 

Introducing "It's an Inside Job" podcast with Jason Liem

[0:09] Welcome back to It's an Inside Job podcast. I'm your host, Jason Liem.
Now this podcast is dedicated to helping you to help yourself and others to become more mentally and emotionallyresilient so you can be better at bouncing back from life's inevitable setbacks.
Now on It's an Inside Job, we decode the science and stories of resilience into practical advice, skills and strategies thatyou can use to impact your life and those around you. Now, with that said, let's slip into the stream.

[0:37] Music. 

Introduction to the Triad of Subjects

[0:45] Welcome back to It's an Inside Job. I'm your host, Jason Liem.
This week, we are going to have a long-form discussion with Joel Lee from Singapore.
Now, this is going to be a unique triad of subjects.
We're going to be talking about conflict resolution. We're going to be talking about the martial arts Wing Chun, and we'realso going to be diving into neuro-linguistics programming.
Now, Joel, he's a master in all three areas and the triad of this conversation is quite curious and we end the conversationwith a lot of practical tips.
So let me take a little more of a moment to formally introduce Joel.
Now, Joel is a professor at the Faculty of Law at the National University of Singapore.
He's a graduate of Victoria University of Wellington and the Harvard Law Schools and his specialty is within negotiationand mediation.
He's also co-pioneered the teaching of negotiation and mediation in the Singapore universities and has played a significantrole in furthering the development of mediation in Singapore.
Joel has also taught overseas in countries such as Denmark, France and the UK.
Along with his other accolades, he is also the principal mediator with the Singapore Mediation Center.
He's also a certified trainer of Neuro-Linguistics Programming or NLP and Joel has also been a practitioner of a Chinesemartial art, Wing Chun, for over three decades and runs his own Wing Chun school in Singapore.
Now I could spend more time adding even more of his accolades, but I think you're waiting for the con.

[2:13] Music. 

Introduction to the Brilliant Guest from Singapore

[2:27] It's an Inside Job. I have a brilliant guest with me all the way from Singapore.
Joel, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Jason, and thank you for having me on the show. It's a pleasure to be here.
Yeah, your name's come up a number of times with previous guests and also a couple of friends of mine, so I thought Ihave to have this gentleman on the show.
Perhaps we could kick off our conversation today by you introducing who you are and what you do.
Well, so I'm based in Singapore, born, bred in Singapore, educated in Singapore and New Zealand and the US.
Don't hold it against me, I'm a lawyer by training but I'm a really nice guy despite that.
My full-time job is as a professor of law at the National University of Singapore.
So not only am I a lawyer, I make them. So again, take that as you will.

[3:22] And as part of my job, I teach a whole bunch of things, but one of the things I've chosen to specialize on is conflictresolution.
So, and that will involve things like negotiation and mediation.
So specifically the parts of conflict resolution, in my mind, that are amicable, collaborative, rather than adversarial, whichmay be litigation and arbitration and so on and so forth.
In my free time, I run a martial arts school and I jokingly call that my other form of dispute resolution.

The Journey to Conflict Resolution Begins

[3:58] And then I also from time to time dabble with aspects of psychology, simply because it interfaces very well withconflict resolution.
I'm married, no kids, four cats.
Four cats? Yeah, I should say no kids that I know of, but I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure.
Okay, well we'll leave that for another show. I'm curious, obviously you, as you said, you're a professor, you're highlyeducated, highly experienced, and I'm just curious, what is the reason you went into mediation to into conflict resolution?
What drew you to that discipline?

[4:34] I'd like to tell you that I was bitten by a radioactive mediator and therefore developed superpowers.
But the back story, I mean, no real origin story. A lot of it is happening to be in the right place at the right time.
So I read law. I studied my first law degree when I was in New Zealand.
And I was exposed to negotiation and mediation at law school.
I practiced for a year and a bit in a law firm, doing some litigation work, and while I felt I was good at it, I could do thatdecently, I found it hard to sleep at night.

[5:15] And I thought that it just did not fit for me comfortably, what I was doing.
So, negotiation and mediation called out to me very early on in my life.
And then I returned back to Singapore, and I won't go into that story because that's way too long.

[5:34] But essentially, I started teaching negotiation and mediation at the law school.
Back then, things like that were not sort of considered acceptable to teach because you know, law schools teach you aboutstuff. They don't actually teach you how to do stuff.
And real law schools don't teach stuff like that. That's thankfully changed over the last three decades.
But back then, you know, people look at you funny because they, what's wrong with you? Why are you teaching thisnonsense, right?
This is all practical stuff. You know, we don't teach practical, we just teach theory.

[6:09] So, and Singapore just happened to be at that point in time really getting into mediation or at least planting the seedsof mediation.
So, it was just really, you know, the stars aligned and it just happened to be an opportunity.
I was here in the right place at the right time and I kind of got involved in the mediation movement at a very early stage inSingapore.
I think conflict resolution is a highly needed skill and all sort of spectrums and spheres right now.
We've talked ad nauseam on the show how societies, cultures are being, you know, we're just being pulled, polarized tothese extreme spectrums.
And usually what bridges this is dialogue and discourse.
But that seems to be even be turned off.
To what extent do you find that, you know, people hunger for conflict resolution, these skills, these pragmatic tool basedskills that we can use day to day to bridge these, the discontent?

[7:16] I think there is a great hunger for it. And the end, of course, there are many causes of people teaching, teaching thestuff.
There is a great hunger for it.
I think the majority of the world get this sense that something's not quite right.
The world's being polarized and somehow we're either not able to talk about it or not willing to talk about it or not havingthe opportunity to talk about it.
I can say a little bit more later about why that might be.
So I think there's a great hunger. And there are also people that may not know that they need the skills.
So for example, there might be people who don't actually know, they're not really good at resolving conflicts, but theythink they are.
And so they sometimes make things worse.

[8:10] But I think, I mean, their intentions are in the right place, their heart is in the right place. It's just that sometimes weneed to be with, sensitive to the nuances of communication and conflict resolution and perspective shifting and all of that.
You know, one part is that we just don't want to listen to the other person because we are shouting from our soapbox andanything they're saying, we just write off.
Then there's the other side of the spectrum that I see is that we've become so politically correct, so worried about thedelicate flower in the room of offending someone that we're even afraid to bring up something.
Because if we bring up something, it will be considered sexist or racist or something-ist.
And we don't want to fall into that camp. And so for me, that also creates a sense of fear or self-doubt as to how do weapproach, how do we have discourse about dealing with issues that can only be resolved by listening and understandingand respecting.
You don't have to agree with what the other person, but only discourse can settle it.
And again, this is from my layman's perspective, But, I mean, what's your say on this?
So, I mean, there's actually a lot in what you just said to unpack, right?
I think, so if you'll excuse it, I'll also kind of break it down a little bit.
Please, please, that's what I want you to do. Thank you. Right, so I think one of the first things we need to do is we needto normalize.

[9:40] Conflict. I mean, a lot of the times, people kind of don't like the idea of conflict, you don't like the idea that, youknow, there's a little bit of a friction and so the avoiders of the world or the accommodators of the world, you know, interms of the approach conflict might be, well, that's conflict's a bad thing, let's not engage, right?
And sometimes that's sensible, right? If someone's got a knife to you, I think you should run.
I mean, I think I think that makes sense, right? If there's a tiger coming at you looking really hungry and you look likelunch, I think you should run.
I think that makes sense.
But by and large, I think most people don't realize that actually conflict's not a bad word. Conflict is a very natural part oflife.
It doesn't feel good all of the time, of course. It feels bad.

[10:26] But actually, if you think about how, for example, a tree grows, right?
Essentially, cells multiply in opposition to one another and it pushes it up.
Similarly, how we move as a result of the conflict of our muscles, there is an antagonism to our muscles, that's why wecan move.
If they were not antagonistic, in a sense, we wouldn't be able to do stuff, right?
So, conflict occurs and you just put two people together and they will not be exactly the same.
Even twins, if you accept that they might be genetically as close as two human beings could be, will have conflictsbecause they are still fundamentally two different people and think differently and have different views.
So, I think one of the first things we need to say is to look at how we could normalise conflict.
How do we say, hey, it's okay that you're fighting, it's nothing wrong.

[11:18] That you have different opinions, right?
And then that leads to the second point, which you've also made, is that we, I think we've forgotten or we don't know,we've not learned how to disagree.

[11:31] In an agreeable fashion. So, sometimes I express this to my negotiation students or conflict resolution students, youcan disagree without being disagreeable.
I can say no to you in a very respectful sort of way or I can say no to you as if you're a real ass.
There are a number of ways to do it.
And so, as you well know, when we teach communication studies, we usually say how you say something is at least asimportant as what you say.
So, your choice of words, your non-verbals, your body language and all of that, all that adds to the total sum of thecommunication.
So, I think we've forgotten how to disagree without being disagreeable.

[12:23] And part of that comes from a space of needing protection. So I said a little bit earlier that people avoid conflict.
And actually, this is tied very much into what you will know as the fight response, right?
The flight response that's theoretically part of the amygdala, the reptilian brain, a survival mechanism, right?
But a lot of the time, when we think, when we have to deal with conflict we think we have to disagree, we think it has tobe in fight mode.

[12:54] And so in order for me to be right, you somehow must be wrong.
And of course that's false, right? That's really a false syllogism.
And coming from my legal training, that's what we're trying to do, right? We think in a very adversarial, win-lose, zero-sum fashion, right?

[13:15] So when I'm thinking strictly in a legal sense, what I will say to you is in order for me to be right, by definition, youmust be wrong.
And it is my sole mission to destroy your argument. And if I cannot destroy your argument, I will destroy you.
So that's the mindset, right?
Whereas what we need to shift into is a thinking that it's really not a dichotomy, it's not either or, it's not zero sum.
Both you and I could be right, both you and I could be wrong, right?
And then maybe what we're looking at is shades, nuance, understanding.
And understanding doesn't have to mean I agree with you.
I can understand you, I respect your right to have that view, and I might still disagree with you, but that doesn't actuallymean you're wrong.
Now, of course, when we're talking about facts and stuff like that, we might be able to say there is a right and wrong andall of that, but when we're talking about opinions, when we're talking about views of the world, right, value systems, Ithink it's way too simplistic to think of it in itself either or sense, right?
If you'll excuse me segueing into sort of a slightly different spin to this, although it will be relevant.
You might be familiar with something called improv.

Improv vs. Scripted Performance in Negotiation and Mediation

[14:43] So if improvisational theater work, comedy and so forth.
So your listeners out there might be familiar with the show, Whose Line Is It Anyway?
It's one of my favorite shows. A lot of comedians, the late Robin Williams was an improv artist, right?
And he was a master of it.
Well, I've often said to my students, negotiation and mediation is more like improv than it is a play, right?
Than it is a scripted performance, right?
So if you actually have a script and you, you know, I'm gonna first say this, and I'm gonna first say this, and you're gonnasay this, and then I'm gonna say this, it doesn't work that way because, you know, as they say, shit happens, right?
Brown matter hits rotating object, right?
And so, you've got to improvise. And one of the fundamental principles of improv is, yes, and, right?
And all it means is, I just, whatever, Jason, you tell me, whatever your opinion is, I'm going to say, yes, which means, itdoesn't mean I agree with that. It just means I hear you.
And then I will build on that point. Now, I know that example is very simplistic and of course it's a lot more complex thanthat, but it fundamentally mentally captures the idea.

[16:06] That instead of pushing back against what you're saying, right, sometimes that is expressed as yes, but, right?
And we've all experienced the but face, right?
And the but face being, you know, I love you, but, and we all know that we're about to get criticized after the but, right?
Okay, and so a lot of time when we teach people sometimes couples I teach couples how to say this I say I love you andand then you just add in what you want to say But if you go, but chances are, you know, you just erased everything thatyou said before that it discounts everything, right? The first exactly right.
It's it's what you say after the but that really resonates with someone exactly so the choice of words becomes veryimportant because if I said, you know, I Disagree with you Jason and my point of view is this Okay, the listener doesn'tgenerally get the sense that you're dismissing the argument.
You're just simply saying, this is a different view, and I've heard you and I've listened to you. Right?
So fundamentally, going back to how do you disagree without being disagreeable is we need to learn listening, right?
We need to relearn the skill of listening.
Most of us listen to fight back or listen to defend.
We're not really truly deeply listening to what the other person's saying with the real spirit and intent of trying to seewhere they are coming from, right?

[17:30] And again I understand it because it's tremendously a big challenge to your identity, right? If somehow they areright and they make sense does that actually mean you're wrong, right?
So you could have fairly good ego sort of ego strength, you've got to fairly be able to say, you know, it's okay, I can getthat you're right and I could be right too, right?
So, role reversal is helpful.

[17:56] There is a, I often say to my students, people I train, I say, listen, it doesn't make sense to you, whatever they'redoing or saying, but it makes sense to them.
Don't assume that they're crazy, stupid, psychotic or whatever. it makes sense to them.
You just don't, you know, you're not sitting in their life, right?
You're not sitting in their skin and in their shoes. So you don't actually know how it makes sense to them.
So there's something called Miller's Law, I think it's named after George Miller.
He was a psychologist in the fifties.

[18:28] And Miller's Law essentially says, you know, assume it is true of that for them.
You, what you need to figure out is what is it, or what could it be true of, right? And it's a lovely way of actually gettingsomeone to solve role reverts.
Now I know I've spoken quite a length now, so let me catch my breath and let you sort of say a few things and then askyou the question. I think what you've said, Joel, is so well articulated.
For me, it comes back down, you know, as you said, at the top of this conversation, you talked about conflict and howmost of us have a negative connotation of that definition.
We see it as a fight, but a negative connotation as towards a fight.
And for me, the fundamental narrative for most people is conflict is bad, and that if I'm right, they are wrong.
And it's like zero-sum, I need to win this.
And I think that's what most conflict comes down to.
And so what I see is that, what I hear is that fundamentally.

[19:28] Before we begin all the listening, before we begin the techniques and the skills, is to go back to the narrative, toredefine the narrative, to have deep discussions, not just once, but to understand the fundamentals of how we define thestory of what conflict is.
And for me, you know, it's great if you're a business student or negotiation, mediating, arbitration, what have you, and yougo into that discipline and you learn that.
But for me, I think these are fundamental communication skills that should be taught at a primary school level. I mean,that's, you think about it, it's a language in a sense, right?
Like, I mean, if you learn French when you're five years old, you're fluent.
You can learn Arabic, French, and English, and you're flipping back like it's one language.
But if we learn conflict resolution, if we learn to, again, from a layman's perspective, to define and look at conflict, as yousaid, where I can disagree but not be disagreeable and the number of multitude of other definitions, then I see this as thatallows us to bridge things.
We're not filled with self-criticism or self-doubt or self-loathing for ourselves, or the other side. What is your take on this?

[20:38] You're preaching to the Qo'ajis and I absolutely agree. We teach young folks how to walk at an early point in life,how to do certain life skills and that might change.
What those life skills are might change from period, generation to generation, we used to teach young folks how to write.
I'm not sure they write anymore, they just type and their thumbs are highly evolved, I think, is what it is now.
But I mean, I don't know any young person who doesn't know how to use a mobile phone.
I don't know any young person who doesn't actually know how to use a computer, right?
The digital natives, I think, term that we sometimes refer to them as, right?
But we teach people how to talk, but we don't teach people how to say things, we teach people how to read, but we don'tteach them...

[21:31] How to choose their words carefully enough to create an effect that you want to have.
We don't teach people how to think about dealing with a conflict, right? It's not just a skill, it's a mindset.
It's how you think about something, right?
You know, if we can inculcate into somebody, well, don't do dangerous stuff, right? Like don't touch fire.
You see that bear, don't go there, right? That kind of stuff.
You know, I think we can equally teach people, you know, when when someone disagrees with you, this is how you dealwith it.
But the problem is, a lot of the time, we don't consciously think about it, we're not mindful about how we approach thesethings. Right?
I'm only mindful about it simply because I teach it. And I'm constantly looking out for how people's mindsets are and thewords they use and how they deal with conflict, how they react to it, how they push back or how they collapse.
I'm constantly looking at that only because that's my wheelhouse, that's my life, right? But most people don't.
Most people are just, you know, the regular folks, you know, living a life, doing their best, getting by, sometimes morethan getting by, and that's fine.
And they're not thinking, oh, my child's having a conflict right now.
How do I now model for my child how I deal with conflict?
Because, to be honest, you can tell your child all you want.

[23:01] But most of the time your child is going to be learning from what he or she sees you doing.

[23:07] How you behave, right? That's unconscious socialization.
You're unconsciously modeling your primary caregiver, your parents, as the with the key people in your life, right? And Iknow that.
And I have a very weird sense of humor. I blame my mother for it, right?
And actually my mother has a lot to answer for, but that's a different podcast, you know?
But fundamentally, your child is gonna look at how you deal with conflict, right?
So if you get into a car accident and your first thing is to be frustrated and angry and get out of the car and cuss out theother guy, right?
That's what they'll learn.

[23:44] Right. And that there's a very funny story that Robin Williams tells, and he says this, you know, when his kid wasreally, really young, saw a child in the backseat driving his car, and his kid hasn't learned how to speak yet.
And of course, he gets cut, you know, overtaken by another driver, so he gets a bit frustrated. He says, fuck it.
And of course, the next words he hears from the back of the car is his young son going, fuck it.

The Influence of Role Models in a Child's Life

[24:16] Right? Of all the words to have to learn at the first go, that would be the one.
And of course these things happen, right? And I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall, you know, with theconversation with the wife a little bit later, but we'll see how that goes.
But essentially the child learns from the role models that he or she has, right?
It could be the parents, most of the time they're parents, but it could be other caregivers and so on and so forth. So,sometimes we're just so busy with our world and we don't think about it.
We are mindful of how we feel and how we respond.

[24:46] I had to say to my class the other day, simply because it came up as a topic, about strong emotions and how youdealt with strong emotions and all of that, right?
And one of the things I said was, whatever you feel, you're entitled to feel.
It's okay for you to feel whatever you feel. You could feel sad, threatened, depressed, angry, whatever frustrated that'sokay don't don't don't deny your right to have a feeling acknowledge the feeling, and let it pass what i said then washowever you don't actually have to act on that feeling right you have choice right but unfortunately for a lot of peoplewhat they do is they feel it and they feel they have to act out a certain way right uh i i, I've often said that the reason whysociety behaves a certain way towards conflict and strife and friction, I blame media, I blame movies, I blame television.
I blame a lot of things that we are unfortunately constantly exposed to.
So, for example, there isn't...

[26:00] A long-running, TV series where people deal with one another respectfully and with conflict in a positive way.
Just think about all the legal shows that they might have back in the day, Paper Chase, Boston Legal, LA Law.
I'm beginning to reveal my age, damn it. And you'll often see is that there's always expressions of anger and emotion andda da da da, right?
And there was a very short-lived TV show called The Mediator, where it actually was an American TV series where thiswoman mediator basically showcased her revolving disputes among folks in a positive sort of way.
It didn't last very long.

[26:48] Ratings were not good because those things don't attract the attention.
We watch a TV show or movie because there's a big fight going on, right?
There's one guy, there's Liam Neeson, you know, taking on 15,000 troops just with a handgun and he wins unscathed,right?
We want to see that, we want to see the fight, we want to see the emotions, we want to, because maybe our lives are so sadand miserable that we actually need to vicariously live it through these shows like soap operas and all that.
But then we're not getting good role models about how to respond to conflict because then we get programmed, right, andI use that word very loosely, but we get programmed, imprinted, that the next time we are thrown into a situation thatvaguely approximates what we've seen in TV, we automatically do it.

[27:38] We don't think, oh, I got that from a movie. It's just that we react, right? And that's the insidiousness, I think, ofmedia.
It is insidiousness now of social media or a whole bunch of different things that our young folks are being exposed to.

Lack of Positive Role Models in Media and Social Media

[27:51] And nobody is actually saying, well, hang on a moment, how about we do a podcast or how about we do a TikTokvideo or whatever the young folks do nowadays on how to speak respectfully to somebody else, right? Now, I'm notsaying it doesn't exist.
It's just, it's not likely to make the top 10.
You know, I can see how drama and trauma are entertaining, because we're drawn to the tensions, we're drawn to the thejust the heat, because that adds to colour and vibrancy to a story.
Okay, we get that. But I think if you look at someone's life, who's filled with drama, you know, because they're not able toread their emotions and see it as information, but constantly see it as instructions of what to do, and they explode.
You see their life as a cauldron of like, it's a tempest in a teapot kind of thing.
But what you're saying, what I hear is that if we're able to be self aware, if we're able to stay in the moment, I think yousaid mindful of, of what's going on in our internal environment, assess it, notice it, don't, we don't have to be defined by it.
But we can use that as looking, making more cognizant choices, making better decisions as to approach.

[29:00] Again, I think for me, for this to happen, it has to come.
I mean, we can teach in universities If you have that particular course in your curriculum, that's great.
But I truly believe if we can bring this down to the fundamentals of primary school, even in daycare to some level, right?

[29:19] It just becomes part of the course curriculum. Like if you're going to learn English, you just don't learn English ingrade one.
You go through all the grades, you're constantly improving that.
Someone was just telling me yesterday about his son and they get into rough housing in school and all of that, right?
And the son says, well, I got sort of reprimanded for fighting yesterday.
And firstly, and I was just kind of talking him through, the parent through, well, hang on a moment.
We don't actually know what any of that means, right? Okay, the kid might have gotten reprimanded, but we're not surewhat reprimands means, or scolded actually was the term used.
We're not actually sure what for fighting means, and maybe he had a good reason for doing what he did.
Right, and so again, modeling, you know, instead of being judgmental initially, ask the questions, ask the questions,gather data, gather information, and then model a response that is.

[30:23] There might need to be some kind of discipline involved, sure, but the model response that just is proportionate tothe situation and taking that opportunity as a learning moment, a teaching moment, to get that person to, that a child toreflect upon, well, how might his actions have made the other person feel?
Or if the other person had pushed him first, how did you feel about that, did you have to push back immediately? Whatelse could you have done?
And so on and so forth. So you're essentially through your interventions, helping that young person create choice, right?
And if kindergarten students and preschool, I mean, in primary school teachers could have that training and be able tomodel that for every child that crosses their life.
I mean, I think at least the world has a chance of being quite a different and more positive place.

[31:23] Oh, I wholeheartedly agree. Wholeheartedly agree.
For me, that's an elegant segue into another part of your life, your discipline and your practice of Wing Chun.
Because I took martial arts from an early age, Taekwondo.
And you know, when you when you start as a kid, you don't know anything, you can throw fists and kick, but I mean, it'sundisciplined.
But just like what we were talking about, when I started White Belt and progressed through the Belt, Yellow Green, whathave you, you learn greater skills and you build on the fundamentals.
So for me, as I said, I think this is an elegant segue. When we're talking about sort of primary school teaching, sort ofthese kind of conflict resolution skills, and then you go up.
I was wondering maybe you can more eloquently bridge this between conflict resolution and Wing Chun.

[32:14] And maybe you could tell us a little about your philosophy and or the philosophy of that martial arts.
Yeah, well, you just opened up a Pandora's box. We'll be here for the next seven hours.
Not to worry, not to worry. Hang on folks. Put on your seat belts folks.
So what I've got to say is Wing Chun is probably the art that I've been at for the longest.
I've been doing that since 1987, so I suppose by last count, over 35 years, I think.
I can't do math, so.
You've been doing it since the last millennium? Yeah, I know, damn it.
I look pretty good for my age.
Yeah, so, but I've done a bit of Taekwondo as well.
I've done Aikido, I've done a bit of JKD, which is Jeet Kune Do, which is a Bruce Lee sort of variant from Wing Chun.

[33:09] So I've done a whole bunch of different things, it's just that Wing Chun is what I've settled on.
That is something that fits very well for me and something I want to dedicate my life to.
So I'll kind of speak about martial arts in general a little bit and then maybe talk a little bit about Wing Chun.
So, I mean, I think most people's first response to martial arts, the connection between martial arts and conflict resolutionmust surely be there's a connection really right because, because one seems to be a lot about fighting and conflict andviolence right whereas uh obviously conflict resolution is about managing conflict and trying to try to get people togetherin an amicable sort of way um and and i think there are a couple of couple of things to this in Chinese.

[33:59] The word for martial art in Mandarin, the characters actually is wushu, right?
And the martial arts, literally, literally martial arts.
What's interesting, and your listeners, some of your listeners might already know this, is that Chinese characters areactually pictograms.
So they've evolved from drawings and it somehow became now the scratchings we call words, right?
So, the word for martial is made up of two words.
One word is the spear, right, which makes sense, which makes sense, right? But the other word is to stop.
So, martial arts, even though movies and everything associates us with the concept of it's about fighting.
At one level, it's actually about not fighting.

Martial Arts: Self-Improvement and Non-Violence Philosophy

[34:59] So philosophically then, at least my interpretation of it and I'm very happy for other people to have a different viewabout that.
But my thinking of it is that we learn martial arts to better ourselves, to discipline ourselves, to master ourselves.
And in fact, where possible, to not fight.

[35:21] Right, so I say this to my students, I say that to my martial arts students, where my Wing Chun students, when Isay, listen, if you can walk away, walk away.
If all the guy wants from you is your wallet and your money and he's got a knife on you, give them the wallet and themoney, that's okay.
Right, there is no shame to doing that. If you see them, you know, a problem in the distance, don't be stupid, don't walkthere, walk around, go somewhere else, you know.
Or wait a while before, let them go away first, right?
So there are a lot of things that you can do, and this usually falls into the category of self-defense rather than fighting,right? Because I think martial arts really is about defending yourself, and sometimes defending yourself is preemptive,right?
Don't do the stupid stuff, essentially, right?
The other thing that I sometimes say is, listen, if you can deescalate the conflict using your words, de-escalate the conflictusing your words.
And of course, this is where we start to see a connection between conflict resolution and the martial arts, right?
Because I've used many times conflict resolution words and conflict resolution models to just de-escalate a conflict.

[36:36] Right, so that it doesn't actually come to a problem.
I sometimes say that the best way to stop to prevent someone from being your enemy is to make a friend.
Now that's not always possible, I get that, I get that, but I'd be willing to buy somebody a drink if it basically meant that,you know, we both left the bar whole, right, and without holes, right, without holes.

Martial Arts: From Fighting to Conflict Resolution

[37:05] It's between martial arts and conflict resolution. Now, the second connection then, I think, comes from the idea thatmany people, when they learn martial arts, start doing martial arts, all they think about is fighting.
But I think it's also in your experience that when you did Taekwondo, you probably realized that as you got better andbetter and better, two things happened.
Number one, you got more confident in yourself, that you didn't actually feel the need to fight.
In fact, you were confident when somebody was pushing you around or confident when somebody was having words withyou, you didn't necessarily feel like you needed to engage.
And that's not fighting, that's stopping the spear as it were.

[37:50] The other thing that you realize also is as you got better in your kicks, for example, because Taekwondo, youdeveloped far more control.
In other words, obviously when a white belt was kicking you, you could potentially be injured.
But if a black belt was kicking you with the same kick, you can be pretty darn sure that that black belt will actually stop.
At the right place, right? So then again, it's control.
It's controlling over yourself, control over your own techniques, controlling over mastery over the self, if you think aboutit that way, right?
So the same goes for all, in my sense, in my thinking, martial arts, because the more you get good at what it is that you doin a martial art, the more you realize, hey, I don't, the need to fight disappears.
I don't, I could fight if I wanted to, it is a choice.
If I had to, I would, I would defend myself, my family, and so on and so forth.
But I don't have to, because I'm confident in myself. I can deescalate, I can avoid. I have a number of choices.

[39:00] And if I had to engage, I don't actually have to hurt them necessarily.
So, so one of the, one of the arts that speaks a lot to me, and I practice a little bit of it, but not as much as Wing Chun, isAikido, right?
And Aikido, the Japanese characters, basically means the way of harmonizing energy, the way of harmonizing energy,right?
And what they do essentially is basically they blend with the opponent's energy, right?
So when the opponent attacks them, they don't actually block the attack, they don't meet it with force or strength.
What they actually do is they step to the side, they redirect the movement of the opponent. And so it looks a little bit likedance, but having had it done to me and having done it to other people, it's incredibly effective, right?
And in fact, Aikido has been used by many people in conflict resolution as a very strong and powerful metaphor.

[39:58] For conflict resolution. So, for example, William Ury, whom you might know, the author of Getting Past No andone of the co-authors of Getting to Yes with Roger Fischer, right? Yes, yes, I'm familiar with the book, yeah, familiar.
William Ury basically calls it negotiation jujitsu, right?
Now, jujitsu is not the same art as Aikido, but historically they are links, right?
Okay, so jujitsu doesn't imply I'm gonna crash head on with you.
I'm actually gonna just move around you and figure something out.
And so Aikido represents a very very good way of thinking about it.
There is another gentleman named Tom Crumb, Thomas Crumb, who is an American, C-R-U-M. He is.

[40:42] An Aikidoka. He is a very high-ranking black belt. I'm not sure what's the C-R-U-M? C-R-U-M, his name.

[40:49] Thomas Crumb. Oh, sorry, sorry, I thought it was an acronym.
Yeah, sorry, sorry, from, yeah, okay.
Right, so he's an Aikidoka, and I'm not, I think he's still alive, I'm not sure about that, but he wrote a book called TheMagic of Conflict.
It's one of the best conceptual books about conflict that you can think of, and he marries Aikido with conflict resolution,right?
And it's a great read, it's a great read. There are other people, there's a gentleman named Dobson, I can't remember his firstname now, Dobson, wrote a book about using Aikido in conflict resolution specifically, right?
And one of the, in fact, it inspired me, those books inspired me to write a piece.
It was a chapter in a negotiation book on martial arts and conflict resolution.
I co-wrote that with a hostage negotiator from New York.

[41:44] And again, in that chapter, I explored a lot of these sort of interstices between conflict resolution and martial arts.
So what I'm saying is that when you do a martial art, you learn to manage yourself far, far more.
You learn to control yourself far, far more and your techniques far, far more that you no longer need the conflict.
You can control in a sense, what we call the amygdala hijack, right?
And that's only a good thing. The final thing that I'll say in terms of injustices is that all good martial artists.

[42:25] Have good stance and good balance. In other words, they are grounded and they are balanced.
And why that is important, I mean, imagine in Taekwondo, from your own experience, you can imagine if you werekicking somebody and you didn't have good balance, right?
You'd fall over before you kick the land, pretty embarrassing, right?
Same with Wing Chun, same with Aikido, right? You couldn't spin around in Aikido if you did not have good balance.Now, the connection between that physical metaphor and conflict resolution is simply this.
If when you are engaged in friction or conflict and you are not both physically and mentally stable, and I don't meanmentally stable as in whether you've got mental illness or not, I just mean, yeah, right, right.
You mentally sort of in a stable space.
You won't be able to deal with everything that they throw at you.
You won't be able to use the SM. You won't be, you know, because then your amygdala just takes over and it's fight orflight, right?
Then you panic and all kinds of nonsense happens, right? That will be unproductive, right?
So being able to control your balance yourself mentally and physically, and they're interrelated, of course. I mean, ifyou're physically unbalanced, it's very hard to be mentally balanced, right?
That is a very important part.

[43:50] Music. 

The Art of Disagreement without Being Disagreeable

[43:57] In the exploration of conflict resolution, the focus is not just on what is said, but also how it is expressed.
There's an observation that we've lost the art of disagreement without being disagreeable.
Often rooted in a protective instinct tied to our primal responses of fight, flight and freeze, or the F3 response.
Too frequently, disagreements push us into an adversarial stance, where the goal is a zero-sum outcome, where one personmust be right at the expense of the other person being wrong.
Now, my discussion with Joel emphasizes the need to recognize nuances and disagreements, acknowledging thatviewpoints, opinions, and values exist on a spectrum rather than in absolutes.
Joel compared conflict resolution like improv, where we don't follow a rigid script.
It encouraged us to use the term, yes and, instead of yes but, to foster understanding and collaboration.
Now, an essential aspect highlighted in the significance of language choice, words shape the direction of discussions thatcan either escalate or de-escalate conflicts.
Listening is noted, is a skill often underutilized in conflict resolution.
Instead of listening to understand, Joel says people tend to listen with the intent to respond or counter the other person'sargument.
Joel elegantly drew the analogy between conflict resolution and the martial arts of Wing Chun, which underscores theprinciples of defense, de-escalation, and mastery over oneself.

[45:26] Training in conflict resolution involves learning not to fight, but to skillfully use words and communication todiffuse conflicts, to gain confidence, and to exercise control without aggression.
You know, the ultimate aim is to achieve a state of groundedness and balance, both physically and mentally.
And so in the second part of my conversation with Joel, we are going to continue the exploration of the martial arts, butalso tie in another dimension, that being NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming.

[45:55] Music. 

[45:57] So now let's slip back into the stream with Joel Lee.
Someone once asked me, what's the difference between aggression and assertion?
And my answer was simply balance.
If you were balanced and you engage in assertive behaviors, that would be assertion.
Assertive meaning expressing your needs, your own rights, disagreeing respectfully and so on and so forth.
But if you are unbalanced, if your CG was somewhere else, that generally comes over as aggression because your voicewill go up, your heartbeat goes up, you probably end up using pointy gestures and all of that, and that gets interpreted asaggression.

[46:49] So it's strange that actually the behaviors, a lot of the behaviors are the same, but it comes out differentlydepending on whether you're balanced or not, physically and mentally.
Yeah, I find that interesting between aggression and assertiveness.
And for me, it's a little different vernacular, but it is self-awareness.
Because self-awareness means you step back, understand what you want, and you are present with your thoughts and youremotions, and you state clearly your needs, your point of view, as you said, to be maybe to disagree, but not to bedisagreeable.
But aggression, well, that's not self awareness. I think that's the F3 response.
You're talking about the amygdala hijack, right? Where we just bang, we're aggressive, we attack, we fight, what haveyou.
Looking at that, you know, if we've amalgamated the idea of Wing Chun and negotiations or a conflict, let's call a conflictresolution.
If we were to say a white belt, someone who's starting out a student that steps into your room day one of semester one andhe or she's trying to understand okay I need to be self-aware, I need to tackle some of these emotions, self-doubts of fearof what I've conflict, what would be some pragmatic skills at a white belt level to deal with the turmoil, the innercriticism, the inner self-doubt, of conflict as a white belt if we can use that term.
Right, and we're talking about a white dot and conflict resolution as opposed to. Yes, yes. Not much, I'm sure.

[48:17] Well, I think one of the things first is for them to realize what the triggers are.

[48:26] And I think it seems obvious, but actually a lot of the times, we actually don't know what is actually triggeringwhat we're feeling.
We know something's annoyed us, but we can't actually pin it down to something specific.
It could actually be the tone of someone's voice. It could be the look on someone's face.
It could just be someone, right? So this person just triggers you, it's possible, right? It could actually be, and this isinteresting because this is all part of stimulus response conditioning.
They say that music and smell, particularly smell, is a very, very powerful anchor, it's a very powerful trigger.
Okay, so the smell of freshly baked bread for many Americans will take them back to their childhood.
The first time they smelled it, they almost go back to being a child and so on and so forth.
But you see, here's the funny thing. If you were involved in a conflict at some point in your past or you were beingscolded you were feeling negative about something and that scent or that sound, a piece of music might have been in thatroom at that moment in time.
Your brain may have unconsciously connected that negative feeling to that song.

[49:40] So I could then be talking to my spouse, my loved one, my life partner, right? and we're just having a niceconversation and that music comes on.
And then all of a sudden I start feeling irritable.

[49:56] But because I'm not aware that that's the trigger, I somehow think it must be something that my wife just said orhow she said it, right?
If I was particularly kind, maybe I'm just eating something, I'm feeling uncomfortable, maybe there's something pokingme in the shoulder, I feel a little bit uncomfortable about that, but most of the time we will directly, connect it to whatwe're correlating, the person we're talking to, right?
Then, and of course, anecdotally, that's how the fight started.
So first thing I would do with this white belt in conflict resolution, what are your triggers?
What are your triggers? Second thing is, how does it make you feel?

[50:36] And there are a number of aspects of that. Number one is obviously, put it to words. Can you put it to words? Whatis it you're feeling?
Now, it may be very surprising to some of your listeners that sometimes we don't actually have the words to describe whatwe're feeling.
We either don't know or there's so much sort of caught up in it that you're not sure if it's anger or disappointment or fear orsometimes it's just an amalgamation, there's no word for it, right?
And I know this because that happens to me a lot, right? So sometimes when shit happens in my life and my wrong, whatare you feeling?
I'm not actually able to put a word, I'm not able to articulate it, right, to specifically describe the emotion.
Right, and back in the day when I was sort of far less aware and skilled in these things, I would just be irritable and again,you know, that will cause some kind of conflict and all that.
I can't blame my wife for that, that's me, that's all me, right.
Or sometimes I just get very quiet and go to a corner and sort of draw circles for a little while and that's because now Isort it out.
So now I'm able to actually say to my wife, I actually don't know what I'm feeling. I'm not feeling good.

[51:50] And I need some time to just sort out the pieces because if it's like five things stuck together, I need to gosomewhere quiet and go, okay, that's one and that's two.
I just start untangling the threads if you get what I'm saying, right?
So sometimes, especially if you're a child, you may not even have the vocabulary, right?
Because like words like anger and fear and frustration and all that is learned, right?
I mean, if you think about how does a young person know what frustration is?
Some adult told him or her, right?
Some adult correlated context, a set of circumstances and says, okay, well, he's probably feeling frustrated becausechances are they are projecting upon that child.
Because I would have feel frustrated. Therefore, so you say to the child, so you're pretty, you're feeling frustration.
Now that might be accurate or not, but you've just given the child a label, right?
But sometimes the child might be labeled wrongly, as it were, right? Yeah, so there's a big problem to all of that, right?
But let's even assume that the child can say, I feel frustrated.
I might then say, okay, point to where you feel it.
Because most of the time, a negative emotion, like anger or frustration, is high up in the body.
Okay. They're generally in the chest, you generally feel it.
I mean, you can test this, of course, in your own personal memories and experiences, right? So you generally it's up in thehead, it's all, it's unbalanced, it's up there.

[53:20] Sadness, depression is of course generally down, right? So it's just right deep in the pit of your stomach, but it'salso equally unbalanced because it's not centered.

Acknowledge and Embrace Your Feelings

[53:29] Right? So, yeah, right. And so some of the things that you then wanna say, it's okay, great, acknowledge it.
Because a lot of people think, oh, I shouldn't be feeling this way.
I shouldn't be feeling frustrated. I should be better than this, whatever, right? And that happens to me too, right?
I teach negotiation, I teach all this great stuff. That doesn't mean I'm the Buddha.
I get angry, I get frustrated. I mean, shit happens and I sometimes act less than gloriously, I mean, that's life, right?
And when I'm calmed down and I reflect upon my behavior, I go, okay, you know what?
Maybe next time I'll do this, right? And that's okay, right?
But sometimes for the child, they don't think they should be feeling that way and so they berate themselves about it.
Then they feel bad about feeling bad, which is not a great place to be.
So you get them to say, okay, acknowledge it. What do you think it means?
And you slowly get them to unpack, learn to unpack and talk about their emotions.
What does it mean to you that you're angry?
Is it okay? How do you think they are feeling?

[54:42] What could you do now to feel better? What could you do now to express your unhappiness?
And notice I've shifted the word from anger to unhappiness, right? It's a technique.
What can you do to express your unhappiness to the other person respectfully?
And so again, you're using your language to just, you know, again, program.
Lay down the seeds for ways of speaking respectfully. it.

Handling Emotions 101: Notice and Acknowledge Emotions

[55:12] That's what you might initially do with the white dog, right?
I mean, if I was just teaching them handling emotions 101, right, that's some of the things I would talk to them about.
Yeah, I think that's so well said, because the thing is, what I hear you're saying is that you need to notice your emotions.Don't identify with emotions, as you said, Joel.
Notice them, acknowledge them, because what I know from neuroscience, once we acknowledge the emotion, it's achemical messenger, then the messenger kind of says, okay, brain received, message received, and the emotion quietsdown.
You know, when I used to work with trauma, this is a couple decades ago, you know, we were understand about sort ofcore emotions, you know, and that had two dimensions to it, valence, and valence meaning we felt comfortable,comfortable emotions, or there were uncomfortable emotions. There was no good or bad emotions.
And then there was the intensity of the emotion. And so, when I used to work with people, I still do this in my coaching orsparring practice, I'll say, okay, what emotion are you feeling right now, right?
And instead of saying valence, I'll say, okay, well, is it comfortable or uncomfortable?
And as you said, where can it sit? Well, again, it allows them to have self-awareness.

[56:23] And you said before, the difference between assertiveness and aggressiveness, assertiveness is understanding that,it's being present. I notice, I think.
So I ask them, well, it's uncomfortable right now. For example, maybe they're very stressed, right?
And then I'll ask, okay, well, what's the intensity of that emotion, right?
And so by putting these two scales onto a particular emotion, by them noticing emotion, on identifying the emotion, well,that allows them to be much more constructive in dealing and finding a constructive approach forward to deal with that.Nice.
But I see a lot of parallels in what you're saying.
No, absolutely. So I tell you, Jason, I'm sorry, just quickly say this.
I've learned something new today. I like it.
I like what you've just said, because sometimes when I'm teaching students about emotions, one of the things I do tellthem is I say, well, firstly, identify the class of emotions that you're feeling.
So is this in the anger category?
And then at what level?
Within the class are you? Because being furious is quite different from being annoyed, right?

[57:31] So what you would refer to as intensity, right?
And so if somebody was just feeling very peeved and you identify me as furious, that's not really helpful, right?
And of course, if they end up being furious, then you need to acknowledge them at that point and then and try to helpthem bring it down to the correct level.
So I'm sorry I interrupted. No, no, not at all, not at all. I just like what you said.
Well, just for our listeners, the way we were talking about it, it could be as simple as, okay, you're feeling frustrated.
On a scale of one, 10 is like your mushroom cloud, one, you're just a little peeved, right? Where are you?
And so it's about putting an objective number on subjective feeling.
So they'll say, well, I'm seven.
Well, then you can walk them back and say, okay, how do we move it back down to 6.5? Again, it gives them a sense ofself-efficacy.

[58:20] They're thinking, okay, this is what I can do, and this is very action-oriented.
And then we start discussing it again.
And as you said, with that white belt, we just used that scenario.

[58:30] When you ask those questions, okay, what are your triggers? How's the trigger?
How do you want to deal with it?
Well, that makes them cognizant, right? From what I hear from your practice, right? I'm sure to some extent, this is also inmartial arts, right?
But let me flip the coin here a little. let's say someone, they understand, okay, I need to do conflict and such, but they areso riddled with self-doubt, and self-criticism that they don't have the confidence to move into conflict, but they understandall the theory and how to tackle it.
But when it actually comes from theory to practice, you know, they get cold feet. They kind of...
They let the bus run them over. Sure. How do you help them find that confidence when they have hardly any experience?
Yeah, I think, so again, as with many of the things we've talked about, there are a whole bunch of things, so again, let'sunpack that, right?

Putting People at Cause: Empowerment and Agency

[59:24] At one point, I think what you and I have been doing with helping people with their emotions is, in essence, puttingthem at cause, putting them at the cause of whatever the universe may be, rather than things are happening to us and Ican't help my emotions, we say, well, actually, you feel what you feel, and that's okay, but let's focus on what you canactually do about it.
And that's putting them at cost gives them agency, gives them empowerment and gives them a sense of efficacy is actuallythe term you use.

[59:57] I think similarly, when we then talk about confidence, so I see this a lot in my negotiation students, when I teachthem negotiation, they know the stuff, they could do it, but some fold, some don't have the confidence is what you'retalking about.
But oddly, there's another group of people that actually can't manage their urge to win.
And by winning, obviously the total destruction of it. Very competitive, yeah, yeah.
Exactly, right? So it's not enough to know what to do.

[1:00:30] I could teach you skills, but if you can't carry them out, if you don't have the right mindset to carry them out,right, so there must be a congruence between how you think about it and the things that you're doing, right?
And I know all of us have had the experience of listening to somebody and they do all the active listening training, I hearyou, I hear you, But you can tell from the eyes, right, lights are on but nobody's at home.
They're not really listening to you, right?
There's an incongruence. They're not listening with your heart, right?
It's the same. People can engage in collaborative behaviors.
But you can tell that they're not thinking collaboratively. They're trying to trick you. They're trying to use collaborativewords to narrow you into a corner.
It's actually more obvious than one might think, but people think they'll get away with it. I have to deal with both sides ofthe equation.
I've got to get them to understand that learning the things itself is not sufficient.
You need to actually do it.
For example, changing mindsets. How do we do this? right? How do we unpack some of the things they're thinking, theconsequences of their actions, and so on and so forth.
But if we talk about confidence, how do we give someone confidence?

[1:01:40] Would you like the proper answer? Would you like the controversial answer?
Controversial, please. You like the controversial answer? You won't like it?
So, if I think about it from an NLP perspective, right?
And so one of my misspent, things I do in my misspent youth is a field called neurolinguistic programming.
Many people have a love-hate relationship with it, and we've talked about this before.
But in NLP, we generally say that the notion of confidence is a state, right? It's an emotion, it's a feeling, right?
And any feeling that you want to have, you can actually have right now.
The problem with having confidence is having confidence without competence.

[1:02:29] In other words, I could make you confident that you could do brain surgery, but I'm not confident you can dobrain surgery simply because you haven't had the training. Does that make sense?
So it would be irresponsible to give anyone confidence if they didn't have the competence in the first place.
However, for somebody that actually has the competence and what they actually need is confidence, then you've got tofigure out what the leverage point is, what the button is, because why do they not have confidence?
Is it because they don't see themselves as a confident person, which is an identity statement?

[1:03:10] They don't believe that they can have confidence, which is a level of their beliefs, for example.
Maybe it's because they don't have any competence, they don't have skillset, so therefore they're not confident, right?
And depending on what it is, so for example, the simplest way of getting someone to be confident of something isfamiliarity.
I'll basically say, do it with me, practice it with me. So practice can build confidence, simply because if you keep doing itand you're doing it right, and you just repeat it, it doesn't matter that there's no variety, just do the same thing over andover again, and you'll get confident that you'll be able to do it.

[1:03:49] And that's how a lot of children learn, they walk, they fall, and they just keep at it, and eventually they haveconfidence, partly because they're also developing the skills and the musculature and all of that.
So that's one way of doing it. Sometimes you don't actually have that opportunity.

Overcoming the Critical Inner Voice: Building Confidence

[1:04:07] So sometimes somebody is not confident, not because they haven't had the practice, but because they've got alittle naggy voice in their head.
I don't know if you're familiar with that inner dialogue, that inner voice?
Yeah, that little soft critical voice. The critical voice, right?
Now, I know that some of our listeners right now are saying to themselves, I don't have a critical voice.
Well, guys, that's the voice. That's the voice that says, I don't have a critical voice, right?
And so we have voices in our head. I mean, how the hell they got there, I'm not sure.
But ironically, those voices aren't always ours.

[1:04:44] So I have my mother's voice in my head. Oh, okay. I see what you're saying. Right?
So the voices in my head, they're not necessarily my own, although I have my own.
Right? And so sometimes it's a big party inside my head because there's a lot of voices in there. And they're all having anice time, you know, watching Robin Williams.
But most of the time it becomes a problem because the inner voice is sort of, you know, being down on us, saying, youknow, good enough, you know, da, da, da, da, da, whatever, right?
And some of those voices got implanted when we were very young in school, okay? You're stupid, right?
A teacher tells you this, right? I mean, they shouldn't ever say this to their child, but sometimes teachers do, right?because they're frustrated, for example, maybe they're having a bad day.
So they're not bad people, it's just they did a thing that's not particularly helpful. Fair enough.
But what the child hears, I'm stupid, I'll never learn. And they carry that into their adult.
Good, right? Now, as somebody who's worked with people before, I know you've had to unpack beliefs in adults that wereactually installed at a very, it's just that those beliefs never got updated, even as the guy grew up 30 years, for example.
Right? So sometimes I have to teach them firstly to identify the voice and what are they saying and how to change thatvoice.

[1:06:06] Now, and this is where, for example, NLP might depart from some other forms of therapy or school or of change,because we don't change what's being said, we actually change how it's said.

[1:06:21] So elaborate on that, for example. Yeah, sure. So I'll give you a real life example, right?
So my, I used to get very, very upset when people were late.
So I'm one of those people that's always early and on time, you know, that kind of stuff.
And as a young person, 50% of the world's usually late, you know, 50% are usually on time.
And I would just get like seriously upset and I'd say, you know, well, these guys are just out to make my life miserableand all that, right?
And when I first took my first NLP training, my trainer, Sid Jacobson, a very, very intelligent man, basically said, well,hang on a moment, when you're upset like that, right?
Um what are you hearing in your head and I'd never really thought about listening to the voices in my head right so so Ilooked at him like you you're the crazy one right and then he goes no no no just just humor me right what's what's who'svoice is it right and and I went my god it's my mother's voice and and and you gotta understand my mother my mother is aperson who is always early always, So if you are not early with her, she thinks you're late, even though you're actuallyearly, right?
It's that kind of a, so, and that's my mother. I love her tremendously, right?
And so I've got my mother's voice in my head and she's speaking in a high pitch and very, very fast.
And she's saying, you're gonna be late, you're gonna be late, you're gonna be late, you're gonna be late. So she's literallynagging me inside my head.

[1:07:49] And I went, my God, how did she get in there?
And I actually do know because you're going to be late is something I hear a lot when I was in my younger years. That'show it got installed, right? As it were.
So Sid, my friend, my trainer said, hey, listen, you want to try something strange?
I say, sure, I'm all up for trying something strange. That's just me.
He said, what if your mother's voice was Donald Ducks?

Shifting Modalities through Donald Duck's Voice

[1:08:19] And I went, what? He says, just humor me, right?
Make that voice, Donald Duck's voice. She is saying the same thing, you're late, you're late, you're late, but you hear it as,you know, wha, wha, wha, wha, wha, wha, wha, wha, wha, wha, wha, wha, you know, Donald Duck's voice, right?
And I did it and I fell down laughing.
I could not stop laughing for about a couple of minutes because firstly, it was so funny.
And then he looked at me and he said, Do you feel differently? And I went, shit, I do.
And so that was when I learned that if I change the modalities of how that voice is, so for example other things I triedwith my mother's voice was I went to slow it down so instead of my mother's voice in a high-pitched voice it, went reallyreally low like a man's voice and speaking very.

[1:09:11] Slowly so her voice and now in the deep baritone a deep bass going, And it doesn't have the same effect, right?And that really solved my problem about being upset with other people, being late.
Okay, it created a new problem. The new problem was now every time I saw my mother, I had to stop laughing because Ikept thinking Donald Duck, right?
Which was a different problem, it's a happy problem.
So if they had an inner voice that was nagging on them, I might intervene that way, for example, right?
If they were not feeling confident because maybe they can't somehow access it, they can't summon it, I might use aprocess called anchoring in NLP, which is a stimulus response conditioning.
It's Pavlovian basically, right? You get them to remember a time of confidence, you amplify it, and then you connect it toa particular stimulus.
And then you call up the stimulus and reconnect it to the situation which you wanted them to be confident in, right? Itsounds complicated, but it's a fairly straightforward concept.
It's basically strict Pavlovian conditioning, right?
And that works pretty well. Now, I recently did something with a student as well that worked really well. So I'd like tojust quickly share that with you.

[1:10:29] Basically, she said she wanted to feel more confidence. And I said, OK, so what do you feel now? And she said,well, I feel.
Upset i said okay where do you feel the upset so i got her literally to point to where it was and she said it was up here inthe neck i said okay so if that you had a shape to that upset what would it be and she said oh it's like a ring around myneck i said okay, and you know does that ring have a color color and she goes oh it's red i said okay great does it have ahave a like sensation to it like there's a pulse or is it just there's a cold there's a warm you know basically things like thatright and i don't think we call these sub-modalities.
And, and, and, and Sorry, you call them sub-modalities? Sub-modalities, sub-modalities.
Different descriptions of whatever, okay, okay, got it.
Right, right. So, so actually, if someone is angry, for example, I'd say, okay, where do you feel it, point to it, what shape isit?
So I get them to convert the emotion to a bunch of descriptions and sensations.
And that usually takes away, yeah, the kinesthetic of it, right?
So anyway, I basically said, okay, you've got a ring, red ring around here that's pulsing, it feels like you're choking. Yep,she goes, yep.
I said, okay, so what would happen if you took that ring and you made it a small pulsing circle of a pleasing color and ifyou moved it down into your chest, and it's pulsing gently, but powerfully, like a heartbeat.

[1:11:48] And kudos to her, she didn't look at me funny at all when I suggested that, she didn't side eye me, she didn't golike, you're nuts, right?
Which is what I did to Sin. And she said, yeah, okay, I'll try that.
And that.

Changing Sub-Modalities to Solve Emotional Issues

[1:12:03] In a nutshell solve the problem. I mean it was it was about a 45-minute intervention, it was a 45-minuteconversation okay but fundamentally what we did was to take something and change it to something else and that fixed itin a sense.
It kind of gave her the confidence she felt she needed and as far as I know it's still stuck today.
I obviously won't mention who this person is because I want to respect their confidentiality but it's someone I'm still incontact with and it seems to seem that that work that intervention seems to have have themselves taken root.
So that's, that's, that's, I'm perfectly happy about that.
So there are a number of ways to identify how to give people confidence.
It really depends on what the cause of the lack of confidence might be.
So if I understand, so you're saying shifting modalities, so as I understand it in your vernacular, modalities is thedescriptive or the visualization we give to a sensation or inner feeling of some sort, such as a ring or a color and whathave you.
So, as you said, when you're helping someone shift their modalities, what it sounds like, first of all, you're making thempresent to putting a picture, they're using visualization, they're being self aware of where it is, how it feels, the we talkedabout is sort of the valence and the intensity of emotions in a sense, absolutely.

[1:13:20] And then what I hear is that through this visualization of, I think the term was sub modalities, you get them toshift the sub-modalities into something that works for them.
So through this psychological process, this has almost an immediate effect on their physiological processes? Is this whatI'm understanding?
Absolutely, you're understanding absolutely correctly.

[1:13:44] And we of course base that on an assumption that what we hold in our heads, the things we see, and what we feel,and how we hold our bodies are interrelated, they're systemic, right?
So, for example, you know, we hear in our language, right, when someone's feeling sad, you go chin up, right?
Strangely, it's actually very hard to be depressed when you're doing this, right?
And I'll describe it for our listeners because I know there's no video to this, but if you're standing, looking upwards, youknow, your body's erect, you know, you're good posture, you're looking upwards, you've got a big smile on your face, it'sactually very hard to be depressed like that.
You know, as Charlie Brown once said, if you want to be depressed, you really need to stand in a depressed sort of way,right?
So how you hold your body affects how you feel and how you think, right?
Which is why going back to what we said a little bit earlier about martial arts and conflict resolution, which is whybalance is so important.
If you're physiologically not balanced, Emotionally and mentally, you will be less balanced.

[1:14:56] Right. That's interesting. You know, there's this triad of conflict negotiations, martial arts and LLP.
So if we bring it back to that white belt that we talked about him or her earlier, and we were talking about confidence, youknow, if someone wanted to understand the modalities or submodalities of what's stopping them, whatever aggression,anger, frustration, fear, overwhelm, what have you, are there a specific set of questions a white belt, just use that term,could ask him or herself to walk them through using NLP to shift?
And is there an organic or a natural way of asking these questions?
And maybe could you share them with us?
Sure, and please understand that obviously I'm sharing them with you right now in this current context, so I'm askingthem a certain way, right?
But in the moment with a different set of circumstances, I might ask them in a different order. Of course.
It really depends, But essentially what I'm trying to do firstly is getting them to identify what it is they're feeling. So whatdo you feel?
And if they have a term for it that's great, like anger, fear, frustration, doesn't matter. Even happiness.

[1:16:05] And if our listeners might want to try this, I'm suggesting these questions to you. Right, so yeah, what are youfeeling?
And on assumption, it is a sort of a low valence sort of thing rather than a positive one, right?
So it's not downwards, it's sort of like anger, frustration, that kind of stuff. Then my next question will be, where do youfeel it? Point to it.
Where in your body do you feel that emotion?
Okay, and so let's say you point to the chest, for example.
Then I say, okay, great. And if that feeling had a shape, what shape would it be?

[1:16:48] Would it be a circle? Would it be a square? Would it be a sphere?
So I'm going to suggest like, you know, two-dimensional and three-dimensional, shapes just in case, you know, they thinkit only has to be two-dimensional, right?
And you go, okay, well, it might be a sphere, for example. That's it, great.
And could you kind of show me with your hands how big that sphere is?
Right, and they can demonstrate usually with their hands, you know, so it's about like this, or it could be like this, right?
Then I go, great, great, great, great. And if it had a color, what color is it?

Exploring the Color and Sensation of Anger

[1:17:23] And if it's anger, it's usually some color like red or orange, right?
And I say, okay, so what you're telling me is that that sphere that's here pointing to the chest, which is this size, is red, isthat right?
He goes, yeah. And of course, you're doing the whole active listening thing at the same time, right? And then I say, great,great.
Does that sphere have any kind of sensation to it? Like, is it warm?
Is it cool? Is it cold? Is it hot? Is it, does it pulse?
Does it sort of, you know, does it vibrate? Does it have anything like that?
And usually anger is actually, it's hot, right?
And then there's sort of like a, sort of very, sort of like, like jackhammer pounding sort of vibration to it. Yeah. Say forexample, right?
And I'm using some universals here, obviously everyone's individual, but I've seen quite a few of these and there seem tobe some commonality.
Then I say, okay, great. So what do you think yourself.

The Powerful Message from a Vibrating Chest

[1:18:29] What message does yourself want you to get from this particular feeling that is a sphere, air to your chest, red andvibrating like a jackhammer?
So I'm trying to get them to see, do you get the message?
And they may or may not consciously know what the message is, but some of them will actually say things like, oh, theywant me to stand up for myself. And I go, great, they want you to stand up for yourself.
And that's a good message, right? You should stand up for yourself.
So go ahead and thank your unconscious mind, yourself, for wanting that for you.

Empowering Self through Visualization and Color

[1:19:09] So now that you've got the message, would it be okay for you to stand up for yourself? and not have to feel thisthis way.
And they usually go yes, because you got a message, right? I mean, who wants to feel bad?
I say, okay, so you want to play? Would it be okay if we play?
Then I say, listen, what shape, sorry, what color would the sphere have to be, in order for you to feel better and be able tostand up for yourself in a respectful sort of way?
Then I'll let them take whatever color they tell me, and I'll say, okay, go ahead.
Go ahead and make the changes to that color, right? Go ahead, change it from red to whatever.
And some can do it easily, some can do it with some practice, but most people can do that.
I say, great, so how does changing the color make you feel now?
What's different? And then you're usually saying, I feel more calm or something like that. Then I say, okay, great.
And it's a sphere, right? What shape should it be? What shape would you like it to be in order for you to feel much betterabout yourself and be able to do these things respectfully?
So I slowly take them to each of these things, right? And there's vibrations, or the vibration may, well, I want it to be agentle pulsing, it's warm instead of hot.
The sphere might actually be, you know, I don't know, actually I like it to be the sphere, but I think the sphere needs to bea little bit more, smaller and more three-dimensional.
I said, great. So I get them, I just one-by-one get them to change all those things.

[1:20:31] And it's obviously I'm summarizing it.
It's not as straightforward as that, but then it changes. They change.
They feel differently about it, right?
And that's in the moment, and there's no reason why that would take necessarily.
They may go back to feeling how they used to feel.
So I'd have to do rehearsal and connect it to sort of certain circumstantial contexts so that it would be triggered correctlythe next time.
So we call that future pacing, rehearsal, mental rehearsal, visual rehearsal, those kinds of stuff.
But that's actually taking the change and putting it out into the future.

[1:21:11] In NLP, we call that future pacing, making sure that the change that happens in a room transfers out.
And that's basically the kinds of questions I'm going to ask, right? So what do you feel? Where do you feel it?
What shape is it, what color is it, does it have any sensation, what message do you think it's giving you, show appreciationfor that message and then start making sort of small changes here for each of those modalities and see how that helps.
Obviously we're guided by our intuition right, if you want to stop someone from being very angry maybe the color shouldbe blue rather than and green rather than fire engine red, yeah exactly, right so there's some some universals you can drawon.
But fundamentally, that's what I've been doing recently with some of the people I've worked with.

[1:22:01] And I mean, I've been doing NLP since, good Lord, 90, 92, I think.
I didn't, no, 90, oh, 80, oh shit, 82, 92, 92, 94, 94.
It was interesting, when you walked through, you said do the exercise at home, and I was kind of doing it. It wasn't anegative emotion. And I felt sort of curiosity.
So that's what I was feeling. And then you said, where would, and I kind of felt it in the center of my, my pecs, mypectorals right there in the center of the chest.
And then, um, you said kind of what shape, and I had to think about that.
And I saw it as a vessel. So I saw it as almost like a glass vase that was, um, excuse me, transparent.
And so it was a V shaped vase. And so the curiosity started off slow as a drip, drip, drip. but I was visualizing this as youwere talking.
And so as the fluid was filling up this vase and was more and more and more, but it was a mixture of different colors.
You know, sometimes when you see oil and water, how it looks like that rainbow, that's the swirling.

[1:23:08] And so it was just funny walking through. And for me, it was sort of an oil pattern of the different colors that yousee swirling.
And as you were talking more, the vase was getting wider and wider at the top and it was filling more. more.
And so the sensation was, it was almost like, you know, sometimes when you're excited, you feel the sort of theendorphins, or you feel that sort of a little bit of adrenaline.
So it wasn't exactly that, but this is what I was visualizing as I was talking about it.
I found it just, I'm just sharing this for the hell of sharing it, but I just found it very curious when walking through it, asyou were saying it, I thought, okay, why not go through the exercise?
I just wanted to share that with you, Joel. No, thank you. Thank you for that.
And actually, one of the interesting things about it, and I'm glad you brought it up because you used obviously a feelingthat was a positive one, right?
So, if you can imagine, actually, if somebody said, okay, I feel happiness, right? And you can do all the whole things andyou point to it and all that, right?
Now, obviously, we don't want to get rid of that happiness, and that's a good thing, right?
But you could actually ask your questions and change the modalities in ways that...

[1:24:10] By asking them, so what color could it be for you to feel even more happiness than this?
So in other words, you could actually increase the intensity of that particular feeling, right?
So if it was a bigger sphere, how would you feel?
And so I feel even happier, wow, wonderful, would you like it that way? Yeah, sure.
So you can actually use it to build even more intense curiosity, for example, or, you know, more overwhelming gratitude,happiness, whatever, right?
And I think the key thing that one of the key things we're saying right now is actually, you have some control over youremotions, right?
We do say, you feel what you feel and that's okay, you don't have to act on it.
But let's just say you wanted to act on it.
There are things you could possibly do, right? And you could, of course, practice this until it becomes almost automaticinside your mind.

[1:25:12] It's fascinating. I've had this love-hate relationship with NLP for the longest time.
I've been sceptical and some things have just really triggered my intrigue right into it.
And obviously, you know, talking to you today, my curiosity has been piqued again.
So I was like, okay, maybe I should dive back into some of those old books that are somewhere in my attic, somewhere inmy basement. So, it's very interesting.

Self-Mastery: Key to Conflict Resolution, NLP, and Martial Arts

[1:25:36] Joel, I'm very respectful of your time. You've given lots of time today and I really appreciate it.
Is there any last tips or suggestions when it comes to conflict resolution or this triad we've talked about NLP, thecommunication modalities and martial arts and conflict negotiations you'd like to leave with my listeners today?
Yeah, I think if, because I thought quite hard about this just before I logged on, and I think the one key commonalitybetween conflict resolution, NLP, and martial arts, or Wing Chun as the case may be, the one key thing that I think is very,very important, that that is quintessential is the notion of self-mastery.

[1:26:25] Mastery over the self. So, you know, martial arts isn't about mastery over somebody else, it's actually masteryover yourself.
You know, whether you define it as discipline, control, it doesn't matter, right, but it's mastery of the self.
NLP teaches you techniques to master yourself. Obviously, you can help somebody else master themselves, butessentially, I'm the direct recipient of some of these techniques.
My mother is now Donald Duck in my mind, and it's a good thing. Dad's Mickey Mouse.
No, no, no, no, that's a different podcast, right?
Yeah, and then the, and for conflict resolution, again, if you can't manage your inner beast, as it were, your inner demon.

[1:27:10] How can you expect what you're trying to do outside to make peace, right?
I leave you with, I think, two thoughts. William Ury, whom I mentioned a little bit earlier, One of his more recent works isa book called Getting to Yes with Yourself.
Right, so the very first book was called Getting to Yes, second book was Getting Past No, but one of his more recent oneswas Getting to Yes with Yourself.
I've read it, it's a great book.
And that book, he's exploring essentially self-mastery.
You know, in order for you to be an effective conflict resolver, a negotiator, mediator, you need to have mastered yourself,right?
So my last thought to you is, and our listeners, is a metaphor.
I'm not sure whether you're familiar with the story of the two wolves.
So I believe it is a Native American story, Cherokee, I think, but I'm not entirely sure about that.
And the story goes, this young Indian child, a Native American child, goes to his grandfather and says you know I'm soI'm furious at so-and-so because.

[1:28:23] He pushed me and I fell and I'm so angry I want to kill him and obviously that's a hyperbole you know, that's justa child expressing his anger and the grandfather said well sit down sit down for a moment changing the physiology rightand he says take a deep breath, that's fine, that also changes the physiology, and the grandfather says there are two wolvesinside every one of us, and these wolves are constantly in battle.
One wolf stands for anger, frustration, fear, greed, avarice, any list of negative things.
The other, Isabel, stands for happiness, gratitude, love, camaraderie, loyalty, all the good things in life.
And they are constantly in battle in every one of us.
And the little Native American child goes, then grandfather, which wolf wins?

[1:29:32] And the grandfather, in a sagely manner, strokes his non-existent beard and says, the one you feed...

The Importance of Feeding the Right Wolf

[1:29:42] It's a great story, it really hammers home what we've been talking about this whole conversation.
Right, so I think fundamentally, you know, we want the world to be a a place, firstly, we need to feed the correct wolfinside us.
Even as we learn to do some of these things, these skills outside of us.
Well said, brilliant story. Joel, thank you very much for the generosity of your time and sharing from all three disciplinesthat you've mastered over whatever it is since 87 to 92. I can't count, I can't count.

[1:30:14] But I hope to get out to Singapore at some point and maybe we can have over Chinese noodles.
A Chinese noodles and a beverage of your choice. I would welcome you to Singapore anytime and I'd be happy to showyou around.
But thank you very much for having me on the podcast. I had great fun.
The time has flown. It didn't feel like an hour and a half at all.
So I love talking about this and I hope we have future opportunities to talk about other things. That'd be brilliant.

[1:30:44] Music. 

Addressing Emotions as a Fundamental Step in Conflict Resolution

[1:30:52] In the second part of our conversation, Joel underscores the importance of addressing emotions as a fundamentalstep in conflict resolution.
He says that identifying triggers and understanding emotional reactions are vital aspects.
Expressing emotions can sometimes be challenging, especially when they are a blend of different feelings.
To navigate this, he suggests employing Neuro-Linguistic Programming Techniques, or NLP.

[1:31:16] He outlines a series of probing questions within NLP to unpack these emotions.
For example, what is the emotion being felt?
Where is it located in the body? What form does it take?
Exploring its size, shape, colour and associate sensations such as temperature or weight adds in understanding themessage behind the emotion.
Additionally, envisioning what shape and colour it would need to be to evoke a sense of improvement serves as a tool foremotional management and resolution.
You know folks, the conversation marked by an unconventional merging of conflict resolutions, martial arts philosophyand NLP, well it has been an exceptional and rare occurrence. A unique blend of disciplines.
For me it was an intriguing fusion that Joel navigated skillfully through, offering a fresh perspective on not onlymanagement emotions but conflict resolution technique.
So for me this conversation was a unicorn. It's not so often you can take three very unique disciplines and finding theoverlapping principles that can help you in each one of those other disciplines.
So a big thank you to you, Joel, for your time and this long-form discussion.

[1:32:25] I learned a lot and you've intrigued and kindled my interest in NLP again.
And folks, if any of you are interested in contacting Joel, I will leave all his contact information in the show notes.
Well, folks, that brings us to a tail end of another fascinating episode.
If you could do me a favor and suggest and recommend this podcast to two people you know, colleagues, friends, family.
I would be very grateful and very thankful. Thanks for that.
Well folks, until next week, until the next time we speak.

[1:32:55] Music.