Are We Living in the Age of the Heart? A Dialogue with Mark Larson

This episode unfurls a captivating tapestry where our friend, Dr. Mark Larson shares a theory of the emergence of the 'age of the heart,' a transformative shift in societal values where empathy and emotional intelligence reign supreme. Listen as we sketch the lineage of societal evolutions, from the bygone days of small family farms, the industrial clatter to our present digital world, setting the stage for a future where our hearts must lead the change.

As we meander through this novel era, we dissect the worrying trend of social segregation, pondering how the walls we've built within our communities have fractured our political landscape and dulled our collective empathy. Hear how stories of the past, like Emerson's poetic wisdom, inspire us to cherish the now, undeterred by yesterday's shadows. With a fusion of hope and pragmatism, we discuss the transformative potential of education systems that prioritize compassion and connectivity from the earliest years.

Closing with a heartfelt narrative, the episode surfaces the raw emotions encircling love and rejection, echoing the poignant stance of "I wouldn't have it any other way." Whether it's about expressing the hard truths or the strength found in bonds of crisis, our dialogue is a homage to the courage it takes to connect genuinely. By tapping into our innermost feelings, we pave the way for a society rich with understanding, where success is defined not just by personal milestones, but by the hearts we touch and the hands that reach out to us in their darkest hours.

Transcript

Joe Boyle: 0:05

Welcome to Stories in Life. You're on the radio with Mark and Joe. We share stories that affirm your belief in the goodwill, courage, determination, commitment and vision of everyday people.

Mark Wolak: 0:20

Our goal is that through another person's story you may find connection. No matter your place in life. The stories we select will be inspiring and maybe help you laugh, cry, think or change your mind about something important in your life.

Joe Boyle: 0:37

Join us for this episode of Stories in Life.

Dr. Mark Larson: 0:55

And so the thing that artificial intelligence cannot do, at least not yet, is do the things of the age of the heart, empathy, sympathy, tolerance, love, deeper appreciation, altruism and understanding other people's perspectives. And I believe that we're, on that, shifting from the age of information, which had a certain set of rules, to this new age, the age of the heart, which has different rules for success. But so often times we want to be either a prosecutor I know the truth and I'm going to win and beat you guys on it the preacher I alone have the truth, and now it's up to you to. You know, I have to evangelize to get you to think that way or the politician, who kind of tells you what you want to hear, but instead you need to look at it as a scientist. And the scientist changes his or her mind when the facts change. And as I look at this, I see it from this perspective. But then I turn it a little bit, or I flip it over, I do something. I see it from a different perspective.

Mark Wolak: 1:53

Our guest on this program brought us information about age of the heart that we want to share with you. But Joe and I decided we need to do a little of our own homework here to get a sense of these ages. So the industrial age started close to 300 years ago 1700. It was the introduction of mechanization in the late 18th century that brought things like a steam engine to pump water out of mines and textile spinning machines so that you could go from one thread to thread. That was multiple strands and it brought forward the expansion of factories, textile industry. Transportation really changed. We're talking about the introduction of canals and railroads transporting goods. We certainly had a lot of railroad barons and lumber barons that made a lot of money. We also had the Civil War, which brought some additional industrialization.

Joe Boyle: 3:07

Yeah, we move into that Civil War and industrialization era it's like from 1860 to 1865 and that's where the increased demand for industrial products really took off Guns, uniform, shoes, boots, all that sort of thing and it really accelerated the industrial development, laying the foundation for the post-war growth that came later. And then came the rise of the corporations Standard Oil, the emergence of large corporations John D Rockefeller the rise of trusts and all that sort of thing. And then what did that lead to? Led to labor movements and regulation. That was during the late 19th century and early 20th century and you had all the labor strikes and movements that came with that government intervention to regulate working conditions. And then all of a sudden you go to a whole different age, which would be the age of agriculture.

Mark Wolak: 4:13

Right, and you'd think that that would be enough change. But really, if you think about agriculture, we've moved from maybe 90-some percent of everyone working on a small farm to moving much towards more mechanization, larger fields, larger farms. I know that, for example, my father-in-law, his grandfather, invented the potato picker and the potato sprayer. That was in the late 1800s and that was here in Minnesota, and there was a railroad track with a big plant to store all this potato starch which was then sent to the bigger cities. So that was that we've really shifted away from an age of agriculture. We produce a tremendous amount of food, but only on a small number of farms today. And then it's the information age.

Joe Boyle: 5:14

Right, Right, but we need to share with our listeners that the agricultural age and the industrial age overlapped with each other. They were both in the 1700s and 1800s, not from one to the next. Yes, but yes. Then we get into the information age, which is the late 20th century, the late 1900s, into where we are now, and with that came the introduction of computers, the internet, personal computers, rapid advancements in technology and communication, dot coms, the e-commerce, you know, growth of online businesses working from home via Zoom.

Mark Wolak: 6:05

I was thinking about. My first computer was in the 1980s, but that was mostly around administration and clerical tasks. There was no internet yet. First mobile phone I had in my car was around 1990.

Joe Boyle: 6:20

Yeah, can you even remember not having a? Phone with you, yeah it was called a bag phone. When I first started in sales, there weren't nobody carried a cell phone yet.

Mark Wolak: 6:31

And now we're into big data. You know giant cloud computing, all these monstrous data storage places being built all over the country. I think probably what inspired our guest Mark Larson to do more thinking about this age of the heart is all the automation coming forward of artificial intelligence. People are afraid of this giant movement towards more decisions being made by artificial intelligence and then such heavy globalization. You know, one poor decision in another country can impact the entire world. That's right.

Joe Boyle: 7:12

And I don't think that's going to change a whole lot. But according to Mark, we're entering a new age, and that's the age of the heart, where a lot of different things have to play a factor, and he has a lot of interesting things to say about that and I'm looking forward to this.

Mark Wolak: 7:30

Yeah, so I think all the listeners out there enjoy this episode and we will close out with some additional comments at the end of the program.

Dr. Mark Larson: 7:39

Oka

Mark Wolak: 7:40

Thanks, oe. Thank you, our guest today is Mark Larson. Mark Larson and I met in 1996. Welcome, mark.

Dr. Mark Larson: 7:49

Thank you, glad to be here.

Mark Wolak: 7:51

And we've had a lot of laughs and good times over the years, Many discussions about the world communities, leadership, people in general. He's here today to share a story that he's developed, a theory really around what's happening in the context of society and communities today and we have a lot of questions about it. This can be fun.

Dr. Mark Larson: 8:12

Good, I'm glad to be here. I'm happy to. I will try to. I was going to say I'll entertain questions, but who am I kidding? I'll answer questions.

Mark Wolak: 8:19

I know you are an avid podcast listener and something intrigued you to reach out and say, hey, I want to tell this story. What was that about? What brought you to thinking that this would be a fun podcast?

Dr. Mark Larson: 8:34

Just the whole focus that you guys have on storytelling and the importance of that and what it means and how that can impact people positively or negatively Make you feel bad. The whole introduction really gets at what you guys are trying to do. And I thought I had a story that might be worth sharing.

Mark Wolak: 8:50

Jump right into it. Tell us a little bit about what's the why behind this for you. You've got a story to tell about your view of the world right now, and there's something driving that on your part.

Dr. Mark Larson: 9:05

What's that abou Also, it's a macro vision, a picture of things, and then it's also then a micro. The macro piece is that I was trying to make sense of what the world, what I thought the world, was going through. There was so much tumult, upheaval. There was a time in our country in which you could easily see politicians saying something like well, he's a great patriot and a great American, but I just disagree with him on this, this and this. And we've lost that time and things have become so mean spirited, so chaotic, there's so much chaos out there that there seems to be loss of meaning and the rules that used to apply don't seem to apply anymore. And so I was looking for a way to give give me some sense about how that came about and what it is, and I kind of think I have that now.

Mark Wolak: 9:48

Yeah, I've noticed it on the freeway. Whenever I'm driving the freeway, it's like oh my gosh, can I stay in this lane, or is somebody going to run me over at 100 miles an hour?

Joe Boyle: 9:57

People tend to be less civil, it seems.

Dr. Mark Larson: 10:00

A lot of that, and it's not just about winning, it's about humiliating, and there's a whole thing about you have to dunk on the person, and then the social media has not made any friends with any of these type of things. You get more likes and clicks, and that's addictive, because you have said something either very controversial or very mean spirited or something, and so there's that vitriol out there. It took me a long time to come to this, but I came to the conclusion that it's because we're on the cusp of a new age, and whenever there's a new age, there's always this turmoil and this just trying to figure things out, and so that's that's my theory of the case, and your new age is age of the heart.

Mark Wolak: 10:38

Tell us about that.

Dr. Mark Larson: 10:40

Yes, but let me back up a little bit here. I think most of us would agree that there was an age of agriculture in which most of the people worked on a farm or ranching or land extraction. But as technology improved Eli Whitney, cotton, gin, but, more importantly, the interchangeable parts that made it so that you could have machines replace a lot of that work and so the agricultural age started to give way to the age of industry, where people worked with their hands. But that was not without. It wasn't a smooth transition. The Luddites, for example, came in and they smashed looms because they were the tools of mass production as opposed to the individual craftsmen. And so that age changed a lot and the rules became pretty standard. Particularly, if you're part of the white patriarchy, you could make a middle class income and working with your hands.

Dr. Mark Larson: 11:28

There are a lot of horrific things about the age of industry. I don't want to make it sound like it was real good and all that, but there were positive things that came out of it. Unions came out of it, for example, which gave us the 40 hour work week, which had some child labor protection, compulsory education. But there were a lot of horrible things too the shirt, waist triangle fire, in which over a hundred people died because you could not open a door to get out. So now, when you're in a building a public building all the doors from the inside open to the outside because of that.

Joe Boyle: 11:55

New York City Garment industry. Okay, okay.

Dr. Mark Larson: 12:00

But then and so. But people understood the rules. If you went and you were loyal to this factory for 30, 40 years, you would have a retirement pension of some sort and you would be able to have a middle-class income. But technology changed that a lot and we started to lose the age of industry and move more toward the age of information, and that's where people started to work mostly with their brains and we had a whole bunch of things happen because of that, some of them misguided.

Dr. Mark Larson: 12:28

For example, ark, you and I had the experience of dealing with people who thought our vision should be all students college ready, which implies that the only work worth having is worth having a college degree. And, frankly, nothing could be further from the truth. The only thing a college degree guarantees you is debt. There are so many valuable jobs out there that you can work with your hands or with your brain, but what's happening now is that we saw technology automating away some of the jobs in the age of industry. They're doing that same thing now, in the age of information. We used to take our taxes into each in our block. Now we do a program at home.

Dr. Mark Larson: 13:05

If you were to be an accountant, mom and dad, I want to be an accountant. They'd be so proud of you, because that was a guaranteed lifelong job. Tax forms are confusing. Tax are confusing. You always have work. Well, that's being automated away. And so the thing that artificial intelligence cannot do, at least not yet, is do the things of the age of the heart Empathy, sympathy, tolerance, love, deeper appreciation, altruism and understanding other people's perspectives. And I believe that we're, on that, shifting from the age of information, which had a certain set of rules, to this new age, the age of the heart, which has different rules for success.

Mark Wolak: 13:43

So if you're, our listeners are wondering about this. What are some signs of that, that this shift is happening?

Dr. Mark Larson: 13:51

The first sign is that you're seeing a lot more vitriol out there in the public discourse because there's a change in what's happening. But now you're starting to see a reaction to it Particularly and maybe this is personal because of my mother's age and condition but there are more and more people that are looking for people that have sympathy and compassion and are willing to work with other people. I'm a mediator, or what's called a qualified neutral, and I'm seeing that people have issues and problems and that they need mediation to try to come to an agreement of some sorts and with that agreement then they are able to move on with their lives. But until you can understand other person's perspective, you can't get there, and so I'm seeing that as a need that people have out there. I'm also seeing that there's a lot more talk about love and respect and compassion, and you saw a lot of that in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder, in which people really came out and spoke with their heart about what's happening and what needs to happen.

Mark Wolak: 14:44

I just noticed in the news in the last week that Minnesota give program achieved a $34 million milestone Broke its own record In one day of giving. So that would be an example of that. I think it is.

Dr. Mark Larson: 15:03

And that people want to do something. People are not happy with the way things are in terms of the vitriol and the conflict. They want to move beyond it. But if there's one simple thing, just snap your fingers and it's taken care of. It's not like that. This is going to take some time. We got here slowly but surely and I think we're going to get out of it also slowly but surely, and there's some things that we can do.

Joe Boyle: 15:24

Where do you think this will be two years, five years, 10 years from now?

Dr. Mark Larson: 15:29

I think it'll be better, a lot better, and here's why we are seeing that there's less of a need for a lot of the age of the information and the power of the brain, but more about the power of the heart. A small, microscopic picture of it is of an electrician. We moved and we downsized and so we did some electrical work. Seven years ago a guy came out and he was able to work with his hands. He figured out what the problem is, how to wire it. He worked with his brain. He was able to do all the things that we wanted to be done.

Dr. Mark Larson: 16:00

But it wasn't quite right, I just didn't have the whole thing. We were fine with it. Okay, fine, we're done. And then, just a couple of months ago, we decided that with our grandchildren and our family, we wanted to have what's called a gallery wall, and that's where you have a bunch of pictures and you have an overhanging lamp. And we called the same electrician company and they sent out a different guy and he was able to work with his hands.

Dr. Mark Larson: 16:23

He was able to work with his brain and solve the problem, but the thing that he was able to do was have empathy and understand our perspective. So what do you want to see here? Well, we want to have a bunch of pictures that people will either stop and look at or, when we see it, we'll give us some joy. What are you thinking about it? Well, in our bedroom we have a big blank wall, yeah, but no one else goes in there, so why would you put it there?

Dr. Mark Larson: 16:42

A good point. We have an office area again, and so he's understanding what we want to have happen and he's also trying to get it said. Our perspective is what it is, so it's in a different spot that we had not considered, because he thought of us. He thought of our issues, our needs. He was able to put himself in our shoes and solve the problem. He is able to work with his hands, with his brain and then also with his heart, and those are the type of skills and I think that's a good example of what this world will be looking for and needing. If I can also just backtrack real quickly, we all remember the famous speech in Wall Street from Gordon Gekko greed is good.

Dr. Mark Larson: 17:21

It's good yes, and there was a time like that and then that we didn't care about. We don't care how nice someone is, we don't care about if they're decent, human, can they get the job done? Are they aggressive in that? And that's going away. And we're getting to the point where we want to have people that we want to spend time with and that have that heart that we need to connect with. And so I'm seeing that, I'm seeing it happen slowly, but I am still seeing it.

Joe Boyle: 17:44

And I'm very optimistic. Are there any ways to help facilitate that?

Dr. Mark Larson: 17:49

There's a couple of different things. One thing is with schools, doing some work with some other schools and districts and what we're finding is that there are looking for intentional ways to insert social emotional learning and understanding, the empathy and the sympathy and all the age of the heart skills. And sometimes that's happening in an advisory program. There's interest in more multi-age advisories. That's where you would have, say, seven sixth graders, seven seventh graders and seven eighth graders and you would have roles. The onboarding of the sixth grade kids would give leadership to ability to the eighth graders, some of the tutoring possibilities from the seventh graders, both ways. So you have some opportunities to create some empathy with that.

Dr. Mark Larson: 18:29

There's also a fancy term, bibliotherapy, which is basically reading and putting yourself in the position of a character and so you can understand how does scout and to kill a mockingbird unless the book's banned where you are, how does scout deal with things? What's scouts thinking about? What is Dell, what is Jim? All of those things are ways that are intentionally able to do that. And then there's some structural things that schools are looking at too.

Mark Wolak: 18:52

So it's good to hear that it's happening in the schools. For me and my age cohort I see it happening in the neighborhood. We tend to be more aware of each other and the human frailties that come with aging, more from the heart, messaging about how are you doing today, where can we help? And Joe, you're a volunteer driver.

Joe Boyle: 19:17

Yes, I drive for the disabled vets on Wednesdays and I also do meals on wheels on Mondays.

Mark Wolak: 19:27

So there's some things that are noticeable just in our tiny little neighborhood here. Tell us, and tell our listeners, what drives you to do this, Mark.

Dr. Mark Larson: 19:39

The first thing was curiosity why are we like this? What's happening? How could people that I would ordinarily enjoy spending time with no longer do I want to see them.

Joe Boyle: 19:50

I don't wanna spend any time with them.

Dr. Mark Larson: 19:54

It's ironic and strange, but true, I just don't. The thing has become so bitter and polarizing, and all that. There's an interesting statistic In 2014, 27% of Democrats and 38% of Republicans viewed the other party very unfavorably. This is going to pew research. And then in 2022, eight years later, almost three quarters of the Republicans and three quarters of the Democrats would oppose their child marrying someone of the opposite political party. How did we get there in just eight years?

Mark Wolak: 20:25

like that it sounds like the old model of the Lutherans and the Catholics from the 50s and 60s doesn't it?

Joe Boyle: 20:31

That's still going on to a lesser degree. Yeah, no kidding, not really, though.

Dr. Mark Larson: 20:40

But we do segregate ourselves and that's really a big issue. By definition, churches, synagogues, mosques separate themselves by people of a like faith. We've done it in our environments, in our neighborhoods. If they weren't redlined, or if they were redlined, then it was all very similar people in the same area. We don't step out of our comfort zone with that and we have no reason to. We socialize with the same group of people and the same religious views, the same ethnic backgrounds and so forth.

Dr. Mark Larson: 21:10

It's really hard to break out of that Human nature. Yes, but one thing and I've said this for a long time is that we've moved farther on gay rights and believing that two people who love each other can get married than I ever thought we would, and the reason for that is that, well, we all know somebody who's gay Our neighbor, our cousin, our nephew, our uncle, whomever it is and they're okay. Why shouldn't they have the happiness or unhappiness that marriage brings? The whole thing is that love is love, but we know someone. We don't all know someone of a different race. We don't all know someone of a different socioeconomic class. We don't all know someone of a different religious view, because we're sheltered. And then what's also happened is that we only get our information from sources that we like Certain silos Exactly, and so it's hard breaking out of those. But it happens slowly when we have family get-togethers and so on. A lot of times they can be a little bit acrimonious, but so, instead of asking how can you possibly believe that, tell me how you came to that belief. That's a little bit more respectful. It gives them a chance to explain the steps that they came to get there and it gives us a chance to have a little bit more empathy.

Dr. Mark Larson: 22:16

And it's not gonna happen. The world's not gonna be all coming together, everything all happy. It's gonna take some time, it's gonna take effort on an individual and a systemic level, and I'm very optimistic about some of the things that we're seeing in the schools, and I just wanna speak to two of those. One of them is that there's more and more interest in looping than there had been, and looping is that the same teacher will same with the same students for two or three years. They know the students right away. There's a less learning loss over the summer because they already know where these kids are, and there's discussion about that and there's some real positive things with it. The difficulty, of course, is that it's a different curriculum, so the teacher has a lot more work to it, but where it's being done, and done well, it's really paying off.

Dr. Mark Larson: 23:02

The second thing is that there is more and more emphasis on early teaching of soft skills. Adam Grant in his latest book, hidden Persuasion, has done some research or cited a study that was done in which a kindergarten teacher who really emphasized and taught the kids a lot of the soft skills about compassion and sharing and the things from that Robert Fulham, everything I knew I'd learned in kindergarten you know the poem that who really focused on that their kids were behind a little bit academically at the end of kindergarten and in first grade, but the gains were eliminated and people caught up, but those social skills carried on. So the students actually did achieve more later on, and so we're seeing some of those type of things. And there's also just one really small picture piece that I find really interesting. A teacher has a seating chart where all the kids are supposed to sit. On Monday it's this chart. On Tuesday it's something different. Wednesday it's something different. Thursday it's something different. Friday the kids sit where they want and they go through that for the whole year.

Dr. Mark Larson: 24:02

And at some point in time every student has to sit by somebody else and get to know that person Exactly, at which they might not otherwise.

Joe Boyle: 24:16

And now it's time for Stories in Life, art from the Heart, deep thoughts from the shallow end. Each episode, we bring you a poem, a song or a reading, just for you. This is a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day? And no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. Do it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear with its hopes and invitations to waste a moment on the yesterdays.

Speaker 4: 25:47

I'm sorry. Did I reach out and hold you in my loving arms, oh, when you needed me? Now I realize that you need love too, and I'll spend my life making love to you. I know I forgot to be your lover and I'm sorry, sorry, sorry. Have I taken the time to share with you all the burdens that love will face, and have I done the little self-mistakes to show you just how much I care? Oh, I've been working for you, doing all I can, but working all day. Don't make me a man. Oh, I forgot to be your lover and I'm sorry, but I'm making it up to you. Somehow I forgot to be your lover.

Dr. Mark Larson: 27:37

It takes some courage to go out and introduce yourself to someone or to say hello or to try to make friends. Adults are really not very good at making friends. Kids really are good, but somewhere along the line we've lost some of that, and so I agree we need to work toward that. And it starts small and it's a little thing here. It's a few conversations there and then all of a sudden it's a coffee time or something else, or it's a come on over for a happy hour or whatever it happens to be. There's a lot of opportunities to get to know people and neighbors, and when you do, you find that people aren't all that different.

Joe Boyle: 28:13

There's a lot of commonality we want the same things.

Dr. Mark Larson: 28:16

We want to love and be loved, we want to have positive relationships and we just want to be able to do things for ourselves in a lot better ways. And if we can do this and this is going to be the real tough one if we can stop measuring success with either money or fame or clicks or whatever it happens to be, and instead measure something along these lines how many people, if they had a flat tire, would call you for help? If that's the metric, then then you've made yourself a friend or valuable acquaintance, but probably a friend. That's going to make a difference. And if that's how we determine success, then I think we'll have a much better world than if we have a world in which you measure success by money, that we have fancy cars or homes or whatever it happens to be, but a measurement of the heart as opposed to of the wallet.

Mark Wolak: 29:08

Yeah, I've been struck by how often society comes back to this notion of a great man theory of leadership that all we have to do is hire the right man to lead us, as opposed to thinking about what are the skills and talents, the aptitudes, the aspirations of any person who steps up to take some leadership. And I think we're stuck in that again a little bit. You know that somehow somebody's going to come and rescue us, when really this is about a collection of people coming together to make a difference in their community.

Dr. Mark Larson: 29:43

It's a lot easier to have somebody tell us what to do, and so I think there is that attraction of that great man and it is a great man, it's not a great woman, it's not a great person that we're stuck in that patriarchal view of things that it has to be a man, a strong man, who will tell us what to do and then we'll just do it and all will be well. It's not that easy, and if you look back through history, you'll see a lot of flawed characters who had leadership. The Napoleon movie that's out right now can be considered to be a great man, but 3 million people were killed on his watch. That seems like a negative thing to me, right. So there's a lot to be said for having humane, decent, positive leaders who can inspire and create goodwill with people, as opposed to someone who's going to pound their fists or pound their shoe Grushev and yell at people to get what they want.

Mark Wolak: 30:35

Do you have like because you know every magazine article is the top 10 things to do for Thanksgiving? Do you have like the top things to do for the age of the heart? Would you just rattle off a few of those? That you think would work.

Dr. Mark Larson: 30:51

The first one is about listening and empathy and really trying to understand what the other person is saying. And let me just give you an example from the mediation that I've been doing. First of all, it's a lot of its court ordered mediation and its harassment a lot of that and there's some difficulty with it. When it's been successful, I've been able to get them to take the other person's perspective. So oftentimes people will not even listen to something else that's counter to what they believe. So the first thing is to listen and try to take someone else's perspective.

Dr. Mark Larson: 31:20

And then the second thing is like how can you believe that it should become something like tell me how you came to believe that? And that gives a person a chance to explain themselves and some of the history of these things. And then the third one is is that make an effort, go out there, be out there as opposed to waiting for things to come to you. Go out, meet your neighbors, meet your friends or make new friends. It takes a little bit of a risk to be out there. I mean, the last time we took a risk a lot of times for us was, you know, asking a girl to the prom, and that was tough then. But you know, we've got a few years on us since then and we can probably do things like that.

Mark Wolak: 31:57

So one thing I think about is the question what leads you, or what led you to believe that? That would require some composure, you know, in a situation where you really disagree with that person, and then you also would have to turn on your listening skills so that you'd be not judging everything that comes out of that person's mouth.

Mark Wolak: 32:23

I mean shut off the judge, right, and you know. Try to make some sense of what you're hearing as opposed to what you're feeling or thinking, and ask the right questions the right way. Yeah, I'm having trouble right now coming up with how I would deal with a couple relatives I disagree with, right, or I suppose I don't have any neighbors right now that I disagree with, but I certainly have community members I probably would disagree with.

Dr. Mark Larson: 32:51

Yeah, and the listening and the looping comes back to it and it's the reflective questioning and it's also trying for you. It's difficult for me, and with the career that I have had, it's not as much about listening as much as it is about telling. I need to convince people that this is what to do and why, but in this thing it's much better to listen to what people have to say and try to understand how. How did you come to believe that? How can I help you evolve? How can I be a better person to help you on your journey? And one of the things that I really firmly believe is that we're all still a work in progress. I hope to be better tomorrow than I was today and I hope to want to continue on on that journey, and it it's not always easy.

Dr. Mark Larson: 33:37

There's setbacks and so on, and there's things that you get really mad about. You know. There's that that joke about how, of course, I'm going to discuss politics at the Thanksgiving dinner. That way I know who not to buy Christmas presents for, and so it's just. I thought it'd be funnier. But so oftentimes we want to be either a prosecutor I know the truth and I'm going to win and beat you guys on it, the preacher I alone have the truth, and now it's up to you to you know, I have to evangelize to get you to think that way, or the politician who kind of tells you what you want to hear. But instead you need to look at it as a scientist, and the scientist changes his or her mind when the facts change. And as I look at this, I see it from this perspective, but then I turn it a little bit or I flip it over, I do something. I see it from a different perspective, and so it's certainly not easy to do.

Dr. Mark Larson: 34:26

People say things that press your buttons or that intentionally make you angry, or whatever it happens to be, and then you react, and then you clench, and then you have all these other thoughts going through, and then you're not listening and then you're not patient and you certainly don't have any empathy, and I wish it was just really easy to turn off and on.

Dr. Mark Larson: 34:45

But it takes some time to take some practice, and so the mediation skills that I have through the work that I've done on it about reflective listening and being able to understand as a mediator. I understand, mark, I understand what you're saying and what it sounds like is this, this and this? And then, joe, I understand what you're saying and it's this, this and that, and so there's some commonalities with this and this, but we have to figure out how to deal with that other one. Those can be successful, but you have to want to be successful too, and some people don't want to. They like the whole idea of the constant state of agitation, the doom scrolling, the rage tweeting that type of thing being on a certain team.

Mark Wolak: 35:24

Yeah, well, we're looking at future episodes on male relationships. What's your thought about men and the age of the heart?

Dr. Mark Larson: 35:35

I think that men for so far too long have played by a set of rules of stoicism, of not showing pain, of not being vulnerable, and those were kind of the rules in the age of industry, when you went to the factory, you got up every day and you did the work and you plugged away. And then the age of the information you went to the office and you did your work and you kept your head down and you just stayed with it and you just didn't have a chance to share or to feel, and that there was no permission to feel and have emotions. I think we're coming around a little bit on that. It's happening slowly, but I think it's now we're at a point where you can say that I am feeling bad and that you can have emotions at work. We still have a double standard A man who cries at work can be seen as sensitive.

Dr. Mark Larson: 36:17

A woman who cries at work can be seen as being overly emotional. So it's not a perfect thing, but it is becoming okay to have emotions and to show and to share how you're feeling. And what we've also been seeing is that Everybody likes to solve someone else's problem or likes to be the expert or something, but we hate to ask. Every time I have someone has asked me for advice, I felt flattered.

Joe Boyle: 36:43

It's like wow, you Really you want to know what I think.

Dr. Mark Larson: 36:46

Yeah, yeah, it's just, it was just. It's always flattering and yet I'm very, very hesitant to ask someone else for advice. And that's gonna, that's gonna evolve and we're gonna change and get better at it. We're not there yet. Some of us are. I'm not. I'd like to be that, that point where I can say I really do want your advice on this.

Mark Wolak: 37:06

Yeah, my pride. I always got in the way of that, so I wasn't very good at taking advice. Joe knows that too.

Dr. Mark Larson: 37:12

Taking or giving.

Mark Wolak: 37:13

I can give advice like you wouldn't believe, but taking it.

Mark Wolak: 37:16

That's a little harder for me, but I get it. You know, I think that that that's part of that vulnerability and men, that there aren't really Really good role models for that in the public view, but they're around. You know and there was just a recent article Joe and I are looking at it now in terms of future episodes about how how lonely men are in particular and If they aren't actively developing relationships with other men, they end up without anybody. Yeah, and we're seeing that too, you know, in communities where both men and women are really lonely, but men in particular, if they've lost their best friend or they never had a best friend, you know they're, they're struggling.

Dr. Mark Larson: 37:58

Well, I think that, if I can go back to the metric of measuring your success, by how many people would call you in the middle of the night If they're in trouble, if, that's if you have a hundred people like that boy, that's amazing. If you have one, well, that's good. If you have zero, then you know, maybe you need to do some things about that, right.

Mark Wolak: 38:16

So this is a pretty heady conversation. I'm thinking some listeners are gonna think man, is there a book I can read? What can I? What can I do to learn more about this? What would you suggest to people if they're kind of curious about?

Joe Boyle: 38:29

this as resources.

Dr. Mark Larson: 38:31

There's been a number of things, that there's a large group of thinkers out there. Adam Grant I cited earlier on, with hidden persuasion and rethinking is his second to last book and it's about the power of Rethinking and how important that is. Some of the things from Malcolm Gladwell about success and how you go about achieving different things and looking at things from a different perspective. And then the Heath brothers, dan and Chip, recently wrote a book upstream. It's about solving problems before they start. Those are helpful. And then there are podcasts that I do listen to. If you'd like me to cite one of them, it's sure on the radio with Mark and Joe and that's a good one.

Mark Wolak: 39:18

Yeah, yeah, we love that show but then there's another one.

Dr. Mark Larson: 39:20

It's called the big idea club, and they have a Author who tells about the book that they've written, for it's once a week. But then they have smaller ones that are on a daily basis, and so, for example, one of them recently was about the power of quitting, and we have this whole thing and it's been Drilled into people, particularly men never quit, never quit. And you know the whole. Winston Churchill's most famous speech is that we will never quit, we'll never surrender. And the point is that, yeah, there are times when you should quit. Discretion is the better part of value, stop banging your head against the wall, and so that. But it's just so oftentimes different ways of looking at things.

Mark Wolak: 39:56

So what, when you agreed to do this program, what did you hope? We would ask? You did we ask you what you needed us to ask you about this topic?

Dr. Mark Larson: 40:07

Yeah, the thing I was really hoping for is that you'd asked me for lunch and you said you made a delicious vegetable soup.

Mark Wolak: 40:13

Yes, yes, yes, yes. So win-win and a refreshment. Yes, yes, okay.

Joe Boyle: 40:18

Gotta ask you loves to listen. Gotta ask it what do you like to listen to?

Dr. Mark Larson: 40:24

I thought a lot about Bruce Springsteen the last couple of weeks and for For Christmas, our daughter got me and she and I went to the Bruce Springsteen concert. I had a great time and a lot of the songs that he sings about are about hope and about Belief and for coming and yeah, and so it's just something along the lines from Bruce Springsteen would be really terrific.

Mark Wolak: 40:44

Okay, one thing I've been thinking about is how much Gratitude and compassion are part of this. So you know what we're hearing from people who Feel like they're making a difference. They're starting from a place of gratitude. Yeah and that you know that sort of Reduces the angst, the stress, the anger, the conflict, from Whatever you're talking about.

Joe Boyle: 41:16

Well, and I think what you're conveying makes so much sense that how can it help but be the reality?

Mark Wolak: 41:25

Yeah, if applied. Yeah. So if I'm an age of the heart person, I'm grateful. I'm Recognizing the gifts that I've been given. I'm not comparing myself to everybody around me. I'm probably less likely to be thinking about money and how much I have and thinking more about the people that don't have what I have. It seems to be kind of a shift.

Mark Wolak: 41:55

Yeah that Around the concept of empathy and compassion and I'm probably contributing differently. I'm not Worried about what I'm getting. I'm probably looking around and looking who might need a little more of something. How can I help? How can I help and?

Dr. Mark Larson: 42:13

it's not necessarily a monetary thing and I'm really pleased about the gift to the max, beating their previous record. That's terrific. But it's more. It's more sharing and less comparing. And it's sharing of time, of energy, of support and help, and less comparing and the sense of gratitude in terms of comparison. You don't want to be I'm so grateful that I'm not like so-and-so or and I don't have this thing. It's more like you want to be grateful for for who you have and for who you are and what you have in your life, and just be thankful for that and it's. But it's easy to get into this comparison trap and when you're there it almost always ends up going poorly for you. You can always find someone who's Wealthier or smarter Not in this case, better looking looks like a three-way tie.

Dr. Mark Larson: 43:00

But it's, it's. You can always find somebody who's got something that you don't have, and when you need to really step back and just be Grateful.

Joe Boyle: 43:06

I found that out during my volunteer work. It makes me feel so good because you know you're making a difference, you're impacting Every time and and they tell you that and you feel it, and, and it creates so much gratitude. I'm really grateful for that because it's fulfilling.

Dr. Mark Larson: 43:36

Let me put you on the spot a little bit. If someone were to say thanks for this, let me give you a tip.

Joe Boyle: 43:42

Oh yeah, insulting, yeah, it's like no, that's not why I'm doing it Exactly.

Dr. Mark Larson: 43:46

Yeah, and that's the key thing about it.

Mark Wolak: 43:49

Yeah, I'm not going to let Joe to be my driver. If I was needing a ride, can't you just picture him being your driver? You?

Joe Boyle: 43:56

do great. Yeah, I always get a few laughs, yeah.

Mark Wolak: 44:00

He'd turn around and he'd say things like did you see that driver? Yeah, I can just hear it.

Dr. Mark Larson: 44:04

You can use the George Carlin joke Whenever you're driving everyone who's going faster than you is a maniac, and everyone who's going slower than you is a moron. That's right.

Joe Boyle: 44:14

And getting back to the Thanksgiving dinner with relatives. Yes, Joe, you're not eating much and it's like I'm too busy biting my tongue.

Mark Wolak: 44:28

That's good, joe. Thank you, mark. I think we've we got a really delightful story here and it's going to be fun to put out there for people.

Dr. Mark Larson: 44:37

Thank you. Thank you very much, Mark. Oh, it's my pleasure.

Speaker 4: 44:54

All right, I got a new suit of clothes and a pretty red rose, a woman I can call my friend. These are better days, baby. Yeah, these better days. Shine and grow. These are better days, baby, better days are better days. Better days are better days, baby, better days with a girl like you, I'm turnin' this, that fortune, sweet kiss. It's like eating caviar and tea, but it's a sad, funny ending when you find yourself pretending A rich man in a poor man's shirt Now, my ass was drivin' from a passenger Gets away your heart like a diamond shone, trouble layin' in your arms carvin' lucky charms. Yeah, these hard luck phones. These are better days, baby, these are better days and true, these are better days, man.

Joe Boyle: 46:13

Mark, that was a lot of good information on the age of the heart. I hope Mark Larson is dead on and that we can anticipate more age of the heart moving forward, and that's something I think we all can participate in.

Mark Wolak: 46:29

It's an interesting theory of action and maybe, as a theory in use, maybe we're beginning to see more human beings behaving this way. I'm certainly excited about it too. I hope that we're moving into a time where people are kinder and gentler to each other.

Joe Boyle: 46:47

Let's hope so.

Mark Wolak: 46:49

You can reach Mark Larson at mark at mjlarsonconsultingcom. Mjlarson, it's an s-o-n consultingcom.

Joe Boyle: 47:01

And today's background music was Heart of a Father by the classical New Age Orchestra. And of course we also had Bruce Springsteen making better days off the Lucky Town album from 1992.

Mark Wolak: 47:17

Thank you, joe, this was a lot of fun. See you next time Okay.

Joe Boyle: 47:25

We hope you enjoyed this episode. Please join us again next time on Stories in Life on the radio with Mark and Joe, and visit our website at storiesinlifebuzzbrowcom or email us at storiesinlifepodcastatgmailcom.