Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Welcome to the Healing Our Politics Podcast!
Join Our Community and Receive Free Tools + How to Guides:
· Always free
· Once per month email
· Curated selection of tools, techniques, and practices discussed on this podcast
· Delivered in simple to follow how-to-guides
· To try and test in your life and teach your teams.
Guest: Jerry Colonna, known as the "CEO Whisperer," is the founder of Reboot, an executive coaching and leadership development firm dedicated to the notion that better humans make better leaders. Jerry made a name for himself as one of the world’s top venture capitalists before transitioning into his role as a coach. His books, Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up and Reunion: Leadership and the Longing to Belong, have deeply influenced leaders around the globe. Jerry’s work focuses on radical self-inquiry, bringing one's whole self to leadership, and fostering a sense of belonging in the workplace and beyond.
About the Episode: In this episode, we challenge the misconception that vulnerability is a weakness in leadership. We explore Jerry Colonna’s practice of radical self-inquiry, how it works, and how you can apply it to enhance your leadership effectiveness in public service. We dive into the importance of understanding your personal triggers and how this awareness can transform your responses to public criticism and internal stress. We discuss actionable techniques for bringing your whole self to your leadership role, even in the face of potential backlash or misunderstanding. Jerry shares his experiences of growing up in challenging circumstances and how these shaped his journey towards becoming a more compassionate and effective leader. By embracing your full humanity, Jerry emphasizes, you can create more authentic connections, foster a sense of belonging, and lead with greater resilience and clarity—learn how to bring deeper purpose and well-being into your leadership in this powerful conversation.
Key Topics Discussed:
· [00:01:48] Guest into
· [00:06:34] Healthy masculine: “Adulthood”
· [00:10:00] Growing up fast (Jerry)
· [00:13:18] Don’t romanticize pain
· [00:15:41] The wounded leader
· [00:17:02] Humans are VERBS
· [00:21:09] Why we wear masks
· [00:22:23] Jerry as coach
· [00:23:00] A broken heart got me here
· [00:24:14] King of the fairies
· [00:26:15] First suicide attempt
· [00:27:25] Rockstar venture capitalist
· [00:32:28] Depression lies
· [00:33:05] The thought that changed everything
· [00:34:04] Your birthright
· [00:34:38] Experience your worth
· [00:38:49] ELC Foundation donors
· [00:39:32] HOP Sponsor - Elected Leaders Collective
· [00:41:38] Become a “better leader”
· [00:44:05] Fear of “doing the work”
· [00:45:31] The longing to belong
· [00:46:26] The inner work comes first
· [00:48:03] “The price of the ticket”
· [00:50:38] Love, safety, and belonging
· [00:51:35] Physical safety
· [00:55:47] Who are you not to speak?
· [00:56:53] Democracy requires belonging
· [00:58:35] The better angels of our nature
· [00:59:33] The benefits of “doing the work”
· [01:01:08] Moral acts are the reward
· [01:02:39] The face of courage
· [01:04:11] The dissonance of belonging and courage
· [01:06:11] “Loving Kindness” meditation (meta)
· [01:07:05] The tradition of non-violence
· [01:09:12] How to de-escalate a public meeting
· [01:10:25] Harden, not your hear
· [01:11:51] Final takeaway: Gratitude
· [01:13:04] Where to find Jerry (below)
· [01:14:12] “The Leader’s Handbook” newsletter https://leadershandbook.substack.com/about
Key References and Resources Mentioned:
· [00:09:24] Cry, Baby: Why Our Tears Matter by Benjamine Perry https://www.amazon.com/Cry-Baby-Why-Tears-Matter-ebook/dp/B0B5M7KDHT
· [00:31:42] Parker J. Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak
· [01:02:59] The Soul of America by John Meacham
· [01:06:11] Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness by Sharon Salzberg
· [01:07:58] Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall Rosenberg
· [01:07:58] Getting to Yes by Bill Ury
· [01:07:58] Possible: How we Survive and Thirve in an Age of Conflict by Bill Ury
Where to Find Jerry Colonna:
· LinkedIn
· Twitter
Where to Find Host Skippy Mesirow:
· Receive Support at the Elected Leaders Collective
· Follow on Instagram www.instagam.com/skippymesirow
· Book a free Clarity Call to see if coaching is right for you
Episode Sponsor:
Helping You Heal Our Politics
The Elected Leaders Collective (ELC) organization is the leading US-based provider of mental well-being training for public servants, conducted by public servants and the world's best mental health and human optimization professionals. With ELC Training, you will learn to rise above and become the political healer you were meant to be, improving your well-being in the process.
Contact the HOP Team:
Do you have an episode idea?
Want to suggest a guest?
Can you provide critical feedback?
We'd love to hear from you!
Contact our team at jesse@healingourpolitics.com
Your input helps us create content that matters.
Creators & Guests
Host
Skippy Mesirow
Skippy Mesirow is a prominent leader, certified Master Coach, and founder of the Elected Leaders Collective (ELC) and ELC Foundation. ELC leads the US in mental health and well-being training for public servants, recognized in The Apolitical Foundation's Mere Mortals report, and named as one of 26 worldwide political well-being "Trailblazer Organizations." A transformational leader in political innovation and wellness, Skippy serves on Gov. Polis’s Natural Medicine Advisory. Skippy’s work has been featured in numerous podcasts and publications, as well as main-stage speaking engagements for organizations NLC, YEO, CML, MT2030, Bridging Divides, and Fulcrum, highlighting his significant contributions to mental health, community, and policy reform. Alongside his professional achievements, Skippy lives in Aspen, CO. with his partner Jamie where he enjoys running ultra-marathons, road biking, motorcycling, international travel, culinary arts, Burning Man, and lifelong learning.
Producer
Aaron Calafato
Aaron’s stories are currently heard by millions around the globe on his award-winning Podcast 7 Minute Stories and on YouTube. Aaron is a co-host of Glassdoor's new podcast (The Lonely Office) and serves as a podcast consultant for some of the fastest-growing companies in the world.
Editor
Jesse Link
Jesse is a strategy, research and partnership consultant and podcast enthusiast. A 2x founder, former Goldman Sachs Vice President and advisor to 25+ businesses, Jesse brings a unique and diverse background to HoP, helping to elevate the range, depth and perspective of HoP's conversations and strategy.
What is Healing Our Politics?
Hello,
I’m Skippy Mesirow, host of “Healing Our Politics,” the show that shows you, the heart-centered public servants and political leaders, how to heal our politics by starting with the human in the mirror.
Healing Our Politics, “HOP,” is a first-of-its-kind show that provides tools and practices for mental well-being, health, and balance, specifically for public servants so we can do good by feeling good and safe in our jobs.
HOP brings together experts, scientists, doctors, thought leaders, healers, and coaches to share their insights in practical, tactical, actionable ways specifically tailored to the public service experience for you to test and implement with yourself and your teams. Episodes feature intimate conversations with global leaders about their self-care practices and personal challenges, providing insights for a more holistic, connected approach to leadership. Whether you're a Mayor, teacher, police officer, or staffer, this podcast will guide you to be the best version of yourself in service to yourself and the world!
Sign up for our once-per-month Leader’s Handbook newsletter to receive an actionable toolkit of how-to guides on topics discussed on the podcast that month to test and implement in your life and with your team: https://leadershandbook.substack.com/
Hello. My name is Skippy Mesirow, coach, former elected official, and lifetime public servant. Welcome to Healing Our Politics. The show that shows you, the heart centered public servant and political leader, how to heal our politics by starting with the human in the mirror. It is my job to sit down or stand up with the best experts in all areas of human development, thought leaders, coaches, therapists, authors, scientists, and more, to take the best of what they have learned and translate it specifically for the public service experience.
Skippy Mesirow:Providing you actionable, practical, tactical tools that you can test out today in your life and with your teams.
Skippy Mesirow:I will also talk to leaders across the globe with a
Skippy Mesirow:self care practice, getting to know them at a deeply human and personal level, so that you can learn from their challenges and journey. Warning, this is a post partisan space. Yes, I have a bias. You have a bias. We all have a bias.
Skippy Mesirow:Everybody gets a bias. And I will be stripping out all of the unconscious cues of bias from this space. No politics, partisanship or policy here. Because well-being belongs to all of us. And we will all be better served if every human in leadership, regardless of party, ideology, race, or geography, are happier, healthier, and more connected.
Skippy Mesirow:This show is about resourcing you, the human doing leadership, and trusting you to make up your own damn mind about what to do with it and what's best for your community. So as always, with love, here we go.
Skippy Mesirow:Welcome to the Healing Hour Politics podcast, the show that shows you, the heart centered leader, how to heal our politics by starting with the human in the mirror. And we have something special, dare I say, equanimical for you today as I sit down with expert executive coach and CEO Whisperer, Jerry Colona. Jerry started out making a name for himself as one of the world's best feces, and that's a quote from Forbes. He served at Flat Iron Partners and later JPMorgan Partners, where he was recognized as one of the primary players in the creation of Silicon Valley and our modern tech infrastructure and entrepreneurial landscape. But after reaching that proverbial financial mountaintop, Jerry found himself questioning his will to live and not for the first time.
Skippy Mesirow:And this experience catapulted him into a new path of deep self inquiry, reflection, and refinement of doing the inner work where ultimately Jerry became a coach, a founder of Reboot, an executive coaching and leadership development firm dedicated to the notion that better humans make better leaders. Along the way, he authored 2 books, Reboot Leadership and the Art of Growing Up, which fundamentally changed my orientation to self and thus my orientation to leadership as an elected official in 2019, and most recently, reunion, leadership and longing to belong, which graced Forbes 6 must read books last year. While doing this, Jerry has served in a number of leadership roles, including raising 1,000,000 of dollars for small business grants for small businesses in New York City, then his home following 911, serving as co executive director on New York City 2012, an effort to bring the Olympic Games to America's largest stage, and serving on literally more boards than you can count of the world's biggest and most successful companies and educational institutions. In this episode, we dig into that process of radical self inquiry. Why do better humans make better leaders, and how can we up level our lives and leadership through taking responsibility and ownership for all of it?
Skippy Mesirow:How growing up in poverty with an alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother shaped his journey and how you can change your journey by coming to better understand your lineage and your family. We discuss the importance of bringing your whole self to work and how to do that in the face of potential criticism, attack, public reprisal, or colleagues who just don't get you. We talk about disease or disease, what causes it, and how we can work with it and eradicate it. We talk about how to meet intolerance or, yes, even violence with compassion as a means to create better outcomes for all of us, and Jerry shares his 6 steps to quell reactivity and so so so so much more. I hope you enjoy this deep, heart centered, and wisdom filled conversation with my friend, Jerry Colona.
Skippy Mesirow:I'm so overwhelmingly excited, honored, nervous to have you here. I think so highly of you and your work. And so funny, I felt like Aladdin this morning, like, as a questioner, right, as an interview. I'm like, well, I want every wish possible. But if I could only have 3, what would they be?
Skippy Mesirow:And that speaks to the wisdom that you hold. And so before we even get into this, I just want the audience to know that there is a well, so much deeper than we'll get to today. So you will be well served by going out and reading reboot, by reading Reunion, by listening to the reboot podcast for any number of things that Jerry's put out appearances on other podcasts. There's just a deep bench of wisdom, and I'm so honored to have you on the show today.
Jerry Colonna:Oh, thank you. I just have one question. Is all of that a euphemism for me being old? Because there's so much.
Skippy Mesirow:It's not in that there are people of an advanced age who don't hold that wisdom, but I do believe wisdom accrues over time, and it seems that you've used your time very wisely.
Jerry Colonna:Well, that's really for you to say. Thank you. I will take that compliment.
Skippy Mesirow:It's funny. I wanted to start with a question in the form of an observation, but it relates to what you were just saying, which is in my view, my observation, my opinion, you represent more than just about anyone else I've come across of a truly healthy masculine. And what I mean by that is in media popular culture, I think we often confuse adrenaline or strength or violence, sometimes even misogyny for masculine, but, generally, that's actually hiding a deeper insecurity. And so it's, in some ways, the inverse of masculine, and you hold such a soft, loving strength, resounding peace. And I wonder how you ended up that way.
Jerry Colonna:Well, first of all, I'll take the compliment that's implicit in that and explicit in that because it is a compliment. And as you were speaking, I was processing it. I don't think of it as a function of the masculine, although I can see exactly what you're speaking to. I think of it more as you know from the language I used in my first book reboot. It's about adulthood.
Jerry Colonna:And I think that your observations about the confusion about what does it mean to be a good man if we can speak from a gendered place like that is unfortunately based on the reality. Too often we do not endeavor to teach folks who have been identified as boys who hold onto that identity. We don't teach them what to do with difficult feelings. And because of the patriarchy of our society, those boys end up growing up into men who have power. And then they don't know what to do with negative experiences.
Jerry Colonna:And so aggression tends to be the dominant response.
Skippy Mesirow:Mhmm. In that, it's one of the more acceptable presentations of that in common culture.
Jerry Colonna:Yes. It's definitely acceptable. It's often called for think of the common and all too true images of people responding. Usually older men responding to boys with language like you crying. I'll give you something to cry about.
Jerry Colonna:And that's usually followed by violence. And then think of all the negative associations we have with feeling in a deep way. I think of a wonderful book I read last year by a friend of mine named Benjamin Perry, who is a minister at Middle Church, and he works with Jackie Lewis, who is also a brilliant pastor. And his book is called Crybaby, and it's all about how important tears are for the human experience. So I highly recommend that.
Jerry Colonna:I don't know how I got to where I am. I mean, you know, it's a complicated tale, but to one degree, I had to learn how to be myself. And in learning to be myself, I am who you see today.
Skippy Mesirow:Yeah. And we're gonna come back to this notion of radical self inquiry and radical authenticity. But by means of introducing you to an audience who many of whom may not be familiar with your work, I think what's fair to say and please correct me if I'm wrong and I've heard you say this about many leaders is a lot of us had to grow up quickly, and that seems to be the case for you. Again, correct me if I'm wrong on the details, but growing up, 9 people, 6 siblings, 2 parents in a 2 bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, a father who suffered from alcoholism, and a mother who struggled with mental illness. You as a little one who came up with the story that since you were the 7th, when there was not enough food or resources to go around, that was somehow your fault, And so you were putting a lot on yourself as a little one.
Skippy Mesirow:And so how did you respond to that initially?
Jerry Colonna:One factual correction is I was number
Skippy Mesirow:6 of 7. Sorry. That's alright.
Jerry Colonna:Everything else you got. So you've been listening. And I'll circle back to why that distinction is really important Yeah. Into the way I
Skippy Mesirow:hold myself.
Jerry Colonna:To be fair to all of my siblings, I think each of us were forced into an early parentification process differently. I think of, for example, my older sister, Mary, who is the oldest of my sisters. My my oldest brother is Vito. He's the oldest sibling. And Mary very, very early on took over responsibility, a maternal responsibility.
Jerry Colonna:My father's depression slash alcoholism and my mother's mental illness, which was bipolar schizoid affective disorder, meant that my mother would often be taken away from the family and hospitalized for weeks at a time, if not months at a time. The first hospitalization that I experienced was at 3 days old. And so those who study attachment can imagine what that did to my ability to bond and feel safe. And we would be parceled out to various relatives throughout Brooklyn. My mother had 6 siblings herself, many of whom lived within walking distance.
Jerry Colonna:And so the siblings would be split up and sent to live with aunts and uncles or cousins or grandparents, that sort of thing. Until my sister Mary was about 13, 14, 15 years old. And she declared to my father that that was no longer gonna happen. And that she was going to take responsibility. And so that process, it would still occasionally happen, but for the most part it ended.
Jerry Colonna:I say all that because to reinforce the notion that each of us in one way or another experienced a kind of early parentification that you were talking about, which, yes, does track in strange ways to leadership.
Skippy Mesirow:I think it's becoming maybe it's just the bubble that I live in, but it's becoming more common in general conversation to recognize that struggle or hardship can be the seed of success or growth. And that's a great thing. It's absolutely true. It's also true that if we looked at the standard outcome plot of people who grow up in challenging situations, those situations are more likely on average, given all the current inputs we have to overcome us than for us to overcome them. And I wonder and no need to share anything you're not comfortable with.
Skippy Mesirow:But your other 6 siblings, I mean, you've crafted a beautiful career. You are well known. You're making a difference. How did that same environment result for your other siblings?
Jerry Colonna:You know, that's more of their stories to share, but I would say that each was accomplished in their own ways. Each responded in their own ways. But if you don't mind, can we go back to the sort of premise of the question just for a second? Because I think we're a little bit in danger of romanticizing struggle. Sure.
Jerry Colonna:And there are a couple of observations I would make in response to the setup. The first is while I think it is true that there is a certain amount of increasing recognition of the relationship between state adverse childhood experiences and the strengths that can come as an adult. And again, I say that with some caution that we do not want to romanticize trauma because it actually makes it small and it sends a very mixed message for people to process. But I wanna recognize too that we have had archetypes in certainly in all of the wisdom traditions around which that I'm aware. We have archetypes of the wounded leader, the wounded healer, for as far back as we have been telling ourselves myths and stories.
Jerry Colonna:And I don't think that there's a new discovery here. I think like so many things, there's a kind of rediscovering of the power. If you look at Odysseus, for example, or a Nius to speak about Greek and Roman poetry and mythology, we're talking about wounded men. The Aeneid begins with I sing of arms and the man, and it's a story of war, but it's also a story of love, his pursuit of Dido. If you think of the Bhagavad Gita, it is a story of wounds.
Jerry Colonna:Beowulf is a story of wounds. I think that there's something inherent in the human condition. We tend to mythologize and support the hero's journey, but we tend to skip over what the hero was like before they went on their journey. And usually there was a lot of pain and suffering that sends them on the journey. I mean, even the story of the Buddha waking up to the reality of birth, old age, sickness, and death.
Jerry Colonna:It's a story about his father trying to shield him from wounding. And then all of a sudden being thrust into the reality that life is filled with suffering.
Skippy Mesirow:Funny you mentioned that. I was thinking about something before you came on. I was looking through the prodigious list of boards you serve on, and I didn't realize you were at Naropa. It just triggered a memory of my own growth and evolution. I went to Boulder for undergrad.
Skippy Mesirow:I lived on Gosse, so 2 blocks away from Naropa. And although I Gosse Street. That's right. Great little house.
Jerry Colonna:Place. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Skippy Mesirow:Great. It was so great. But I'd walked past it every day, and I didn't know this at the time. I didn't have the words for it. It's all retrospective understanding, but I was extremely insecure at that point in my life and for a lot of reasons of growing up in a broken home, etcetera.
Skippy Mesirow:And I just looked down at Naropa with so much judgment even though I knew nothing about it. I actually joined a Facebook group, and I thought this was the funniest thing in the world at the time, and it's popped into my head yesterday. It was called the people for the conversion of hippies to diesel fuel. And I thought that was super funny. But when I look back, I realized that I was broken and insecure on the inside, and I needed somebody to look down on so that I could make myself feel better relative to.
Skippy Mesirow:And it was completely unconscious. And last month, I, after trying for multiple years, got admitted into a program at Naropa. And I'm so excited about it And the opportunity to connect, and the people that I've met through that university are some of the most beautiful, spiritually connected, kind, servant oriented humans. And it was just such a stick to what you're talking about of how we shift over time.
Jerry Colonna:Right. And to be clear, I served on the board there for 12 years. 6 of which I was the board chair. The last 2, I was not chair. So I laughed when you told the story about the Facebook group, and I remember a story.
Jerry Colonna:So for those who aren't familiar with the geography, neurope is on, has 3 campus locations and the main campus location is in an old, old 120 year old school building on Arapahoe Avenue. And it backs up to one of the many campuses of CU Boulder. So you went to CU Boulder and there's a legendary story of. Boulder students being on what they call their green, the center green, which is just a little patch of grass with a gorgeous sycamore tree on it dancing naked while the CU Buffalo football team is trading. Sound right.
Jerry Colonna:Kind of bright. The contrast in experience, and CU has this party reputation, and it's more traditional. But the thing that I always really appreciate about Naropa, I always say about Naropa University that it will break your heart because it aspires so much to be a warm and welcoming place. And it does not shy away from the rough encounters with our brokenness. And so when there is an intensity about a conversation that would normally accompany the college experience, Multiply it by a 100 and you'll get Naropa.
Jerry Colonna:But the image I often have is that it's a welcoming place for people who might not otherwise fit in to a heteronormative binary construct that it still struggles with implicit racism, but it is a more welcoming place than many colleges and institutions. It's not the only welcoming place. Think of Antioch or Reed College or some of the other places that exist, but it's a place where I often joke that it's like the island of misfit toys on Rudolph the red nose reindeer. It's the place where the caboose with square wheels can fit in.
Skippy Mesirow:Yes. But to your point, it's the place where authenticity is accepted and rewarded, and so it shows up.
Jerry Colonna:Yeah. With all of the encounters that can happen. I mean, there is a reason why we go through our lives masked, and that is if I am going to quote, let it all out. If you are not to use that language we were describing before further along in your adulting, you may not know how to handle me being full and real and honest. And so one of the most profound things that is taught at Naropa, regardless of the subject of the class, is the experience of being with another's experience and learning to regard your own reaction.
Skippy Mesirow:You know,
Jerry Colonna:you use the term radical self inquiry. That's a term I coined. And in many ways, it encompasses what we're talking about here. Why am I having the reaction to what you're going through that I'm having?
Skippy Mesirow:Mhmm.
Jerry Colonna:And what does it say about me and my experience that is happening? Those are radical self inquiry questions.
Skippy Mesirow:So let's shift over there. Maybe if you can build a little bit of a bridge from early life to how you became a coach. What does it mean to be a coach? And then what is your method? How is it different?
Skippy Mesirow:And that's the bridge to radical self inquiry.
Jerry Colonna:I appreciate the question, especially the latter half of the question, because I have come to understand that I am in fact a different kind of coach. Not different necessarily from my peers and my colleagues, but if there's a spectrum between say executive coaches who teach people how to do their job strategy, like sales strategy, that sort of thing. And the ones that are more at the other end, let's call them transformative coaches that I'm in that zone. The simplistic, simple answer to your question is I got here by way of a broken heart. I got here because the house of cards that I had built up in my twenties thirties fell apart.
Jerry Colonna:And we started talking about my childhood. There are moments in our lives where we are knocked off course in one way or another. In reboot, I talk about being hit by asteroids. And then all of a sudden, the trajectory of our life changes. And they're hard to predict, but when you look backwards, you can see what happened.
Jerry Colonna:And so when I was in high school, I started to have a major depression in my senior year in high school. And prior to everything was going well, despite the circumstances of my childhood, I was in the top of the class and I was, I had the lead role in a production of Midsummer Night's Dream. I was king of the fairies, which growing up in Brooklyn don't often tell this story. But I remember the director, it was this classic moment. I was visiting the English department, which was where I hung out because that was like my people.
Jerry Colonna:And Barry Marcus, the director stops and says, stop. Stop. You're my Oberon. I'm like, what are you talking about? And later, he's a wonderful man.
Jerry Colonna:And later I was talking to him about that experience. And he said, and this goes to your point about masculinity. He said, you're one of the only kids in the senior class. You're one of the only boys in the senior class who could pull off being the king of the fairies and not be teased or bullied about it. And I said, fuck them.
Jerry Colonna:I don't care. And I had that attitude then. The truth is I had deeper problems than being teased at some point.
Skippy Mesirow:Sure.
Jerry Colonna:But in senior year, we would rehearse. And and my high school, we started this in 11th grade. My high school took the performing arts very seriously. One of my classmates was Marissa Tomei, for example. And there are many, many of the kids that I went to school with who ended up in the arts in some way.
Jerry Colonna:Basquiat came after me, but he was a student or Adam Meow from the Beastie Boys. This was kind of high school I went to. Anyway, by senior year, I stopped going to class, but I never missed a rehearsal. It's so good going. Odd was going on.
Jerry Colonna:I just I would actually skip school the whole day and show up at the end of day. I would go to Coney Island all day. And then I would show up at 3 o'clock and go to rehearsal, which confused everybody. Like, what the fuck is he doing?
Skippy Mesirow:I like that they let you do that back in the day. They thought, yeah, that's fine. Keep coming.
Jerry Colonna:Well, you know what it was Skippy, was that I was one of those kids who was I was a good kid. And so what was going on was literally I had very patient teachers who would say not you're a truant. They would say, what's the matter with you? Which is actually, by the way, the right question to ask. Anyway, 1st semester freshman year at college, the depression got so bad that I ended up I also had another play, but which I went to rehearsals but didn't go to class.
Jerry Colonna:And I ended up attempting suicide. January 2, 1981 82. And I spent the next 3 months in a hospital And then came out and went back to school and kinda got patched up together. I started opening up and talking about some of the things that were going on, but that depression, which was damped down, tamped down, could no longer stay contained. And I got myself together and I went back to school and I started doing well in school.
Jerry Colonna:And then I got a job and met the woman that I ended up marrying and becoming the mother of my children. And we had our first child when I was 28. And then by the time I was 30, I had shifted careers again, and then I was a venture capitalist. I started as a journalist, really winning a, scholarship for a local publishing company, which came with a summer job. And then I spent my thirties as a kind of rock star venture capitalist being successful in New York.
Skippy Mesirow:Getting those gumdrops.
Jerry Colonna:Lemon drops.
Skippy Mesirow:Lemon drops. That's right.
Jerry Colonna:A lemon drop. You're referring to the way I held the pursuit of money as a pursuit of lemon drops of, the way my grandfather adored lemon drops. Anyway, that whole system came crashing down. So there were these two major moments were of crashing down where the structures of my life fell apart. The first at 18 and the second, not coincidentally, 20 years later at 38.
Jerry Colonna:And they say not coincidentally because there's only so long that you can hold a house of cards together. And it was that crash at 38 that really led to me being who I am today. Mhmm. Because it was and it was only through the graces of my incredible psychoanalyst, doctor Aviva Sayers, with whom I had been working for a few years before the suicidal feelings came back, that I was able to hold myself together and begin the process of radical self inquiry with simple questions like, what am I not saying that I need to say? Because I had spent 38 years not saying the things I needed to say.
Jerry Colonna:And arguably the depressions that had haunted me were because of the things unsaid that I needed to say.
Skippy Mesirow:Yeah. There are, and I've been one of them, innumerable leaders in the public sector, whether they're elected officials or staffers or working in nonprofits who I imagine listening and knowingly or unknowingly finding themselves in a similar place, different but similar, to where you were at 37. Outwardly successful, have a title, were driven into their work by something compelling and meaningful, but find themselves quietly struggling internally, overwhelmed, fearful, depressed, anxious, insecure, all those and more. And I wonder now, knowing what you know and having experienced what you've experienced, If you were to run into your 37 year old self somewhere in New York, your older self recognized what the younger self didn't recognize about their position. How might you meet that version of yourself?
Skippy Mesirow:What might you do or say or counsel if you would at all?
Jerry Colonna:Well, there would be a number of things that I would say. And to be clear, I think of the work I do today as kind of time traveling back in time and repeatedly trying to save myself again and again and again. And that metaphor is helpful. That image is helpful for me because I think that that is one of the essences of that archetype we spoke about before the wounded healer. Mhmm.
Jerry Colonna:And so in thinking about that, one of the most important discoveries that I made at that time, which I would remind myself of and maybe even share it a little bit earlier in that journey, is, how not alone I was. Because what people can focus on is the depression. But what I tend to focus on that I experienced at 3738 years old, what I tend to focus on is the choice I made not to kill myself Because the choice I made not to kill myself was enhanced by the discovery of people like Parker Palmer, who is a brilliant writer, Quaker teacher, in his wonderful book, Let Your Life Speak, where he, someone I admire deeply wrote eloquently and authentically and honestly about his struggles with depression. There are lots of examples of that. And I remember having the lightning like flash of insight that said, wait a minute.
Jerry Colonna:If somebody I admire struggled, then maybe I'm not as broken as I think I am. For those who might be struggling with similar feelings right now and listening to this, I would say to you something that Parker, who has become one of my closest friends, a dear mentor of mine, and someone whose work I hope to continue. He's 85. I hope that I can continue to push what he began with his work. What he said to me was profoundly important, and that is that depression lies.
Jerry Colonna:When we're in the depressed state, we tell ourselves lies and we are convinced they're the truth. We tell ourselves, for example, that we're beyond redemption. We tell ourselves that we are unworthy of love, safety, and belonging. You know from reading Reboot what I consider the trifecta of what it is that the human experience is about, to love and be loved, to feel safe emotionally, existentially, spiritually, and to fully know that you belong. And part of the lie of depression is that you are unworthy of those things.
Jerry Colonna:There's a corollary thought here, Skippy, which is that, how did you get attracted to Buddhism? Right? You wanna know the one teaching that flipped the switch for me? Yeah. It goes like this.
Jerry Colonna:And this went against everything I learned when I was a boy growing up in the Catholic church. The teaching goes like this: You are fundamentally basically good. In Buddhism, they'd say it's Buddha nature. And the evidence of your basic goodness is the fact that you're a human being because only human beings can attain enlightenment. If you think about this for a moment, we were joking before we started recording.
Jerry Colonna:Your producer and I we're both city kids. I live out here. So these kids of ours, growing up in wherever we grew up, I'm growing up in Brooklyn. It's a mind fuck to internalize the notion that I am worthy of love, safety, and belonging simply by being born, that I don't have to earn it. I don't have to keep it.
Jerry Colonna:I don't have to do anything except be myself. And here's the really tricky part. I can't lose it no matter how many times I failed to live up to my aspirational values and I do something knuckleheaded that I am fundamentally good. And if I could offer anything to anybody in the world, you are fundamentally good.
Skippy Mesirow:I've been fortunate enough to have a handful of moments, key moments in my life, where I've been able to not just know what you just said, but know what you've just said. Right. At the cellular level without any question of doubt, that is absolutely true from end to end in the universe. And even having had those experiences and being able to go back to them in meditation or visualization, the tendency for me is as life comes back in, I can tend to forget and fall back into patterns of I must do to be good enough. I must perform to be good enough.
Skippy Mesirow:I must achieve to be good enough. I must make this much money or whatever the external validator is. And so it's a struggle. I imagine I don't know if this is true, but many people have not yet had the first moment of knowing that's true. How do you work with clients in this case to work back through that process to unearth that truth and not just unearth it because knowing it is not the same as knowing it to embody it?
Jerry Colonna:What comes to mind is the experience that I had after my first book reboot came out, which was July of 2019, and I wrote about this in reunion. There were so many people from such a wide variety of backgrounds who came up to me and and said in one form or another, your story is my story. That it was a really confusing moment for me because I thought in writing reboot, I was writing a book about leadership. But the truth is my unconscious had another plan altogether, which was I was gonna write a book about being human and becoming an adult. And what does that mean?
Skippy Mesirow:They're synonymous. Right?
Jerry Colonna:And so the right. Well, that was, again, that was an insight that I gained actually while writing the book was the realization
Skippy Mesirow:of that. Yeah. Yeah. That's very interesting.
Jerry Colonna:And so to the point, I think that this experience of questioning our deserving of love, safety, and belonging is one of those universal experiences. And you asked how do I work with a client in that regard. The primary method is to normalize the experience. Mhmm. Because the mind does something really terrible.
Jerry Colonna:It says, I feel terrible. I, whatever the I is. Right? I feel terrible. I feel anxious.
Jerry Colonna:I feel depressed. I feel all of these negative emotions. And then the story making starts. And the story is I feel anxious because I'm broken. Mhmm.
Jerry Colonna:Or I feel badly because I did this bad thing. And when you begin to open up and when someone like me who might have power projected on me because of the meat sack of me. I'm white, cisgender, straight, male. Right? In this society with all that that gets projected onto me in that way, When I can stand up and say, I question my own worthiness of love, safety, and belonging while still maintaining space for the other person, then something magical starts to happen.
Jerry Colonna:I would call it community. We are together in our struggles with being human. We are together in questioning these things. And I think that makes it a little bit lighter for people to work with. So that's one of the things that I would do with a client.
Skippy Mesirow:And now, a quick break from our sponsors, and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is supported by Gold Level Elected Leaders Collective Foundation, donors coming in hot, the Douglas Foundation, and Monica Vidal, some personalities there. We could not do this without you. Thank you. And if you want to hear more of this content, you too can support us by going to electedleaderscollective.com, clicking the donate button, and receiving that delicious, delicious tax benefit.
Skippy Mesirow:The Healing Our Politics podcast is brought to you by the Elected Leaders Collective, the first leading and most highly recognized name in mental health, well-being, and performance coaching for elected leaders and public servants designed specifically for you. Now don't be fooled by the name. The Elected Leaders Collective is not just for elected leaders. It is for all public servants, staffers, volunteers, government, nonprofit, whole organizations. This is for you.
Skippy Mesirow:If you are filled with passion for improving your community and world but are tired as I am of the anger, stress, and vitriol, if you find yourself banging your head against that same wall, struggling with the incoming criticism and threats, arguing with colleagues who are supposed to be on your team, and questioning if it's even worth it any more than the elected leaders collective programming is specifically for you. With the elected leaders collective, you will learn to become a hashtag political healer, building the authentic unshakable confidence and courage to stay true to yourself through the anger and pressure while cultivating the open empathetic mind to meet others with the curiosity, compassion, and kindness necessary to respond to threats, improve challenging relationships, deescalate conflict, and bring people in your community together to solve real problems and get shit done. You'll reduce stress, anxiety, and overwhelm, and become a more effective leader while having time for your family, yourself, your health, and your wealth, sleeping well at night, and showing others they can too. Now that's leadership. Healing our politics listeners receive 10% off all elected leaders collective services using the code hashtag political healer.
Skippy Mesirow:Use it today and become one of the brave political leaders healing our politics. Use code hashtag political healer by going to www.electedleaderscollective.com and starting today. That's www.electedleaderscollective.com and starting today.
Jerry Colonna:I am not responsible for my colleagues' inner state, but I can by properly deploying the power that I have to create space for them. I can make their experience a little bit easier, a little bit lighter. So if we broaden the definition of better leadership beyond, say, I know that you are drawn to the world of civic leadership. What if we measured political success, not by the adherence to or the maintenance of power, but by the changes wrought in society to make the lived experiences of those we're privileged to lead marginally, if not significantly better? Yeah.
Jerry Colonna:What if we had the highest graduation rates of high school? What if we had a society that valued life throughout its entire journey or the health and well-being? Right now, I'm fixated on teenagers post pandemic and the epidemics of depression and anxiety. For obvious reasons, I relate to those feelings. And yet that still does not feel to be a priority.
Jerry Colonna:So I would describe that as better civic leadership.
Skippy Mesirow:I can tell you there are a huge amount of leaders, civic leaders in this country, who do aspire to those things and find the exercise of that within the current system. And I would argue even cultural constraints and expectations, which is part of what we're talking about here, really hard to do. And in many ways, I think the call it the startup world or the corporate world, whatever you wanna call it, that you've been primarily working in, while it's certainly not in, in phase enlightenment yet, it's probably 30 years ahead of the public space in terms of being open and willing to do the internal work to recognize the totality of the human experience. There's a lag and there's a fear that in being my full self, in caring about myself, in thinking about the bigger picture, I will be kicked out of a club, not welcome, ridiculed, criticized. In many cases, people get death threats for things, or there's a ton of fear around what if I step into that zone.
Skippy Mesirow:I wonder what you would say to that and how to cultivate a sense of safety as you try to more fully activate a political leadership around those better as you describe them?
Jerry Colonna:Well, I think the common denominator in all of the realms of leadership that you're speaking about, whether it's startup leadership or corporate leadership. And to be a Fortune 500 CEO these days, for example, you might get whiplash where 5 years ago, you were told you had to have an authentic and fully robust DEI program. And now your stock may take a hit if you have a robust DEI program, or if you have a commitment to the environment as demonstrated in the policies and procedures, you somehow might lose your job. Okay? And I hear what you're saying about civic leadership, political leadership being challenged about being thrust out of the club.
Jerry Colonna:Mhmm. Okay. So now we're gonna talk a little bit about reunion. The subtitle of reunion is leadership and the longing to belong. And belonging, for me, is a stand in for the the entirety of love, safety, and belonging.
Jerry Colonna:It's the notion of us being creating a society where the human part of us is valued to the point where we all feel love, safety, and belonging, that there's this deep and profound longing that exists. And that our responsibility as those who hold power in any situation that we're in is to move towards creating those conditions. And I say this very specifically, move towards, not necessarily succeed. Mhmm. Because, unfortunately, we will fail.
Jerry Colonna:We will fall short. But the common denominator in the realms that we're talking about is that people have tried to do this work without first doing the inner work. And this is brings it all the way back to reboot and radical self inquiry. I'll give you a perfect example of what I'm talking about. So my famous question from reboot is, how have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want?
Jerry Colonna:Super powerful question. It's probably sent a 100000 people into therapy just putting that question out in the world. The corollary question, the follow on questions that I wrote about in reunion are how have I been complicit in and benefited from the conditions in the world I say I don't wanna see? Now that starts to speak to privilege, but the follow on question to that is most important. And it goes like this.
Jerry Colonna:What am I willing to give up that I love in order to see the world that I would like to see, in order to see a world of systemic belonging? And the reason that's really important is it requires radical self inquiry. So I'll take as an example. You said there are civic leaders all over who really would like to, and you don't understand, you didn't say this out loud, but you sort of implied it, how difficult it is. And I wanna acknowledge, it is fucking hard.
Jerry Colonna:It's also hard to be a corporate CEO to stand up to say the Bill Ackmans of the world. The question is, are you willing to give up membership in the club? Okay. James Baldwin, in a brilliant essay called The Price of the Ticket, and he spoke about the ticket to whiteness for the children and the immigrants, the descendants of immigrants from Europe, especially southern Europe, southern and central Europe, and their movement to the United States and into the hallowed ground of whiteness, the price of that ticket was to be disconnected from your own ancestors in your own past and your own experiences. Now we talked before about adverse experiences being in a sense a kind of rootedness in who we really are.
Jerry Colonna:What I write about in reunion is the fact that by disconnecting, changing our names, adopting attitudes, melting into the melting pot, if you will, it's a sim joining the club, if you will. We have to be willing to be thrust out of the club of safety in order for us to, at least for me, per speaking personally, in order for me to look myself in the eyes and say I did my best, I have to be willing to lose every one of my clients, every access point to that club. You know, that club, the white cisgender straight male club. Remember. I have to be willing to lose all of that for me to be the better human that I'm called to be.
Skippy Mesirow:There's such a tension between ideas here. Playing the momentum game, jumping around here, going back to your depression, suicidality. It's this separation, this isolation that drives that. We seek belonging, the recognition that we are all human, that we're all in this together in our diversity, and we gotta be willing to let that all go to find it.
Jerry Colonna:I wish there was a wisdom tradition that spoke about the dangers of attachment. Oh, right. Buddhism. But really, that's what you're talking about is that tension. We have to be willing to lose it all in order to have love, safety, and belonging to exist in a society.
Jerry Colonna:We have to be willing to lose stock gains. We have to be willing to think of the reverse. Think of that cartoon. I I wrote about this in reunion, That silly New Yorker cartoon with a guy sitting there with the remnants of a suit, sitting around a fireplace with a bunch of kids where he says, but for one brief shining moment, we had record breaking EBITDA. Right?
Jerry Colonna:It's a picture of dystopia. We have to be willing to let go of record breaking EBITDA to not end up in dystopia.
Skippy Mesirow:Yes. And this is going back to the conflation you highlighted, which is true because I get tangled in this web as much as anybody. The headlines that drive people and this is my observation. This may be wrong and please correct me if but the headlines that seem to drive people to work with you who are successful CEOs are the headlines I see that, you know, Jerry helps people raise the bottom line by making them cry. Right?
Skippy Mesirow:We always go back to this external justification for it. And within that dynamic, it's so hard to break free because the person who wants to prioritize public good, but is judged on whether they win an election or keep their job. It's tough. Right? You get into this Chinese finger trap of a mind game.
Skippy Mesirow:And I wonder how you help people break out of that while also recognizing, I mean, you were and again, my observation, but fortunate to have collected the proverbial lemon drops to put you into a physically safe position to do this work. Right? Those things also do matter. We practice non attachment, but from nice homes between us, you know, in nice places in Colorado. There's a contradiction there possibly.
Skippy Mesirow:And I wonder what you think about that.
Jerry Colonna:I don't know that it's a contradiction, but I think it's a reality. And the reality is that having enough of a quote nest egg, not nearly as much as say colleagues, but enough gave me a privileged position from which to first do the inner work that I spent 20 years doing. And then trying in these last few years to connect that inner work to an outer work. What is my obligation as an elder? Because that's how I see myself right now.
Jerry Colonna:And I acknowledge that there's a certain amount of physical safety that exists in the fact that I earned a certain amount of wealth. And I acknowledge that much of that earning came about because of the MEATS Act that I have and the way the world responded to that. Those are true. When I was preparing the book, I was just talking to some of the folks in the marketing team. It was just about a year ago.
Jerry Colonna:And, Skippy, I think you and I met 11 months ago, right, in May at summit at sea. And we were talking about, okay, what's gonna happen when you go out into the world and you start poking the spear, Jerry?
Skippy Mesirow:Mhmm.
Jerry Colonna:And I was fully expecting all sorts of pushback from the left and from the right. The pushback I expected was a good job. Yeah. But but the pushback I expected was you're a traitor to the race. The pushback I got was I disagree that a business person should be focused on worrying about whether or not there's belonging in the organization.
Jerry Colonna:I can argue with that. The pushback from the left, which I expected was more along the lines of you're not doing a good enough job speaking. Oh, here you are as a privileged white male speaking about things like equity or the lack of equity or lack of inclusivity. And I was really focused on making sure that I wasn't going out in the world and proposing an alternate framework for DEI work. What I was really trying to do is identify what I believe to be some of the important foundational work that's necessary for those programs to succeed.
Jerry Colonna:What I got in a couple of instances was, who are you to speak of these things? And my response was, who am I to not speak of these things? Because there is a responsibility that we all have to speak of these things, whether or not we have the privilege. Right? Because if those of us who experience power as a result of privilege choose not to speak, then our silence is complicity and maybe even be perceived as a cent that we agree that, as we were saying before the recording started, that babies should be shot for ideology.
Jerry Colonna:Because that's the world we're in. People are killed in a nightclub because of who they love and how they love. Worshippers are gunned down in temples because of how they respond to the divine. Who are we to not speak about these things? How dare we stay silent?
Skippy Mesirow:Argue for those of us who are in the public space, whether we are police officers or directors of sustainability or mayors, Congress people, we do have a responsibility to prioritize belonging because without belonging, there will be no system for our quote unquote team or our quote unquote best policies to work within. The system of democracy is one that requires divergent ideas. That's what makes it unique from autocracy or fascism or communism is a diversity of ideas. And we have to be able to see those who have different ideas as human beings, as the same, so that we can work together. Because when we stop doing that and there are examples on the Left and the Right throughout history.
Skippy Mesirow:This is not something that happens in one side of the political spectrum when we exile those who think differently as others. It ends in catastrophe and societal collapse for whatever country it's in, and those who remain do not reap the spoils. They're sitting there in the ashes with the EBITDA guy.
Jerry Colonna:Yeah. So I agree with everything you've said, and I take it one step even further. Mhmm. Because the call to support democracy with divergent ideas reminds me a little bit of the call to do the radical self inquiry inner work as a foundational component of good financial outcomes. Mhmm.
Jerry Colonna:And I wanna be very clear. Those are true, by the way. But the call to do the work that we're talking about comes from a morality. And I'm an old fart. I'm 60 years old, getting older by the day.
Skippy Mesirow:Most of us are.
Jerry Colonna:And I let's hope. And I think it's okay to call forth the better angels of our nature. I think it's morally responsible to do these things even if it doesn't improve our bottom line.
Skippy Mesirow:Mhmm.
Jerry Colonna:I think that we have a moral responsibility to speak because we're human beings. I think it's because it's a manifestation of our basic goodness, our Buddha nature to stand up against injustice, to stand up against suffering.
Skippy Mesirow:And if to do these things, we inherently take risks, well placed risks, I would suggest, what do we stand to gain? What is the reason to do this work? When you look at the people you've worked with over decades now or close to decades now? What would they reliably report as the benefit?
Jerry Colonna:We spend a good amount of time talking about depression. Yeah. We spend a good amount of time talking about, let's break down words, disease. I remember many years ago, I did an appearance on a report for CNN called Mostly Human in which, it was interviewed about the prevalence of depression in Silicon Valley. And afterwards, the head of learning and development for a very large software company called me and said to me that, health care claims for anxiety and depression amongst the children of this company's senior executives have been up 35, 45%.
Jerry Colonna:And I would argue that one pathway to alleviating that suffering is for people to lean into the work that we've been talking about. So I think that that is one of the benefits, one of the outcomes. But now I'm gonna say something even challenging. We're supposed to do the right thing even if it doesn't benefit us. And that's the reality.
Skippy Mesirow:Yeah.
Jerry Colonna:In fact, we're supposed to put out of our mind the possibility of a concrete positive outcome. That is the essence of a moral act. It's we're supposed to leave a gift for a neighbor without a tag on it saying, from Jerry. Right? We're supposed to do the right thing for the benefit of doing the right thing.
Skippy Mesirow:Yes. And I would not even argue. I would just reflect experientially that in my own life, when I've chosen to make decisions of integrity, conviction, openness, even when those were challenging, requiring saying something hard to a loved one, for instance, or supporting something that I knew would be a loser at the polls when I've been able to fully be exercised in my morality, taking your word, probably not one I would use. And integrity, definitely a word I would use.
Jerry Colonna:We I like that word too.
Skippy Mesirow:And the benefit to me internally, despite whatever happens externally, is immense. This sense of fulfillment, ease, energy, simultaneously, what you might think of or talk about as equanimity is hyper present. And even when that's preceded by a very challenging act, I find that to be a tremendous reward that calls me back time and time again even when I fail intermittently in between. Do you find that?
Jerry Colonna:Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's what I was trying to link back to when we had that discussion about depression and the experiences of that. Part of the growth into adulthood is that, to use the language from before, adults do the right thing regardless, and that's arguably courage. And when we look back over the course of this country's history, we lionize that kind of courage.
Jerry Colonna:We tend to recognize it after the fact rather than while we're in it.
Skippy Mesirow:Yes.
Jerry Colonna:But I just finished reading The Soul of America by John Meacham.
Skippy Mesirow:That's
Jerry Colonna:right. I highly recommend it. Yeah. And it's a good way of reminding our ourselves that we have been here before repeatedly. We have faced the forces of mendacity.
Jerry Colonna:And again, I'm not taking a stance, right stance or left stance. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the forces of mendacity, the forces that would twist the experience of being a human citizen into service of 1 ego, one ideal, a kind of authoritarian psychological dominance that you have spoken about before. And we are stronger when we rise against that impulse. In the same way that we are healthier as human beings when we do the right thing.
Skippy Mesirow:Okay. This is a great kind of last thing to touch on because I think this one's very hard for me and others to wrap our heads around. You talk about the ending of othering, of universal belonging, and then there's also the call to fight against these forces. And I'm curious how these things can live in concert. I've observed this candidly when I lived in Boulder as the place that I saw it the most.
Skippy Mesirow:People who outwardly extolled the importance of acceptance. No human being is illegal, etcetera. But, oh, I would never date a conservative. Oh, I can't talk to them. They're a blank supporter.
Skippy Mesirow:And it's like, okay. So we're we're open minded to everything, but people who disagree with us. Got it. And so often, those forces I mean, let's just look back in history to defangle any biases. I'm a Jewish person.
Skippy Mesirow:I grew up in a fairly Jewish community, many, Holocaust survivors there. But when I think back to those times in Germany, and I'm in my heart, I can't think about the people who were so broken is not the word. None of us are broken, but we're so affected by life in a negative way that their reaction was to perpetrate that cruelty outwards in such a horrific way. And those people must have felt exceptionally separate. And so fighting against them is only going to reinforce that feeling of separation and drive the behavior, and yet it's hard to open one's heart and love and bring in those you're fighting against simultaneously.
Skippy Mesirow:So it's a very long question slash observation, but how do you make sense of that?
Jerry Colonna:There are a couple of teachings I would bring your attention to. Couple of wisdom traditions that that help us in these times, and the impulse to meet violence with violence, for example Yeah. Is quite human. The impulse to meet intolerance with intolerance is quite human. I would bring your attention to loving kindness, the Buddhist concept of loving kindness, and best articulated by my teacher Sharon Salzberg in the book, loving kindness.
Jerry Colonna:And there is a really, really difficult meditation that she teaches in which we seek to send loving kindness to people. Right? And we start off with the people that are easy to send it to. People that with whom we agree and people that we love and people that and then eventually, you end up with people that you just fundamentally and profoundly can't bear to be with. And many times, it may be someone who is physically threatening you or those you love.
Jerry Colonna:When I talk about speaking up against the forces of mendacity, I did not say fighting. Okay? And so for that, I turn to the wisdom traditions of non violence. Whether it's Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King at times in his career or even the work of Marshall Rosenberg in nonviolent communications. Or I'm reading another book right now.
Jerry Colonna:I'll soon finish it by Bill Urie, who cowrote Getting to Yes years years ago and has spent 50 years as a mediator. He's got a new book called Possible. And he tells the story of helping the Trump administration respond to Kim Jong Un because what was at risk was nuclear annihilation.
Skippy Mesirow:Mhmm.
Jerry Colonna:Okay. And his telling of what the advice of counsel was, which led to that crazy moment where Donald Trump steps into North Korean territory over the DMZ zone and all of this stuff. And yet what Uri brought me up to was to realize, wait, wait, wait. Nuclear annihilation. Okay?
Jerry Colonna:Nuclear annihilation. This is profoundly important. And one of the most important lessons is we're not going to get to the place of reunion. We're not gonna get to the place of a pervasive and systemic sense of belonging until and if we are willing to hear those with whom we disagree and what their feelings are. Yeah.
Jerry Colonna:And that's really hard stance. Yeah. This is why it's critically important that we do that in our work so that the house of belonging that we endeavor to build is built on a foundation of what is my reactivity? What is my aggression? Right?
Jerry Colonna:Because it's just as aggressive to annihilate a conservative person because they're conservative as it is to annihilate a progressive libtard because they're progressive.
Skippy Mesirow:Yeah. Just to make it specific, and we'll link to so many amazing resources that you've mentioned in the show notes. But to make that specific, let's imagine there's a school board member. School boards are very hot button right now. People care a lot about their kids, and they have very different opinions on what their kids should learn.
Skippy Mesirow:And this school board member is at a meeting, and somebody's coming in to give comment. And from the moment that comment starts, their internal proverbial hair is on fire, and they are just having a huge reaction to this person. What do they do with that energy to get back to the place that you were talking about?
Jerry Colonna:Breathe. Take a breath. Ascertain and discern whether this threat that you're feeling is as existentially threatening as it feels. Dial down the reactivity. Dial down the judgment.
Jerry Colonna:Lean into the possible understanding that person loves their children as much as you do. And that their interpretation of the world of threats to their child is what's leading them to be at that microphone saying the things that you profoundly and fundamentally disagree with. Because here's the thing. Polarization does not create a world of unity. I mean, it sounds obvious when we say it.
Jerry Colonna:Yes. But harden not your heart. And I get it. It's hard. But that person at the microphone has Buddha nature.
Jerry Colonna:Even though the the words they're using just feel so offensive, feel so threatening. And, yes, it's unfair because you're gonna be asked to do this work and not be met by someone, quote, on the other side who's doing the same work. That is true. And what do we do? Sit back and wait for everybody to be better human before we attempt to be a better human ourselves?
Skippy Mesirow:You're gonna be waiting a while.
Jerry Colonna:You're gonna be waiting a while. That's right.
Skippy Mesirow:I love that. So 5 simple steps is what I heard when we're feeling that sense of reactivity. Connect with the breath. Call the internal nervous system. Check-in with the threat.
Skippy Mesirow:Is this as big as I think it is? Be aware of the judgment that you're holding. Find compassion for the other person and find a tether of shared humanity. And from that place, exercise curiosity. It's kind of how I heard that.
Jerry Colonna:That's it. You got it. That was better articulated than what I said.
Skippy Mesirow:It's really good source material. So final question, same one that goes to every guest is our audience are not passive observers. They are the proverbial humans in the arena. And if you could leave them with just one thing, one quote, one practice, one idea, one task, one anything that would best resource them to be a vector for healing our politics by starting with themselves, what would you leave them with?
Jerry Colonna:Well, the first thing I would actually convey is gratitude. Mhmm. This is hard work, and I appreciate the work that you do. The second thing is, man, I would quote rabbi Tarfon from the Talmud, and I quote him in Reunion. And that this is really important to recall.
Jerry Colonna:And what he wrote millennia ago was that it is not ours to complete the work, but neither are we at liberty to neglect the work. There's so much wisdom in that statement and so much hope in that statement. And what the rabbi taught gives us the ability to understand that we may not succeed, but we're called to do the work anyway. And I think that that's really, really important because what we're talking about is changing hearts and minds. It may take generations, but we have to do the work regardless.
Skippy Mesirow:Beautiful. If people wanna find you, find the coaching programs that you run, the books, anything you would like to lead people to, website, social media, or otherwise?
Jerry Colonna:Yeah. You can find out all things Gerry related, but more importantly, Reboot the company related at reboot.io. We're on all the socials there as well, Instagram, Facebook, blah blah blah, LinkedIn, whatever. But the important thing is that we have a ton of really great free resources that we make available. We have courses.
Jerry Colonna:We have books. We have things that are available to people so that they can go deeper on some of this work, and you can find that all through reboot dot I
Skippy Mesirow:o. Thank you. Jerry, thank you so much for your time. It has been really a blessing to have you here. Your work, how you show up in this world have really been a blessing and continue to be a blessing in my life.
Skippy Mesirow:So thank you very much for that.
Jerry Colonna:Thanks for having me, Skippy, and thanks for being such a willing coconspirator.
Skippy Mesirow:Guilty as charged. Let's go. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you wanna put what you have heard here today into practice, sign up for our newsletter, the leader's handbook, where each month you'll receive just one email with a curated selection of the most useful tools and practices discussed on this podcast today and over the course of the last month. Delivered in simple how to worksheets, videos, and audio guides, so you and your teams can try and test these out in your own life and see what best serves you.
Skippy Mesirow:And lastly, if you wanna be a vector for healing our politics, if you wanna do your part, take out your phone right now and share this podcast with 5 colleagues you care about. Send a simple text, drop a line, and leave the ball in their court. Because the truth is, the more those around you do their work, the better it will show up in your life, in your community, and in your world. Have a beautiful day. The Healing Hour Politics podcast is brought to you by the Elected Leaders Collective, the first leading and most highly recognized name in mental health, well-being, and performance coaching for elected leaders and public servants designed specifically for you.
Skippy Mesirow:Now don't be fooled by the name. The Elected Leaders Collective is not just for elected leaders. It is for all public servants, staffers, volunteers, government, nonprofit, whole organizations. This is for you. If you are filled with passion for improving your community and world but are tired as I am of the anger, stress, and vitriol, if you find yourself banging your head against that same wall, struggling with the incoming criticism and threats, arguing with colleagues who are supposed to be on your team and questioning if it's even worth it any more than the elected leaders collective programming is specifically for you.
Skippy Mesirow:With the Elected Leaders Collective, you will learn to become a hashtag political healer, building the authentic unshakable confidence and courage to stay true to yourself through the anger and pressure while cultivating the open empathetic mind to meet others with the curiosity, compassion, and kindness necessary to respond to threats, improve challenging relationships, deescalate conflict, and bring people in your community together to solve real problems and get shit done. You'll reduce stress, anxiety, and overwhelm and become a more effective leader while having time for your family, yourself, your health, and your wealth, sleeping well at night, and showing others they can too. Now that's leadership. Healing our politics listeners receive 10% off all elected leaders collective services using the code hashtag political healer. Use it today and become one of the brave political leaders healing our politics.
Skippy Mesirow:Use code hashtag political healer by going to www.electedleaderscollective.com and starting today. That's www.electedleaderscollective.com and starting today.