SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Beat the Prosecution, presented by Northern Virginia criminal defense and DUI lawyer Jonathan Katz, where we are here to regularly present you information and ideas for beating your prosecution as best as possible. Nothing on any of our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or for individuals who have paid for a consultation. And now for your host, John Katz.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

Hello, everybody. This is John Katz at Beat the Prosecution. I'm a criminal defense and DUI defense lawyer here in Fairfax, Northern Virginia. I am delighted to have Joe Weston with us today. I've known him for years. He's going to tell you what he does, but I know the things that he includes is conflict prevention and uh knowing that uh night chronic niceness is a chronic pain in everyone's butt. At least that's the way that I call it. He doesn't call it that way. Go find him at JoeWeston.com. Find him at fiercecivility.org. He's got two books. I thought I had at least one on my bookshelf. Maybe it's at home. It starts with uh uh respectful confrontation. I went to his workshop on that many years ago, and then that was followed up by Fierce Civility. Um see his TED Talk, definitely. I was I started listening to that uh today about going into the jail and how uh Joe turned around the situation without doing direct confrontation with this man named uh uh Sam, which always reminds me of Green Eggs and Ham. Uh but Sam at the jail tried to take control of where Joe would sit, and Joe would have nothing about it. But see see that uh TEDx uh talk about how Joe handled it. With that, Joe Weston, please introduce yourself to everybody.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Hi, John. It's great to be here with you. It really is. My name's Joe Weston. Uh I call myself an international facilitator, trainer, coach, consultant, uh, author, speaker, and advocate for lasting peace. And uh uh I do work around the world in corporations and government agencies. I was originally born in New York. I currently live in the Netherlands. I travel around the world to do my work. I've done a lot of work in the Middle East, working with women's rights organizations and conflict zones, working with severely wounded combat veterans, and as John mentioned, working with uh incarcerated men.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

Okay, Joe, uh so you call yourself a coach?

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

What brought you to doing this uh kind of uh work or whatever you call it, uh this path in your life?

SPEAKER_01 2:52

It's a it's an interesting journey. So people often ask, as my again, the the first methodology I developed is called respectful confrontation. The second one is fierce civility, as you mentioned. And people often ask, why, Joe, why are you so attracted to conflict and confrontation? And I say, Well, I grew up in New York City. Every day was an examination of confrontation and conflict. And uh we have to learn how to navigate, how to be around millions of people in very small places and just the energy. And I also grew up, my childhood was pretty volatile, sometimes violent. So I understood and had to track conflict as a young boy. And always, and and in all of that, I had to find strategies to survive, of course. And uh I've always asked the question, though, while I was in this experience, why is it, even though we know better, even though we're a relatively intelligent species, where we have all information we need at our fingertips, we we uh we we we we can get any kind of information. Uh technologically we're advanced. Why is it even though we know better, we still have arguments and fights? And on a larger scale, crime and war and hunger. And that's taken me through my entire life with all the work I've done. One of the most significant, important things that happened to me was as a young man. I was very wound up, as you can imagine, uh, where I how I was growing up. And someone said, Joe, you really need to meditate. And I said, Oh, I couldn't meditate, I couldn't sit still that long. So he said, What about tai chi? That's like meditation in motion. And John, as you know, that changed my life. I uh began to understand mind-body connection. It helped me understand what it meant to go within and do inner reflection. Uh, I was able to understand force and dynamic of energy and and how that uh shapes how we engage with people if we come in in an aggressive way or if we come in in a more assertive way. And that really shifted things, and that opened me up to more Eastern philosophies, Taoism. And as you know, I'm I've been practicing now Tai Chi and Taoism for uh 40 years now, uh, and Tibetan Buddhism now, more than 30 years. And that really shaped a lot of my thoughts around the importance of wisdom, the importance of compassion, and understanding this the aspects of that, the aspects of uh being mindful of your actions and the consequences of that in terms of who are you harming someone or is or you're being harmed. And I took all of that in a lot and learning transformational healing and coaching and um human dynamics and human behavior work. And that's when I started this first body of work called Respectful Confrontation, which was uh I was in the Netherlands when I was developing all of this. I decided to come back to the States. I was in the San Francisco Bay Area first and then in Washington, DC. And for me, what the respectful confrontation was was to help people, myself and people that I was seeing, learn how to stand, have the courage and the skills to stand in your power, speak your truth, get your needs met in a way where you don't get harmed and other people don't get harmed. Because I was seeing, yeah. I'm listening. Okay. No, because I was just seeing that there were a lot of people who had something to share who wanted to have an impact, but what weren't feeling confident or courageous enough to do it. And I was also seeing that people with the best intentions would walk around with what I call chronic niceness, as you mentioned, with a big loving uh smile on their face, but can still say and do the most harmful things to one another. And we don't, and we don't realize that right now it might cause, not it might not cause severe harm, but down the road, it erodes relationships, it erodes personal relationships, work relationships, and the integrity of those things. So that was uh I was on that path for individuals, and then suddenly I started getting asked by organizations, including NASA, where I worked for 12 years doing this respectful uh confrontation work. And that's what I took into working with the combat veterans and in the Middle East. And I can go on and on, and and I guess it comes from a deep conviction within myself that I've always had my, you know, of wanting to be of service, of that question I had, of wanting to really get to the root cause of what causes us to harm one another. And then with the with the with the eastern philosophies, this this sense of really uh what can I do to be of support uh to other people who are suffering.

SPEAKER_02 7:32

So you grew up in Queens, what part of Queens? Flushing Queens, where they have one of the biggest Chinatowns in the world right now.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Yeah, yeah. It was Flushing Kew Gardens. I grew up, I grew up on the street that uh uh Paul Simon grew up on. Um his mother was my third grade teacher, Belle Simon. And uh I'm very proud of growing up in Queens and New York.

SPEAKER_02 7:58

And uh what year were you born?

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Why are you asking me that, John?

SPEAKER_02 8:03

Because I'm trying to see how much we're contemporaries since I grew up the road in Fairfield, Connecticut.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

All right. I grew up, I was born in 1964.

SPEAKER_02 8:11

So you're a year younger than I. So while you were dealing with uh your ups and downs in Queens, I was uh growing up in Fairfield, and for four years I went to this summer camp that had a bunch of New Yorkers, northern New Jersey, and Long Islanders, and what I learned with them was competition. But I I'll I'll look uh within, you know, it all starts from ourselves. I didn't learn to be warm and fuzzy with those folks. If if I want to learn to be warm and fuzzy, that had to be myself. This was all competition, etc. So are you willing to share uh what these struggles were that you were having as you were growing up?

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Um I I don't think I would. I'd would rather uh um move on to how I turned that into my uh my gifts in a sense. You know, we we uh yeah, that's that would that that's okay with you.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

Let's do that. What form of Tai Chi Chuan do you practice?

SPEAKER_01 9:04

It's uh short form, um Yang Yang short form. Is it the Chiang Man Chang style? Changman Shen style, yeah. Yeah, the same one that I do. Yeah, it's beautiful and it's beautiful. And it's uh it is so powerful. And you know, I I I also did some Aikido and I bring in in all of the work I do, whether it's at NASA or with CEOs or or in the conflict zones, I bring in the Tai Chi, I bring in the martial arts uh to help people really feel in their body uh a definition that I have of resilience, which I would say is presence, awareness, balance, and flow. And also to understand that uh how to work with force. Because as you know, with tai chi, what you learn is to take the force of another and and and and and shift it. Or in Aikido, you take the force of another to get out of the way, you pivot the energy away. And that's really key with the with the respectful confrontation work, and particularly with the fierce fear civility came later as a response for me of the extreme polarization we're facing in the world right now. And uh, because for me, this idea of with the extremes on the left and the right, and and of this uh need to hold on to this idea of severe need to say, I'm right and you're wrong, or I'm all good and you're all bad, or I need to win and therefore you have to lose. That's what's that's an interpolarity that's causing the external polarization we're seeing. And when you get stuck in that, it causes stagnation. It's like two Rams who are pushing their heads against each other and they just keep pushing. And all of that energy and exertion is going into pushing and thinking somehow that if you just push harder, you're gonna win. But that doesn't work. It just wears you out and exhausts you. And that's what we're seeing play out in the world. So the idea of the fierce ability bringing in the Tai Chi principles and the Aikido principles is to say what happens if those RAMs, if one of them just pivots the energy and just shifts the energy, right? It changes something. It it gets it gets out of stagnation into flow again and movement, where there suddenly is possibility. And I would imagine that uh litigators can translate that, you know, in terms of how do you find ways if you feel that there's a there's a that you're stuck in uh uh not being able to find movement, where can you find the pivot that can shift the energy to your advantage uh or to the advantage of just getting to a solution?

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Well, for me, it's a lot of it's about applying tai chi and push hands at all times. Uh, do you engage in push-hands practice?

SPEAKER_01 11:55

I've done that, yeah. I've studied that. And I bring that into when I'm when I'm training trainers, we do some push hands to understand that principle. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

And so uh just this past Saturday, after being away from it for being out of town numerous times in weather, I was back at push hands after a few weeks with uh two of the greatest practitioners in the area. And you know, so after I do push hands when I'm in court, it's just a continuation of the push hands. And when I'm doing push hands, it gets a continuation of what I'm doing in court. And it was really something that uh uh I'll tell you about the prune juice challenge in a moment that keeps me not missing uh Tai Chi even in a day. But one day when I realized I hadn't done Tai Chi that day yet and I was finished with court, I was uh about to enter the uh courthouse and I started doing Tai Chi uh right outside the courthouse. And 30 minutes later, a prosecutor said to me, I received an email from one of my colleagues that you were doing Tai Chi, so let them know that I'm doing that. Uh so my prune juice challenge is that um my assistant bought a jar of prune juice when I said, I think I uh I'm not supposed to be uh creating an exception for prosecutors and judges and cops to be able to badmouth them worse than anyone else. So if I uh create a discrimination like that for them, I'll drink prune juice online, which scares me more than probably I I might like prune juice, but I I'm assuming that I will hate it.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

It's good for you. I'm gonna give them my queen's accent. It's good for you, Jane. It's good for you.

SPEAKER_02 13:28

So I've announced to the world that if I even miss a day of tai chi, I'm gonna drink prune juice online. So next week will be one year that I've never missed a day of it. Um so who have been your teachers beyond your Tai Chi teacher to do this? And how much of this is your own inspiration? And how much time did you uh spend with the Dalai Lama being your teacher or any of his uh uh underlings being your teachers?

SPEAKER_01 13:53

I um I've been many teachers uh in Tai Chi, mostly in the Chengmong Shen tradition. Uh, I've also done a lot of work with Taoist uh uh alchemists, with uh Taoist uh uh energy masters from China, uh learning more of the subtle energies and the subtle uh through the body. In terms of Buddhism, I had my main teacher, uh Geshe Sunam Gelsen, who was uh who was uh uh at five years old, went to a Tibetan monastery. And with the Dalai Lama, they the they walked over the Himalayas to escape uh Chinese oppression, uh, to create a life for themselves in monasteries in India. And he's been my main teacher, and I've studied with many other lamas and teachers uh in San Francisco and and uh as well in the US and as well as in India and and and Tibetan traditions. Uh I have worked with the Dalai Lama, I have uh had teachings from him, and it's always the same with the the the with these teachers. There's there's just a genuine sense of love, a genuine sense of um uh compassion, uh there's joy, um and and at the same time there's a presence and a fierceness in terms of keeping, especially with Westerners, to help Westerners with their Western minds, uh which which can be very distracting. And they do that with love. And um and I'm very inspired by that. And and that really has like I said, I I I've been by practicing it, it cultivates within me a genuine feeling of I I want to be of service. And I don't know if you know this, but certainly from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, when you talk about love and compassion, the definition of love is the desire to make someone happy and acting on that desire. And the definition of compassion is the desire to alleviate the suffering of another and acting on that desire. And uh so so these are verbs, right? These aren't states of being, these aren't feelings or emotional states. This is a way of life to be able to wake, it's a practice to wake up and say, who can I make happy today? Who who can I help alleviate their suffering today? And we and and the belief of that, and you if you don't believe it, try it and get get back to me and let me know what to think. Try it, and you'll notice it'll you'll become lighter. You'll feel like you have more purpose and meaning. And I would imagine a lot of I would imagine, and the beauty of it, John, as you know, is that you can learn it and you can develop it more, but some of us are born with just a natural instinct for that. Why do some lawyers become public defenders and others become contract lawyers? It's not there's no good or bad in that. It's simply, I believe, that those people who just decide to choose the life of a public defender have already within them that sense of a desire to alleviate the suffering of others and acting on that desire.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

So, um what do you think about uh the the uh the following scenario about an interaction I had with the prosecutor and whether you would have done it differently? There was this prosecutor who uh with his straight face said, Here's your play offer. I said, Okay, I'll I'll get back to you. And as a lawyer, I have to tell my client about what the play offer is. And uh I told my client, and um as he was thinking about it, the prosecutor said um he switched gears. I mean, I said, The prosecutor, let me just make sure what your play offer is. And he uh uh one aspect of it, I just want to make sure. And then the prosecutor did an almost avowed face and everything. And I said, Well, you know, maybe you haven't represented private people before. You're free to change your play offer at any time before it's accepted. I mean, it's just like when you go to buy a used car, the used car salesperson can change the offer before you accept it. I said, I'm gonna lose total trust uh from my client this way. Uh, do it as you want. Uh and then things totally flipped around there uh where he wouldn't stop apologizing to me for having done that. He returned to the original plea offer. Well, he maybe even got something better. And he apologized so many times, at least five or six times. Like, I was at the point of saying, Well, you shut up already. You're bothering me. Uh, I mean, was there anything better I could have done there? You know, I certainly, you know, didn't didn't tell him that that there was something off about him. I just said, you know, this is just a non-starter, then with negotiation. Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

No, I don't, I don't, I don't know if this is not a question of better, it worked, right? So as long as it worked, then you did the then you did what you needed to do. Uh, but it is an interesting thing. So what you're I love that you're bringing this up. The most favorite part of the trainings is what I call, yeah, but what if. When I when people finally understand what respectful confrontation is, fear civility is, and how it could work, then they're like, oh yeah, but that's not gonna work with my boss, or that's not gonna work with my mother. And then they come with scenarios, and then I and then one for one, I show them that there's another way of approaching it. And and I'll give a context to it, and then I'll end, and then I'll give you a direct answer to the question. The work is around understanding nervous system regulation. So uh uh, because and basically what it is is someone, whether they whether this prosecutor did it consciously or not, it was an attack on a certain level to throw you off balance, to come with a plea and then come with another plea. And if you are not grounded, if you're not, um, if your nervous system's not regulated, you're gonna get thrown and you're gonna go into a fight-flight-freeze response. And either you're gonna go back, which you and you didn't do any of those, you're gonna go back and just say, How dare you do that? I'm gonna take you down, right? That's the fight. Or, you know what, I can't even deal with this right now. Let's talk about this another time. That's the flight. Or say, um, uh, okay, whatever you say, that's the freeze. And on some level, again, we do it to each other all the time fight, flight, freeze. Uh um uh not fight, flight, but these, these ways of triggering each other that result in the fight, flight, freeze. But on some level, because you have your practice, you were able to stay regulated, stay centered, stay connected to yourself, connect with the other person, and then approach them in a way that was respectful and confrontational. Where you were able to say, listen, you know, that's that's that's from my experience, that's not the way it works. And this is the way it works. So, so and that so I would say that your approach was good. I might not have started with maybe you're new at this. Because and you get you're laughing, so you get what I mean, right? So, so that's not a good starting point. But it's so, you know, and that's funny, John, because that in in the TEDx talk I do, A Cure for Chronic Niceness, you know, you mentioned that uh I talk about fear civility, but I talk about I started with an incident, my first day working for four years at a California state prison. And I shouldn't say working, I was a religious, they called me a religious volunteer. And I was uh uh working, uh I worked in two units. I would go one day and I would work uh in in the the less security unit where it was mostly people, but mostly a lot of men who were sleeping 36 beds in a room and they they didn't have any silence, so they would come just for my session just to have a little bit of silence. But the lifers that I worked with, the high security unit that I worked in, these were people practitioners of Buddhism. And I cultivated a beautiful deep relationship with all of them over four years. We became like brothers with a lot of challenges, and and we could confront each other and we cried with each other, we laughed with each other, we grew with each other, and um and I had to win their trust and claim my authority. And I I talk about in the TEDx that uh what I had to do that first day when the alpha. Of the group basically came in and said, This is my territory. And I had choices. I could either acquiesce and be chronically nice and say, okay, whatever, but that wasn't, I wasn't going to be an effective teacher, or I could have challenged him and said, hey, this is my territory, which wouldn't have been, which could have been messy. But I found a solution. And I won't tell you what the solution was, what I did, because you should watch the TEDx, but I talk about four tools that I use in moments like that when you do feel stuck, like either I'm going to have to fight or I'm going to have to give in. And that's why fear civility, why I developed it, because part of the stagnation we're in right now, John, is I believe is that we've got bullies and we've got people who let the bullies be the bullies. And the problem with the people who don't want to be bullies is that, you know, you know, because so the work I do is how can you confront a bully without becoming a bully? And because we don't have those skills, we end up not doing anything and the bullies continue to win. It's shifting. I think it's going to shift, but what we're seeing right now is uh as a society that still allows the bullies to win. So the four tools are uh in in a moment like that of high tension, where you have to make a choice in in uh immediately is first you regulate your nervous system. Because your nervous system is in an extreme fight-flight freeze. You're not and when you are in extreme, and I would like you all to think about this, that when you go into a tr for a trial, when you go into high-stakes situations, your nervous system is highly activated. The stress hormones are off the charts. And and that wears you down if you're in that constant state of high stress. That's why it's important to learn skills like Tai Chi and meditation to downregulate, to regulate the nervous system to come to balance. But when you're in that state of fight-flight-freeze, you can't, it's hard to access your critical thinking.

unknown 24:03

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

It's hard to do effective decision making.

unknown 24:06

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

And it is certainly impossible to access your heart and compassion. And I think that's what we're seeing in the world. The world system is doing a great job of keeping all of us dysregulated and disconnected and isolated. And as long as we all all citizens stay disconnected and isolated from one another, the world system can continue to do what it's doing. So I say the most rebellious thing, radical, revolutionary, rebellious thing we can do at this moment, at this time in our history, is do practices to get regulated and self-care so that we're physically vital, emotionally stable, and mentally um clear, and cultivate and deepen our relationships. So the first thing is regulate the nervous system in that high stress moment. The next thing is meet the other where they are, which we forget. And oftentimes we we we we either talk down to people or we see them as the enemy, and they might be the enemy, but and maybe there are some situations where we can't do fierce facility because it's dangerous and it's not safe, then don't. But how do you find a way to meet the other where they are? Find the common ground. And then from there you create safety and trust. And then the last step is get collaborative buy-in, where you work towards win-win solutions.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

So you do that phrase collaborative what?

SPEAKER_01 25:39

Buy-in. Buy-in. Okay, got it. And you know, and I can see that that's that's great for negotiators, for mediators, for lawyers, the whole process. Regulate your nervous system. When your nervous system is regulated, it's scientifically proven that if your nervous system is regulated, another person's nervous system is going to get regulated as well. And regulated simply means calm and balance. It's it's it's called co-regulation. Um so imagine walking into a tense situation where you have to do a plea. If you're regulated and connected to your heart and connected to yourself, and then you connect to the other and meet them where they are, you're gonna get them more receptive. They're gonna be more willing to work with you. And then you create an environment of safety and trust that even if they're not gonna like what's being discussed, they still feel, well, even if they don't cognitively think this, but their nervous system feels I can trust this situation, then there's gonna be more of an opening towards collaborative buy-in.

SPEAKER_02 26:40

Okay, so what's your thought on the uh following next scenario? I had such venom towards this judge for not enabling me to stay overnight at Vegas for a conference. I had to take a red eye back for a bench trial, and I had such venom towards the prosecutor for getting a postponement over my objection uh of the trial, and then not uh uh not agreeing to work with my schedule over it because of uh their uh uh witnesses' needs. So um I'm leaving the airport, and luckily I got a good chuckle because as I'm leaving the airport in Vegas to take my red eye back, I bump into a lawyer I know, and we had a good laugh as we're passing each other. He's arriving and I'm leaving. And uh so I go into the courtroom and I don't say a word to my opponent because I knew that there was nothing to settle. Uh, and I went in front of that same judge who had denied me the continuance. I erased from my mind any anger I had towards the judge. And as I often say, look, you know, we we try we criminal defense laws, we only tell about our wins, I guess. This was a win. And I won the trial, and one of the ways I won the trial, I think, was that I had erased my anger towards the judge. My venom was still full force uh towards the opponent. My client was sitting there bewildered about how I got the win. Uh the judge was just enjoying it uh completely. I got it dismissed based on, we won't call it a technicality, but it was a technicality of sorts. Uh now, did I win partly despite myself, though, because I still had that venom towards the opponent.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Um, yeah, let's see, where do I go with that? So um what the first thing that comes to mind is that is to I and maybe you did that, is to remember that despite your feelings towards the judge and the prosecutor, you're there for your client. And that in the end, you have to behave in a way that's going to benefit the client, not you. And and I don't know, I'm not a lawyer, but I and but I know enough lawyers, and I and and and I've done enough work around mediation and and and negotiation and high-stakes conversations like this. And I think that that's an important element that could neutralize some of the anger, at least at the moment, so that at least walking in there, you say, okay, they may have done this personally towards me, or they're just they're they're whatever it is, I can I have my venom towards them, and I have to act appropriately for my client. And and I think that shifts something because that brings you back to your heart and your humanity, and you remember why you're doing this work. Uh the the so I would say there's a self-care element that you could still do, even is that you know, you did the appropriate thing. You were you were you were activated when you were still in Vegas, you were very activated. You were probably screaming and and and all of that, and even on the way to the airport and all of that. But when you got to the courtroom, it sounds like that you were able to manage that. Great, you have a practice, you know how to do that. There are ways to release that energy because that's the problem. The reason why we burn out is we are in high stress situations. The stress hormones are off the charts, and we don't release them. It's uh this is a lot of the work I do with trauma healing and trauma-informed leadership and coaching and working with chronic stress. I was asked by NASA, I was commissioned by NASA to create a stress reduction program at the beginning of COVID for suddenly the entire staff had to work at home. So I've done a lot of work the uh work around this. I taught a course at Georgetown University in the School of Government, the program for conflict resolution on teaching young people who are going to go into conflict zones of understanding the patterns of trauma and chronic stress and how it affects not only those who are going into the conflict zones, but also the people that they'll be serving. And there's just and and part of um how the nervous system works is that you you can see films of this is that you'll see, for instance, uh a tiger chasing a deer. The deer manages to get away and it's safe now, and it's it it activated so much stress hormones to be able to run and get away from the tiger. But the stress hormones are still in the body. What the what the deer will do is it will start convulsing and shaking. And it's not convulsing and shaking because it's scared, but what it's a built-in mechanism that the body shakes to release stress hormones so that it can come back to balance. It's a healthy thing that human bodies have as well. We just don't realize it. In a modern society, we hold on to that stress, and that's where we burn out and we're exhausted, and we have maladaptive coping mechanisms like using alcohol and other distractions. And this is an important part of the work, is to realize that when you're working in a high stress environment, if you want to do this for a long time in a healthy and vital way, you have to figure out a way to release those stress hormones to bring yourself back into balance.

SPEAKER_02 31:56

Excellent. Now you're talking about bullying. Let's talk about the physical bullying then. Let's say we have a uh 13-year-old who's moved from the the country to uh uh what's reputed to be a really tough school in uh in the big city, and uh that person's asking for advice of you, you know, what do I do if I if I face someone holding a knife on at me? What do I do if if if if uh gang of people are trying to pummel me? I mean, I remember uh what someone in my college said, I said to him, you know, what was that like going to going to high school in the uh neighboring city to me, you know, Fairfield, Connecticut. That uh that that's a rather wealthy town, and we we even had the uh Hoodlum type people uh in in the high school there. But I, you know, it must have been worse over there in Bridgeport. He said, Oh, I had no trouble with the uh tough students. I said, why? He said, I stood up, I stood up for them to the teachers. Uh, but there's got to be a better way than that that would then transcend uh this this student and what they're gonna do for the rest of their life.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Yeah, that's a tough one. There's no uh I would need a few hours to answer that one. Right. And and what I'd want to say is that uh um the respectful confrontation work and the fear civility work is finding ways to work through the conflicts and the tensions with people that on some level are willing to work through it with you, or how you can be more persuasive to get them there. And I do talk about different levels of aggression, what I call high grade aggression, low grade aggression, and and medium grade aggression and low grade aggression, and how to approach that from a perspective of respectful confrontation. And the only strategy I really give for high grade aggression is get out of the room. Is you know, you know, and and you know, uh it is and and so in in that circumstance, I would say the first thing to think about in any of the work that I'm I'm advocating for is to first say, is it worth it? Are you safe? And if you're not safe, then remove yourself from the situation. There are ways, and there there that there are many uh different ways of this idea, what I call the power of the pivot, of how do you then find a way, maybe not in that encounter at that moment, but find ways to wear down the bully's aggression through kindness, through humor, through uh through through other means. That uh and it it it sounds kind of corny and kind of you know just like uh the sentimental, but it it's a question of I would say for the person who is being bullied, first of all, you talk to people, you let you let parents know, you let teachers know. And and and I think that's important if that feels safe. And you learn, and there's nothing wrong with learning some skills about how to fight. Yeah, nothing wrong with that. That's a you know, that's the fierce part of fierce civility, is that there's you know, it's not it it's not all just um a you know, uh what I say like a sentimental hallmark cardi kind of way of being. You know, that doesn't mean and I'm not advocating for fighting. But the but what uh so actually what is important is that what I learned with the martial arts from my practices is that the more I learned martial arts, the more I was able to convince myself that I can take care of myself from within. The more I truly believe from within that I can take care of myself, I'm less afraid of what's happening around me. And I become less defensive. Right. Because right, because I know we the I would say the more defensive we are means that we can't, we don't feel we can protect ourselves, so we have to build walls. And I would say that a bully, deep within themselves, feels like they can't take care of themselves. They have no self-esteem, no sense of inner power, and therefore they have to uh use external ways of showing it. I and I think that's an important thing. And what happens in a very in an energetic way is that when I walk through the world feeling more confident within myself, the kid's not gonna bully me.

SPEAKER_02 36:18

Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:20

I'm just giving an energy that's just like this isn't gonna work on me, right? It's not even a question of good or bad or right or wrong. It's just a question of I'm not your target anymore. You're targeting me because you because you're picking up an energy where I where where you're sensing I can't take care of myself. But if I can exude that energy, and I would say this is the same thing walking into a business meeting. I would say the same thing with parenting, with with with being in the world, with with going into to uh for litigation, a plea deal. If you can exude a sense of um confidence, especially if you're working with a jury, right, then that is going to have an impression on them and they're gonna start listening to what you're saying and start at with because they're gonna try feel your sense of authority and credibility.

SPEAKER_02 37:10

So um what suggestions beyond the following do you have for when uh my client is uh responding in a very stressful way to the prosecutor being nasty? Because lawyers are not permitted to speak with opposing uh represented parties. So uh some nasty prosecutors will try to intimidate them uh through their arguments in court, whether it's at a bond hearing, at a motions hearing, at a continuance hearing. And I prepare my clients as best as possible in advance, especially for the prosecutors I know uh uh are are heartless, have ice in their veins, and I say, look, this prosecutor is going to try to intimidate you. Uh, but if we keep our eyes on the prize about what this case is about, uh that intimidation effort, the more they're trying to intimidate you, the weaker the prosecutor actually feels. Because if the prosecutor is actually confident in what he was doing, he wouldn't be trying to intimidate you. And so that plus my, you know, doing everything that you're saying with me, uh I I try to figure out what more I can do than that beyond whether my client is willing to do the same practices. You know, like Ram Doss would say, we work on ourselves, we can't force other people to do our own practices, uh, you know, the the path that we're taking.

SPEAKER_01 38:33

Yeah, I I the first thing that comes to mind is, well, I think yes, to inform them and practi and maybe role-play with them, practice with them. If you if you don't ask, I mean, you ask, are are you triggered by um by aggression? And um, so if if the if the prosecutor starts doing that, how are you, how do you think you're gonna respond? And what would it look like if you didn't? And then you make a game. I I don't want to I don't want to uh uh um lighten it because I know it's very serious, but to uh the humor really works. What if you uh said with your client, let's play a game? Every time the prosecutor does that, um uh we we kind of like do a uh a little signal with each other or some something that uh that it becomes a game. So you neutralize their energy, right? So you're keeping them uh you're you're keeping them from being focused on the prosecutor and back to you as quickly as possible, right? So that uh so to to turn it into some kind of I I hate using the word game, but I I think you know what I mean by that.

SPEAKER_02 39:37

Right.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

Yes, that's it.

SPEAKER_02 39:40

Uh because you know, when I prepare clients uh for testimony, sometimes I get together with other lawyers, including people who have attended Trial or his college programs, whether it was at Jerry Spencer's ranch before we transitioned off of his ranch. And that uh, you know, that's from Jacob Moreno with uh role-playing and reverse role-playing. But certainly I can do that psycho drama with my clients or or something similar to it, uh, you know, scene setting, role-playing, reverse role-playing, uh about dealing with that prosecutor in the room, whether it's just with me and my client or me and uh several of the lores and non-laws of my client, and having them play the role of the uh, you know, the prosecutor and let them exaggerate it as much as possible, being as nasty as they want to be, sh and then getting back into their own role or getting into the role of the judge. And plenty of judges act heartless in part because plenty of the judges are scared if nothing else that they're not gonna uh get through the docket by the time the court closes.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

Right. No, I get, yeah. So so if you if you're doing your work of regulating your nervous system and meeting your client where they are, creating safety and trust, then it's just a question of, okay, so you know, there are many things. You can say to your client, let's also play a game, let's see, you know, the prosecutor's doing this to to to try to get something over on you, don't let them win, right? So it's a victory every time you don't react the way they expect you to react. Take take the victory. Um and and I don't know, I'm just thinking maybe you say to your pro to your client, I hate prune juice. And every time the prosecutor, prosecutor tries to uh uh get you get you activated and you don't, I'm gonna have to drink one sip of prune juice. Right.

SPEAKER_02 41:23

Well that that that humor thing uh that that humor thing is is really good, Joe. Uh I do often put my client's mind at ease with uh uh with with good natured humor. Now maybe maybe it wasn't good nature when uh when there was Officer Burley there and and I leaned over to my client, I said his first name is Hurley, but uh that that totally put a very nervous client at total ease. And and when I I I'll I'll make fun of a prosecutor sometimes if if they're uh uh going off wrong, and and and that often makes them self-aware. That often, you know, any way to any way to hold that mirror up to them, as long as it's good natured and making fun or or teasing, just holding that mirror up to the prosecutor, and sometimes they back down just by holding that mirror up to them.

SPEAKER_01 42:12

Yeah, I mean I think it's a question of I'm I'm I'm hoping that uh that a public defender can see the humanity in their client with a with some of their clients, and that that and that sometimes that might might be all they need is someone just acknowledges them at that moment.

SPEAKER_02 42:26

Right.

SPEAKER_01 42:27

Um you know, I don't know about the jokes during the trial, but I think uh beforehand, I think that uh to just establish that. And and I and so the the the key, it's a pivot. All of what I'm saying are just different pivots. The the just like Sam in the prison with me had it had a had an uh he had an assumed outcome that I was just gonna back down and let him do what he wanted to do, the prosecutor has an assumed um outcome that it what they are doing is going to trigger that client of yours.

SPEAKER_02 42:59

Right.

SPEAKER_01 43:00

And every time it doesn't work, it's because the client or or did did a pivot of some kind.

SPEAKER_02 43:06

To what extent is it important for you in uh your own personal practice and in uh helping other people to do uh sits, quiet times, what what do you call it?

SPEAKER_01 43:20

Yeah, I mean, I for me it's about just concentration exercises, it's about staying regulated. I I offer a core exercise, which is about coming to your core in your lower belly, the Dantien, as you know that, and connecting with your heart and and and in a sense practicing this definition of resilience, presence, awareness, balance, and flow. And it's key. And and what can you do to bring more awareness to what you're doing in every moment? And that because that will bring you that calm physically, emotionally, and mentally.

SPEAKER_02 43:55

Are we too late in our talk for you to uh give an example of that?

SPEAKER_01 44:00

Well uh when I uh one I can one one thing to do very quickly. So when I is uh when I was working with the combat veterans, I was working with uh who were severely wounded and also had severe PTSD and would suffer flashbacks, and I developed a quick practice that that uh helped them to come back into the present moment because they disassociated. And it's um and it's very simple. If you you just and and the beauty of all the work that I do with my trainings and my coaching is that these are exercises you can do at your office, you can do it in a chair, you can do it while you're even taking a walk sometimes, as well as doing at home. You don't have to do it on a beautiful mountain in a retreat center in a yoga studio or something like that. Those are fine, but this is something you can do anywhere. And the first step would be to just sit in a comfortable way where your feet are flat on the floor, your spine is straight, your shoulders are relaxed, your jaw is relaxed, your belly is relaxed. You feel you, you feel your feet on the ground, you feel the sensation of the under the bottom parts of your feet connecting with the ground. Those we call that your contact points, that's your connection with the earth. That grounds you, that brings you back to the present. And you bring your focus to your core and your lower belly, inside uh, which which is your center of awareness and personal power, gut wisdom, and then connect to your heart with or your heart center in the middle of your chest where your heart power resides, compassion and connection. And then you take a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth, and that's kind of the practice. And if you can just remember that, feet on the ground, focus in my center, connect with my heart, and take deep breaths. And long the inhale is a long inhale. You begin breathing into your lower belly, your lower ribs, and your upper ribs. You hold the breath for a moment, and then you just let the breath spill out of your mouth. Why that's powerful is that it's been scientifically proven from neuroscience that that breath, breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth, activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the nervous system that activates the hormones that relax you, dopamine, the things that bring you to more calm, oxytocin. So when you are stressed, where the other hormones, cortisol and adrenaline, are activated, by doing this, feeling your feet on the ground, focusing in your center and your heart, taking these deep, deep breaths in through your nose, out through your mouth, you bring yourself back to balance. And this is something that you know that I had to do with Sam when I regulated my nervousness. I've been doing it for so many years now, I could do it in two and a half seconds because that's all I had when I was standing face to face with Sam and the others in the prison. Uh, does that resonate for you? Does that familiar to you, John?

SPEAKER_02 47:18

Of course. And you know, and that's something that I do say to my clients. Uh, I can condense uh John Cabotzin's uh mindfulness for beginners down to a paragraph. Focus on your breath, get to the now, be in the present.

SPEAKER_01 47:34

Yeah. So here's something that I like to say. Um and to remember this: so feet on the ground, focus in your center, connect with your heart, take deep breaths. This idea of resilience is presence, awareness, balance, find the balance, but also flow. So that when you can, particularly the flow part, if you can move through your day flowing around obstacles instead of fighting them or freezing around them and getting stuck, then you'll find you'll have more vitality. And actually you will discover that you will, and this is how I've trained people in coaching. This is I've worked with teams on different levels, with C-suite people, I've worked with different staff members, that it's possible with the practices that I offer that you can actually get more done with less time and effort and energy. That it is possible with these practices.

SPEAKER_02 48:27

Well, well, that's well said. That that's uh why, you know, the benefit of this uh mindful uh the moving meditation of Tai Chi and any other mindfulness practice for me, then instead of my being bored by uh uh reviewing financial statements, uh, for instance, it's it's just another, it's another mindful moment. It's another part of the flow of the day, it's the flow of the river, it's the flow of the air.

SPEAKER_01 48:51

Yeah. And you can practice and you can practice, and the thing, the beauty of it is like this kind of these kinds of exercises, when you're walking to get your lunch, you can be doing this breath, right? You can be feeling every step that you're feeling the bottoms of your feet as you're walking on the concrete or whatever. May sound really silly, but try it and you'll just find that. So it's like I said, you don't have to go to a yoga studio, you don't have to buy expensive equipment, spend a lot of money on your practice. You can do it uh when you're when you're sitting at your desk. And to think about this, uh, I don't say come into the present moment because John, we're always in the present moment. We can't not be in the present moment. If we were not in the present moment, we'd be dead. So the question isn't that we're not in the present moment, the question is how much of our awareness is aware that we're in the present moment. Right. Focus is focuses on the awareness.

SPEAKER_02 49:41

Awareness. Well, I said we would finish at 8 o'clock Eastern time, and you're there on Amsterdam time, and here we are. So there's so much more I want to talk to you about, and I'm sure I'll get to do that in the future. This is your opportunity, Joe, to say anything to the audience you haven't already said, including to remind them of your websites, to tell them about your monthly uh opportunities uh online and also to tell them how they can hire you and donate to you.

unknown 50:12

Oh, that's great.

SPEAKER_01 50:14

So uh again, my websites are joeweston.com and the nonprofit Fear Civility project is fear civility.org. You can certainly donate to fearstability.org. We're doing this work in communities, uh bringing trying to find bridging uh challenges and communities that are in and are not communicating well. Uh on the Joe Weston website, you can see the events page. I do a monthly online global heart gathering, which is a meditation, like I just suggested a little bit of people gathering who from around the world who are looking to find ways to be more engaged with what's unfolding on the planet. Uh as I said, I if you're interested in talking to me about uh executive coaching or life coaching, uh professional coaching or trainings with your team or with your organization, get in touch and we can talk. I can I do different programs on resilient power leadership, as well as respectful confrontation and fierce civility. And uh watch the TEDx talk, a cure for chronic niceness. And I guess I would I would end by saying that um we're living in a unique time. Uh I I've been saying for years that uh uh that uh the good the good news, the bad news is that the systems as we know them are crumbling. The good news is that the systems as we know them are crumbling. And and we're and we can see that playing out, and we're in this in-between liminal space, and it's causing a lot of anxiety, and that's what we're seeing play out in the world. We're all in a state of fight-flight-freeze, where we're just trying to survive. And that the uh I uh I use in my trainings uh the results from a Gallup Gallup poll uh where people from 50 different countries were asked, what do you expect from your bosses and your leaders, from your bosses, where places you work? And more than 50% in the results said hope. And that's something that I would like to leave everyone with is to consider every day what can you do to a family m for a family member, someone on the subway, someone you work with, to give them that just that little sense of hope, just that little sense of feeling like they matter.

SPEAKER_02 52:38

Excellent.

SPEAKER_01 52:40

Yeah, those small things really go a long way.

SPEAKER_02 52:44

Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Joe. You've heard from Joe Weston, joeweston.com, fierce civility.org. Read his books, starting with uh respectful confrontation and fierce civility. This is John Katz. I'm a criminal defense and DUI defense lawyer in Fairfax, Northern Virginia. This is Beat the Prosecution because there is no other way. Please stand by, Joe. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 53:15

Thank you for listening to this week's episode from Beat the Prosecution. This is a regular podcast giving people a leg up against police investigations and prosecutions. Nothing discussed on our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or to individuals who have paid for a consultation. We welcome you contacting us via email at info at beat the prosecution.com by calling our office at 703 383 1100 or texting us at 571 406 7268.