Tag Archives: Braver Angels

Time Under Tension: A Fitness Model for Training Political Discourse

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Learn. Practice. Train.

To get better at anything, we must be willing to tolerate the discomfort of being bad at it–for a while. And the reward has to be worth the effort.

What reward will make it worth the effort for us to tolerate the discomfort of political discourse, in order to get better at it?
What other uncomfortable training can we compare it to?

“Agonist Supersets! The focus of this block is adding more intensity + time under tension to a specific muscle group. Lower body in A series, upper body in B series for TBS (total body strength) days. Two movments focusing on the same muscle group back to back. First movement more focused on neural engagement and higher movement complexity, the second movement for increased TUT and hypertrophy!”
–Ethos Training Systems, February 2025

Rear foot elevated split squat. 20# each hand. 6 reps x 4 sets.
Tempo: 2 count down, pause 1, up 1, repeat.

To pause for one second at the bottom of a rear foot elevated split squat can be uncomfortable. The longer I hold tension with the glute of the forward leg extended in that position, the more challenging it is to stand back up, especially by the 24th repetition. But the rewards are a stronger posterior chain, a more stable core, and confidence and ease getting up and down from the floor as I age.

Since there are only six reps per set in this block, I can lift heavier weights. I think this is the first time I have done this movement with 20 pounds in each hand. And the program builds in longer rest periods after heavy load sets. Consistent and disciplined repetition for neural pathway learning and muscle hypertrophy–I get better each time I train.

I so wish more of us would take this attitude toward our political conversations–see it as personal training to get better at it. What do I mean by ‘better’? I do not mean better at criticizing and shaming people who voted differently. I do not mean amplifying derisive words and ad hominem attacks on public figures. I do not mean aggressively debating ideology and attempting to convince someone their values and ideals are ‘wrongheaded’ or otherwise invalid.

By ‘get better’ at political discourse I mean asking more open and curious questions, listening to understand rather than to rebut, reject, or demean. I mean challenging our own convictions for consistency and integrity. I mean engaging in earnest, in the spirit of critical collaboration, to find common ground in shared goals, where we can stand and work together to make our systems better. Policies born from this laborious process last, rather than getting overturned from one administration to the next. It requires leaders as well as citizens to withstand the discomfort of disagreement and clash of ideology. It demands patience, diplomacy, professionalism, self-awareness, self-regulation, humility, honesty, and mutual respect.

Who looks at this list of requirements and thinks, “Sure, no problem, I’m very comfortable with that, sign me up.” More often I suspect a reaction along the lines of, “Are you kidding me? Like anybody (on the other side) will show up that way to me? Why would I bother doing it for them?”

And therein lies our impasse. Who will go first? Only those who can tolerate the discomfort–of vulnerability, uncertainty, and humility–with confidence. It will be those who have trained.

Time under tension: It builds muscle strength and stability, improves load tolerance, and allows us to lift heavy things with grace. We have to get in the gym, grip the weights, and submit ourselves to the struggle. And we have to do it consistently, with discipline. We must take time to rest and recover, between sets and sessions alike. We need coaches to monitor and correct form and position. And it always helps to have our friends doing it with us and cheering us on.

If we don’t feel like it and don’t do it, then muscles atrophy and risk of injury increases when weekend warrior mindset overtakes us. A healthcare system can get overburdened by people who fall and fracture hips due to frailty from lack of physical training. A society’s political system can be similarly overburdened, and thus vulnerable to nefarious actors, by a citizenry that fails at political discourse due to frailty in conversational exchange of ideas and difference of opinion.

So how do we train? Thankfully there are more and more resources to help us. My suggestions:

  1. Start within our own group. Find people willing to put down the ad hominem approach, who are willing to look at what we say and do with a critical eye, looking at it from ‘the opposition’s’ point of view, and seeing how our messages may be counterproductive.
  2. With these peers, practice engaging with ideas you disagree with. Role play the ‘other side.’ Research objective evidence that supports that point of view–avoid that group’s ad hominem attacks also; look for evidence that they also understand our point of view.
  3. Attend a Braver Angels workshop or event. Learn and practice the skills we need to engage calmly, openly, and with respect and curiosity in front.
  4. Follow groups like Builders and A Common America to see who among our elected officials, and those who might run, already practices non-adversarial discourse. Amplify them on your social media and to your peers.
  5. Finally, seek out people who voted differently from you, whom you respect and whose relationship you value. Get vulnerable. Tell them you want to get better at talking politics, that you want to connect more than divide our country. Be prepared for an incredulous and dismissive reaction. Decide how and whether you will persist. Comment here if you want a pep talk, I’m good at giving those! And then if they agree, practice all of the above and below with them! Go for it!

In any conversation, aim to ask questions at least twice as often as you make statements. This is an uncomfortable, challenging, humbling, and extremely effective way to get better at engaging anyone in conversation. But they can’t just be any questions. The best questions–the ones that make us pause, resist our canned and offhand responses–are open and honest–see tips below. And the intention must be earnest–the goal must be to connect and understand, never to one-up or ‘win’.

Time under tension in political discourse builds the muscles of engagement. It improves our tolerance of intra- and interpersonal discomfort. It gives us the ability to think in curious rather than adversarial ways. It makes us stronger citizens, neighbors, friends, and family members who can withstand disagreement and conflict with resilience.

I’m considering how I will spend my time, energy, and resources this year. Work will be busier. Daughter will launch to college. I will continue to write. And now I hear the call of advocacy getting louder. I have a few ideas about the whats and hows; the Why remains steadfast: to foster the healthiest relationships among all whose lives I touch.

Exciting times, friends! Scary for so many, I know.

How will we all help?

https://healingcircleslangley.org/2016/10/asking-open-honest-questions/

On Personal Activism

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Strong back, soft front.
Am I doing enough?
Am I enough?

Once again I find myself alarmed and agitated, wondering how we got here. One week in and it feels exponentially worse than last time. Some would argue that all politicians are equally nefarious and selfish, equally devoid of character. I suppose that is possible, but I just don’t think so. Jimmy Carter, George HW Bush, and Barack Obama stand out to me as role models, men of character and integrity. Not so the person in office now.

Executive acts this past week have served what I believe to be their intended purpose, stoking unrest and outrage, churning anxiety, division, alienation, and escalating susceptibility to fear and rage-based behavior, inclulding violence. I believe some of the most sweeping acts will be successfully challenged and modified, if not stalled, but at what cost to the system? What of the workers who suddenly lost their jobs? What of the scientific and medical researchers whose funding may not exist anymore, and the patients whose very survival or mortality may hang on that funding? And all while real and present problems loom at impasse after impasse because our elected officials refuse to negotiate like mature, reasonable adults? How did we get here? How did we choose these people to ‘lead’ us? End rant.

How will our daily lives feel the impact of this administration? I wonder how racism, misogyny, and dehumanization will cascade again en masse from the precedents that this POTUS sets? He validates, encourages, and exemplifies the most derisive of human behavior and relationship.
How did we get here?

Once again I find myself asking, “What can I do, I’m just one person?” Somehow this week, treating people all along the political spectrum with respect, asking open and honest questions, holding the benefit of the doubt, resisting outrage in favor of calm and curious exploration of diverse perspectives, and withholding judgment just don’t feel like enough. And yet there is so much to advocate for, so much to resist, so much happening every day, it’s overwhelming. Where would I even start? And I think that’s the point, right? Submission by way of learned helplessness.

I had the good fortune of two incredibly insightful and enlightening conversations this weekend. I was invited to articulate my Why, my purpose, and explore my Whats. I talk to people. I write. My favorite and most effective forum is one on one, and I also do well speaking to large, live, interactive audiences. I am an integrator of ideas, an innate mediator, a ‘boundary spanner.’ Normally that feels exceptional and more than enough, I realize as I write this. But today it feels small, inconsequential, puny.
But maybe that is not the sensation to heed.

Connection across difference is exactly what we need right now, all of us, elected leaders and all. We have lost this capacity and skill at a collective level, it seems. So if I can retain it, then it’s actually a big deal. If I can exemplify and amplify it, be the connection and do it every chance I get (which is any given human encounter), then I am making a difference. Me, one of seven billion.

What if I could modify, even a little, the mindset and behavior of just two people in their encounters with people who disagree? And each of them two more? What if each of my Braver Angels friends could do the same? What if even a fraction of Mónica Guzmán‘s readers also had this impact? That’s exponential growth–a movement–of connection across difference.

Ok I feel better now. DIY pep talk via blogging! I can keep doing what I’m doing. Talking, writing, Healing Through Connection is my domain, literally and figuratively. Abortion, equity work, gender policy, healthcare, and intellectual freedom are all issues I care deeply about. I can find ways to support initiatives and leaders in those spaces ad hoc. But my own work, my personal activism, lies principally in person to person relationship, which applies in all other domains more than most people realize. I can raise that awareness and help folks acquire and hone those intra- and interpersonal skills that may, one day, steer us toward electing legislators who also practice successfully. Meanwhile, we could heal friendships and family ties wounded by political divergence. How hopeful.

So, dear reader, what is your brand of personal activism?

Holding Polarity

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To long time readers of this blog: First, THANK YOU!

Second, what themes here stand out to you over time? Because they recur so often, they resonate, or for other reasons? When I search for ‘polarity’, 20 posts come up since 2020. I only learned about the concept of polarity management in 2019 and have since integrated it in my approach to challenges in almost every life domain.

Almost exactly a year ago I wrote about it in one of the best posts of the month, in my opinion. I identified Polarity Partnerships and Braver Angels as two organizations that do polarity management well (Partnerships was founded by Barry Johnson, author of the seminal book Polarity Management). This means that rather than pitting apparently opposed or antagonistic ideas and positions against each other in a zero sum, we seek to identify and maximize the advantages of both perspectives for optimal integration and function.

It occurs to me that we perceive the word ‘polarized’ with a negative connotation. It means people withdraw from one another, retreat to corners of comfort and concensus, avoiding engagement with those who think, feel, and believe differently on important topics. This negativity about polarization risks making us think negatively about polarity in general, which I Hold for Us to resist.

Polarities are good. Or at least they are not inherently bad. Actually describing them as good or bad is probably not helpful. Polarities are ubiquitous, a fact of nature and life, and holding them in curiosity, openness, and possibility, and without judgment or resistance (thus holding them mindfully) helps us see through and past conflict to creative (re)solutions.

Progressive/Conservative, Blue/Red, Left/Right–however we label our political poles, we each have to stop wishing for the ‘other side’ to back down or step aside. We need to let go the idea that we can convert anyone from their side to ours, to make them see and think the way we do. And we absolutely must stop demonizing one another, calling each other names and generalizing negativity on whole groups based on one attribute. The truth is we need tension and competition of ideology, the free and open debate of ideas and solutions to thrive as an engaged, innovative, and evolving society. We just need to handle the tension and debate much, much better.

We have descended too far into the depths of adversarial engagement. More than any political ideology or policy change, I see this as the greatest threat to our democracy–the fact that we citizens, the collective electorate across the country, cannot muster the ‘curiosity, compassion, and courage‘ to talk through our differences respectfully and constructively. This makes us extremely vulnerable to those who seek to inflame our respective greivances for their own benefit–those for whom a divided population helps them rise to and stay in self-serving power. ‘Divide and conquer.’

The good news is that the movement of polarity management–the resistance to toxic division–grows quickly now. Early adopters have found one another and partnered. They amplify one another’s messages on social media. Their reach expands by resonating with the deep need that so many feel to leave behind hostile rhetoric and ad hominem attacks, to come together and get sh*t done.

The featured image on this post shows twelve organizations that partner with BridgeUSA, “the youth movement for better politics.” From their About Us page:

BridgeUSA is a multi-partisan student movement that champions viewpoint diversity, responsible discourse, and a solution-oriented political culture. We are developing a generation of leaders that value empathy and constructive engagement because our generation will bear the cost of polarization and tribalism for years to come.

Starts With Us, another polarity navigating group, asks:

Are you one of the 87% of Americans from all walks of life who sees a world beyond “us vs. them?” Are you tired of polarizing politics and endless culture wars? The power to reclaim our culture Starts With Us.

Their Movement statement:

We can each work on the skills needed to overcome the forces that divide us — but where do we start? The 3Cs: [Curiosity, Compassion, and Courage]

We all have an innate capacity for curiosity, compassion, and courage. The Starts With Us community is committed to turning the 3Cs into personal daily habits [emphasis mine] that have tremendous personal benefits:

–Connect with and influence community
–Repair strained relationships
–See through fear-stoking media
–Strengthen communication and negotiation
–Sharpen critical thinking and problem solving
–Feel more agency, less anxiety

Progressive and Conservative ideologies are not inherently good or bad, or even necessarily opposed, and it’s counterproductive to hold them as such. Navigating this polarity with the 3C’s, from a mindset of mutual respect, integrative and complementary potential, and shared humanity opens the possibility of finding truly innovative solutions to the challenges of our increasingly complex world.

I Hold Polarity for Us because we are not enemies. We are all humans, here doing our best with what we have. Competing ideas and ideologies do not necessarily imply inevitable conflict or war, though humans too often escalate it that way. Holding Polarity with Curiosity, Compassion, and Courage, in the spirit of connection over division, will help keep us from destroying ourselves.