5,000 Mediations and No Secret Sauce

Big thoughts, quick talk, flip facts, tick talk, level up your mind, every single line. Ladies and gentlemen, Sam Arterate, proud to welcome you to just a brand new beginnings of a baby podcast called The Anatomy of Complex. And Sam, I'm not going to introduce you, I'm going to have you introduce yourself. I just want to tell everyone sort of my perspective real quick on how we came to cross path through the magnificent sort of labyrinth of LinkedIn. And I just found you, Sam, you are generous through LinkedIn, I don't know how the algorithm works or connects people, but you are a generous human with your attention.

And I take it to honestly, you know, when someone with, when someone who's significantly like more advanced in their career pays sort of benevolent attention to me, I always take it, I'm always really impressed, right, because you don't have to, you're not going to gain anything, you have nothing to gain.

So it's always, so I took note, I took casual note, and then you showed up consistently. And then you mentioned in one of your posts that you had, you mentioned it casually, like something, something, something in 5,000 mediations, here are some of the things I learned. And so that, that's a huge number.

And so it sort of seems to defy the laws of physics. So from a very sort of reptilian brain, clickbait brain of mine, I have to, basically, maybe you partially inspired the podcast, like I have to figure out what's the secret sauce to these kind of gurus who walk there. So no pressure, but I can introduce you.

But how would you introduce yourself today and almost midway through 2026? How would you introduce yourself? Oh, golly. Well, I guess I'd start with my family. My wife and I've been married for 43 years. We have three daughters. They have their own husbands, their own kids, so we've got seven, almost eight grandchildren. Part of my story is spending years as an active alcoholic. I was living on about a quarter vodka day. And then I stopped drinking when I was 37 years old in 1995. I was a full-time litigator. I'd been litigating for about 12 years.

So trying lots and lots of cases was a time when lots of cases got tried. Mediation almost didn't exist. And then I went to mediation training in 1994, not because I had any interest in mediation. I wanted to find out what they were going to do to me. That's how self-absorbed I was. And then I stopped drinking in 1995. And I started mediating accidentally at the same time that I got sober.

So my path of 37 years of sobriety and 30 years and 5,000 mediations dovetailed with one another. So I guess that's the best I can do on a bag. I've gone to school like everybody has and been trained and things like that. And then over time, I transitioned from being a litigator to being a full-time mediator. I did one and I did 5,000 and I'd love to tell you that I know exactly how that happened, but I can't tell you exactly how it happened, but I'm happy to have the conversation. It's interesting. You start your book and I sort of read, I didn't read the book, I think that's not correct. I listened to the free audio version of the book, positively conflicted.

And it's interesting to me because I'm also sober from alcohol since 2019, so almost seven years. I take it to be a part of my identity. It's certainly something I'm extremely proud of and sort of, I wouldn't say extremely vocal, but vocal. But in some ways, I was looking at the table of contents of your book on things, the podcast app. And in some ways, and I'm not super familiar with the 12 steps or like the AA kind of pedagogy, but it kind of reads like a recovery book in terms of like, I should have it open in front of me.

But it's like self-awareness and self-responsibility, right? And sort of like self-suething, right, finding ways to self-sue. So my question to you is, you open the book with this and then doubling down on it, you open the podcast introduction, you're introducing yourself in a book form, introducing yourself in podcast form as, look, the starting spot for who I am is family and like personal struggle with substance. Why? Because I think that was the defining moment for me.

I mean, I have, my life was perfectly fine until I started drinking, but what I, when I guess it applies to mediation, it gets one reason why mediation dovetailed so much with getting sober is there is so much emphasis on self-awareness and self-actualization and things like that. And at least what I found is that without my paying attention to it, it moved into self-absorption. And I think I spent a lot of my time up until I stopped drinking, thinking that everybody else in the world was feeling good all the time and I wasn't and alcohol worked and it made me feel good.

And so that was the way I felt with alcohol must have been the way everybody else felt. And I found out that I was dead wrong. People stopped drinking and have the same problems that they had other times, whatever form of recovery they might choose to use. And so I thought, I mean, I had an advance degree, I was making a living, I had a wife, I had three children, everything was going to hell in a hand basket. And yet I thought I was doing what made sense. And I was doing what made sense to me and I find that is really similar with people in litigation. I mean, everybody that shows up at my office has had something go wrong that they didn't expect to go wrong and they weren't able to solve it on their own.

Those are the two things they had in common with me. And when I keep in mind that we all think we have the right amount of common sense, I mean, it got you where you are sitting, you're doing this podcast today and doing the mediations you do and having your family. And our common sense search is pretty well until it doesn't. And when I started realizing that every time I was agitated with somebody else or angry or whatever, I was almost always afraid of something. And what I was often afraid of was just the fear of losing control that I didn't have to begin with. And I know we were talking about, you know, secret sauce or what it takes in mediation.

And there are, when I mediate, it is not uncommon when I go from room to room and this has been true for years and years and years, people say, go do your magic. So they've had this dispute. They couldn't solve it on their own. The higher lawyers, the lawyers couldn't solve it. We're not ready for trial. Judge makes them go to a mediation whether they want to or not.

So they're here often because they have to be, not because they want to be. They can't imagine anything different than what's in front of them. And yet we have conversations that create a space for them to have a conversation that something might be different or maybe this shouldn't have the primacy in their life that they have given it. And I'll get to go and lecture them about that. And it's not even necessarily my goal other than provide a space for it.

But it's like, you may have read Daniel Connemon's book, Thinking Fast and Slow. And one of the things I love from that book is he talks about the focusing illusion. Nothing is so important is when we focus on it. And he gives two, what I think are magnificent examples. One, they'll talk about somebody who's a car person. They love their car and it's a fancy car and they keep it nice and they love driving it and doing all these things.

But what he also points out is most of the time, even while they're driving their car, they're not thinking about their car. So they're getting no value. They're not getting no joy from their car because they're not even aware they're in their car. They're thinking about the person they're talking to, the song on the radio or whatever else. And the other one, the other one he gives that I think is really terrific is of someone who's become a paraplegic through an accident and they did a study and after they've gotten through the initial trauma and the depression and then goes along with that, they started asking questions.

And so someone is a paraplegic. If they're at a bar watching a ball game drinking a beer with their buddies and they ask them for their level of enjoyment versus the other person that can walk away from the table, it's just the same. So it's only when we're focusing on those things and ironically, in mediation whether it's family mediation or civil mediation, we're asking these people that are living their lives to come together and really focus on this stuff, which is a whole bunch of stuff that's going wrong, that they haven't been able to figure the way out of it.

That they want to make somebody else's fault and we're trying to help them have a conversation and consider things a little bit differently and it just takes time and it takes engagement and it takes me not deciding what it needs to be or has to be. I can show them the respect to say, you've got to ride to walk away from here if you want, which is different. When I think about about 5,000 mediation, I kind of suspend a little over 30 years. I divide it into three parts. Are you familiar with the stair, Perel?

Yeah. And she talks about harmony, disharmony, and repair. And Richard Rohr, the Catholic priest, talks about order, disorder, reorder. When I look at my mediation practice, I'm going to be talking to some people about this in August. I put it into three phases. There's the school principal phase. When I first started and I was nervous and I was afraid and I thought I had to control everything and put it in a box and things didn't go the way I wanted, I'd be very uncomfortable. And then it moved into kind of the scientist phase where I was sort of curious, I had some hypotheses. I was open to having the conversation about those things, but I still was fighting a little bit to say, okay, this is what this is.

In the last phase of it has really been more like a jazz musician. There's some chords you need to know, but you need to be really comfortable with where the music goes and you don't control it, but you can engage with the people and you can respect them and you can call them back. And it's more like a jazz improv than it is like a school principal or even a scientist because it's not a designed experiment.

So that's what I look at, you know, all those mediations, I really can't believe it's been that many, but I look back and it has been. And they've been all kinds. So I used to do family mediation, I've done civil mediation, I've done class actions, done really big personal injury cases, and I've done cases involving two farmers fighting over the boundary line to their property.

So it's a lot of stuff. So no secret sauce or light up, so yeah, let me, so I don't really need to, so the person who's obsessed with studying Kobe Bryant or LeBron James or Steph Curry from behind the three point line, they're studying their film over and over and over again, like looking, there's YouTube videos of like just subtle changes in hand position and release position. And in many ways, I'm like, I listen to Esther Pearl, I listen to something like I think her most recent podcast yesterday, I was listening to a while, I was cleaning up the like all the kids toys in the basement. And she was, it was amazing the way she moved.

I mean, like in the podcast, she like was hosting this couple who the man was manic, it was a man and woman husband and wife, man is manic and had had affairs. And they're grappling with how can they stay together and the way in which she moved with this. I mean, she at one point instructed the man to take deep breaths. She's like, let's just stop, let's just have you take deep breaths. And she did it like instantaneously and seamlessly. And it's like watching, listening to her is like, I don't really follow Jiu Jitsu, but I imagine it's like studying Jiu Jitsu like the way.

So it'd be like asking Esther Pearl, like how, what's your sauce? What's your secret sauce? When you said jazz, which to me means you're comfortable, I have a guitar, you're comfortable with the instrument, you're really comfortable, you don't even need a look, right? You can do three things at once.

But like, that's not super helpful for the person who's trying to figure out how to be Esther Pearl. Well, here's what I would say and I'll give you two things. I remember years ago, and I think this was somebody from Harvard and they were saying, the people that do this the best are not a particular personality type, they don't have a specific skill set, but the people that do it the best are the people that know themselves the best.

Now I distinguish that between being yourself, because if I know I'm hot tempered, that doesn't mean I want to be hot tempered because I think that's authentic with people, right? I mean, so knowing myself gives me a chance to make a different set of choices. And then about, it was probably 10, 15 years ago, I hired an outfit to do a survey of clients saying, why do you hire me? And the two things that came back, and I've lost the survey, but the two things that came back are these, you make the lawyers look good and the clients feel safe and heard.

Those are the two things that get that's why people hire me, they didn't say, boy, this guy is so smart, this guy can take complex information and distill it down into something really simple. And the reason I think that's important, I give a list of 10 things to my negotiations to this. Here are 10 qualities that negotiators or mediators or just human beings have, and it's not all the 10 things that are with 10 things, tell me which three, and I have them right in one through 10. And then I'll have a conversation about their top three.

And so I'll give you the 10, even though, Clarity, I'm reading them off now. Clarity, compassion, patience, humility, reliability, likability, authenticity, honesty, knowledge, and commitment. So those are the 10. I'll say, what are your top three, and we'll go through and we'll talk about it. And then I will tell them not until we're all done having the conversation with my top three are, and my top three are humility, compassion, and likability, and hear the reasons. I find if I can't be humble, then I won't listen as well as I otherwise could. If I can't be compassionate, then I won't care.

I'll be looking toward an endgame rather than being willing to be as the Latin roots as just simply present with another's suffering. And if I can't be likable, people are not going to engage with me very well. So if I go in lecturing or telling them what they're doing wrong, it promotes defensiveness.

So the humility gets me to quiet down some, which is you can tell I don't do very well. I talk a lot. Compassion must be with that suffering without having to fix it. People that are coming to see mediators, they're suffering. Could be huge suffering, could be small suffering, but they are there in an uncomfortable position. Can I be with it without necessarily saying it's my job to change it? Can I learn more about it before saying, here's the path we go down? And the likability is simply to engage with them as another human being, whether I agree with them, disagree with them, what is it to communicate? Because we talked about attention. It's, I think it was Simone Vey.

It said attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. We all like people paying attention to us. So these, these traits, these humility, compassion, like, so guys, if you are enjoying the conversation so far, the way the algorithm works is it rewards and shows you content that you've liked before.

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Okay. So let's go back. You said, be yourself. Is that, is that what we're saying? I said, know yourself. Don't necessarily be yourself. Yeah. Know yourself. Um, but imagine you're, you're at Harvard, right, or Yale or like, like a TED talk and they're like, what are the three things at the top media? I think I'm going to keep pushing. I'm going to try, I'm going to try and keep pushing. One of the top three things and I'll, so, um, I just want to book about like essentially like how to be liked, um, how much eye contact to make, how frequently to say your name, Sam. Do I say it at the beginning? Do I say it kind of like every five minutes? Where do I put my hands?

So for example, like this hand gesture is like a very powerful hand gesture. Like if you were to walk in on a room and someone's just sitting there like this and you don't know me, we're not interfacing, it's, it's a different vibe than if I'm sitting there like this. And generally speaking, the research shows that like this is not this with the fingers up and down like a spooky, but just this is a very, um, you know, it's, it's, it's the same question about Esther Pearl. Like does she, is she really kind of intangibly to some of her experiences? Like she's just been playing the game for so long that she knows herself. I guess that's the way I say it's the way I'm saying like you can't teach this stuff really.

You have to be comfortable. Well, I, I think it's both. I, I think you can teach it, for instance, there, like when, when mediation started years or years ago, so I'm looking at the late 80s, early 90s, the most common phrase you would hear from a mediator, when we all went in the days where people would actually get together and be in the same room, the most common phrase you would hear, you know, it's a good mediation if everybody leaves unhappy. And I thought that was crap. What people aren't happy about is the situation that brought them there. If they, if they are there and they can engage in what it is to be a grown up addressing difficult circumstances, I don't know.

I don't find that they leave unhappy if they've made a decision to end the legal part of whatever this thing is. But that's also why I talk about legal closure, not resolution. I think resolution is way bigger than legal closure. What, what, what, what, at least in my job, what I help people do is see if they want to make a decision to end their lawsuits for the most part. I mean, there are other things that happen.

But if, if someone has suffered a horrible injury or lost a child in a horrific accident, not from a, by being hit by someone who was, who was driving a little intoxicated, when I was solving that, what we might do is help them end the legal part of it so they're not spending time focusing on that. And then moving forward, they may learn to carry that pain, that sadness, that grief differently.

But they're resolving that. I'm not resolving that. And I'm not resolving the lawsuit either. And I, and I think that's, that's such a huge part of it. But I think it's, it is part of who you are in the sum total of your experiences. But I think there are things you'll learn, like if you read Chaudini's Science of Influencing talks about the six, six things that, that, that influence people, like abilities one of them. Excuse me. I think we all, we all use those things to greater or lesser degrees. We learn to not necessarily pick the fight, but listen and ask questions in a way that doesn't promote defensiveness. I think that's a learned skill. Listening.

And that's why I say, I mediate differently now than I did 20 years ago because I'm not so, so concerned with, with containing the room or when things get uncomfortable. So it, it goes a little bit back to what I said in my book when I talk about engaging conflict. I think you need to embrace discomfort because it is uncomfortable. You don't control the situation that you don't want to be in. I think it involves radical listening, which is listening without an agenda, which is really hard to do. I think Kate, Kate Murphy wrote a book on, on listening, and she talks about listening to learning, listening to understanding, listening to fix.

And I think in certain professions, maybe even most, or even if you're just a friend of cup of coffee, they'll tell you their problem. And for most of us, we will go to, how can I fix this? What do I have to offer? What can I give them? And there is some element of compassion in that, but there's also an element of ego that's going to make me feel good for them to feel better than I have the answer. And the third, the third thing is accepting responsibility. And that's, for me, that was, probably goes back to this sobriety piece.

I was patty, and I, I mean, there are times when our marriage had been really bad and really difficult, and yet we've made it through with lots of help since it's, you know, almost 43 years. But we're going through a particularly rough time and a friend of mine takes me out for a sandwich and it's in the book.

But he said, and he says, Sam, what's wrong? And I proceeded to tell him for 20 minutes everything that was wrong with patty. I just went on and on and on. And he let me talk myself out and he said, okay, Sam, the purpose of this conversation I'm going to assume that, that everything you told me about patty is correct. From this point forward, we're only going to talk about your 5%. And I think that is, and I think that's learned when, when people start talking to me about what's going on in their lawsuit or whatever other problems they have, I'm not going to say what's your 5% and this guy had a relationship with me where he could be very direct. And I needed that kind of directness, not everybody does.

But we can talk about those things in, in ways that would be the way you would do it as opposed the way I would do it, which would then be authentic, but you can still be careful about some practical skills. And what's uncomfortable, I don't like what they're saying, can I, when I start reaching a conclusion, can I draw back from that conclusion, say, it's not time for me to move to fix. Or maybe I'm arrogant to think that I even can understand, or maybe what I'm learning is not what they want me to learn.

So it's, I think, learning to live in those questions, but I think those three things are really important to embrace the discomfort, to listen radically, and to accept responsibility for it. Sorry, it's still not secret sauce. No, so, so, well, I'm going to, let me try and approach from this, from the, from the side.

Okay, so, so you, you're open about your, I mean, you're open in your book, you've been open in the podcast, are you open in the mediation room about Sam? You bring Sam, you know, you also said, what did you just say? Know yourself, not be yourself, you're, I mean, I would say, you're more open, you open the book with these sobriety and married concerns, right? You open the podcast with the same, which I find really refreshing.

Um, I'm obsessed with like, I think we do a huge disservice to people who are married with like, the whole magical weddings and our wonderful vows and like, nobody, it doesn't see, the divorce culture is prevalent, but there's not us, there's not a, a strong current of like, when people say marriage is hard, the four letter word hard is far too nice a word. It's far too too dimensional for what they mean. Um, so I appreciate the kind of like, um, and I don't think you're just paying a lip service to the, to the idea of marriage being hard and, and, you know, you kind of take yourself down a couple of notches with sobriety as well.

But the question is like, hmm, do you bring that, uh, how, do you bring that to mediation? Do you, what kind of Sam shows up? If I'm to hang out with you after mediation, you know, is it like, what version is, is there a dissidence or, you know, how do you, is that what you're, like, I'm trying to sus out like, when you say, know yourself and be yourself. And you're, and you also said the, the third thing that these are all sort of the same is like, you get better as you get better. You get better at mediating as you become a better person because I, because I think you do, uh, and, and I, I do not lead a mediation with saying, I'm recovering alcoholic.

I don't lead a mediation with saying that, that my wife and I've been married 43, 43 years and it's been great, but they've been really difficult times. One of those might come up alcohol rarely, um, but the skills that I learned in recovery and in staying married, um, certainly influence how I engage with people. I mean, among other things, just learning, I'm not in control of the world. I mean, one question that I got asked really early in sobriety that comes up a lot in mediation. People talk about using your hard, the word hard again is compared to what, right?

If I say something hard, I've got to be comparing it to something that I can't tell you how helpful it was to me when someone just looked me in the eye because things aren't, things aren't dualistic and you talked about, you know, it's not either or, um, things exist with a lot of other things swimming with them in marriages and relationships and even just in our own heads.

So when I think something's hard, what has to be tied to some kind of expectation, um, maybe even an entitlement, maybe something I'm afraid of that I don't want to look at. And if those things are true of me, what I've, what I've learned most maybe is that I'm just not different from the people that are coming to see me.

I mean, I may have a different set of, you know, life experiences over the course of those years, but those, those fundamental fears, fears of losing control or fears of embarrassment or looking bad or, um, or fears, um, that, uh, of ego, fears that I can't change my circumstances, fears of losing discomfort when I, most of what I deal with, I'm dealing with a lot of people that feel entitled to comfort or I think about, you know, I've, I've had a couple of friends recently get horrible medical diagnoses.

Now, a month ago, they weren't thinking at all about what happens if I get a horrible medical diagnosis. They thought about it at the moment that it, that it came up. And that's often true for people I think it marriages and in losses. So, and I had a friend ask me a long time ago. She said, I wish I were the same when I was with my friends and when I, when I was at work and with my husband, they, they don't call for the same skills. And even we talk about in vulnerability, it's kind of valorized. I'm going to be talking with my, but he goes, Asian class with this tonight. There is value, I think, of vulnerability, but there's also value and boundaries and there's value and discretion.

And, and I'm not going to lead in other people. I mean, on, on a first date, you're probably not going to tell them about a horribly traumatic childhood trauma. You're just not going to do that. That, that may come out later, may not come out later, but, but we, we kind of dip our toes in things, seeing how they will go. And the same thing happens with mediation. The place with mediation is usually the lawyers are hiring me for a, I've mediated with them before, not all of them, but a lot of them.

So the client, if they trust their lawyer actually offers me a little bit of trust to begin with. They say, oh, my lawyer trusts this guy. So I'm going to at least start out trusting. Maybe not with my most intimate, detailed secrets, but I'm going to trust them. Sorry, I'm babbling on now, but, but I think that, that authentic piece of it, I mean, you and I dress differently, right? I mean, if, if you and I are standing side by side, they might guess different things about what we do. They might think we have different interests. They might think we have different philosophies of life. And what we may find is we've got, we may have some differences, but I'll, but we've got a boatload more in common.

And I think as we, as we have those conversations and, you know, people can, can go all Ted Lasso, be curious, not judgmental. But I find the, I, I'm so quick to be judgmental, usually when I'm afraid of something or I feel like I don't have time to do a deeper dive. So it almost always involves fear or impatience. And, and I, and I think, and I don't know if it's true in, you know, in everybody's relationships, but certainly as I've gotten older, I pay a whole lot more attention to physical cues.

But oh, this is because I will, I will realize it physically before I recognize in my brain what's going on. It's just the way it goes. So with my wife or anybody else. Yeah, yeah. I, uh, with, you can kind of say like the marriage is the, I don't know if you say this explicitly, but it's one of the things I took out like marriage is a marriage is like conflict starts within you, conflict starts at home. It's one of the reasons it's, it's certainly I'm hyper fascinated, as I said before, about couples.

That's why I'm listening to Esther Perrell and how, and why she's talking about, um, you know, one of the things she said to the, to the, to the man who had the affair and his sort of affair impulse, which we might call like a normal impulse to be attracted to other people, his affair impulse was accelerated by his mania. Um, and more so, so that's a heightened factor and being a male, um, Esther Perrell sites both as sort of these factors that, um, add tension to a relationship. And Esther Perrell said, it's not like, she's like, guys, don't think that this is unique to you because he's manic and blah, blah, near with me.

She's like, this is, this is mayor and she don't think it's because he cheated that you're having these conversations. I mean, that's the circumstances to why we're here, but she's like, this is the fabric of being in a relationship. Like this is the texture of being a human being with the structural components that we have. I just think it's super fascinating because we don't talk about it. It's taboo. We don't talk about it. You're kind of scarlet lettered if you, if you admit it. Um, and probably for those reasons, it's super interesting for me, and because I can see in my own marriage and my own brain, I can see the fault lines. I can feel the fault lines.

I can feel being pulled like a, you know, and then all the while for my, for my work, I'm an intellectual who can help people solve these problems that are clean and I'm the neutral one. And so just like swimming in the obvious, I don't know if it's hypocrisy, but it's certainly like, whatever you, whatever the word is when you have opposing forces. Um, so do you, does that vibe with you? Does that check out with you? Sure. Well, let me, let me take a step back though. How do you define the word neutral? I mean, I'm not, I guess I, I'm not, the one lens is, I don't give advice to either party.

Right? I'm not going to tell you, I'm not going to whisper in your ear, you know, if you go to judge A and court B, you'll get verdict C. And I'm not going to give you, not going to go on chat GBT and give you supportive cases, right? But, but when I, and I, I don't, I never use the term neutral, even though I'm in the technically the neutral business, they certainly label mediators and neutrals. I think there is a danger for mediators and for judges, because neutral and impartial almost robsists of our humanity. I think my job, even if I, this kind of goes to know yourself, don't, don't necessarily tell everybody everything about yourself.

I mean, if I go into one of the rooms and somebody calls me an ugly lying son of a bitch, it's, it's probably going to get my attention a little bit, right? My heart rate may go up and things like that, okay? But that doesn't mean that one that I am that or two that I need to respond to that or two that I need or three that I need to defend myself.

So I think neutral almost says, I am above this fray, where I think what we're doing is we're entering right in the middle of it and we are going to, and maybe, maybe, and again, maybe this doesn't happen to everybody, but I am affected by things people tell me sometimes. I mean, I go in two different rooms and I go into one room and they'll tell me things. I think, Kali, why we've been here? These, they should just, these other people should just give them what they want. And I go in the other room and they're thinking, why we've been here? Those people in the other room should just give them what they want. I mean, and I think those are natural human tendencies, right?

So I think my job is to not to act on those, not to invest in those, but also to be aware of that, that that label of neutral does not make me above the people that are in this that are clearly not neutral. I mean, I want something out of this, but to suggest that I'm neutral is I don't have human emotions when I'm engaging with those things.

Yeah, which is, which is to say you're saying don't be so hard on yourself that you feel torn by the same complex, same or similar complex that your clients are dealing with. Right. And I think it's two parts that I think one, don't be so hard on myself and also don't deny it. Sometimes I'll hear from people that say they're the neutrals and they will present themselves like, well, like, and I've got friends that are judges, they well, you know, I'm the impartial third party, I'm able to make these objective decisions. And I think horsepucky, you know, they, you know, they, they're, they, they, they cannot, they cannot extract whatever their humanity is from them.

They can work to have it not play too hard one way or the other, but we've all got that stuff and we don't always know when the button's going to be pushed. Yeah. I mean, I gave you an example specifically in the, is I was sitting in, I think, I mean, I put it in a post, but I didn't put it in the book, but I come home for work and I sit down, you know, and then we got the sunroom in the back of our house, and my wife comes in and you know, when you don't somebody a long time, they don't have to tell you they're mad. It's, it's pretty clear when they walk in the room. This is one of those times. And Patty walks in, she says, I feel like I'm living with three people in this room. You, me, and you're ego.

I was thinking it was going to be the dog. And, and, and, and, which is really my soft spot, because I think, golly, I can, I can, I can't be so self-absorbed. I can't think my common sense should apply to everybody else. I can't listen for, for two minutes and then think I've got the answer. Somebody needs a fix offering unsolicited advice. I think I need, I've got to be aware of those things.

So 5,000 mediations in, is this the thing is, and I don't know if it's the right segue, but one of the ways, I'll just ask the question and then I'll explain later. Is, is this the thing you think you're still quote bad at or still quote? Yeah, the, the ego bit that I'm Sam artery, I've got it figured out. Is that sort of the shadow thing that you're looking over your shoulder? I, I think it is. I, I would tell you that for years, I chased money and ego. And I'm not chasing money anymore. Ego, what, and what I realize it's not so much that I have it figured out is that I'm insecure enough to occasionally be worried when other people realize that I don't have it figured out.

I don't really think I've got everything figured out. I don't think I know it. I don't know if you ever seen that the Alan Watts narration of the, the parable of the Chinese farmer. I'll send it to you. It's, it's a minute and 48 seconds long, but he's telling, he's telling parable of the, of a Chinese man with a horse in the center goes through these things. You need to listen to Alan Watts. Not me. I'll send it to you. You can put it in your show notes for whoever, whoever listens to this, but it, but it's just so good. We, we are so uncomfortable with uncertainty that, that we want to create a false sense of certainty and then we, then we wrap our lives around that.

And that's the same thing when, when people in a mediation sometimes will tell me, well, I know the judge is going to do this. I know the jury won't do that. And then they'll attach principle to that. They'll say, well, and if it's, I, it's not about the money. It's about the principle. And, and when I had less gray hair, I would have said, or less white hair. I would have said, it's always about the money, but I've really come to believe and the place we have a disconnect. And I'm really frank with them about this. I said, when you tell me it's about the principle, I absolutely believe you. I said, where we may have a little bit of a disconnect is I don't think jury verdicts prove principles.

Because what tends to happen is both sides think they have principled arguments. And if the jury disagrees with you, you think the jury got it wrong. And then I'll ask this question of everybody. And I've only gotten one answer. I said, are your principles something you're willing to turn over to a third party? Whether it's me and judge your jury, every person has said no. It's okay.

So it's really not the principles that are being decided. You've got this dispute. Do you want to do something to move to a different place, not necessarily beyond or through, but to carry it differently, as we talked about earlier? Because it doesn't, we just thought the principles allow us to put our head on the pillow and sleep at night. They're not something we hand over to a third party.

But people so attached the principle piece to that. And then they have a really hard time engaging about something that might end up differently than they wish it would be. So how does this connect? So help me, help me, what's the connection between this, the distinction between principles and money, right? And you go, well, the connection is, I think when people have principles without knowing it, that it will make a shift deciding what proves or affirms the principles. And that could be money. That could be winning a ball game. That could be winning an argument with a spouse. It could, or it could be any of those things.

And the place with principle and ego is my ego, and I don't even know, I can't claim I really know what ego is. But whatever it is, it's like sending me these messages that say, you're okay if things are this way, you're not okay if they're that way. And deciding what I might be vulnerable or willing to disclose versus not. What I'm protecting and what I'm not. And I usually find those things, I'll find those things back through physicality. Like, oh, my heart rate just jumped up. My palms are sweaty. I wonder why this is going on. And I think the other kind of conceit we can have is we don't always know why. We think we do. And if you ask me why about something, I'll give you an answer.

And the answer will make sense to me, whether it's accurate or not, who knows? Could it be something for when I was five, I don't want to get everybody on a psyche and a psychoanalytic couch, but could it be something for when I was five years old that I was insecure about? Who knows?

But those things are there. And it's, well, and I'll give you an example in terms of the ego piece of it. And I think where people get so afraid of it, because I think fear is such a big driver. I give what when we begin negotiation class, I write on the board this sentence, even if blank, literally draw blank, is not okay, blank, and I'll put another blank can be. Even if blank is not okay, blank can be. I'll ask students, I said there's not a right or wrong answer, but how would you fill that in? Anything come to mind for you? How you would fill that in?

Even if my marriage isn't okay to use the marriage example as a continue to ask the problem, I can still be, I think I can still be interested in loving playing guitar. I can still be, I can still be, you know. Yeah, you can carve out others. I can still be having fun dancing. You're being a good dad, doing all the things.

So what is it doing? It's creating, it's eroding, a binary, a false binary. Absolutely it is. And the place I find it comes out almost unconsciously with people. If you talk to somebody that's had something bad happen, and somebody will say to them, it will be okay. And I think that is a promise we cannot keep. We cannot promise anybody that their circumstances are going to be okay by their definition. What I believe the way I fill in those blanks is even if circumstances are not okay, I can be. It doesn't mean I will be, it doesn't mean I like it, but I think we get so vested in, and my ego gets so vested in, I can only be okay.

If the conditions I put on future happiness, I've got a friend that talks about, he said, I wasted so much time fixing the wreckage of the future. And then, you know, who knows what wreckage happens, or it doesn't happen at all. But that, using that as an umbrella helps me with that ego piece of it that's telling me I can only be okay if I put these conditions on it, or what if they find out I don't know. And that's why I find in mediation, I am much quicker now than ever before. Just simply say, I don't know, what do you want to do? We're in this together trying to get this done. Is there something I'm missing? Maybe I'm missing. And as, people have told me that I'm missing stuff.

They told me they can't stand me. It doesn't happen every day, but it certainly does happen. And I think when somebody tells you that and they're expecting you do to give the fight back to them. And I think this is a place where we forget the value of surrender. Because you're not surrendering your whole life, you're just surrendering the fight. I think, oh, and I can say, as you heard me right the other or something right the other day, let's say you're right, tell me more. That is not what people expect. And they almost always will tell you more. And once you've given them that invitation, it's harder for them to dislike you and blame you as much as they were before.

Because you've just invited them to share more information with you. Yeah, neuro, neuro, neuro, neuro, yeah, neurohacking. I think it's like a, it's disarming because it's, it's doubly disarming. I did an analysis. I did a, I haven't shared this yet, but I did a full on analysis of that. Why does it disarm people to say you're right tell me more? And essentially it's two parts. One, you validate them.

And so you build rapport immediately by saying you're right. You do not need to be defensive. I'm on your side. I'm with you. I'm on your team. You're right. That lets their guard down. And then you say, tell me more. And then you shut up and stop talking. And then they start speaking. And it, that's why I'm therapist to facilitators, to mediators, to everyone. It's brilliant, brilliant. And I'd love to tell you that I knew the neuroscience behind it. I just found it worked. And part of that came from, from, you know, when our, when our daughter had cancer, one of, one of Patty's, our daughter and my best friend were diagnosed with cancer at the same time in August of 2018.

And our, our, my friend that was diagnosed was a, was an anesthesiologist in Denver. And he had a good friend at the Mayo Clinic. And we were talking about one, and we finished having this conversation with this guy. I was on a Sunday morning. He was kind enough to just hang out because he was friends with my friend.

So just this guy and his wife in, in, in Patty and me. And they said, you have any questions? And this is when Patty asked, say, you know, I have such a, such a hard time with this whole notion of battling cancer, fighting cancer, beating cancer, because it puts kind of this moral overlay on it. Like if people die from their cancer, they die quickly, or maybe they even choose not to get treatment, that they, that they've lost. They've done something morally incorrect and said there's so many things out of their control. And that's when he responded, well, there are different choices people can make. He said, I would never tell anybody what choices they need to make.

He said, but one option is to surrender the battle to the professional warriors, the people who are the doctors and the technicians and the nurses. And then you as the person that's experiencing the disease can spend time with people you like reading things that nourish your soul, thinking about service, thinking about things greater than yourself. I mean, things that they're not involved with the battle that sucks so much energy. And at the same time, if people want it, if that battle metaphor is helpful to them, have at it. I'm not saying it's wrong, but it was, it was one of the things that for Patty was so hard when people are about fighting, beating, and people would say, she's going to be okay.

Well, we don't know, you know? I mean, that's not a promise they could make. So as we're talking, I'm still thinking about my brain is unfortunately tethered to the secret sauce. What's the secret sauce? What's the advantage? You know, why does Seth Curry drain so many three, so many threes? And certainly, I think, I think it's unavoidable that, you know, there's stats about how many three point shots he makes during games as a percentage of the amount of three point shots he takes in a given year in practice and just overall. And it's like 3% of his yearly three point shots are in games, and 97%.

So certainly like at bat, play a bat, play a role. But I wonder if what you're saying, and so I think that's, I think we could just in my mind, I have to see that experience matters, and the 10,000 hours rule matter and a stair, a stair perl having decades of experience, same with you. Um, and I also think it's interesting because you seem to be converging on like these very simple ideas that actually aren't that simple, right? It's like, it's like how to be a good spouse, right? Basically like show that you care period, right? Like why is that that difficult?

And I think you're essentially saying like, you know, when you listed your three adjectives, I'm not going to look at them right now, but it's like listen, be curious, be basically be kind, be likable, you could collapse the two. Um, and you said know yourself, which I tend to think like if you're going to try and do those things, you kind of like that falls into the fold, you're probably trying to know yourself as well if you're trying to listen and be curious and be kind. Those are for in a profession characterized by people who in lawyers or people who love solving problems and love thinking and love kind of going through the Rubik's view as fast possible. Same thing with mediators.

It's basically no different. Like give me a problem. Really come that nobody else can solve, right? It's like let's roll up our sleeves. I will help you solve it. And I'm looking for like, well, what's the PhD level tools of this? They're like, and I think if, tell me if I'm right, is it, it's probably both and, but is one of the things, sure neuroscience and all the brain hacking, but you're saying very simple things, very, very simple things. Yes, because I'm a simple guy. I mean, it's, and I, but I think that's why I think knowing yourself is so important, which also sounds simple, right? Um, but I'll give you an example. I mean, okay, so I'm 68 years old. I've been married 43 years. We've got three kids.

We've got seven. I mean, I can give you all my life circumstance stuff, right? I've mediated lots of cases. And so patting an iron hotel and one of the like is going and making reservations and deciding whether we're going to sit inside or outside. And then say people say, I don't care. And then so I'm up there making the reservation. And it looked like there were, there were tables outside.

So I said outside. And then patty walks up and she said, well, why don't we go inside? It's kind of hot. And I, and I, and I had that back to the physical, I did an amazing physical charge. Then why don't you make the dam reservation? You know, and, and it's, and at first I said, I said, next time maybe you could do that and she didn't hear me. And I was so glad she didn't hear me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nothing to it. But, but that immediate response and I tell people, the acronym I use is park, P-A-R-C, pause, assess, reflect and choose. Like that. So you start with pause. And if you, if you just pause your way ahead of it and assess is, okay, let's think about the context and what's going on here. And let's reflect. And then once I've done that and looked up, then I can make a choice. It's not going to be necessarily the perfect choice.

But it won't be my instinctive, why don't you make the dam reservation choice, right? And so I, I think that's why that, that physicality. And so I get, I get to tell that story today because it'll make me less likely to screw up next week or the week after an immediately when we've gone on a, we're at 10 o'clock at night. People are working really hard. And they're not the only ones that are tired. I'm tired too. Or I think back to ego. I think I've got the path to get there. And I realize it's not my job. And in fact, it's not even my right to do that. I can ask questions. They may choose to go there. They may not.

But, but it's those little experiences in life that I think help us. So that's why I say it's important to know myself. But not to be myself. And, and on that, on that day at the restaurant, I got a little bit of grace. Patty didn't hear me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, okay, let's wrap up one more question.

Okay. So following in the tradition of the podcast, the diary of a CEO with Stephen Barlett, we're going to have each guest, the guest that comes after him for, or they, they're a question. And so guest number two will answer guest number one's question and so on and so forth. So in your mind, Sam, um, and this is, uh, what question do you have for the next guest, not going, not knowing if they're going to be, they're going to have some surface area for, uh, the general topic of, of the anatomy of complex. They could be a couple's therapists. They could be an FBI negotiator. They could be a mediator. They could be, uh, a Buddhist monk. Um, and I'm, I'm interested in what your question is just period.

But I'm also interested because, um, I think it's an easy way to get you to project. What are my, what is Sam really curious about that he doesn't yet have figured out? What is, what is he really like, what's the fastest thing that comes to your mind as a matter of like free association? I'm, I'm, I'm Sam. I'm really interested in X as it relates to this topic. What, what role does fear play in how you do your job? I'm not talking about the fear of the other people. I'm talking about your own fear.

As a, as the facilitator, as the meter, like, I fear and, and, and just to be clear for clarity, is this, I, as a professional entering the space, I'm afraid that you guys aren't going to like me and leave me a five-start Google review. And how does that play in my work? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And, and for me, it might be even though I'm not settling people's cases. In the back of my mind, is it running in my head? Well, 99% of all cases settle. Why is this one not? What, what have I done wrong that this one? And I think those are valuable questions to reflect, but not to completely take on the responsibility. And I think about patty and I talk about, well, I'll shut up. We're closing the podcast out.

But what, what role does your own fear play in how you do your job? Okay. That will be for the very next guest that comes. We will ask them that question. How do we do today? I just want to give like 10 seconds. How do we do on the secret sauce? I came in with the thesis that I, I, I think there is a secret sauce. And I think now I'm more confused.

Now I'm, now I'm, now I'm questioning the question. And maybe that's a really, I think, and I'm thinking maybe I need to value the basics, the quote unquote, easy basics, more than chasing the sexy science. I mean, I think both are important. But now you've, you've sort of spotlighted the basics. And as I think about Esther Peral and any other sort of skilled person to person, professional, I think maybe that's right. You know.

So thank you, Sam, much appreciated. You are, I think as I started, but never let, like it, I know you said, you know, you're, you're, you're, you said you're no longer concerned with what did you say at the beginning? You're no longer concerned. I said for you, for years, I chased money and ego and I'm not chasing money anymore. And I'm not ego part.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm chasing it more slowly. Yeah. Well, I think it, I, you know, just take it from me as a human to human thing. I really appreciate. And when I say I really appreciate, I mean, let me give context to that. When you're relatively young, I feel relatively young, at least with respect to the professional mediation, which I've only been full time doing for two years. I have three kids under the ages of eight, right? I feel like I'm just swamped.

And so when someone older than you established sort of shows you some, it could be some interest, it could be some just like any, any sort of positive attention. What did you say? Attention is like the ultimate generosity or whoever said that. Yeah, it feels good. It feels good. And it feels, it feels good. It feels rare. It feels necessary. It feels, I mean, like necessary to survival.

So I say that as that's my, that's my reflection to you. So thank you. Well, thanks, Rob. I love talking about this stuff. And I'll tell you my fear. My, my fear was, I'm coming in this and I don't have any secret sauce. I thought, boy, if I could just have the secret sauce in and, and Ryan can take this and run with it. How great would that be? And I'm like, dang it. I don't have a secret sauce.

Yeah. And that's your, that's your real fear. That's your, that's what you would say truly. Yeah. Yeah. Because it, it's, I want to look good like anybody wants to look good. And my, my friend that got cancer with same time as her daughter, he died about four years after he was diagnosed. And I was getting ready to go give a presentation. And he said, he said, Sam, just be yourself. You don't have another goddamn thing to offer. Which is like an existential conundrum, right? Because he's right. That's because it's right. And it's kind of, it just like puts it, puts it in an absurd, absurd love. Yes. Yes. Absolutely it does.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Good stuff. That's a wrap. That's a podcast. Thank you.