112: How to Listen (and Why)

Ethan Sawyer  0:09  
Hi friends. Ethan, saw your College Essay Guy here. My goal is to bring more ease, joy and purpose into the college application process. This is the College Essay Guy podcast, where it's normally my job to interview the most brilliant minds in the college admissions world, analyze their genius and break it down into actionable, practical steps that you can take, whether you're applying to college or helping someone else apply. Now I say that's normally my job, because this episode is going to be a little different. On this episode, I interview an old friend of mine whose name is Ben Mathis, and he's the founder of something called the urban confessional, which is a free listening project. Now, what do I mean by that? A few years ago, Ben started posting up outside bus stops and street corners with a sign that read, free listening. And he would just do that, you know, just listen. And over the last couple years, it's really ignited, and it's created something of a movement and urban confessionals now in 73 countries. It's got 2000 volunteers. It's been featured in the Huffington Post, Atlantic, Fast Company, Big Think, glamor magazine, in over 45 international publications. Ben's blog, called how to listen when you disagree, has been read over 2 million times, been republished in over 100 publications around the world, and currently, urban confessional is the subject of a PBS produced documentary called, are we listening? And this year, Ben launched the heard podcast, which features honest conversations from visionaries, leaders and other interesting people. On this episode, I talk with Ben about how urban confessional got its start in the first place, like, why did it even begin? What he's learned about listening over the last few years, how these lessons have impacted his relationships, and even what it was like to do free listening at last year's Republican and Democratic national conventions. At the end, he offers a really great resource called the practice partner Guide, which is really neat. It's got some great practical tips for listening. It's amazing stuff from an amazing human being. And like I said, it's kind of a different take for this podcast, but I think you'll see that the applications include and go far beyond the college application process. So enjoy. Welcome. This is gonna be an unusual episode. Now, normally, I kind of script things out, or at least have a set of questions. Today, I don't have a set of questions today. All I have is a title. And the title for this podcast is how to listen and why. And my guest is Ben Mathis. And Ben and I go back. We maybe 12 years we went to graduate school together, and God, we like. Ben was just talking about how he saw on his Facebook profile like pictures of us being silly and like we're growing up together and not growing up together, which I really appreciate. So


where should we begin? Ben, what do you what are you up to these days?


That's not a very interesting question, but let me ask you a better question, yeah, can I actually just put you on the spot for a second? Yep. So I have this list of brave and interesting questions, and I want to just peg you with one of them. I want to hear it. Okay, so what was the toughest decision you made last year.


Ben Mathes  3:25  
Oh, man, the toughest decision I made last year. I there. There are two, I think, and they're in different I don't mean to compartmentalize my life so much. But there were some tough decisions I made around some of the choices around my business and things, and that was really a tough decision to commit to them, to commit to growing what I do. And then there were some tough personal decisions I made, and that was mostly driven by a commitment to move on from a very long term relationship that I was in.


Ethan Sawyer  4:06  
You notice how vague he's keeping it here. I'm


Ben Mathes  4:08  
keeping it very vague because I'm not sure who's gonna listen. But yeah, both, both of my most specific, most difficult decisions were around committing to something. Can you get get a little bit more specific? Yeah, of course I can get all the way specific. This is me just working it through in my mind. So I run an acting studio, and I also run a movement around free listening and


Ethan Sawyer  4:32  
which we're going to get to as part of why I wanted to get I wanted to get him in the back.


Ben Mathes  4:39  
So both of those I've been very safe with, and I really decided to commit financially, emotionally, strategically, to growing those things, which was a huge commitment, and then on the personal side, and you can't disconnect these two. It's just how my brain's operating to get to the connection I started compartmentalized, and I'm working down to the connection I. Um, but, but on the personal side, a relationship I was in with, with my girlfriend, ended after about five years, four and a half, five years. And that was kind of like, you ever have somebody like from just like, what was that movie? It's like Indiana Jones, where just reaches under your chest, grabs your heart, and it was kind of like that and, and so I had to make some decisions about at the first make decisions about that I was going to accept this and move on and begin the healing process. So as opposed to deciding that I was going to more, you know, wallow in it or allow it to level me in a way. So I had to choose to I had to choose growth. I had to choose that. And that is not the decision I would have preferred to make. Frankly, yeah, because it would have felt really good to sit and and kind of bathe in the feeling sorry and the anger and all of the negative things, and I absolutely experienced them, but I had to choose to allow them to come in and to keep and let them keep going.


Ethan Sawyer  6:03  
You mentioned healing, and I'm curious about healing. What healing looks like to you? What? What do you do to heal?


Ben Mathes  6:13  
Okay, this is, but that's a huge question. But for me, I can't I have a hard time, and I have a hard time disconnecting healing from something, which I might say as growth, I might say as learning. It's not like I'm fixing necessarily, but I'm I'm taking what's happened and I'm growing from it. So I'm turning a tragedy into a beauty in some way, something horrible happens to me, and if I can learn from that and allow it to affect me, and then I can create something beautiful from it, I kind of go. I think I've healed, and it's because I've transformed what it was into something else. And


Ethan Sawyer  6:54  
what do you do to do that, like, what are some tools or resources?


Ben Mathes  6:57  
For me, it's impossible, and I don't know if this is right. This is just what I got right now to for me, it's impossible to disconnect healing from serving other people. And anytime that somebody comes to me and they feel lost or confused or they're broken or something is happening in their life, sometimes the first question I ask is, who are you serving? And there's something about serving others, not that we shouldn't pay attention to ourselves and and work on ourselves. But I think sometimes this idea that I can't engage with others until I help myself, sometimes that becomes addictive, and so we never engage with others, and sometimes I find the best way to work on myself is by working with others and taking the attention off of myself and placing myself in a place of humility, where I'm here to serve you, actually has a restorative thing to me.


Ethan Sawyer  7:51  
Do you ever find the opposite to be true, that you're focused more on others than


Ben Mathes  7:57  
yes? Yes, that's the shadow side. That's the shadow side. And I've been there too, and that's that's part of it, that savior complex, where it's like, I'm just focusing on you as a form of avoiding what's going on in


Ethan Sawyer  8:07  
me. It's not me, it's you, it's not me,


Ben Mathes  8:11  
it's you. It's not so like with everything, there's there's balance here, and it's all about the intention. But I know that the greatest things in my life have come from the lowest lows in my life. And it was when I was at the very bottom that I turned and I it's not like I looked out to find distraction. I looked out to find others. And it was like I was positioning in myself, in this ultimate humility where I said, Look, I don't have anything, but with the nothing I have, I can meet I can I can embrace my weakness and meet you in your weakness, and we can find a communion together that is healing.


Ethan Sawyer  8:47  
I'm gonna go, I'm gonna keep going. I'm just gonna keep just hit me. Talk to me about your lowest lows, like, let's start there, where give me one of the big challenges that you faced.


Ben Mathes  9:01  
Yeah, I have several. Have many. One of them, maybe the most profound for me, that has taught me the most was, was when I left my wife. And I mean, really, I mean, I've had many since, but that really was, and it still is, something that I feel, I look at who I was then, and I'm not proud of who I was. I'm not proud of the things I said or did, and it it really, if you have those moments where it's kind of like, oh, wow, the rug has come out. There is no more rug. There is no safety net. And I was forced to look at I was forced to look at my imperfections. I was forced to re evaluate who I thought I was. I was forced to come to terms with my weaknesses and my vulnerability. And I think it was the really it was. It was a. It was a conversion moment for me, and it, it was a sacrifice that I put her through. And was not I would not want to do that again.


Ethan Sawyer  10:10  
Take me through the give me the darkness of the night. Like, what were the effects of that in your life? Like, what impact did that have on you? Well, it


Ben Mathes  10:20  
I went through a period of kind of, I think I went through a period. I was working with a counselor. I knew something was off, yeah, so my I was calibrated enough to know that I'm not right, something's going on, and I was just running from problems, is what I was doing. And I was not facing them. I was not admitting to myself that I was capable of making mistakes. That was, that was the first thing. And I had justified so many things in my life that were keeping me from really connecting with the person I wanted to connect with the most. And, you know, I was blaming her, and I was blaming other circumstances. And all you know, just used you started looking around like it's not me, it's got to be everybody else. I was very self serving. I was concerned only with me and what I was doing and my life became very much around me and pursuing my own needs. And when I kind of came to terms with that, leaving my wife was not necessarily where the lesson lived. That was just in the reaction. I didn't know how to deal, so I left. I didn't know how to listen, so I left. I didn't know how to see so I left. I didn't know how to be present, so I just left. Yeah. And then in the aftermath of that, when things started to settle, I started to to really become. I started to reinvestigate my spiritual life, my physical life, my mental life. And I started really to see that if I was going to become the man that I was hoping to become, that I had to do some real searching. And it led to this discovery that serving other people can have a healing effect, yeah, and that serving other people can can position me in a type of humility that allowed me to see myself in them, yeah, and allowed me to realize that the very thing that I was looking for was I was not getting it, but not because it wasn't being offered. I wasn't getting it because I wasn't open to receive it. And receiving is difficult for me, like it still is, like, if I go out to dinner, like I want to pay, I want to pay for you, I want to it's receiving the generosity of others is not easy for me, yeah. And so in learning to do that, and by using specifically free listening to do that, which is kind of what came from this, it put me in places where I had to challenge my own availability, yeah, I had to challenge my own willingness to sit with people and their discomfort, which allowed me, which allowed my own discomfort to be reflected back to me. And I learned how to be with them, and I learned how to be with myself.


Ethan Sawyer  13:00  
Yeah, so I'm hearing the need for connection, the need for vulnerability. You didn't say this, but like, the need for presence. The need for presence,


Ben Mathes  13:08  
yeah, yeah. Does that? Does that? That's very it's great. The need to be present with with myself and with others, and with circumstance, and just the need to step into acceptance, yeah, of these things because I was I couldn't, I couldn't accurately tell my story either, like, who was I? I don't know. I mean, I still don't know, but I know, but until I could honestly sit with the things that I might consider a shadow, or until I could understand that that shadow is as much a part of my self as my light, and that these things can't necessarily be separated, yeah, I can't just want the good stuff, right? You know? I mean, of course, that's all I want, but I but I can't just live for As if. And that's what I was doing. I was turning my back on all of the things, yeah, and that just made them grow, yeah? That just made them grow. And so I was making decisions from that place, which I, you know, and as soon as I began to understand and incorporate and go, Yeah, I'm, I'm the totality of the light and the dark in the sense that I've got it all, then I started, then I became more familiar with it, became less scared of it, and it had less of a control over my decision making.


Ethan Sawyer  14:21  
Wow, so I'm hearing in that acceptance of all the parts, more parts of yourself, yeah, you said the light in the dark. So what'd you do about it?


Ben Mathes  14:30  
Well, I that's the, you know, maybe this is a good time to segue into this for me. I hit a moment outside of a liquor store where i i finally called somebody and I finally I was talking to a counselor, but I, you know, that has which was a beautiful thing, but that kind of had a framework where there was some expectation, and I felt kind of safe in that space. But I finally called somebody else, and I said, Hey, man, I need to talk. And. And that that phone call, that the raising of your hand and saying, I need help is that's like, that's the hardest I'm not then, that the strength it takes to raise your hand, I don't know, I don't know if you can get that in a gym. I mean, you might be a star football player, but the strength to raise your hand and say, I need help, that's a whole that's next level strength, and just doing that and then having that received on the other end of the phone. And why


Ethan Sawyer  15:26  
was it particularly difficult for you? Because for some people, I could see it being easier, right, right? What was it about


Ben Mathes  15:31  
you that made that I think, I think for me, I've never felt like I felt pretty autonomous. I felt pretty I can do this on my own. I felt, I've always felt like I had it together. And so admitting help in my mind, I don't believe this now, but was admitting a weakness. And in my mind at the time, weakness was not good. And now I understand weakness as actually the greatest strength, really. And you know, when I think of the things that matter, tenderness, compassion, love, listening, they kind of require that we reacquaint ourselves with what strength is, and we the ability to meet someone like I said, are in their weakness and to be okay with my weaknesses actually is the greatest form of strength, I think, yeah. And, you know, the the things that require the type of strength we're used to are often destructive and, and, you know, and I want to be strong physically. I want to be strong in these things, of course, because it's healthy, I suppose, but, but the real inner strength comes, I think, from weakness. And I was not okay with that, yeah, so calling somebody and being like, I need help was hard, yeah? And because, I think I also assumed that it meant there's something wrong with me, that there was something and there wasn't anything wrong with me. So when I did that, and then I was heard, I was listened to, and I thought, Wow, I feel better. What just happened? Somebody listened to me. This is wild. And I really thought, you know, I felt this connection and and then one day, I was crossing the street and a homeless guy needed money really, and I didn't have anything. So I didn't have any money really to give him. And but I said that I would sit with him, I'd pray with him, I'd be with him, and that's what I did. And I thought, Whoa. I just took that leap into vulnerability. I just took that leap into communion with another person, a stranger, and it felt awesome, and it felt great. And I was like this. I need to practice this. I need to know more about this. I don't know what this is about in my relation. I don't know what this is about with the people I'm close to. I definitely don't know what it's about with strangers. So so then I made a free list. I thought, what's the closest thing to free prayer that I can do with somebody that might be more accessible to everyone? And I thought free listening might be so I did it. So I made a sign, and I stood on a street corner with some friends in my acting studio and and I did free listening, and that was about five years ago, and then it's just never stopped, and now it's become a huge part of my life, and been a huge platform for me to explore my own weaknesses and to let go of control and to be with people and create a hospitable environment for others, which has helped me create a hospitable environment for myself.


Ethan Sawyer  18:27  
What have you learned about how to listen? Well,


Ben Mathes  18:30  
what I've learned about listening, really, is that it is not how to it is not a tactic for me. It's not something I do to get something I want. It's a it's a practice. It's like yoga. It's a posture, it's a lens that you put in your life, glasses, it's the way you see things. And and I say that not to avoid that question at all, but, but because I really believe it, and I see a lot of people talk about listening. I mean, if you want to google how to listen. There's, there's, there's steps that you can take. And everybody has kind of the same things to say about it, you know. I mean, the first thing is, shut up, you know, and listen to the you know. But it's tough to teach people something they know how to do already. And so there's absolutely useful things that you can say, do these things? Do this thing? But to me, it's a practice, and we have to understand it as that first, I'm not always good at it, and listening is not just something happens with my ears. I can listen with my gut. I can listen to my body. I can listen even while I'm speaking. I can be listening and taking in what you're giving me as I speak. So for me, it begins with that recognition that it's a practice, it's not a tactic. And for me also it really when I give someone my attention, I like to I say it like this. So this is not just on spur of the moment. This is actually something I've thought about, and it's clever, so it's catchy, so it's bright, so it must be correct. It's clever. But the way I. I really think about it is I give you my attention instead of imposing my intention. And when I give you my attention, it's like I'm paying attention to you. I'm offering something. It's a giving. I'm not trying to control this moment. I'm not trying to respond. I'm not trying to be right? I'm not trying to sell you. I'm not trying to convince you. I'm just giving you my attention, which is actually more valuable than anything else I can give you, really. So I'm interested in you. I'm curious. I'm going to ask questions. I ask a lot of questions. When I'm listening to people, I try to keep what I call an imbalanced conversation. So 80% you, 20% me, that's good talking. And you know, 80 or maybe it's 70, whatever it is, it's more you than it is me. 78 7080 something like, what


Ethan Sawyer  20:43  
are some of your favorite questions? Do you have some go to ones? Yeah,


Ben Mathes  20:47  
oh, yeah, I've definitely got go to actually, my favorite question to ask people, and it's something I usually ask at the beginning is, where are you from? And it sounds like, Why do you love that question? I love that question because it often gets people talking about themselves, whether sometimes it's like, oh, I'm from Minnesota, or, you know, or they, or they might say, I'm from this little bitty town somewhere, and that always lets me I'm listening closely. I they may not like where they're from, and that. And then I can hear that, and then that, that might open up something that, you know, tell me more about that, what's that about? And that can that can get them talking, or it might be they love where they're from, which is a great place to start also, and, and it often gives me a rapport, because I like to travel, so maybe I've been there and I can say how much I love, you know, the Pacific Northwest, and, or maybe I've never been there, but I've always wanted to go there, and it gives me the opportunity to open up some interest in them. But I think that where we're from, if we ask ourselves, where am I from, and what is my association to that? What does it mean to me? I think we can start to really open up some stuff in the person. So I always, I always open up with that. It always gets people talking. It also helps me establish rapport with them, because I like where I'm from. I mean, I think it's unique and interesting and and, you know, we can always start talking about that and it if you listen closely, when someone answers that question, you're going to hear a lot of stuff. You're gonna hear a lot of stuff. They may talk about, their family, their friends, they may not talk at all about it. Where are you from? New York. Oh, wow. Okay, right, all right. Well, maybe, maybe we won't go there, maybe we, maybe we should go there. So, I mean, I hope that doesn't that's my favorite question to ask people. I


Ethan Sawyer  22:31  
love that question when you have that moment of like, maybe we won't go there, maybe we should go there. What are you weighing? What's telling you


Ben Mathes  22:39  
I'm weighing two things I'm weighing. I actually the first thing I'm weighing is, do I want to go there? Frankly, do I feel like I have time and patience right now to go there? And I hate to say that, but it's true, because I would not want to go there, not feeling like I'm willing to go there, because then I'm not really listening very well. However, there are times when I want to challenge that in myself too, like, I don't really want to go there, but you know what it sounds like, my discomfort around this is less important than your need to talk about it. So, yeah, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna sacrifice my needs right now for comfort and actually be with you, which is back to that healing aspect of of service where I'm going. And then I discover, you know, what my discomfort is, not all that important. And then I go, Man, I sure am glad that for a second, I re evaluated what I felt like I needed, and I gave in to what someone else needed, and I found that maybe I didn't need that thing to begin with. And then the other thing I evaluate is whether or not, and it's just intuition, I don't know how to measure it. Maybe you can speak more articulately around it, but whether or not that person wants to talk about that, you know, I never want to manipulate someone into saying something they don't want, because listening is not a tactic to get what I want. One of the My brother is among many things. He was a chaplain in the Navy for a while, and he he wrote a quote once. I'll paraphrase it, but he said that we have to allow people to reveal themselves, to reveal themselves, if they will, or when they will, how they will and if they will. That's good, you know. And I know I've spent listening, has taught me to just allow them to lead the conversation, and if I'm listening closely, I can help move it, but not everybody's going to reveal themselves, and I have to, I that's okay. I've got to give up my need for them to reveal themselves, or some kind of thing. You know, boy,


Ethan Sawyer  24:35  
the way that's landing for me as a as the College Essay Guy is like, one of the things when I'm working with a student one on one, is one on one is that we have unlimited sessions, so it allows for that space, yeah, but we've also got a deadline, yeah, of November 31 Yeah, or whatever the deadline is, yeah, November 31 November 30 or December 31 or whatever it is, where it's kind of like, sure. We've got plenty of time. But also, if we gotta get going, we gotta get going. So what I'm noticing, as you're saying that, is that while I'm really in line, aligned with that desire that you just spoke of, like, that's the higher aim for me, there's also this other thing in my work that I'm doing with students, and I'm like, trying to do a thing, you know that has an outcome, which is to write a personal statement that you'll send to a college so well,


Ben Mathes  25:27  
I think, I think that's great, because to me, the aha moment is, oh, I can allow people to reveal themselves, and with that aha moment, now, what do I do to help them to feel confident, so that they reveal themselves


Ethan Sawyer  25:41  
well. And that's the thing. The other thing is that there's a little bit of extra juice that comes from the deadline. Yeah, yeah, where folks and students that I work with are a little more willing to be like, All right, well, we we gotta get


Ben Mathes  25:51  
going. We gotta get Yeah, because I'm just on the street with people and there's no deadline. There's no anything except for that I'm tired or it's hot outside. You know, boy.


Ethan Sawyer  25:59  
One more thing this makes me think of is when we used to take Zola, my daughter, for a walk, when she was, you know, whatever, 10 months old, when she was just learning how to walk, we would go for walks, and it would take us forever to get anywhere. And I realized was because she didn't know that we were going somewhere. Whoa, wow, that's awesome. She was just walking. That's awesome. Enjoying walking.


Ben Mathes  26:18  
That's beautiful, that's beautiful. And in my life with my wife, all that strife now is


that a knife oftentimes,


Ethan Sawyer  26:31  
will be playing with Zola in a way that I see, like they're not going anywhere, like they're just playing, playing, and just being in presence, in the moment. And for somebody who thinks he's pretty present, I realize I've just got still so much to do.


Ben Mathes  26:44  
That's I mean, if we learn anything from children and dogs, it's how to just play for the sake of play. Oh, you weren't gonna say HOW TO BE Goal director. Be trained. It's potty training. Well, we learn from dogs and children, yeah,


Speaker 1  26:56  
and my practice each day now is like, how do I go from eight hours of consistent goal driven efficiency and productivity to just boom, shut it off and then be in play mode. Yeah? And not try and clean up the house the same time, because I'm really excited to do that a lot of yeah,


Ben Mathes  27:11  
let's make a game


Ethan Sawyer  27:12  
of cleaning up the house Exactly. Or when she's playing and I see she's distracted, I'll start to pick things up so that I'm not being fully present? Yeah, yeah. What? I'm curious. This leads to another question, because I just shared one of the things that's like, you know, in drama, because I've been, I studied drama together, they say drama is the the it's two loves coming into conflict, like two things when you're either when you're listening or if you want to share in life, what do you see in terms of two values that come into big conflict for you, like, two things that you love and it's hard to do them at the same time,


Ben Mathes  27:46  
two things I love that are hard to do at the same time, oh my gosh, to Okay, two things I love that are hard to do at the same time. Is, one is to just be with somebody and and also not want to fix them. Talk to me about that, yeah, because I'm a fixer, like it's hard for me to be presented with problem that I don't want to engage in. And and listening has taught me that actually, just by by allowing someone to be who they are in my presence that often that's That's enough, like, I don't have to fix it. It's not on me to fix I don't have to be responsible for them. But I often experience the need to want to do that, and then I rationalize that need by being like, well, I can help you, I can help you, I can help you. And then it's about me again. Sometimes it's about me, and sometimes the person is asking for help, and I still don't. I can't offer it, because the help, the lesson you need, can only be learned by you going through this. I can't get you around this. I can't get you under this. You have to go through something. How do you manage


Ethan Sawyer  29:00  
that? When you when the thought comes up, flickers up, ooh, here's the thing,


Ben Mathes  29:04  
I allow that thought I go, I have the recognition, and I just control whether or not I say something, really. Because, look, you know, I as a teacher, or any I can see, you know, if I'm I teach acting, and so if i i see a scene, I can see 1000 things that can be fixed on that scene. You know, anybody can see the things that we can improve. It's, it's, I think real wisdom comes from listening, being quiet and and then getting the feedback from the actors, and then addressing not the symptoms, you know, not the many things that I can see, but listening so closely that perhaps I can, I can finally hear the very core, the very bottom thing that if we address that bottom, everything else will align. And when I'm listening to people on the street, you know, I'm. Trying to listen to the deepest of I'm trying to listen to the deepest version of who they are. And the more that I try to fix the symptoms of what they're saying, or fix the symptoms of their thing, I'm not going to get to the bottom of who they are. They won't reveal that ever, because we'll get caught up in the management of who they are, and not in the essence of who they are. I don't know if that answers your question, because, well,


Ethan Sawyer  30:24  
it answers a different question, and you can just say see above, if you want, for this question. But what has free listening and the free listening movement taught you? What have you been able to bring into your with your acting students, as you're teaching? Oh,


Ben Mathes  30:38  
man, oh gosh. Free listening is like the greatest acting training ever. And that's not how it's not why it was developed, but it does several things. So free listening takes the attention off of me and puts it onto you. And if there's anything an actor needs is a little less attention on themselves, which is actually a lot of acting teachers talk about how, you know, a lot of teachers talk about, you know, it's about the other person. It's about the other person, but then it their techniques are totally opposite of that. So acting training so often became about, what can I do to put the attention on the other person, right? And it was always still, what's your objective? What's your and all this crap that acting teachers talk about so that you can control this moment, right? Even though it's wrapped in this kind of beautiful it's freeing the moment to understand the moment. And I'm like, I don't know if it is in the free listening experience, we actually get out of the classroom, and you're actually face to face with all of your own stuff, and you're face to face with, you don't with somebody who you can't predict, so you do not know what's going to come to you if anything comes to you. And so one of the things that when people go free listening. And in the workshops that I do afterwards, we talk a lot about what happened, and somebody will always say nobody came and spoke to me, and I just wanted someone to come and talk to me, and I felt lonely, and I felt ignored, and I felt like people weren't paying attention to me. And I we always process that, and at the end of it, usually we arrive at, oh, wait, it's not about me. It's I'm not I'm not there to get things from other people. I'm there to give things to other people. And that is a huge lesson for artists and actors, is that acting is not about what we receive. Acting is an offering. It's a giving. And in the giving is where we find our freedom, where we find our power and we find in the giving of our art, we really are only going to discover things that someone who's that generous will ever discover. And so then, then you really understand it all differently. It's like, I'm not doing this to become famous or to get an applause. I'm not doing it for the audience. I'm not doing it. It's an offering to you. Then the work becomes unevaluable. Because I don't know, have you ever seen somebody like helping? Okay, someone's walking down the street and somebody falls and somebody runs out and picks them up like you would never stop and be like, you just did that wrong? Yeah, you would never critique it. It's like, give it an A give it. Yeah, right. It wasn't. It could have been better. What was your objective? Like, you wouldn't do that. And so when we position ourselves in that place of offering, we discover a new level of freedom and a new depth to all of our work, whether it's writing or acting or or relationships. And I find that free listening is a unbelievable way to practice that offering and and so we take that then into our life or into our work. If I can practice offering myself to strangers, then I can practice offering myself to the people I'm closest to, yeah, which is sometimes harder, yeah.


Ethan Sawyer  33:31  
What has it done for you in your life?


Ben Mathes  33:36  
Well, I, for me, it's, it's, it's shifted a lot of my relationships. You know, I've if I can go back to when I was talking earlier about my low point, you know, and leaving my wife. I didn't know how to be with people in that tension. Soon as it got uncomfortable, I was out, and this has taught me how to be present with people, even when I'd prefer not to be to be present when it's unpleasant and to be there with them, you know, I so I hope that next time I want to leave whatever it is, whether it's my wife or I want to leave the situation, this conversation, this conversation,


Ethan Sawyer  34:16  
will keep you long. They'll keep you


Ben Mathes  34:17  
along that that I can I've practiced how to be present in that space, and I can accept more of the totality, the wholeness of life, which includes the stuff I'd rather not acknowledge, yeah, you know, so I can experience, I hope, I can be present with the things that are uncomfortable and the things that are comfortable and and actually eventually lose. They lose those designations even, trying to talk about it. So until it really just becomes I'm just sitting with all of it, because all of it is, if it exists, it belongs. Is one of the things that one of the people I like to read, Richard Rohr, he says that if it exists, it belongs. And that is not. How I was operating, yeah? Because to me, if it existed and I didn't like it, it did not belong, you know, which compartmentalized my life and and I wasn't listening. Because you can't really listen to something and compartmentalize it. That doesn't work, because then you'll only hear the things you like, like we do on Facebook, yeah, we just edit out the things we don't like, and we just hear this stuff you like, give us more. And so it's put us in a place where disagreements impossible. Really, we have, you know, political stuff going on right now. And, and I know people who are very upset, and of course, I'm very angry, and that's fine, of course, and but I know a lot of people also are now listening and, and I know people who say that's how we got here because we weren't listening. And I know people who finally feel heard. And I know, you know, so I mean it, it's a big thing. I've got two


Ethan Sawyer  35:53  
more questions for you. One is, would you share just a little bit about what it was like when you went to was it the RNC, or was the DNC? The RNC? Yeah.


Ben Mathes  36:00  
Will you share a little bit about doing free listening there? Yeah, we orchestrated free listening at the RNC and at the DNC at the Republican National Convention and the Democrat national convention for this last election. And the conventions were last summer. I did not go to the DNC. I went to the RNC, and that was just because I had to choose one. I could only afford to go to one. So I went to the RNC. To the RNC and but what I heard they were both very much alike. I mean, it's an unbelievable energy. It really is. It's really great if you ever get a chance to go to these conventions, at least just to go outside. It's really exciting, because there's a lot of people with a lot of opinions, and they're expressing them really creatively. It's really cool. Actually. It is not a place where everyone's there supporting the candidate. It's a place where most people there are not in support of the candidate and and so you there were people dressed up like walls, you know, protesting against Donald Trump, and they were people dressed up like babies running around, doing kind of performance art things and making a point. And then there were people who were very much in support of the President, and they were saying things, you know, you had the kind of Westboro Baptist type people there, and you just had everybody there. And actually, objectively, it was beautiful. I mean, it was like free speech at its finest, I mean, and it was, it was very safe. In this instance, the police officers were from all over the country, and they, you know, when somebody was saying something that was particularly inciting, they just, they would form a bicycle wall between the bicycle wall. So, like, literally, these guys showed up, and they had a megaphone, and they were yelling some pretty insulting things, frankly, and so people were yelling back at them. And so there was just these people yelling and people yelling. And it wasn't, I never felt unsafe, but the cops just very calmly on their bicycles went in between the two disagreeing parties. And literally, you had a wall of bicycle police, and you had these two people yelling over them, two parties. So it was probably 50 people on either side, so maybe 100 people just yelling at each other, and the cops just very calmly created a barrier between the two of them and let them yell at each other for an hour, and then they quit and moved on and did something else. I mean, it was fascinating. Wow. And I will also say that there was more press than people, and the press were showing us all of the crazy yelling and screaming, but there was a lot of people just having real conversations, too. And so I was there free listening, and that was where I really learned how to listen when you disagree with people. And you know, I wrote a blog about this, and so I can highlight some things about it, but, and we'll link to the blog. Link to the blog, yeah. But ultimately, what happened was a lady came to me with a very strong opinion about abortion, and was telling me about this, and and I was just listening. And I think she thought I was going to disagree with her, and I did disagree with her, but I kind of felt that I'm going to disagree. And instead, I just asked her. I said, How did you get to this opinion? What was your story? And as soon as she started to tell me her story, there wasn't anything to disagree with, yeah, you know? I mean, it was a different I still don't agree with her opinion, but I can't disagree with her person like, yeah, you know, then I'm tapping in. I'm hearing her heart. I'm not just hearing her thoughts, yeah. And so disagreeing takes on a different thing, yeah. And it's, you know, if, if you're a Trump supporter, or if you're not a Trump supporter, or whatever it is, if you ask somebody who is on the other side of the aisle? Let's say, if you ask a Trump supporter, hey, can you tell me about what's causing you to support him? You might, you may not. This person may not have thought about it, but you might hear, you know, well, look, I've been out of work. I've been in this you know, you might get to that place where you still don't have to agree. The choice they've made, right? But you've gotten down to something human that you can listen to, and it's a starting place, you know, and then you can listen to them, you can disagree with them, but you're doing it from a different place, you know. You just, you're, in fact, there's a Heineken ad that just came out, that's gone viral, that's just about this exact thing about, hey, you know, at the core, we're all people. We want to be loved, we want to be acknowledged, and we have stories that shape the choices we make. And when we get into that story, all of a sudden it's hard to say, you made a bad choice. You made a wrong choice. And it is not to say, I want to be very clear. It's not to say that we shouldn't disagree or that you shouldn't protest or stand up and express yourself and but it, you know, it gives us a beginning place that's a little less reactionary. Perhaps


Ethan Sawyer  40:52  
last question, why do you do what you do?


Ben Mathes  40:57  
I really do believe that the world is walking around and does not realize how beautiful it is. The people in the world are walking around and they don't realize how beautiful they are. They don't realize how significant they can be. And I I want people to know that they're valued. I want people to know that they matter and that they can offer something in the world. Because I can only imagine if we had 6 billion people who knew that how much better things could be. I think that's I mean that really, I mean really, really, that's it.


Ethan Sawyer  41:34  
That's the podcast. Hope you enjoyed it. I certainly did. It was really, really wonderful to sit down with Ben again, and keep in mind, you can find the show notes at college essay guide.com/podcast, you'll see a list of all the episodes I've done and the practical guides that go along with them. Until next time, stay curious. You


Transcribed by https://otter.ai