With the first debate of the 2016 U.S. Presidential race occurring tonight, I have politics on my mind. Having spent the last two years developing and training people in a process of emotional connection, through Emotional Self-Defense, EmoFit, and iFeelio, I’ve distilled it down to three steps that seem to work for me.
The general version of the steps are Step 1: Me, Step 2: You, Step 3: We.
Now, I take these steps and change the words to suit different situations. In ESD, I say the steps are 1) Truth, 2) Fair Play, and 3) Love. Relevant language seems to help people grasp the concept better.
When it comes to politics, I believe the three steps would be:
1) Trust
2) Respect
3) Unity.
The United States do not feel so united these days. I believe that we feel more and more divided, politically, economically, racially, ethnically, geographically, and even in terms of which drinks we order at Starbucks.
And it seems that unity is the goal for many political organizations. The United States. The United Nations. The European Union. Heck, even Putin’s party is called United Russia.
I believe that if we want to have unity in this country, we need to start by building trust and respect. I believe if we do a really good job at building trust and respect, then we unity will come naturally.
One of the main concerns over this election has seemed to be whether people trust Clinton and whether they trust Trump. From what I’ve read, very few Americans trust politicians in general. The trust in government is very low right now. Trust in general is really down. Clinton seems to hide a lot of information (hard to trust someone who never discloses), whereas Trump seems to tell a lot of false information (hard to trust someone who consistently gets caught lying).
What I hope to see tonight is a step to rebuild trust in each other. Where the candidates get on stage and start to be honest with each other. Honest with how they’re feeling. Honest with what they believe. Honest with what they don’t know.
After all, trust is inherently grounded in uncertainty — not knowing what the other person has done, is doing, or will do, but still believing that they are doing their best.
I hope it goes well tonight.