Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:05 Welcome to teaming up conversations, the podcast, I'm your host Simon better. I believe that one of the most satisfying and
Speaker 2 00:00:14 Rewarding moments
Speaker 1 00:00:15 In life is belonging to a trusted team and achieving something unique together. Thank you for joining our dialogue, how to build lead and be part of an inspired team and community
Speaker 1 00:00:40 I'm honored to speak to Azim KAA. His personal life experiences taught him the practice of compassion, forgiveness, and peace, making something we and our world need more of Azim immigrated to the United States in 1974 to escape violence in Kenya. He became a peace activist of the losing his 20 year old. So to, to a tragic gang-related murder in 1995, out of unspeakable grief and despair, Azi chose the path of forgiveness and compassion rather than revenge and bitterness. This amazing choice led to the establishment of the thi KASA foundation with the purpose to stop the continuing cycle of violence among youth Azim has received over 80 awards, including the national crime victims, community service award presented by bill Clinton. Also, he received the international award for building peaceful communities. Along with the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Azim has written several books, including the secrets of the Bulletproof spirit, how to bounce back from life's hardest hits and the Triology from murder to forgiveness. A father's choice from forgiveness to fulfillment and from fulfillment to peace. Azi has a very powerful message, which I apply in my own life. I encourage you to take this message to heart, to heal yourself, your relationships, families, and communities. Enjoy the conversation with Azi camisa on forgiveness and compassion
Speaker 2 00:02:32 Azi. It's wonderful to connect with you. How are you today?
Speaker 3 00:02:37 I'm hello, Simon. Good to see you too.
Speaker 2 00:02:40 Thank you. Thank you for being on my podcast. Let's dive into an incident that really shook up your life in 1995. What happened?
Speaker 3 00:02:52 Yeah, it was a life changing event, probably the worst nightmare parent can ever face. My son, who was a student at San Diego state university worked as a pizza delivery man on Fridays and Saturdays to make some extra money for college. He was a good kid, very talented writer, gifted photographer, and inspired some to work for national geographic. Good sense of humor, kind generous, a wonderful girlfriend that they just got engaged to was lower to a bogus address by a youth gang in north park and San Diego. And in a gang initiation, there were four gang members. Three of them were 14 and the leader was an 18 year old who gave a nine millimeter handgun to a 14 year old and ordered him to shoot my son who was already in his car, trying to back from the scene of the crime that given the right apartment address, but the wrong apartment number.
Speaker 3 00:04:00 So he knocked on many doors and got back to the car and he was gonna drive away. And then then the 14 year old got the order. He fired one round, which came for the driver's side window and entered my son's body into the left shoulder blade and then exited to the right down. It was fat and tar died. Couple of minutes later, drowning in his own blood at the age of over a lousy, very sudden overwhelming grief over believe, you know, really total confusion is you try to absorb a new hideous reality. And this was 27 years ago assignment, but it never goes away.
Speaker 2 00:04:50 Yeah. Yeah. It stays with you. And I'm so sorry to what you were went through there. How did you respond to that? I think you, and then it really kind of created a new purpose for you around forgiveness and, and promoting peace. So how did you respond to that incident and that devastating moment?
Speaker 3 00:05:10 Yeah, I mean, I went through the emotions, expect a pattern to go through despair hopelessness. Uh, at one point I was suicidal really did not know how to go through without him. It's an important part of my family as children always are, but sometime deep trauma, there's a spark of clarity. Uh, practice is a SoFi Muslim. I started to meditate when I was, uh, 20. My mom was very spiritual. My dad was a businessman. I grew up with equal emphasis on my spirituality and my career. And I lost him in my early forties. And I was educated some excellent schools in England in mathematics and finance. What really helped me to deal with my deepest tragedy was my spiritual foundation. So what I mean by that is sometimes in trauma, there is a spark of clarity. Every Saint has suffered the dark night of the soul.
Speaker 3 00:06:16 And I believe in God, I believe in a higher power. And I remember the pain was so excruciating when I found out that had been and killed, left my body. Couldn't be my body. The pain was unbearable. I into an with God, I was not don't remember how long I was gone for. It's like a nuclear bomb that had gone off in my heart. And when the explosion subsided, I came back into my body with the wisdom that there were victims at both ends of the gun. So that was not something that came from my intellect or my loving heart, but to download from my higher power because the kid who killed my son was only 14. And I saw him as a victim of our society's easy to see that my son was a victim of the gang banger, but I saw him as a victim of American society.
Speaker 3 00:07:13 And as you know, the problem with youth violence is an epidemic in the United States. We lose a young soul every hour and we're just going through <inaudible> in Sandy hook and it's a mess. And I didn't know all of this because over my work, before he died was an international investment banking. I traveled the world and multilingual and lot of international work. And then since he was killed by 14 year gang shocked of youth violence in took first world countries like England in Japan and Canada and Australia and Canada. And they added all the kids that die in those 25 countries, took the total and multiplied that by 11. That is not many we losing in United States of America. And since that particular study things are actually going worse. So I asked the question, you know, how did we create a society where children killed children? And we lose so many and we are the richest nation in the world. Yeah. We can spend billions of dollars or trillions of dollars on wars foreign. So yet every day, right in our own backyard, our kids are being wiped out in the friends, bizarre violence.
Speaker 2 00:08:42 Yeah. Nine months. Well talking a bit more about gang violence and, and your foundation.
Speaker 3 00:08:49 I was coming to the foundation that nine months later having learned this horrific statistics, I felt as an American citizen, that I must be accountable with a, at least my share with the bullet that took my son's life because it was fired by an American child. And I saw that the enemy was not the 14 year old, but the societal forces that forced many young men and women to fault with the crack and get involved with gangs and crimes and drugs and alcohol. And so, so owner my son and helping my family deal with the strategy in a positive way, nine months later, I started the target foundation, TK org, um, just named after my son with the initial mandate of stopping kids from killing kids, by breaking the cycle of youth violence and essentially at three mandates supposed to save lives of children because we lose so many and it's important to do.
Speaker 3 00:09:49 They had a lot of living to do you know, when you have 6, 7, 8, 19 years old to be murdered. I still believe when I think about how many young people we lose, our second mandate was to empower the right choices. So kids don't fall so that crack and become involved with crime and gangs and drugs and alcohol and weapons. And third was to teach the principles of known violence, of accountability, empathy, compassion, forgiveness, which is a big part of my story and peacemaking and peace building. And I started with a simple premise that violence is a learned behavior. No child is born violent. Tony who killed my son, wasn't born violent. But if you accept that there's a tourism, then nonviolence can also be able, nonviolence can also be taught, but you have to teach it because kids are not gonna learn that through smooth cities.
Speaker 3 00:10:48 And what shocked me, maybe surprised you as well. And your listeners that our kids don't see examples of violence. By the time they get to grade one, they're six years old. They've seen over a hundred thousand images of violence. Think about movies, television, video games. They're very much an I for an I society. Where do they learn non violence? I took on this mandate. And then soon after I reached out and forgiveness to Tony's grandfather, I would never have met him that his grandson not taken the life of my son with the attitude that I'm not here, screaming, retribution, and revenge because your grandson killed my son. Rather, what I really see here is we both lost the sun when he lived with his grandfather and calls him daddy. And the real reason I'm here is to tell you that I've started this foundation with a really loved mission of stopping kids from killing kids.
Speaker 3 00:11:52 And I need your help. I can't do this by myself. It's a big job. And it behooves us to work together because I can't bring Ty back. He's dead. He is gone and you can't get Tony. Tony was the first 14 year old in the state of California to be tried as an adult, which I was not in favor of, but you can't get Tony out of the criminal justice system. But the one thing you and I can do is make sure other parents and grandparents don't suffer. And we don't lose more kids in our community that die like my son, or end up in prison like the, and never can do. Will you help, man? So he was very quick to take my hand of forgiveness and thanked me for reaching out to him. And he said, you know, as soon as I found out, my grandson was responsible for the of your son, I went into the prayer clause, please is a Baptist from the south Christian.
Speaker 3 00:12:52 I practice is a so Muslim. He's African American and my roots are Eastern. Although I grew up in Kenya, I often kill him. I always tell him, Claire, I'm the African American nor you. I was born in Africa. <laugh> anyway, he was very quick to take my hand of forgiveness and fast forward, 27 years later, that foundation he's also in his 27th year. And we have a safe school program, which has four programs for youth. We were invited by Berkeley university to create a program for parents based on our work in restorative practices and restorative justice. So we have that now. And we during COVID also creating a program for teachers because teachers are very, very traumatized during the COVID couple of years. So now the six programs together are the safe school model have been evaluated by many of our community colleges and universities in San Diego delivering amazing results.
Speaker 3 00:13:56 And now, uh, three years ago, we started the second site in Pennsylvania. And last may a little bit over a year ago, we have a third site in Colorado and we are finally expanding the safe spoon model on a national basis. And hopefully someday my goal before I pass onto the next world is that our curriculum becomes mainstream. Because if you look at the American landscape about of our population has an undergraduate degree, have a master's degree and about three or 4% have a PhD, but 90 plus percent become parents. And my goal is that it's important to teach stem. I agree. You teach math and reading and science and all of that, but it's important to teach nonviolence because eventually if you can create parents that can practice the concepts of nonviolence and empathy and compassion and forgiveness, and then the children will be that way. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And maybe in a few generations, we can have a more peaceful world.
Speaker 2 00:15:09 One of the key cornerstones of your teachings is forgiveness. What is forgiveness and why is it so important?
Speaker 3 00:15:17 Well, I think forgiveness is something that in the Western world is not better. Understood. Forgiveness is something you do for yourself. And I think the biggest part of forgiveness is to be able to separate yourself from the offender. I did not want to go through life in anger and hatred and resentment. If I do that, who am I hurting
Speaker 2 00:15:43 Yourself?
Speaker 3 00:15:43 Yeah. So self abuse. There's a great quote from Mandela is there's, you know, unforgiveness is like drinking poison and waiting for your enemy to die, kills you, not the other person. So the important thing I teach is you leave the offender to the higher power because there's two pieces here. First. You don't want to live in this corrosive emotions of anger and hatred and resentment and, and retribution. Cause it becomes very consuming. The second piece is I did not want to go through life as a victim. I had a very full life, you know, as an international banker, I made good money and I put social life and stayed in like spaces, travel in the world, hat, good restaurants. And then I had life. I wanted that life back. We all do mm-hmm <affirmative> and I understood that unless I forget I would remain victim.
Speaker 2 00:16:40 Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:16:41 Let story, you teach it two day forgiveness workshop and I've done it for several years now, for who started by a minister in San Diego, because she says, you know, I know your passion is kids, but adults need to learn how to forgive as well. In fact, my congregation would love it if you teach it. So that was my first course, probably 18 years ago. I did it's a two day course. I did it in sent Paul Minnesota. And there was this Jewish lady on the morning of the second day, she came up to and says, you don't get it. She's very animated. And I said, what is it I don't get, I am trying to forgive Hitler pretty heavy because her ancestors were Holocaust victims. And I not all I understand. And I said, probably the biggest BLE issue, uh, world history is the Holocaust, 6 million Jewish people were murders.
Speaker 3 00:17:36 And so I can't speak for six Menon Jewish, but I said to her, you know what? I see these lines of hatred on your face. Hitler died 70 years ago. I see the anger and resentment when you speak about what you're trying to accomplish. But lemme tell you the higher power knows how to deal with Hitler better than you do. And it, and as I speak to you, the higher power is dealing with Hitler. Why do you want Hitler to live in this meager real estate of your psyche is important. MEE, why don't you let Hitler go knowing the higher power is dealing with him. So I, Jordan lived because I can, see's destroying you. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So the light bulb went on and even by the end of the second day or shift started to fade that month later, I got this amazing, beautiful card from her, thanking me for the workshop. And there was a PS, my husband, thanks. You you've been married for 30 years. And now we have the most loving relationship in our marriage because Hitler IST living in him. So, you know, it's something that you need to get. It's something you do for itself.
Speaker 2 00:18:53 Talk about self forgiveness. Um, how do I practice that? Is there a process that, um, can help me to practice forgiving myself?
Speaker 3 00:19:05 Absolutely. I, uh, this is the work I do in prison teaching offenders to forgive themselves. And essentially it is a four step process. The first is to take responsibility for your actions, Tony, cause of my forgiveness. When they had a hearing to decide whether he should be tried as an adult or as a juvenile, give a very emotional remorseful speech. But you take responsibility for killing tar, which never happens because a judge asks you, how do you plead guilty or not guilty? What do they normally say? Not guilty. He didn't say that. He said I shot and killed Tara kata person. I did not know who was not doing any harm to me. In other words, I am guilty. Now that was not the murder trial. That was a trial to decide whether he should be tried as an adult or a juvenile. And the judge told him, you don't have to plead guilty because this is a decision we're gonna make.
Speaker 3 00:20:04 Whether we should try you as an adult or a juvenile. And then we have a murder trial. He says, no, I am guilty. I don't want to drag Mr. Cara's family and my family through a trial, which was very, very amazing that, that he was 16 and a half when the trial happened. So it's the first thing you, when you start forgiving, take responsibility for your actions. A lot of us don't do it. We blame somebody else. He didn't blame the 18 year old that gave him the order because he pulled the, the second thing I ask is you ask forgiveness of the people you have, whether it is granted or not, doesn't matter. I already forgiven it. But in that speech, he also ask for my forgiveness. I pray to God that Mr camisa would forgive me for the harm that I have caused him and his standard.
Speaker 3 00:20:53 The first step is to redeem is to change your behavior forever. And when you are parole, and most of the inmates I speak, if I speak at a program for life connection program are offered to inmates are going to be parole in the next three years. So when you go on the outside, change your behavior forever and help other young people not follow in your former footsteps. Now, if you are not an inmate and if you harm somebody outside of society, a lot of your listeners are not going to be prisoners, but they might have got a stranger with their spouse or their expo, or, or there's a lot of problems between father, son, mother, daughter, business partners, right? You have to essentially amend man that relationship and not only maned, but then from what you have learned to help others not make the same mistake.
Speaker 3 00:21:55 I did this program in London and there was a daughter that hadn't spoken to her mother for 30 years. She reached out or to a very emotional letter. Now they talk every day. So the point I'm trying to make is, and then you practice with other that have been a strained. It's called redemption as Tony does. Now, Tony is now 41. He's out prison. I helped, uh, advocate for his Pearl. And he's now volunteering for the foundation, just like his grandfather. And I have done for 27 years. And we just got back from Chicago, where we spoke at the conference. We saved him, but he's sending lot of other kids. So by doing this three steps, then the fourth step is you can forgive yourselves because you took responsibility. You asked forgiveness of the people you've hung. You've changed your behavior, help others not to repeat your offending behavior. And that helps you forgive selves,
Speaker 2 00:22:50 Very powerful process, very powerful. When you teach that at prisons, you go to federal prisons every year and you teach inmates about nonviolence and forgiveness and peace making. What's your experience when you talk to those
Speaker 3 00:23:06 People, you actually it's, uh, it's very, very rewarding. It's very emotional. A lot of the people I speak to a lot of the inmates I speak to are going through a program for life connection program. It's a spiritual program and I teach how you deal with pain and grief because a lot of pain, because when you killed an innocent unarmed human being like Tony did that knows on your conscience, 24 7, not an easy thing to go through life with. And many of these inmates that have done this offense are suffering. And another thing is I've yet to meet an offender who was not a victim, some of the abuses that they went through when they were young, created the kind of offense that they created. So the spiritual program is based on a six month program where they learn the skills and each particular inmate is paired with the spiritual teachers.
Speaker 3 00:24:03 If you're a Christian, you have a minister. If you're Muslim, you have an Imam. If you are Jewish, you have a rabbi. If you are Buddhist, you have a Mon. If you Don of that, the spiritual teacher, I speak at the front end of this program because the chaplain who runs the program says when they listen to you, they pay attention to the rest of the program. So the recidivism rate in the adult system is two thirds. But if they go through the CP program, which is optional, they don't have to go through it. But if they go through it, the recidivism drops to under 17%. So 83% have changed their behavior and are out there doing good work. Wow. It's, it's phenomenal. I wish it was in every prison. I speak at some federal prisons like Leavenworth, which is by Kansas, my land by Detroit and Petersburg by Richmond.
Speaker 3 00:24:56 And I leave Monday to speak in Terra ha, which is in Indiana. It's another federal prison and I'm doing two presentations, one from eight to 10 and another one from 12 to two. And I also teach 'em how to meditate because I meditate two hours a day. Now, when Taric was alive, I did about an hour, a day to connect them, you know, with the inner guidance, with the higher power to make better decisions. And it's very powerful. It brings tears to my eyes when I'm there. And I get a lot of hugs. And I remember this in Leavenworth, there was this one kid who was in wall street and got caught with white crime or wall street, greed and Everest, and was indicted and was in prison. And he came up to him and he says, my father will not speak to me because I was involved in this criminal activity of, you know, defrauding, older senior people with our financial models.
Speaker 3 00:25:56 And my father was a doctor will not speak to me. And I'm sorry. And I, I wish I hadn't done it. I want to men that relationship with my father and I spent hours and days and ears grieving for my actions. I said, well, gimme your father's phone number. Let me call him. And I called his father. I said, you know what? Your son is alive. He's a good kid. He made a mistake. You need to forgive him. He wants to have the relationship with you. I said, my son is dead. I said, how are you gonna feel if your son dies and you were not able to heal that relationship, he's your son. He's a good person that made a bad mistake. Help him. It'll be good for you. It'll be good for him. Of course, they came back together and now they have a good relationship.
Speaker 3 00:26:50 So I do some of this work while I'm in prison. When I'm asked to, I don't know this for a fact, but there's a lot of resources in our prison. You can't save all of them. I'm sure that there are certain hardened criminals, but we have 2 million prisoners. We are 4% of the world population and we have 25% of the world's prisoners. Yeah. I truly believe that. You can probably say about 70%, at least in my programs, we've seen that prisons are not places where we rehabilitate or prisons are not places where we practice restorative justice. And I truly believe that the LCP is a great program. I mean, and these 83% are not outside sitting on their couch. They are working, helping other young people not follow on their form of footsteps. And that applied experts. You know what I'm saying? Sometimes they're better at preventing violence than a PhD.
Speaker 2 00:27:51 Yeah. I, I truly believe that at the core, most people have a good heart and they have good intentions, but many human beings, people make mistakes.
Speaker 3 00:28:02 Absolutely. We all make mistakes. And even the hardened criminals have something of value buried within them. It's hard to find like finding diamonds, they're deep and hard to find. And then you bring them up with rocks and you have to separate the draws from the, from the diamonds and then cut it and Polish it to really style. But I think the more we do that with our prisoners, the better society will create.
Speaker 2 00:28:30 Now talk about the mission of the foundation. Tar Misa foundation is to reduce gang violence. Then there's a lot of gangs and they do bad things. What is it that attracts young people into gangs?
Speaker 3 00:28:49 I think a lot of it is because they are coming from a gang culture. I have met gang members that are three to four generations of gang members. And I just spoke at San Diego state university. And this kid came to me and he said, Mr. Camisa you changed my life. I said, well, tell me more. He said, when I was in seventh grade, you came and spoke to my school and I decided to follow you and become a banker. And you became my role model and didn't follow my older brother, my father and my grandparents. They were all gang involved and I just graduating and I have a job at Wells Fargo. I get stories like this all the time. We specialized from fourth grade to ninth grade because Tony joined the gang in sixth grade and killed Clark in eighth grade. So our first program is an assembly live with the grandfather.
Speaker 3 00:29:47 I entered this man's grandson killed this men son near there together in the spirit of compassion and forgiveness. We are different races, different religion. We met in di circumstances, but we are brothers. We're still together. 27. Yeah. He's one of my closes friends. That's close to me as my own brother. And then we have a 10 week curriculum where we teach accountability, empathy, compassion, forgiveness, choice, making all of those 10 week. And we have three levels of it. First is for fourth and fifth. Second was six and seven. The third level is for eight and nine. So it's great. Specific age specific. They, we created to peace club on campus, which is a leadership stuff. You teach leadership program of 60 different titles. And then our last program is a mentoring program between eight to 12% are the kids that are likely going to join gangs.
Speaker 3 00:30:40 It's a big number in inner city schools, a thousand kids. So those eight to 12%, we hook them with our mentors and the mentors work with them, not only in school, but also in their homes and the community. So in our schools, we don't expel kids. If a kid has an altercation, they send them to our mentors. I tell you a story about one of our top mentors. Who's now a facilitator on her way, home. When she was in seventh grade, she was 13, 14 years old on her way home, which is four blocks away from her her school. There was a gang waiting and the initiation, there was the next person that crosses the street. You gotta go beat her up. That was her. So they molded her. They pulled her hair. She started to bleed. They hit her. Fortunately there was an adult there that was able to break up the fight and she ran home.
Speaker 3 00:31:37 Two weeks later, we were at her school and she saw that I forgave Tony and reached out to his grandfather. And she was so move that she forgave the kids that mortar went through high school, went to Berkeley. What a degree in social work and now is one of our top teachers. So what we are seeing is that these concepts of accountability and Goodwill and empathy and compassion and forgiveness and peace building and peacemaking are not only teachable. Our kids are hungry for it. Yeah. I give you another example, 2019 November, just before the pandemic, I was invited to speak at bishops, which, you know, in LA JOA hundred and four years old, very high end school. Everybody that graduates there goes to an Ivy league school, 800 students, 200 teachers, pretty good ratio there. And there was a, a big line of kids that were there after I spoke to talk to him and there was this one lady she said to me, her name is Vanessa she's, uh, giving me permission to share her story.
Speaker 3 00:32:49 She came up to me and said, Mr. Camisa when I was in seventh grade and 14 year old, you came and spoke at my school. I was put into the foster care system at the age of eight. After I heard you speak, I forgave my biological mother, who I blame for all of my pain in my life, IGA a of my foster parents with the confusion they created in the world for me. And I decided to move onto a different trajectory. She won, won a scholarship division because she couldn't afford it. She in a inner city kid, she just graduated from bishops, with honors and as a full scholarship at UCLA. And she coem, uh, our 25th anniversary celebration. She might come
Speaker 2 00:33:39 Present, beautiful story. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:33:41 Or might become like Kamala Harris. I don't know. You know, but I could just see the determination in this lady. But you started with that decision. She made at age of 14 to forgive her biological parents and her foster parents and started a whole new trajectory. And she's going to just, so
Speaker 2 00:34:03 We talk about self forgiveness now, Vanessa forgave, others, what are the key criterias principles to forgive someone else or even they continue to do bad things. How do we practice that? Forgiving others, even if they continue to do violent behaviors,
Speaker 3 00:34:27 Right? What you're talking about is a lot of domestic violence because there is a continuation of offenses. So I always tell them that if you are in a situation where you're being abused, you need to move away from it. There are many nonprofit organizations that can help you. You don't have to do this alone. There are also some agencies like the child protective services, where you can reach out, or they reach out to us at the foundation and we have tremendous resources. But once you are away from that abuse, at some point for you to move forward, like Vanessa did is to be able to forgive. And the steps there I teach is first, you have to acknowledge that you have been harmed. It's a grieving process. We all get hard hits. One of my book is called the secrets of the bullet for spirit.
Speaker 3 00:35:20 How to bounce back from life's hardest hits 30 chapters of how you do the acknowledgement is a grieving process. Grieving is medicine. We don't grieve enough. It's painful mean I went through grieving and my, in my tradition, we were 40 day grieving period where you don't cook or clean house people from my mosque brought me food, but I had to grieve. I couldn't even say a Taric diet so painful, but now I look back at it and I to tell the story with all the details I had to step into the grave to accept Tarric body. I thought me with him, I didn't want to beat them alone. So, but pain is not a bad thing, Simon. This is how the union was mold. There's a great story in a book by Kaji brand or GI brand, they're both acceptable pronunciations for the prophet, where he talks about joy and sorrow, where he says, where you feel joy, sorrow, sleeping on your bed.
Speaker 3 00:36:15 And when you feel sort of joy sleeping on your bed, you feel these emotions from the same faculty. And you can deepen that through either experience. And he talks about this Potter. It's making this beautiful piece of, uh, sculpture with his clay. He so into it, that actually whats the claim with his tears. Once the sculpture is done, he has to take the clay, put it in a 2300 degree fide oven for 18 hours, pretty painful. So the clay can become porcine and radiate its beauty. I know what it feels like to be in the 2300 degree oven. So the first step is to, it's a good from the Turkish pro that says he who conceals his grief, doesn't find a remedy for it. So it's a healthy way to agree. An unhealthy way to agree a healthy way. As you know is to read something inspiring, spend time with nature, meditates, self care journaling help me a lot.
Speaker 3 00:37:18 Meditation is a big part of my life spending some alone time. I I'm single I didn't date or never much of a social life for three and a half years. Cause I was grieving. And the unhealthy way to grieve is to be on drugs, but they're or illegal. There's a good quote from ING, which is from my tradition's a SU I'm sure you know, read about rooming. Yes. It says light enters through the wound. Wow. The cure for pain is in the pain. Another room equal. So pain is not a bad thing. If you are having people, listen to it, have to understand that it's the biggest teacher to help you evolve in a spiritual way. So once that's step number one, the second step is to give up all the resulting resentment, because you don't wanna go through life as a victim. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, there's two strategies there.
Speaker 3 00:38:15 One is to build empathy. The other one is to set an intention. So I do an exercise called just like me about how do you build empathy? Where I have people pick the person that they know somebody that they're staying, but they, they don't like at all. They may even hate this person. And I go just like, just like me, Tony was afraid just like me. Tony was trying to do better. Just like me. Tony was afraid just like me. Tony made mistakes. And by the end of this exercise, you have empathy for this person because you've all made mistakes. And we about that, the is set intention. And uh, you know this from the leadership work, you do that. When you set an intention, especially at that meditation level, I'll foresee whatever they call it. You don't have to have a process of how to create the outcome.
Speaker 3 00:39:09 You let the universe help you create it. But the intentions are very powerful. When dire wrote a book on it, the power of intentions and you know, he passed on, I knew him. So you want to set that intention because at the end of the day, forgiveness is a blessing and a blessing is what preparation makes grace. So you set that intention in a meditative way, build your empathy muscle. And eventually, as I was blessed with the gift of forgiveness, the blessing of forgiveness. So will everybody, because it is altruistic. It's sincere that no strings attached. And the third one is to reach out, to reach out. Not everybody has to reach out to the person who murdered their child. Very often you are reaching out to somebody at one time, you loved like your parents or fathers, son, mother, daughter, ex-wives ex-husband people you worked with, you know, you have to resolve and heal that relationship because people ask me, well, how do I know that I have forgiven?
Speaker 3 00:40:08 I said, you know, when that person has a safe passage through your mind, when I think about Tony, my blood pressure, doesn't go up. If anything, I become calm. So if you've done the two steps, right, which I teach in my workshop, then the third step is to reach out, which might seem difficult, but it has a lot of fruits. When I met Tony, he was 19. Took me five years to come eyeball, to eyeball with the person who murdered my son, very hard to do because we're more drugs. But at one point in that first meeting, we locked eyeballs. I'm looking in his eyes. He looking in my eyes and that for a long time, I'm trying to find a murder. And I was able to travel through his eyes and touch his humanity. I got the spark in him was not different than in me and you.
Speaker 3 00:40:57 He was well mannered. He was articulate. He was well spoken. He was remorseful, a likable kid. He didn't portray any of the typical attitudes of a 19 year old. I wasn't expecting that. At that point, I told him, you know, I've forgiven you cause I've been working with your grandfather for four years. But when you come out, you can join us. And when I left the prison, it was like a big Albert trust that had been lifted. I knew that I had completed my journey of forgiveness and the Preem thought in my head was, why did I wait? Five years? Forgiveness can be very free. It relieves you all the burden of anger and resentment and hatred and grief and despair and guilt. And you know, all of the shit we go through that preclude us from performing and having a different trajectory. You know, like Vanessa. So it's really an Alexa. I'm amazed. Everything that has manifested in my life is a result of their choice of forgiveness. 27 years ago, my written five books, I won 80 award given a thousand presentation to over a million kids, 700 keynotes. I mean really rewarding work, which I would never have done. So once you are able to go through this forgiveness, you're going to change the trajectory of your life going forward and are going to manifest amazing results that even blow your mind beyond your expectations. It has been that way for me.
Speaker 2 00:42:32 Wow. Very, very impressive. I work a lot in businesses and you also have a business background. You, you also talk to business people. How do those principles apply to a work environment?
Speaker 3 00:42:46 Yeah, actually, you know, that's a good question because restorative justice has now morphed into restorative practices. It is taking traction in certain parts of our society like education and prison reform and social justice, but it hasn't found its way to corporations. But the idea behind restorative practices, which is more from ReSTOR justice is that true justice happens when three things happen first, you have to make the victim whole, you can't bring tar back, but working with players, which is Tony's grandfather and Tony is meaningful to me and my family because less kids are ending up dead or in prison. So to the extent I can be restored or made whole, I believe I have been. And so as my family, cause they all forgiven to second is you have to bring the offender back into society as a functioning and a contributing. And the third thing is you have to heal the community.
Speaker 3 00:43:48 So as you see, in my story, we are the poster boys of the restorative justice movement. Now, when you I've done this in corporations, because the same principles apply where there is people there's conflict, but any conflict using these three mandates essentially create a better outcome. So how do you do it? But you ask five questions. The first is what happened. The second is what were your thoughts and emotions when that conflict or altercation happened? And depending on the gravity of it, you take a hiatus. And during the hiatus, you work both with the offender and the, and sometimes you bring in the community because through restorative circles, which is a very disciplined way of looking at conflict in a different light, once you have done the work, because often in this period, people mostly do altercation when they're angry. And when you are angry, you are not thinking when you are angry, you always make the wrong decisions.
Speaker 3 00:44:52 And very often when you do things, when you are angry or in resentment, you regret later, so you work with this. So then you bring them back together. And the question you ask, well, what are your thoughts and emotions now? And often you see if the work in between has been done correctly, it is remorse. That is apologies. That is, uh, potential for forgiveness. When you add forgiveness to restorative practices is practices on steroids. It really brings it alive. Fourth question you ask is who was harmed and why? And the last question you ask is how do we make it better and make sure it never happens again. So good example of your trained a, a company in London, they are basically consultants doing culture shaping and leadership development. Lot of work do you do with the fortune 500 companies? And they had a bunch of consultants and this was the mayor group, European middle east and Africa group.
Speaker 3 00:45:47 And the CEO had fired one of their consultants. And there was this full tension in the 30 some consultants because she had done some good work and they were not complete the way he had fired her. So that was a wide difference. So I created this particular two day, actually a day and a half of workshop and created a safe environment for that to come up. And it was one of the German consultants that says, you know, I'm not happy with the way I'm gonna use a different word that, uh, Elizabeth was fired. Cause I worked with Elizabeth and she add a lot to our process. As soon as he said that four other consultants says, yeah, I worked with Elizabeth too. So the CEO was put in a spot, he took responsibility for it. We going through the, the process of accountability. He says, you know, I take responsibility IM going out to, and I make sure that I make amends with her and make sure that whatever we decided that it is a fair way for her to leave the organization. I want to be a better CEO.
Speaker 3 00:47:02 So I was in facilitating this workshop and I said to said, I acknowledge here as a CEO, most CEOs would be more defensive, which you be more vulnerable and you've taken responsibility. You could have done a better job. Doesn't make it. That's fine. We can all do a better job because we all sometimes act part of, uh, anger and emotion. So thank you for doing that because, uh, I really appreciate you taking responsibility. But the question I have is how do we make sure this doesn't happen again? Mm-hmm <affirmative> question number five. So he went into this very deep thought was a long period of silence. His thinking, how do I make sure this doesn't happen again? I want to be a better CEO. I just let him think. And after a few long minutes, he said to me as what do you suggest? So he put the ball back into my core.
Speaker 3 00:47:56 And I said to him, you know, none of this happens in vacuum. There's obviously going to be some conversations around the water fountain. There's gonna be, this is going be in the field that this might gonna happen. Normally you can tell, right? And I'm on a board of an organization. And we just had the CEO that we were thinking about letting go resigned by herself. So that energy is in the field. So if you are patient enough, sometimes these things solve themselves. I said to him, none of this happens in a vacuum. My suggestion is, are you willing to let your consultants, that report to you, call you if they see something like this might happen next, because I'm sure that they, they will feel it. He said, absolutely. Then he didn't talk to me. He talked to his consultant and he said, absolutely. He says, I want to be a better CEO.
Speaker 3 00:48:50 I give you full permission to call me if you see something that I have done that isn't right. And how I could do it better, because I love you all. You great consultants and you do amazing work. And I wanna support you. So back to the servant leadership kind model at that time, the German consultant who started this conversation got up, shook the CEO's hand and gave him a heart. Now you're okay. You know, Germans are not very good at hugging <laugh>, but it changed the entire atmosphere right. Of how you use a sport practices, you know, in a environment. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:49:30 And it takes courage, courage to be vulnerable, courage, to acknowledge. We made a mistake, courage to allow others, to be honest with us. Yeah. And it took, uh, a lot of courage for you to go through the path you did. And you created a lot of good. Um, you share your wisdom with a lot of people and the world needs more of the message that you teach. So to finish this up, what is some of the advice you have for the listener to think about and keep practicing, to have a more fulfilling and peaceful life?
Speaker 3 00:50:05 Well, I mean, I think that the, the big takeaway from this interview is that to look at forgiveness in your own lives, both the forgiving people that have harmed you and forgiving yourselves, understanding that we are mortals. We all make mistakes, but we don't want to be mired by living in resentment and anger and hatred or guilt for things. We might have done that to let go using these principles. My book has 30 chapters. If you want to dive deep into how do you bounce back from life's heart, I'm gonna do another two day workshop in the fall. My website is Azi cana.com. I can do a monthly newsletter. You can sign up on it. And you know, if you are dealing with some heavy duty issues, I, I recommend the book also the, the workshop, because you really clearly understand how do you do both? How do you forgive people that have harmed you and how do you forgive yourselves? And the reason to do it is because once you do this, you're gonna have a very different life. Afterwards in my book, I also have a few chapters of life after forgiveness because what's, you know, as I said earlier, what's manifested in my life is a result of forgiveness is beyond my expectations. I had no clue. All of all that is happening in my life in a positive way, but the choice I made some 27 years ago.
Speaker 2 00:51:32 So the book is the secret of the Bulletproof spirit, how to bounce back from life's hardest hits. We'll put it in the show notes and with the other information where you can learn more about Azi and his foundation KF, and with that Azi, thank you very, very much for,
Speaker 3 00:51:54 I was, uh, he wanted me to tell you what people should have on their saving screen.
Speaker 2 00:52:00 Yes. Yes. What is that? What is the one message you want people on their screen saver?
Speaker 3 00:52:05 Nobody ever asking me that question? So thank you for asking me that question, but here's the I've been thinking about it. So here's my one sentence. Forgiveness is the crown jewel of personal freedom.
Speaker 2 00:52:19 Forgiveness is the crown jewel of personal freedom. Thank you.
Speaker 3 00:52:23 We all want personal freedom and I found it through forgiveness.
Speaker 2 00:52:28 Thank you. I appreciate our friendship, your teachings. You have, uh, given me a lot of good advice and teaching. So thank you very much. Aine.
Speaker 1 00:52:43 I'm Simon better. And you have been listening to teaming up to never miss an episode. You can subscribe on apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Also, please refer, teaming up to your friends, colleagues, and coworkers. It will make me happy when more people can benefit from valuable content. Thank you for listening.
