S5E18 - Doug Noll
This week’s guest is Douglas E. Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker.
Doug was raised in California and left the state to go to Dartmouth where he earned an undergraduate degree in English. In 1974 he returned to California entered law school, eventually graduating with honors.
Doug spent 22 years working as a civil trial lawyer, trying over 250 cases during that time! He realized in that time that though the work was interesting, his heart wasn’t in it.
Concurrently, Doug started studying martial arts and earned a 2nd degree blackbelt in one discipline before moving to Tai Chi at the advice of his teacher. As he explains, it was the teachings of Tai Chi that led him to the epiphany that he needed to do something else…something that would make an impact.
You’ll hear more in the episode but at nearly 50 years old, Doug quit his job and started a Master's program in Peacemaking and Conflict Studies offered at Fresno Pacific University which he completed. He also became a certified energy healer (panic healing) and arhatic yoga practitioner.
Along with Laurel Kaufer, he founded Prison of Peace, a wonderful organisation bringing conflict resolution to the incarcerated as well as others. Hear about it in the episode. Additionally, he is a mediator for private conflicts.
Note from Rabiah (Host):
I’ve been really lucky to find guests who exemplify what this podcast is really about. Doug is definitely one of those. I really loved the synchronicity that took place in Doug’s story with him asking a question and then receiving an answer that created a whole new path. I won’t say more. I’ll let Doug do the talking. Enjoy!
Rabiah (London) chats with Doug (California) about moving out of conflict and into conflict resolution.
Transcript
Rabiah (Host): [00:04:13] This is More Than Work, the podcast reminding you that your self worth is made up of more than your job title. Each week, I'll talk to a guest about how they discovered that for themselves. You'll hear about what they did, what they're doing and who they are. I'm your host, Rabiah. I work in IT, perform standup comedy, write, volunteer and of course podcast. Thank you for listening.
Hey everyone. Thanks for being here again this week, or if it's your first time, thanks for joining for the first time. Got a new episode up for you. It's with Doug Noll. He's a peacemaker. He's a lawyer turned peacemaker. So you'll learn what that means, but it's pretty cool. What I like about this chat is that Doug goes from a career of over 20 years to a brand new career because he realized he needed to serve people.
And that's, I've just [00:05:13] had a couple of guests recently that have inspired me so much because I'm kind of thinking about what I'm doing in my life, pretty much all the time. And I also want this podcast to serve a purpose. And one reason I created this podcast was for the purpose of helping other people. And one way I'm trying to do that is by telling, having other people tell their stories and just give their insights and then hopefully people listening get something from that.
And so with Doug, what I really liked was how the change happened over time. Because a lot of times we'll hear about, oh, someone's the best at this, or someone's running a successful business, or they're doing this degree and they're finishing but you don't hear about the evolution of that and how long it took them to get there and what they're doing to do that.
And I have a few people like that coming up, but Doug Noll, who I'm talking to on this one, just, uh, he's pretty cool. We had a lot of laughs, but we talked about some very serious stuff. And he had a really intense job before and he's doing, I would say pretty intense [00:06:13] work now, but in a different way. So I really liked that.
I also he's someone who talked about how COVID impacted, what he was doing and how they've had to pivot or change. I know people don't like the word pivot. It's office speak, right? But sometimes we pivot, so he did and I just really liked how he talked about how they evolved and changed what they were doing in order to meet the needs of people still, even though COVID happened.
Um, so those are the two main things, but this one's so important because at the end, just a few things he says, and he just keeps saying these really profound things that kind of resonated with me when I was editing the podcast. Um, otherwise just some news for me, because you won't hear me talking about going to, uh, the Public Leadership Credential program at Harvard Kennedy because I finished my last course.
So I have a two week project coming up in a couple of weeks [00:07:13] and then I'll be done and I'll officially have my public leadership credential and I guess be qualified in both moral leadership and public policy though I won't write policy for awhile. So, I will leave this brief. Enjoy the episode. Please let me know what you think I'd love to hear from you.
And, um, let's do this.
Rabiah (Host): Hey everyone. My guest today is Douglas E Noll. He's a lawyer turned peacemaker so we're going to hear what that means. Thanks for being a guest.
Doug Noll: Hey, thanks for having me. California, the London. I can't mind that.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah, exactly. And we're both, we're both Californians. You're, you've stayed there. I'm here for now, but we'll see. So, uh, speaking of you are in California. What part of California are you in?
Doug Noll: I live in rural California about 80 miles south of Yosemite National Park. I have 10 acres in the central Sierra Nevada. I'm in the center of the state about halfway between LA and San Francisco. It's about three and a half [00:08:13] hours to each city from where I live.
Rabiah (Host): I think some people will hear that and they're, if they're not in California from California, they think, well, it's three and a half hours to another country in my case or two
Doug Noll: Three and a half hours is nothing in California.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah. You don't, I mean, you, I had, no, I had a nightmare at one time going from San Diego to LA and I mean, it took twice that just to get that distance.
Doug Noll: Because the five gets so jammed up. Right.
Rabiah (Host): exactly. Yeah. And we did that California, this thing already where we talk about "the five".
Doug Noll: Right. Exactly right. And you know, here, you know, here, the roads are really good. Actually the roads up here are a lot better than they are in Southern California. It was just down at Corona Del Mar a week ago and I couldn't believe how bad the freeways were, the road conditions were horrible.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah, it is horrible down there. I was talking to a friend about that too, about just the roadworks and like, by the time they get done fixing a stretch of highway, they have to go back to the front of that stretch and start over again.
Doug Noll: Exactly. Exactly.
Rabiah (Host): So first of all, let's just talk about [00:09:13] you being a lawyer and your legal career, because that's where you started out. So you were on the corporate side of things?
Doug Noll: Well, I graduated from high school in Southern California and then went back east to Dartmouth college and graduated with a degree in English. And then in those days if you weren't going to med school, you went to law school.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah.
Doug Noll: Came back to California. Entered law school in 74, graduated with honors law, review, all that stuff.
So I did well academically and had a choice of a number of jobs, and I chose to move to Central California and clerk for an appellate judge for a year, which was a great experience. And then after that I joined a medium-size bankruptcy and civil litigation firm and they, they hired me to grow me to be a big con trial lawyer.
In fact, they did because I joined the firm in September of 1978 and tried my first jury trial in November of 1978. My second trial started in December of 1978 in the Southern [00:10:13] district of California, which is the federal court in San Diego. It was a seven and a half month securities fraud case.
And we were defending a farmer in a securities fraud case. We won that one too. So that's how my career started. And then for the next 22 years, I was a hardcore trial. I tried over 250 cases of all different kinds of complexity, all civil, no criminal, no divorce or personal injury. It was all large commercial business types of cases.
Interesting work, and I made a lot of money, but my heart wasn't in it.
So what happened was that I started studying martial arts in the eighties and eventually got my second degree black belt. And my teacher fired me. He said, you're too arrogant. You're too much of an asshole.
You're going to hurt somebody. Go learn Tai Chi. And so I did, and I studied Tai Chi as the martial art. And it turns out that one Tai Chi is the oldest of all martial arts. And second it is extremely vicious. Every blow is a killing blow and [00:11:13] Tai Chi. Once you understand that as an art. But Tai Chi has two interesting paradoxes.
The first is the softer you are, the stronger you are. And the second is the more vulnerable, are, the more powerful you are. Soft to be strong, vulnerable, to be powerful. It did not compute. I was a hardcore trial lawyer,, a second degree black belt, fly helicopters and airplanes. I mean, I would do all kinds of crazy stuff.
And so that whole paradox really didn't.. I didn't understand it. But it sunk into me until one day, some years later, I was in the courtroom in the late nineties and the thought came to me, "what the heck am I doing in here?" And after that, after. I went on a river trip, whitewater trip with a bunch of friends and spent the week in my raft thinking about how many people I served as a trial lawyer and concluded that I hadn't served very many at all and said, I'm not doing this anymore. But I didn't know what I was going to do.
And the universe provides, right? So I come back from that trip and I'm driving down out of the mountains to my office. And I hear what turned out to be one of the only public service announcement [00:12:13] for getting a Master's degree in Peacemaking and Conflict Studies offered at Fresno Pacific University.
So I signed up. I enrolled and for the next three years, I was a full-time master's degree student. And this was in my late forties- full-time master's degree, student full-time trial and we're in three quarters time law professor. And that was the end of my first marriage. So I had long discussions with my partners about what I wanted to do with all this new knowledge I was acquiring and, and we could not come to a greement. And so one day I just, I gave a week's notice and walked out, left $10 million on the table and just walked out of the law firm and started my own peacemaking practice. And that's how it started. And that's when my life really started. I was 50 years old
and it was amazing.
Rabiah (Host): Huh? Yeah. So there's a lot there. I mean, It's like, you've got the story down succinctly, but there's a lot
Doug Noll: It was a journey.
Rabiah (Host): yeah. So first of all, just with thinking back about your [00:13:13] initial career of, I guess it was over 20 years as a trial lawyer, did you like it at first or were there things you liked about it that kind of started to fall away as you got older and just started to reflect on your life?
Doug Noll: I love being in the courtroom. Doing trials is fun if you're prepared. But you know, we don't try really try that many cases when you think about it and what I really enjoyed the intellectual challenge of puzzling out the problem, and then thinking about how am I going to present this to a judge and jury in a way that they're going to understand it, because usually it was pretty complex And then thinking about what what's the likely outcome. So I really enjoyed the strategic thinking. The preparation was incredibly hard and long and tedious, you know. For every hour you spend in a courtroom, you spend at least eight hours preparing for that hour and that's just trial. But after you've done all the pretrial discovery stuff. What I didn't [00:14:13] like, what finally got to me was that it was constant conflict. You're fighting with your partners over compensation. You're fighting. Of course you're always fighting the opposition. You're fighting the judge, you know, you're fighting your own client to get paid.
I mean, it was just a constant, constant fight and that just wore me out. I just didn't like that constant adversary process. And you know, it, it wore me down and I wasn't burned out, but I also felt that I wasn't really living to my true calling. It took me that long to grow into the idea of becoming a peacemaker lawyer, turned peacemaker.
I couldn't have done it right out of law school, but you know, so it was just, it was you know, an evolution in my consciousness and then my, you know, m y growth that led me to that,
Rabiah (Host): Yeah. And then when you got to asking yourself the question of how many people am I serving, do you feel like it took a while to come to that question versus other [00:15:13] questions? Like you were maybe thinking about different aspects of what your purpose was, but did it, did that question come up first or
Doug Noll: Yeah, well, like I said, I was in, it kind of started, you know, obviously this has all been churning around inside of me and I haven't really been giving a lot of thought to it but then I had that question that popped into my head when I was cross examining somebody in the courtroom. What the heck am I doing here? And that really stuck with me so that when we started the trip, I knew I was going to have 10 days on the main salmon up in Northern Idaho. I was a former whitewater guide. So we were with a bunch of friends, world ex-pros, and all have our own gear. And you know, so for us, it's nothing. And so I got to spend the week or 10 days just floating down this beautiful river, thinking about what the heck am I doing here? And then that led to the question, well, how many people, cause I'm, you know, analytical, how many people have, I really served? How many people came into the legal system and left better off than they were when they came in? And I could only count five people that I'd [00:16:13] served over 22 years, that I felt like their situation improved as a result of the work that I did.
And I thought, well, that's a really crummy you know, assessment of what most people would consider to be a very successful trial career. And I said, I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm not going to go another 30 years and say maybe I've only served 10 or 15 people in 30 years. That's BS. I need to do something else. I need to, I need to help people in a bigger way.
And, and you know, the beauty of it is that I made the right choices because I serve more people in a week than I served in 22 years as trial lawyer.
Rabiah (Host): You've mentioned quite a few activities you do, but I think the predominant one that I heard was just the Tai Chi eventually after you got your second degree black belt. So do you feel like the practice of martial arts has been the most I guess the most important for you as far as like getting you to a place where you.
Now a peacemaker, as far as your not work activities besides education. I mean, people do those all different activities for different reasons, but how do they [00:17:13] play in for you?
Doug Noll: So it was a combination things. I've always been in and out of spirituality of different kinds of spirituality ever since college. So, interestingly, the martial arts of course in the beginning for five or six years of just intense study of how to kill somebody, how many ways dealing with your hands, right? And that's basically what I learned. But in the Tai Chi, I had the opportunity to learn how to actually manipulate Chi, life force. And so I would do things like blow out candles. Fingers and blow, blow business cards across the table, just with cheap energy, very cool people, their eyes get as big as saucers. right.
And that led me to getting interested in, I got introduced to a system of healing called Pranic Healing, which was created by a guy in the Philippines Master Choa Kok Sui, he is now since passed. And he created Pranic Healing and arhatic yoga. And that, that really appealed to me because it was, he's an engineer.
He was a chemical engineer and very analytical about his spiritual practice. And he just laid this out, this whole system out. I said, [00:18:13] I'll give this a try. And it turned out that, I became a certified energy healer and I actually could heal people. How about that? Whoa, look what happened? And so all this was happening in the nineties. So I had a Tai Chi, where I was learning to be soft and vulnerable. I was studying the spiritual practice called arhatic yoga and healing, serving people as a healer. And this is all completely opposite to my career as a trial lawyer. So during the day I was a hardcore trial lawyer and at night I was a spiritual healer and practitioner and, you know, Tai Chi person.
And I realized probably by the mid nineties I was living I was out of integrity. My life was out of integrity in the sense that I was living, living one life in contradiction to another life. And I said, this, just, this, this can't, this is unsustainable. And I think that's when it finally dawned on me in that trial, that, what am I doing in here?
I don't need to do this anymore. And I think that's what kind of [00:19:13] led to it. So it wasn't like a big flash of illumination, or I had an enlightenment. This is something that happened over many, many, probably over two decades. Cause I went into law not really sure if I wanted to be a lawyer or not. It was kind of a default. But eventually, you know, I came, came around and saw that this was not serving me. This profession was not serving me. And that's when I left.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah, well then with going back to school in your, I guess later forties by then, what was that experience like for you?
Doug Noll: Well, I'd been teaching law for quite a while. I started teaching law in '86, so, so I'm an academic by nature, but it was really hard. Not, not because going back to school with art, because it was a lawyer, you know, we're constantly reading and studying all the time. So it wasn't that it was that.
Peacemaking and conflict studies is multidisciplinary. And I had the, I had some brilliant mentors and they pushed me. They knew how smart I was and they pushed me hard. And so I would be it's the first time in, since law school that I actually had to have a thesaurus and two different [00:20:13] dictionaries.
As I was reading stuff, because when I'd be reading philosophy and I hadn't studied philosophy since college.
And so, and these philosophers were talking in gobbledygook. They sounded like lawyers, then I'd move over to theology because we did a lot of looking at the idea of peace and conflict and religion, and especially in the context of Christianity. And of course, the truth is different than what most people think.
But, but, but then the theologians have their own language and then I would study sociology and then they had their language and, and, you know, so every single one of these disciplines has their own coded language to show that everybody how smart they are. And they were using five syllable words when they could use one syllable words.
And I was sitting there with a dictionary trying to what the hell is that? I thought I was smart guy. And I, of course, then I drew the same conclusion that I finally realized as a lawyer in the beginning of law. I read a judicial opinion. I said, man, I must be really dumb. I don't understand this. And I [00:21:13] finally realized, no, I'm really smart. It's it's judge is stupid because the judge can't write clearly enough to make himself. And I drew the same conclusions from reading a lot of this other multidisciplinary stuff. Eventually I picked it up and figured it out. And, you know, I started thinking about it and because I'm really good at integration and critical analysis. The way this program worked in those days, not anymore,
was, it was Oxford tutorial style. So at the beginning of a term, I go in to see my professor and he would say, this class is about here's your reading list. This let let's take the nature of nonviolent revolution, which was one of my favorites. So he said our first session, he said, we're going to study the nature of nonviolent revolution.
And the question you're going to answer at the end of the term is from 1989 to 1993 Czechoslovakia, The Soviet Union, Germany, all these Eastern bloc countries were able to move from an autocratic or semi-automatic government to some form of democracy without violence, but Northern Ireland [00:22:13] and Yugoslavia failed.
Why? And here's your reading. And each, each week, you're going to study a different. I studied the history of that country and what happened and at the end of the semester, and write a paper on the book that you read. So every week I had to write a paper and then present it.
And so that's how you learn.
And so I was reading all of these books about what happened during that time period in the history of all these different countries. And of course, in that, the answer to the question was it's all about leadership.
Rabiah (Host): yeah.
Doug Noll: And so for example, the reason that you'll never find peace between the Israelis and Palestinians is because the leaders are cowards. They're absolute cowards. They're afraid of peace. You've got Zelinsky who is obviously courageous. He's, he's really grown in his role as the President. Putin is a coward. Putin is a coward and so they'll never find peace.
Putin could never come to the table and negotiate. So, so that was the big lesson that in any kind of situation where you've got a group conflict, you have to have a leader who has the [00:23:13] courage to find peace. So that was, that was the kind of training I was getting, looking at all these things we looked at, we looked at, I, I studied under one professor who was the leading scholar of the nature of violence and non-violence and the Bible. And so we looked at the Old Testament and the New Testament and looked at the nature of violence and looked at Jesus, not as some mystical creature, but as a political figure.
And why was he, why was he murdered by the Pharisees.? And it was a political, it was a political murder. Didn't have anything to do with anything other than politics. And he was caught between the zealots, the essenes and the Pharisees and he was just a 30 year old rabbi preaching peace. He was radical.
He was a radical. If he were alive today, he would be in jail. He'd be in prison. And back then, you know, he got crucified because of his beliefs. So it's all very interesting.
Rabiah (Host): That is interesting and it's funny just you saying like you had to get out of your dictionary at the stars and stuff, because, man, when [00:24:13] I started my class in January last year and it was actually leadership, moral leadership for the first two classes. So what you're saying is resonating a lot, actually.
I seriously thought, wow, did I become dumb? You know?
Doug Noll: I know
Rabiah (Host): and my friend.
Doug Noll: I'm a smart guy, right. Or you're a smart woman.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah. Like I'm not like maybe, I don't know. I'm not, probably not as smart as you just, we we've had different paths, but , I'm not, I know I'm not unable to read. And I was starting to question that, like, can I even read? So I completely, I completely understand.
And then it's just, you get used to doing that again too. And, and
Doug Noll: It gets you studying again. 20 years out of school and not used to you know, three unit course. It was 2000 pages of reading and for the course. That's a lot of reading and dense reading and stuff that you can drink and drink a chard and have a glass of Chardonnay cruise through this stuff.
Rabiah (Host): You're absolutely right. Yeah. You're absolutely right.
So, so you get through the, the school and then you end up [00:25:13] quitting your job. And how did you get into like the next steps
Doug Noll: Yeah. So one of the things I started mediating; I'm a mediator as well as a peacemaker. But I did something different than a lot of people like me don't do. Most legal lawyer mediators only deal with litigated disputes because they just want to work the lawyers. And I was more interested, in because of my training in, working in broader conflict.
So I started, I would do litigated disputes, but I also worked in conflicts that were not in litigation, such as family, business conflicts or organizational conflicts of all different kinds. And I started getting called into all these really high emotion cases. And I began to realize that all conflict is all conflict is the most.
And all conflict is caused by the mismanagement of strong emotions. My problem was that I had not been trained. Nobody knew how to calm an angry person. I was taught this whole active listening stuff, which was developed by Thomas Gordon back in the 1950s. And it doesn't work. And then [00:26:13] Marshall Rosenberg stole his stuff.
They both were at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. And Rosenberg basically stole his stuff and rebranded it as non-violent communication. That didn't work either. I took all those courses, so I was stuck and. I had, in my master's degree, I had started studying neuroscience, which is long before anybody had ever heard of neuroscience.
This is 19 98, 97, 98. And I mean, functional magnetic resonance imaging has only been around for three or four years. So, but I, but I was lucky to get tutored by a professor at Caltech, John Allman, who started teaching me how the brain works. And, I came to insights. One, everything starts in the brain so we ought to understand how our brain processes information and two we're, 98% emotional and only 2% rational. So I've been studying and studying and studying and studying really trying to figure out how do I deal with these angry people? And one day in 2005, I was called into a mediation in Santa Barbara, California, where this divorce couple had sued the [00:27:13] husband ex-husband had sued the ex wife.
It was an $18,000 problem. They spent $50,000 each and attorney's fees. kind of classic.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah.
Doug Noll: When I came into the conference room, you know, met them. They were well dressed, well presented, looked like normal, upper middle class people. And they started screaming at each other. I mean, if there had been knives on the table that would have been below on the floor. And I just sat there,
I said, what am I going to do? And the thought came to me out of the blue, listen to the emotions. So that's what I did my quieted them down. I do my Moses parting of the sea kind of thing. And I can get, I can get them sit down and quiet. And then I had John start telling a story. And what I had Susan do is instead of trying to reflect backwards, paraphrase what he was saying, I had her say, I had, I asked her, tell us what he's feeling.
She couldn't do it, but then she got it. And she said, he's really angry. He's frustrated, whatever. So John would tell a story, I'd stop him. What's he feeling? And within five minutes, everything, the whole temperature of the room completely calmed down. And she went from being [00:28:13] victimized to feeling empowered. So I got through John's story. We flipped the rules. John told his story, she listened to his feelings, or he listened to her feelings. All done. John puts his face in his hands like this and starts, three or four minutes, wracking sobs, honest to God, real grief. And he looks up at her and says, that's the first time you've listened to me in 25 years. And they settle the case without me in five minutes. Got up, walked out holding hands to have lunch with each other and three hours before there would've been blood on the floor.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah.
Doug Noll: What did I just do? I know what I done. And so I said, ah, fluke. So I started using it in other mediations and it worked every time, fail.
So then a study came out in 2007 out of UCLA, Matthew Lieberman's lab, and who's a neuroscientist. And he did a scanning study to show why this process called ethic labeling words. [00:29:13] And now I have the science to show my God, this is what's going on in the brain. And it's amazing how w I won't go into the science of it all, but it, needless to say, this is empirically
through brain scans studies that is that when you label somebody's feelings to them using a new statement, it literally calms the brain down. And so then I started teaching it. I would go to conferences and teach other mediators and lawyers and judges how to do this. And I would get reports back saying this stuff is amazing. But I was still getting a lot of pushback on it. And so that's when 2010 finally rolled around, right at the end of the financial crisis. And I got a call from my colleague, Laurel Kaufer, who was a mediator in Los Angeles. And she read me a letter that she had just received- she was standing at her mailbox, in fact- from a woman serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole in the largest, most violent women's prison in the world, which was at that time Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, California, which is about an hour, hour and a half from where I live.
And basically this woman was asking Laurel if she would be willing to come into the prison and teach the life. [00:30:13] How to be peacemakers and mediators to stop the violence because they were tired of it. They weren't getting out. That was their community and they wanted, they wanted peace and the guards weren't helping, they were making things worse.
So Laurel read a letter to me and said, what do you think? And I said, I think we should do this, but it's the real deal. So it was the real deal. And we got permission to start and we started the program, the Prison of Peace Project that April of 2010. And the foundational skill that we taught and we to this day still teach is how to listen to emotions called affect labeling and that, and that's, we teach a whole bunch of other skills too, cause we're taking incarcerated people and through an, a very intense one-year training process to become a peacemaker and a mediator.
And then if they want to become trainers, it's another three years on top of that. But the program has been phenomenal. Pre-pandemic we were in 15 California prisons, 12 prisons in Greece. Uh, we have a startups in Italy [00:31:13] and in Kenya. And the pandemic of course shut everything down, but we continue to do distance learning.
And this last year we had $500,000 and we put the entire curriculum on film. So it's in post-production right now so that probably in another couple of months, we will be able to offer Prison of Peace anywhere in the world, subtitled in any language. It is amazing. We've trained over 20,000 people in California. About three or 4,000 have been released.
No reports of recidivism, not one of our people is re-offended to our knowledge. And it's just been an amazing program prisoner piece.
Rabiah (Host): Huh? Yeah. And it's just, I mean, it's a lot because I just, I'm just thinking about the people that you're serving now are people that in many ways are kind of pushed way aside by society. I mean, If we look at the idea that there's first of all, over incarceration in the U S and [00:32:13] then, and then, yeah, and I was careful when I said that just because I know that ends up being an issue that people don't always agree on.
But but there's that, and then, well then you're taking it internationally too. But then also just it's people that are disregarded. And so this is who you're serving and the fact that someone in prison asked, identified a need there and said, Hey, we're sick of this. Cause you're right, the people are there for life for whatever reason, that is where their life is now.
And so it's kind of amazing they wanted to improve their quality of life, even in that situation.
Doug Noll: Right. And we never expected it to grow as big as it has today. It's I mean, we started with, with the women at Valley State Prison for Women, then the state decided to convert it to a men's prison. And in those days, it was all pro bono, which is Laurel and I, we weren't getting any money.
We paid for everything out of pocket, basically gave up our professional practice to do this. And both of us almost went bankrupt. And, and then when it was repurposed to a men's prison, ultimately we went back in and started training them in. [00:33:13] And we found that the men were just as amenable to this as the women were.
And then finally we started getting some funding in 2017 and we've been able to grow since then. You know, the thing that I've learned about incarcerated people is they're there for a reason And most of them have been horribly abused. And my observations have been that most people grew up in dysfunctional families, emotionally dysfunctional families.
And are there they go through this abuse of this thing it's called emotional invalidation. And it's the, it's the number one cause of emotional dysfunction and actually comorbidity later in life. And the people in prison are just worse. They just grew up in a worse environment, you know what I mean? And the stories that you hear about their upbringing.
Well, no wonder they're in prison and I learned that murders are not born. They're bred, they're bred by their parents to be murderers by their environment. And you know, only there for the grace of God, are they and not you and me. Because we all grow up in an environment that is emotionally emotionally abusive [00:34:13] and every single, every single person I've ever talked to.
Once I start pointing out to them, what the abuse is, they say, oh my God, you're right. it's not necessary, but this way of child-rearing has been handed down from generation to generation and we're just in this never-ending cycle in it. And the really extreme cases is how we create criminals and people who kill and end up in prison as a result.
Rabiah (Host): Well, yeah, and even in the same household, you end up with people in different to process what they experienced in different ways. And it shows up in different ways. I mean, I can say things for me, I've shown up in a certain way, then we're different than my siblings, you know? And, and sometimes it's just the luck of... DUIs or the thing I think of where I know I could have gotten a DUI for sure. And I'm not proud of it, but it's just something that, especially anyone who started driving before Uber, but then I just didn't get pulled over and someone else did, and then they
have a record and I don't.
Doug Noll: There's a certain amount of luck involved in all of this.
Rabiah (Host): there's a lot.
Yeah.
Doug Noll: [00:35:13] But the, but the, you know, the bigger question for me is, you know, is it possible that there's emotional invalidation that I've been talking about? So you remember when you were a little girl
and you're running around outside and you fall down and your skin your knee, you start to cry and maybe you're two or three years old.
What are you told?
Rabiah (Host): Oh, you'll be fine. It doesn't hurt, whatever. Yeah. Like what does it hurt? Yeah, it does.
Doug Noll: Big girls don't cry. That's emotionally invalidating. That is the worst thing you can say to them.
It absolutely destroys the brain, the human brain. There's a study called the ACEs study, adverse childhood study out of San Diego. And it shows that that kind of emotional abuse, if it's consistent in most families, it is, will lead to all kinds of quote morbidity in terms of health problems later in life that leads to diabetes. It leads to obesity. It leads to cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. You name it. Any horrible disease that you can have in your fifties and sixties [00:36:13] is all emotionally caused. It's not genetics. It's not environment. It's emotion. And Kaiser did the study because Kaiser's model of course is wellness.
They want to keep people out of their isn't their systems. So they got really interested in what what's the relationship between early childhood experience and issues, health issues. And they were astounded, the results they got. If you get three ACEs, three adverse childhood experiences, you know, you're more likely to go to prison.
You're more likely to be drug addicted or addicted to something.
More likely to be divorced and have failed relationships, more likely to take up smoking. I mean, the odds are really stacked against you. So I started studying, well, how bad is it really? And it turns out it's really bad. Whenever you emotionally invalidate a child, you're basically shutting that child's emotions down and what they need are parents who can coach them through their emotional moments, not shut down their emotions and tell them it doesn't hurt, you know, get up, rubbed dirt in it.
You know, the worst thing you can do [00:37:13] and you know, as a result, we have a society that have a lot of unhappy people and, and it's all on a continuum. On the worst side, we've got people in prison serving life sentences. And on the other side, we've got people that are functional, but really unhappy and deal with their dysfunctions in a lot of not so pleasant ways.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah, I can see that. And also I think even just thinking about Conflict with people at work or just interpersonal relationships. A lot of times it does come down to them just not even acknowledging your feelings. I have one person who just continues to not acknowledge my feelings so we always have conflict and I don't even want to talk to them anymore.
And I wouldn't if I never had to, again. But at someone I have to talk to, but it's like, and I've told them that and they just don't get it. But it's like, that's the core of the conflict.
Doug Noll: And that's a really good observation because it's the core of every conflict.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah.
Doug Noll: It's because we're not acknowledging each other's emotional experience. We're, we're refusing to listen to each other because we don't know [00:38:13] how really. It's ignorance that conflict persists and escalates. And once you learn how to listen to and reflect another person's emotions, I call it listening another person into existence.
Once you learn how to listen to another person into existence fights and arguments go away forever for ever. I'm my wife and I have never argued. And we're not passive aggressive people. We're both highly intelligent, highly educated people and, and she's a spiritual counselor and practitioner and I'm a peacemaker. And you know, if one of us is upset, the other one just labels, what's going on. it's amazing.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah, so with Prison of Peace then you recorded, like you said, so you're going to be able to present it without actually being present. But then are you also, now re-engaging in person and do you see a difference between those two?
Doug Noll: Well, that's a great question. The prisons haven't opened up yet in California. dropping fortunately. So, and we have put in for a number of grants with the department of corrections and rehabilitation to test different ways of [00:39:13] using the video curriculum to see which ones are the most effective.
And in which population groups is it going to be most effective? So we don't know yet. And we also don't know whether it will be. As effective as in-person training, or we actually go in and do the training as opposed to them having well trained facilitators have to use the the videos and how to do that, but they don't have to have the knowledge themselves.
They don't have to have know the Prison of Peace curriculum cause it's all on video. They just have to be able to facilitate the classes. Which is more effective? The videos, I mean, I've watched the whole thing. It's over 40 hours long and it can be delivered over probably a year and it's spectacular.
What we've done is amazing. I mean, first of all, aesthetically, it's beautiful. We hired a full Hollywood film crew to do this, and they did a fantastic job. So, but pedagogically, is it going to be as effective? We think so we hope so. The [00:40:13] one thing we do know is that we've gotten inquiries from all over the world on how to bring Prison of Peace into various institutions.
And by delivering this in this format, we know that we'll be able to, even if it's not as effective as in-person training, it's going to be more effective than anything else. So, we will be able to reach prisons, re-entry programs and even domestic abuse shelters. I mean all over the world that can learn these foundational skills to bring peace into their lives.
It's not just inmates. It's anybody who's got conflict can benefit these skills.
Rabiah (Host): That's really awesome. It'll be interesting to see what it does too. And I think just, I mean, education in general has had this huge shift to you know, hybrid or remote models anyway.
Doug Noll: And at least in California, the, the Department of Corrections is way, way behind on technology, but they finally got around to giving the incarcerated population tablets. What they access is restricted, but, but one of [00:41:13] the things that can happen is that our program can be delivered on tablets and they can watch the videos and then go to class and, you know, learn, you know, watch it again and practice and interact.
And so we're hopeful that you know, technology can really work in our favor here. And we'll see it's a big, huge experiment.
And more importantly, we can deliver it overseas. You know, like, like my colleagues in Kenya, you know, they, they really wanted, they really want Prison of Peace. They're all set up for it. The COVID hit and it stopped it dead in its tracks.
But now we can deliver Prison of Peace via the film, the curriculum on digital, and I can train up their people as facilitators and probably 10 or 15 hours of training. And they're ready to go as opposed to hundreds of hours of training to be able to teach the material yourself.
Rabiah (Host): And it's so scalable then, and just
Doug Noll: Exactly.
Exactly.
Rabiah (Host): That's great. So are you still doing private practice as well? Now that
Doug Noll: Yes, I, well, I do [00:42:13] a lot of things. I still take on mediations and arbitrations where I work basically as a private judge.
Also have online courses that I promote and teach. I'm teaching people these skills as much as I can. And I teach graduate classes at Pepperdine, so that keeps me running.
Rabiah (Host): yeah. That's good. But then you, you did find what was at your core. So other than what you mentioned, like Tai-Chi and then you mentioned whitewater rafting, so you're also a musician, is that correct?
Doug Noll: I am. I picked up old time and Irish fiddle in law school. But last in the last 12 years, I've taken up jazz and blues violin. And I have a teacher in Massachusetts and we meet every other Monday for an hour and a half night and for lessons. And so I've been working on jazz violin.
It's very, very difficult, you know. But it's really good because it's a completely different way of using my brain and I really enjoy it. And you know, very, very challenging, you know, the, I, the idea is. [00:43:13] You know, you listen to a a common song like a Broadway song. And now how do you improvise against those chord changes?
How do you create beautiful music? That's really interesting to listen to them on a violin, which are a million million moving parts. So if you miss it, even one little thing is off, it sounds horrible. So it takes exquisite control practice to manage it. So I play, so I do that
you know, I taught skiing. I'm a level three certified ski instructor and taught skiing for many, many years. Now, i, I don't teach skiing, but I live close to skiing and less than an hour away and up the mountain. And so this time of year, although this one has been pretty dry, I'm able, I'm able to get out and go skiing once or twice a week. So that's kind of fun. And you know, I'm just, I'm living in perfectly. I'm happily married and live in a beautiful place and make enough money to get by.
I'm not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm comfortable. And I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm very blessed.
Rabiah (Host): Oh, that's great. I mean, it sounds like you've, you've achieved kind [00:44:13] of through time. And I liked the, for me w what I've gotten out, and sometimes I just like to say what I got out of it so people might think about it too. It's just that it happened over time. It wasn't an overnight thing and that you recognize that.
So, cause sometimes I think people get impatient and I'm a little bit younger than you I'd say. So like, just based on when you started practicing, but I think my generation, and then the one which is now finishing school, I guess. We're very impatient about how long things take, but it's really, you know, it took me 42 years to get where I am right now.
So if it takes a five to get to the next thing, it shouldn't be that big of a problem, you know? Cause it's, it takes time to know yourself.
Doug Noll: Patience is really important in the, and the, the there are very few overnight successful people. And the key, the secret to happiness is learning how to serve other people. It's not about the money. It's not about the big car. I've had all the money. I've had the big car, the big house, all that stuff. That's not what makes you happy.
In fact, a friend of my [00:45:13] wife's who lives in New York city is, an exec... executive assistant to billionaires. And when she was here visiting a couple of weeks ago and we were talking and there were a very few happy billionaires. Very few happy people with that kind of wealth.
They worked, they worked super hard. Many of them were lucky and worked hard and made buckets of money, but the buckets of money have not bought them happiness. And the secret is to learn how to serve others in a really meaningful way. And that doesn't mean doing a Mother Teresa kind of thing. I mean, just like what we do. Prison of Peace started off really small.
It's still pretty small, really. We hope it'll get a lot bigger, but just who would ever think about walking into a maximum security prison and teaching a gang banger, how to be a peacemaker.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah.
Doug Noll: The opportunities are out there. And if you've, if you follow your heart rather than your bank account, you'll do fine and the universe will provide.
And that was a really hard lesson for me to learn.
But I found it and I can't tell you how happy I am. My life is amazing [00:46:13] to me.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah,
Doug Noll: Get up in the morning, watch the sun coming up over the mountains, sitting in the hot tub, you know. Throwing the Frisbee for the dog to down down. It's
amazing.
Rabiah (Host): yeah, no, that's great. Well, normally I ask do you have an advice that you want to share, but it's kind of feel like that was like
Doug Noll: the advice is to really, you know, I know when you're young, there's a really interesting book called Falling Upward I think that by Richard Rohr and he talks about how the first half of life is all about accumulation. And the second half of life is all about giving. And I think that's really true. I think that's really true. And so, so especially for people who are in career or mid career you've got bills to pay. You've got kids to raise, you've got college tuition to pay someday. You know, you're trying to make it, make it go. You're trying to advance in your career, recognize that that's just a, it's just a phase in your life and it's, it's going to be over with.
And you'll be moving into other phases. So as much as you can, try to serve other [00:47:13] people. Whether it's your family, or if you're on a faith community and your faith community or whatever it is, try it, try to find something that gives you meaning and satisfaction. And it's, if you can combine that with your work, that's even better because just grinding for the dollar is it's soulless work for the most part. And You know, that's why so many people are unhappy and drink too much, you know, trying to escape the pain of their lives.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah. Yeah, I agree.
Rabiah (Host): My next set of questions is called the fun five. And this is just questions I ask everybody. So we'll get to this one, but but yeah, this has been a really meaningful chat. So thank you for this so far. So what's the oldest t-shirt you have and still wear?
Doug Noll: I have a t-shirt that is over 30 years old,
Rabiah (Host): Amazing.
Doug Noll: Probably almost probably 35 years. I have three or four of [00:48:13] them. They're from my martial arts training and, you know, just t-shirts. And I wore them when I was training, but I haven't trained in that stuff in a long time. And so they just, they're just sitting on the shelf and think, wow, I've had this t-shirt since 1986 and it doesn't have a hole in it.
You know, it's still pretty good. good t-shirt. Yeah.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah, it is. Yeah. Well, it's kind of things back then lasted a long time. Now they almost come to come with holes in them a lot of the time.
Doug Noll: yeah, I know. don't understand that. I guess that dates me
Rabiah (Host): That's okay for me to, I mean, it's tough for me. All right. So if every day was really Groundhog's day, like it seemed for awhile. little bit better now. What song would you have your alarm clock set to play every morning?
Doug Noll: Hearing the same song over and over again. I I'd probably do Dave Brubeck's Take Five, because it's so rapid, you know, it's a five, it's a four 1, 2, 3 1 2 1 2 3 1 2 1, 2, 3, you know, like that. So it's very repetitive [00:49:13] rhythmically and that would be a great Groundhog Day sound.
Rabiah (Host): All right. Coffee or tea or neither?
I'm a coffee drinker, although I'm now off caffeine. So it's decaf that we have an espresso machine makes us amazing. It's a jura espresso machine, so we get to get, I have three or four shots of decaf espresso every morning. And that's it for my coffee. I used to be a real caffeine addict, but I've been diagnosed as, as high risk for glaucoma.
So the first thing that you got to do is get off caffeine.
Oh, interesting.
Doug Noll: So, so, got to change. I live a very healthy life but I'm just looking at what are the, what are the things I can eat and drink that'll protect my eyes? And caffeine, said, okay, let's go to the decaf. And out works for me.
Rabiah (Host): Okay. Can you think of something that just makes you like laugh so hard you cry or just cracks you up and you'd think of it. I just like to know what makes people tick in this way really?
Doug Noll: What really cracks me up is I've got a eight month old Border Collie female puppy. And watching her grow up and go out and do the crazy stuff. She does. [00:50:13] The Border Collies are insane dogs. They just I've had a lot of dogs, but I've never had a Border Collie and they are insane.
And she's so fun to watch. She's she's a cracks me up. She can be the sweetest little puppy and just kind of look at you and her ears are back. The in real sweet. And then, then she can go like this, you know, get really, really intense cause you got a disc in your hand, right? So she's a disc addict and you throw that discount twenty-five or 30 yards down the hill and she gets down, she's like six inches off the ground,
blasting down the hillside, like totally focused. And she gets to it and it zigs a little bit she's zigs, and then she's up in the air, grabs it and pulls it down. And then she puffs up near tails up. And she's so proud of herself because she got the disc. It is hysterical to watch
every morning I get to work.
Rabiah (Host): Awesome. Yeah, she sounds like a character. All right. And that's nice though, because I mean, sometimes people get a dog and they're like, oh, I didn't get this dog. So I'm glad [00:51:13] you're, excited yours. So the last question who inspires you right now?
Doug Noll: You know, the sad thing is that I stay at top current events and current current events and stuff like that and I don't see anybody out there who is truly, truly inspiring and is really moving the needle. I see a lot of people that talk a lot and are in some ways inspirational for who they are like the Dalai Lama, but, but the people that inspire me are people who are actually out there doing things and making change happen.
So I can't think of anybody right now that truly inspires me, although I'm sure there are people out there that are doing really inspiring work. But my, my criteria for an inspiring person is somebody who's actually effectuating change.
Not somebody who's out there preaching or lecturing or talking or you know, is, has an image. But somebody who's actually working in the trenches, making stuff happen. [00:52:13]
Rabiah (Host): Yeah.
Doug Noll: You know, maybe, maybe as I think about that, maybe Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine has inspired me because of his courage.
And here's a guy who was looked, looked at as an idiot six months ago. And today he's a national hero in a world icon for standing up to the Russians. And he's the guy who's effectuating change as a leader. And the other thing that's really interesting is that as a leader, he's demonstrating the leaders, don't do leaders lead and he's not out there fighting, although he's, you know, doing, making lots of decisions and that's something that I think that's something that's, you know, something we can all learn from.
So if you're looking for inspiring people, look for people who are really instigating change in the world in a positive. And not, not just talking about it.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah. I agree with that. I think it's, it's hard because a lot of people do just talk. And the people who spend the most time telling you about what they did to me, usually aren't [00:53:13] doing very much because they have so much time to tell you about it.
Doug Noll: People are very self promotional. And so I, you know, I, you know, peop the people that really really trying to do things are the people who are really inspirational. I heard somebody, one of my graduate students sent me a YouTube video today of a pastor in Georgia who got up in front of the Georgia legislature and said, you know, we got to stop this tribalism.
How can we make Georgia the greatest state of the world? We can do it by stopping the tribalism. By stopping this talk about Democrats being socialist, communists. Republican's being white supremacist racist. You know, we've got to stop that. Move to the middle of the hard thing to do right now is to move to the middle, move to the messy middle. That's where stuff gets done.
That's where we can make change. And I thought his message was really profound.
Um, oops. In the messy middle politically. There's no money there. Nobody wants to, nobody wants to [00:54:13] fund that because it's messy. But that's where we have to be. We have to be in the message.
Rabiah (Host): well that's where the compromise will take place, so, okay, cool. Well, thank you for that. And then. And yeah, it's sometimes becomes a hard question for some people and I can see why it is for you. And then as far as just people, if they want to find you Doug, or if they want to find Prison of Peace, where should they go?
Doug Noll: So I created a special page on my website for everybody who is listening right now. And if you go there four offerings, one free ebook about talking about my deescalation skills. Two, you can buy my fourth book, De-escalate: How to Calm an Angry Person in 90 Seconds or Less. You can also get access to my video course, how to calm an angry person in 90 seconds or less video course. And then if you really want to invest in yourself, you can enroll on the emotional competency courses which teaches you basically teaches you how to be emotionally competent.
And, and which opens up your life in many [00:55:13] ways, if you want to learn about the Prison of Peace project to go to prison of peace dot org (prisonofpeace.org) and that that's our project website. It's not totally up-to-date, but it'll give you a good sense of what the project is up to. And if you're interested in maybe starting Prison and Peace and where your neck of the woods you've got a jail or a prisoner re-entry program, or a domestic abuse shelter then reach out to me at doug at doug noll dot com (doug (at) dougnoll.com) and we can open up a conversation about how to make that happen.
Rabiah (Host): Super. All right. Well, Doug, thanks so much for being on More Than Work. And I really appreciate the chat. It was, it was fun, but it was also super informative and I really appreciate what you're doing.
Doug Noll: Well, you're welcome. It was great being here.
Rabiah (Host):
Thanks for listening. You can learn more about the guests and what was talked about in the show notes. Joe Maffia created the music you're listening to. You can find him on Spotify at Joe M A F F I A. Rob Metke does all the design for which I am so grateful. [00:56:13] You can find him online by searching Rob M E T K E.
Please leave review if you like to show and get in touch if you have feedback or guest ideas. The pod is on all the social channels at, at more than work pod (@morethanworkpod) or at Rabiah comedy (@rabiahcomedy) on TikTok. And the website is more than work pod dot com (morethanworkpod.com). While being kind to others, don't forget to be kind to yourself.
