My jaw has been dropping for months. At what? Mostly at Trump supporters who, with complete sincerity, describe him as God-sent, brilliant, and selflessly sacrificing for his country. Give me a break.

I know exactly how to influence someone out of this rabbit hole. My book Coach Them Out works. And still ... sitting across from a true believer, I couldn't do it. I just couldn't. Not even a little bit.

The influence techniques were loaded and ready. But I couldn't pull the trigger because I had absolutely zero respect for the level of self-delusion I was witnessing. And here's the dirty secret nobody tells you in the influence literature: you cannot coach someone you secretly disrespect. They can feel it. And even if they can't, you can, and it poisons every word out of your mouth.

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So I did what I do when I'm stuck: I meditated on it. Not the political situation, that's a rabbit hole with no floor. I meditated on something simpler and far more uncomfortable.

Every person in my life has been a gift.

Every single one. The ones who lifted me up, yes. But also the manipulators, the narcissists, the ones who cost me sleep and money and years of recalibration. A couple of them even did a stint in prison. Gifts, all of them. Not because what they did was okay, it wasn't, but because every one of them taught me something I couldn't have learned in a classroom or a quiet life.

"You cannot coach someone you secretly disrespect. They feel it. And even if they can't, you do, and it poisons every word."

When I started sitting with that idea seriously, something unexpected happened. Appreciation began to show up. Not forced, not performed, actual appreciation. And appreciation, it turns out, is the doorway to something I'd lost: enough compassion to stay in the room.

Fast forward to dinner last night.

There I am again, face to face with someone whose beliefs I don't respect. But this time I'm carrying the weight of that practice, this person is a gift, this conversation is a gift, even this frustrating exchange is a gift. And instead of shutting down or lecturing or mentally drafting my social media post about the decline of critical thinking, I got curious.

I asked questions. I was curious. I helped them find their own cracks in the foundation. Like a good coach, I pointed to sources of information they haven't considered, gently, without the energy of a debate champion who needs to win. 

These are the principles from Coach Them Out, and they work. But they require something the book can't give you: enough genuine warmth to stay present with someone who's frustrating the daylights out of you.

Appreciation gave me that warmth back.

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I'm not saying all beliefs are equal. They're not. Some beliefs are demonstrably false, some are harmful, and pretending otherwise is intellectual cowardice dressed up as open-mindedness. You are allowed, obligated, even, to know what you know.

And I'm not saying that when you mediate on that abusive person who harmed you, that with toxic positivity, you ignore that and look for the silver lining of the gift. See it all. No sugar coating. Then focus on the gift. You learned something. Focusing, appreciating the gift places you in a position to influence them out or at least plant the seeds.

Knowing the reasons a belief is wrong and being able to influence someone who doesn't share it  are two entirely different skill sets. The first is about the struggle to sort through fact from BS. The second is about being effective at influence.

Think of Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men. One man, eleven against him, surrounded by certainty and social pressure and the blazing New York heat. He doesn't yell. He doesn't lecture. He holds his own, quietly, persistently, with genuine curiosity about everyone else in the room. He wins not because he's the loudest, but because he never stops being interested in the people he's trying to reach.

That's not just good cinema. That's the blueprint.

You can hold your position with both hands and still remain genuinely curious about how someone arrived at theirs. Those things aren't in conflict. What is in conflict is contempt and connection — and contempt always wins that battle, which means you lose the conversation.

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So here's the practice. Not a theory, not a framework, a practice, meaning you do it before you need it, not when you're already in the weeds:

Think of someone who drives you absolutely crazy, politically, religiously, philosophically, personally. Now ask yourself, with genuine curiosity: what is the gift this person has been? Maybe they've made you sharper. Maybe they've revealed something about your own capacity for judgment. Maybe they've shown you the kind of person you never want to become, which is a gift of enormous value.

Sit with it until you feel something shift; not agreement, not approval, but a sliver of appreciation for the gift they are. That sliver is the door. Compassion lives on the other side of it. And on the other side of compassion is the version of you that can stay in the room long enough to actually matter.

You can be smart and useless, or smart and useful. The difference between those two isn't knowledge.

It's appreciation.