Veterans Day Special: Brian Ahearn on ‘His Story, My Story, Our Story’

Hey, I'm Kwame Christian, and you are about to step into the world of Negotiate Anything, the number one negotiation podcast in the world, where we teach you how to make difficult conversations easier while getting more of what you want in the process. Each episode is packed with practical tips and strategies from the experts. We delve into negotiation, conflict resolution, and leadership skills that are crucial in both business and in life. Whether you're closing a deal, managing a team, or navigating personal relationships, Negotiate Anything provides you with the tools you need to succeed. Our conversations are real, relatable, and most importantly, rooted in practicality. So if you're ready to transform your conversations and elevate your negotiation skills, join me on Negotiate Anything. Subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. Let's make every conversation a winning negotiation. Brian, thanks for joining us again, my friend.

I appreciate every time we have an opportunity to do this. Kwame.

Yes, likewise. And so for the listeners who might have missed your first, second, third, or fourth appearance on the podcast, can you tell them a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Sure. My name is Brian Ahern. I'm the Chief Influence Officer at Influence People, and I work with individuals and clients to help them hear the word yes more often through social psychology and very specifically, teaching them about the science of ethical influence.

Amazing. And Brian, today we are here to talk about a very exciting and very exciting project, and a project that I know is very close to your heart, which, to I think a lot of folks who know you, might seem like an odd deviation from what it is that you typically do. So can you tell the listeners about your new book and the reason why you felt so compelled to write it?

Sure. The book is called His Story, My Story, Our Story, and it's about my relationship with my late father, Brian Ahern Sr. My father was in the Marine Corps from 1962 to 1969, and during that time spent 13 months in Vietnam, and it had a profound impact on him. People weren't talking about PTSD back in the 60s, and ultimately I think his struggles in trying to cope led to the downfall of the marriage with my mom. A lot of turmoil growing up, and when he passed away in the year 2020, I decided to write a book about our relationship because we had overcome a lot of difficult times and we were actually in a good place at the time of his passing. And as I wrote the book, I learned a lot about PTSD and was able to have a lot more grace and empathy for my father not dismissing the bad things that he did, but still having grace in terms of thinking, how would I have been if I was over in Vietnam at 22, 23? And I don't know how I would have responded coming home. So that's what the book is about. It follows our relationship, but it also kind of looks at my life and his life separately too. And he also wrote a lot about his time in Vietnam, so you get firsthand account of his time in the Corps and the time over in Vietnam.

Wow. Yes. And from my perspective reading this, it was really interesting to see how different, but at the same time how similar it was to some of the things that you've written in the past and the work that you do. Because for you, as somebody who is a master of sales, persuasion and influence, I can see so many of the like, the methodologies, but also your heart centered approach in so many of the conversations that you're having in this book with your father. And one of the things that I know you've mentioned you want to have as a goal for this book is helping people who have folks who are in the military that are in their lives, helping them to understand how to empathize and connect with those servicemen and service women who are serving their country. But there's an emotional disconnect sometimes that makes it tough for people to connect and truly understand and empathize. So can you tell the audience a little bit about that particular barrier that people might have in these types of conversations?

Well, I think human beings, first and foremost, we are always more concerned about ourselves than we are anything else. I mean, that's just the reality of how we live our lives. How is this going to impact me? When you have somebody who has served in the military, and in particular, you know, you ratchet it up a notch when it's Marines because of that whole culture they have. And now you bring it up another notch because of the experience in combat. You can't really understand that. You can kind of know about it, but to understand it at the heart level, you're not going to unless that other person begins to open up and you really allow yourself to start thinking, how would I have responded in those situations? And so the disconnect, I think Kwame is growing up, it would have been really easy for me to just think, man, my dad's an ass. And he was at a lot of times, but. But I had no understanding of what he had, had been through. And then of course, I think for the person who has served, they go through some things that they don't want to talk about. And I can understand, you know, when my dad finally opened up and some of the things he shared, I can understand why he did not want to relive those. He wanted to put them in a box and put them as far away as he could and try to enjoy the life that he was having after Vietnam. But the reality was it was still there and it was still impacting him, which meant it was impacting my mom, me and my sister. And as I grew up and I understood that, I started pressing, I wanted answers, I wanted to know some things I might have pressed a little bit too hard. Hindsight's 20 20, but I am glad that I started moving in that direction. So the disconnect can be, you know, well, this is all about me dad, and, you know, about how it affected me. I wasn't thinking so much about how it was affecting him. It was just too hard at that time. So my advice, the more your listeners can step outside of themselves and try to prioritize that other person in terms of understanding them, then I think if they respond, you'll start getting what you want or what you need out of those conversations.

I agree 100%. And when you think about it, that's central to all of the difficult conversations we have, right? Just naturally, inherently, we are a bit egocentrical. Egocentric and self centered in terms of what it is that we, how we navigate these conversations. So in these conversations, these interactions, we're often just wired to focus on what's in it for me, what is it that I want, what is it that I need. Now when we take it to these conversations, there's an additional barrier because this is much easier said than done. And you've chronicled that in the book because, yeah, it's easy to say focus on the other person, but we also have to recognize that the person who served, who might be dealing with PTSD or other forms of trauma, that they are feeling it emotionally. But then the person who is their family, their friend, their spouse, their loved one, their child, whatever it happens to be, they're also feeling it too, because this is a situation that impacts everybody involved. So it sounds like there's a lot of self work that needs to happen in order for us to prioritize the other person in the conversation. So when you look at your experience, what was the self work that you needed to do to even get to that point where you could prioritize your father in that way?

One of the big things, and I wrote about this in the book, Is I was reading a book called the Body Keeps Score by Vandal. Was it Bessel Van der Kirk? I think it is. And that's what really started to drop things from my head to my heart. Things that I intellectually knew. Like, I knew my dad was in combat, and I knew certain things, but somehow, having read that book and. And him talking a lot about Vietnam vets and their inability to express what was going on inside of them. And so it still would come out somehow, some way. Sometimes it came out in. In my dad's case, it was abusive behavior towards my mom. It was infidelity. It was staying out late, shooting pool, drinking beer, getting in fights, stuff like that. Others use it, they channel it, maybe through art. And I don't know about you, Kwame, but there have been times I have looked at art and thought, whoever made that must be whacked. What's going on inside of that person? And now I have an understanding like there, that is the expression of something they cannot put into words. And the more I started to understand that, the more empathy I started having for my father. And, you know, the book opens up with an unfinished letter that I was writing to him. And I say, you know, as I was reading the book and I would think about my dad, I would just cry because I just thought, 23 years old. Think about when you were 23, Kwame. And for me, that was a long time ago. Now, at 23, we think we know what's going on, and we. We really don't know much. But at 23, for him to have experienced what he did and come home and have two young kids and the responsibilities and all the stuff that was going on, I have no clue how I would have reacted in that situation. And so for me, that really started helping me tremendously to have more empathy for him.

Let's actually talk about the letter, Brian, because that's one of the things that started off the book. And just. Can you tell the audience a little about the letter and the impact it had on you just going through that process of writing it? Hello, my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever wondered how to elevate your team's negotiation game and how you can help the folks on your team have better, difficult conversations? At the American Negotiation Institute, we offer transformative keynotes and workshops tailored to empower professionals with top tier negotiation and conflict resolution skills. Whether it's a keynote for your next event or hands on training for your team, we've Got you covered. Don't just negotiate. Master the art with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate, and succeed.

It's. I mean, just imagine this, Kwame, if you were to sit down, you know, you love Whitney, and you can talk about that, but if you sit down and, like, really begin to focus, to put your thoughts about your feelings for her on. On paper, you start feeling differently. And you probably would have tearful moments. You probably have moments of elation and how happy you are, and, well, now let's take that and just shift over to something that's not so enjoyable, maybe, but to. To try to ponder that other person and what they went through and. And seeing, you know, friends killed, all the things that you go through in. In combat, it's hard. It's really hard. And. And it's hard. I will say, for me, it's even hard. The good things. There are times where I have difficulty expressing how much I love Jane or how much I love our daughter Abigail. I can do good things for them, and they're. They're rooted in that love, but sometimes trying to verbalize it can be almost overwhelming emotionally. And so, again, if we think about somebody who's been through the trauma of the service and combat, how much harder must it be for them to start talking about some of those experiences? Because most of the time, they're very painful, and nobody wants to voluntarily move into that pain again. You lived it once. You don't want to move into it voluntarily again.

That's. That's real. Because that helps to understand. Helps us to understand why sometimes the way that people choose to process this is by not sharing. And one of the things that you recognized is that it took years to get your father to a place where he could share. But based on what you said in the book, you felt like it did help. And there are challenges there, right, because it's like you want to encourage somebody to share, but at the same time, you want to respect boundaries and not push too hard in a way that's almost disrespectful. So, in your opinion, how can somebody balance that desire to be there with also the respecting of somebody's boundaries?

If I had it to do over, and knowing what I know now and having those conversations with my dad, I would have tried to frame them a lot more in, dad, I love you. And I. I am so thankful for all that you've given me in terms of discipline and teaching me right and wrong and all of these things. But there's parts of me that I don't understand and parts of me that I'm struggling with. And I know that being raised by you, some of that. There's something there that I need to understand. And when you're ready, I hope you'll be willing to open up and start talking about some things. And I know they may be painful, but, you know, they will do so much good for me to help me be the man that I want to be, the husband I want to be, the father that I want to be. And that's how I think I would have approached it. And I really hope, Kwame, that the other person would. Would be thinking about, well, there's not many people in the world that I love more than my son. If I'm going to do anything for anybody, why wouldn't I do something for him? Even if it's painful, that's how I think I would. Would approach it differently. When I was 30 years old and we started having those conversations, I wasn't thinking that at all. He just did some things that angered me to the point where the lid came off. And I was just. All of a sudden, I started thinking and feeling all these things that I hadn't thought or felt when. When my parents were going through their turmoil. And I just was kind of demanding answers. And so the conversations were pretty hard. But fortunately, he stuck in there. He didn't. He didn't give up. He could have easily written me off. And ultimately, I think he started to recognize it was good for him to think about the past. And that's why about 10 years before he passed away, he started writing the document that's included in the book. He. He started to realize it was therapeutic for him to think about his past and the time in the core. And so we. We wiggled our way to. To a good place.

And it took a. It took some time, but I think. Yeah, and. And the point is, though, you took that time and you did not give up. And I think a lot of times we. We have this microwave mentality where we say, all right, I. There's an outcome that I want, and I want to get there as quickly as possible. But when it comes to sensitive situations like this and when it comes to people, a lot of times the. The desire to do this quickly and get to the conclusion quickly is exactly what makes it take much longer than it needs to, because the person feels disrespected if they feel as though you're taking away their autonomy and their agency, forcing them to do something that's uncomfortable. And I love the reframe that you. You have now. If. If you were to go back in the past, the difference that you would have, the different approach that you would have used, it's more. And tell me if I'm conceptualizing this the right way, Brian, it sounds like, first of all, you are framing this by clearly stating your positive intent and clearly stating the. The. How you see the person in a positive way and exactly what it is you hope to accomplish with these interactions. But you're not forcing him to engage in these conversations. You're just setting the table and extending an invitation and letting him know that you're there whenever he's ready.

Yeah. I wrote in the book about how much I admired my dad growing up. I mean, he just was a stud of a person. He was the kind of guy that when he entered a room, you knew he was there. And I should have been able to express some of the things about how proud I was that he had served in the Marine Corps. When I see his picture and I think about what he did, how proud I was, you know, when I would see what he was doing in business and his intelligence. And so I could have expressed a lot more of that. Of course, when you're growing up and you're young, you're not really thinking about that again. You're just. The whole world revolves around you. So I wish I could have. If I had expressed some of those things, it might have made it easier for him to open up. But as I wrote in the book, too, when. When we finally got to this point where the. The lid blew off for me. I mean, I intellectually knew all these things, like he was unfaithful and he had hit my mom and certain things like that. But it was when I was 30 years old and we had a conversation on the phone, and he blurted out. He just goes, look, I'm a good person, and I don't care what you or anybody else says about it. And I know more about GD religion than you'll know in your whole effing life. I mean, he just exploded with that. And it caught me off guard. I was like, where is this coming from? I said, I've never called you a bad person. And he said, well, in so many words, you have now. I think he was feeling conviction himself. But if I had been able to express that I loved him and how proud I was and all those things, I don't know that he would have probably responded that way because he wouldn't have had any basis if he had known that I was always saying, I love you, dad, and gosh, I'm proud of you, and things like that.

That's powerful. And, you know, it reminds me of some of the episodes we've done with Mike Reddington. If I haven't connected you with Mike yet, I need to. You two would vibe for sure. He does interrogation work, and one of the things that he talks about is how important it is to let the other person know that you do not see them as a bad person. And in that extreme scenario, in the interrogation, he's even going as far as providing excuses. I know this might have happened, and I know you're under this pressure, and I know you probably felt this, so you're giving them excuses and seeing which one they latch on to. And I think the psychology is somewhat similar here, because what you're doing is you're anticipating the kinds of defensive responses that you might have. And although you might know the positivity of your intent, we can't assume that the other person feels that exact same way when they are recovering from trauma. And they might feel as though they are being targeted and picked on, when, in fact, you're just trying to be there to help. So I really like this. This positive momentum that we're starting with the conversation by reaffirming the fact that, hey, I love you, I care about you, and I admire you taking it to the next level, because loving and caring, that's like, baseline for a family. But admiration and respect, that's next level. And I don't think we say that enough.

Yeah, if you think about, like, a coach, coaches say and do things that, when you're playing, can piss you off, and yet you get away from that situation. And I look back on my high school coach, who I'm still in touch with more than 40 years later, and I know that everything he was doing was for our. In our best interest. And he, having grown, too, says, right motivation, wrong methods, that he recognizes he could have done things differently as a coach. But the bottom line was still he. His intent for us was to make us the best players we could be and the best young men that we could be so that we could be good citizens, fathers, ET because most of us didn't go on to play ball beyond high school. So if we were to more assume, like, hey, coach is yelling at me. I don't like it, but I know he has my best interests at heart, and he's trying to make me the best player possible, probably wouldn't rail against him like we did in the locker room with our buddies. And the same can be true of our family that we may sometimes say or do things. We're not intending to hurt somebody. We're a lot of times just intending the best for them. But the message gets. The translation gets lost in. In that messaging to that person. And there can be a lot of hurt feelings. For sure. For sure.

And I think about that coach example as well, because back in my day, and I'm sure in yours, the coaches sounded very different.

Very, very different.

And I think the word we're looking for is criminal, they could say back then. But again, the delivery matters. The delivery matters, yes. When I think about your. These conversations that you had with your father, I'm sure there was a part of you that was probably thinking, you know what? It is better that I don't have this conversation. You know what? My dad does not want to talk about this. He'd rather just bury it deep in his soul. Maybe that's the way I should do this too, and I'll just try to process this on. On my own. And sometimes we find ourselves in a situation where even though we try our best, the other person doesn't want to open up. We can't force them to. But then there are other situations where we don't allocate enough effort or intentionality to the conversation and we give up too quickly. Like we try one time, it didn't feel good. So I'm going to leave it for the rest of my life. So when we think about our motto at A and I, we say the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And so a lot of times people don't. They can't really imagine that other side of the conversation, so they don't feel properly motivated to have the conversation. So for you, speaking as somebody who has gone through it, who has dedicated years of your life to trying to break through, and then having made some inroads, when you're thinking about the people who might say it's not worth it, what do you have to say to them so they can understand that there is something worth it on the other.

Side, I look at it from the perspective of faith. And there are a lot of times we go through things in life, we don't have a clear path. We don't know what's on the other side, but we know it's the right thing to do, and so we persist in that. I will say as a personal example, early in our marriage, Jane and I struggled a lot. And it would have been easy to bail. And if somebody would have said, hey, Brian, you know, you gotta have faith, because this is what it's going to be like on the other end. And I will tell you, Kwame, our marriage is amazing. Now, the way that we get along, how much fun we have, just the two of us, and the things that we do together. I would have missed out on the best experience of my life, which would have also included the birth of our daughter and now soon a grandchild. I would have missed all of that if I would have said, it's too hard. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna put in that effort. If there's anybody or anything that's worth too hard in the effort, it's family. It's the people that we love. We don't get to choose our parents, but they are our family. And so I think doing what we can to work on that relationship with my dad, it was. I wasn't hammering him all the time, but I also knew until we kind of get this elephant out of the room, I can't just be happy, go lucky, have a few beers, play some golf, tell some jokes, and act like everything is good. This was hanging right in front of me, and I felt like I needed answers. So the difficulty was, over the years, we still continued to get together, but it wasn't the same. And sometimes I didn't look forward to it. And Jane could see when I was changing, if I was getting all bound up, she could just see the. The changes that were happening. And so I wasn't about to let it go, but I wasn't. Every time we got together, I wasn't like, okay, dad, we got to talk. We got to talk. He started opening up when he was ready. And it was probably about 15 years ago, somewhere around then, when he. We were on vacation, and he gave me the document that's included in the book. And he said, I think this might answer some questions. Maybe it'll raise some more. We can talk about it when. When you're. When you finish it. And it was the document about his time in the core. So if I hadn't opened that up and if I hadn't pressed a little bit, he might have just kept going on the way he was, which was not even thinking about his own past.

Wow. So. And again, this. This is the part that is a little bit art and a little bit science, too, because I think it's very important, too, that we explicitly articulated the fact that you're not badgering him. Every time where. Oh yeah, for the last, you know, 17 years, every time I talk to my dad, I'm bringing this up. That would be, you know, borderline abusive, really. Just like forcing somebody to talk about their deepest trauma. But you kept the door open. And I think that's really important. And also too, because I know there are going to be some people who listen to this who might say, well, that might have worked with your dad, but you don't know my dad, you don't know my mother or whatever it happens to, to be. But it sounds like. And I'd love for you to speak to this because it sounds like as you were preparing for these conversations, as you were getting into the right mindset, as you were trying to be more empathetic, that process of preparation was cathartic and healing to you, in a sense. So even if the conversation never happened, you would have been a better, more self aware person as a result of just preparing for the conversation.

Yeah, I, I learned to temper my expectations. I got to a point where I thought, you know, he may never end up being the person I would like him to be, at least in terms of, like, his openness and, and things like that. But I can still enjoy being around him. And so we would go down on vacation and we would spend time together and, and I would enjoy the time. And I knew that he really looked forward to it. I could tell by the way he hugged us and how happy he was when we first got there that he so appreciated our time together. So just over time, you have to adjust your expectation. People will not be who you want them to be. We have to learn to accept them for who they are. And I appreciated that he at least had tried to. The point about somebody thinking, well, you don't know my dad. I would say, you don't know my dad. Again, think about this, you know, seven years in the Marine Corps and how hardcore you become with that and being a combat veteran. And I tell you, Kwame, I never saw my dad back down to anybody. If he thought you were cheating him out of a dime, he was going to be in your face. And I will share this story too, that when we got to the point where he finally we sat down to have this conversation, we kind of met in a neutral place between where he lived and where I lived. It was a restaurant. And he could not understand why I wanted to rehash some of the things of the past. So I said, dad, what would you do if I hit Joe? That's the lady. He ended up Marrying. He was married to for 38 years before he passed away. I said, dad, what would you do if I hit Joe? And he leaned across the table and he looked at me, and he goes, I will. And you can bleep this out if you want, but he goes, I will kill you. And I said, what if you found out it was five years ago? He goes, I don't care when it was. If I ever find out you laid a hand on her, I'm gonna kill you. And I said, well, good. Now you know how I feel about the divorce. Even though it was 12 years ago, it's right now for me, and I want to talk about it. I share that story because there aren't probably too many parents who will say what he said to me and mean it. That's the thing I could see in. In his eyes and the intensity. It didn't matter that I was his son. The most important person in the world was. Was her. And I don't. I do not fault him for that at all. Again, as I look back, she helped him through. Get through the trauma that he was dealing with. Now she says she doesn't know what she did. She probably was just the empathetic ear. She was removed from the situation, but nonetheless, his world revolved around her because of what he felt she did for him. And so I don't look back on that and feel animosity toward him. I understand why he felt the way he did in that moment. But my point for this is just. My dad was as intense as they come, and yet he did change. And I think it's available for anybody. It does take two to tango. But I think he started getting to the point where he did want to change and he wanted to understand things, and he wanted a better relationship with me and all the things that come with that. So, again, you don't lose faith. You do what you know is the right thing, and then you trust God that he will be working on that other person as well, whether or not they choose to respond. They still have free will, but that would be my advice for people.

That's so good. That's powerful. And again, when I think about your life, your relationship with your father, and then the healing that came from this, not just for you, but this is a generational type of. Of thing. And this is something you talked about in the book as well. The. The. The healing really, in many ways, and the work that you put into yourself prevented a lot of negative generational momentum that had been passed down. And so the return on investment that we have for this type of conversation is much bigger than what we ever think it could be, because the ripple effects of the conversation will reverberate for generations. And that gives us an opportunity to talk about the bigger picture here. Because this wasn't just written for the sake of sharing your story. We think about the last story, the last part of the title. His story, my story, our story. Right. There's something bigger here. So when you think about the impact that you want this book to have, what does that look like?

Well, my hope is that when I first wrote the book and I put in there, that the hope was that a Marine might read it and make better choices than my dad, that maybe he would learn some things that took my dad a lot longer to learn, that a family would read it and maybe have more empathy and understanding for the Marine in their life sooner than. Than I had it. More broadly, fathers and sons and just having that. That natural tension that's there, because I think fathers, we want to be proud of our children, but we also don't want to admit when we're on the decline and they're on the rise and that, you know what? They can do things better than we can. And I think that was tough for my dad as he got older and I was on the ascent. But then also the family aspect. And for me, the family aspect was wanting to, as I said earlier, be the best husband and father that I could. So that when we're raising our daughter, life has enough challenges. I don't want to lay any more burden on her because I'm not thinking about who I am. And same with Jane. And so we were very intentional in terms of how we raised Abigail. And you've had an opportunity to meet her, A wonderful person, special. And. And the best confirmation I could have gotten, Kwame, was a few months ago when we had been walking around uptown, and. And then she stopped by the house. We were just sitting out on the front patio, and. And she was thanking us because she said, I've had a great life. She goes, I love this house. This is the house I grew up in. I love this neighborhood. And I know I'm loved by you guys. I'm loved by God. And. And she said, I wouldn't change anything. And it's not to say we didn't make mistakes along the way, but everybody will. But for your son or daughter to say, you did it right, man, that meant a lot.

That means everything. That means everything. Wow. Brian, thank you so much for joining us. It's Powerful. Powerful as always. And again, before you go, I always want to make sure give you an opportunity to let folks know again about the book, where they can get it and how they can get in touch with you too.

Sure. So the book's available at, you know, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, places like that. If you want to learn more about the book, the website is Brian Ahern Biz B I Z. If you go to that, you'll read some testimonials, see a short video. There's a lot of information out there about the book, but you can get it directly on Amazon, you can get it at Barnes and Noble. In terms of getting in touch with me, if you liked what we talked about here today, LinkedIn is probably the best place. You know, just reach out to connect on LinkedIn. I I connect with everybody. I will ask you how you found me and if you tell me how you found me, I'll still send you a personal message to keep the social in social media.

Amazing. Brian, thank you again for coming back back on the show, man. Really appreciate it.

Appreciate you having me on. I look forward to number seven or eight or whatever. The next one will be.

Many more to come.

I'll write a book just so I can come on the show again.

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