Ep. 42 Conversation with Paul J Nadeau- The power of Compassion

Transcript    

Gissele:  [00:00:00] hello and welcome to the Love and Compassion podcast. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives in our world. Cool. Don’t forget to liken, subscribe for more amazing content. Today we’re gonna be talking about how to end hate with kindness, respect, and love with Jay Paul Nado. Who spent more than 30 years working with victims of crimes and perpetrators and learning from top experts.

Over the course of his career, Paul has talked hostage takers into giving themselves up and murderers into admitting their crimes. And because of his extensive training and his unique approach to connecting with people of all walks of life and under different circumstances, his life was saved by a terrorist during a terrorism attack in the Middle East.

Paul is a bestselling author, a mental health strategist, and was the Canadian Mental Health Association’s first choice as keynote speaker in 2019 for their fourth annual conference. He’s [00:01:00] a regular guest on Sirius xms Talk Talk Radio, a consultant to World News Networks such as C N N, the National in CP 24 for his expertise on terrorism and global hostage crisis.

He’s a screenwriter and accomplished keynote speaker on topics of negotiations, conflict resolutions, and mental health. Paul is also the host of Inspire Us. Paul is also the host of the Inspired US podcast. Please join us in welcoming Paul. Hi Paul.

Paul: Hi Giselle. Very nice to see you. How you doing? I’m good.

Gissele: How about yourself?

Paul: I’m doing well.

Gissele: I was wondering if you could tell the audience a little bit about your childhood and what led you on this journey.

Paul: Absolutely. Well, you know, I, I was raised, in a home where there was a lot of violence.

My father was a, a violent alcoholic who used to beat my mother, my brother, and myself regularly. I grew [00:02:00] up not believing in myself. I had low self-esteem. I suffered from depression, and something happened in grade seven that really was the pivot point for me. Up until then, I had no belief that I would amount to anything.

my teachers were even telling me back then that you’ll never amount to anything. What are you doing here? And it was that kind of environment way back when in the sixties. So, in grade seven, I started to like girls, and there was one teacher that. He put me on the spot. What he did was, and I don’t know if he did this deliberately, Gissele, but what he did was he announced to the classroom that we were all going to have a test, and he expected everyone to pass.

And then he pointed at me, he said, except for you, Nadeau, I already know you’re going to fail. That was so humiliating and embarrassing to me. I, I felt every eye on me. And I remember going back home and just crying that weekend and just, kind of examining my life. And I, I opened the books for the [00:03:00] test and I didn’t know how to study because I’d never really applied myself to, to do that.

My mother tried to get me to study, but my little mind just didn’t want to. And I, I did that for the weekend. I just looked over my notes and I went in the next week and I wrote that test. And you know how we have these two little voices in our hands? Yeah. One voice is supportive. We’re the other one is not.

It’s like a little devil. Mm-hmm. . And the little devil was telling me, you’re, You’re not gonna do this, you’re not gonna pass this test. He’s gonna humiliate the heck out of you. And the other one was saying, you know, the stuff, like, just answer the questions. Once I had written the test, I handed it in. And what was customary in this tea