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Finding Common Ground – a conversation with author Henrik Wilenus
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Finding Common Ground, especially with teenagers – a conversation with author Henrik Wilenus
Parenting a teenager can involve walking an emotional tight rope as you try to help them manage the changing times of adolescence.
In this episode of the Abeceder work life balance podcast Rest and Recreation Henrik Wilenus the author of the Rise Up trilogy of coming-of-age novels explains using examples from his own experience, how to get along with anyone.
Henrik stresses the importance of seeking to understand the perspective of the other person so that you can focus on finding common ground. is approach to finding common ground, not just with teenagers.
With practical explanations of how to do this Henrik provides a route that anyone facing or trying to avoid a conflict situation can follow to identify a resolution
The Independent Minds is Made on Zencastr, the all-in-one podcasting platform, on which you can create your podcast in one place and then distribute it to every platform. Zencastr really does make making content so easy.
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr visit zencastr.com/pricing and use our offer code ABECEDER.
Thank you to the team at Matchmaker.fm for introducing me to Henrik. If you are a podcaster looking for interesting guests or if like Henrik, you have something interesting to say Matchmaker.fm is where matches of great hosts and great guests are made. Use our offer code MILW10 for a discount on membership.
Travel
Henrik describes how being able to travel has exposed him to different cultures and explains how these experiences have influenced his approach to conflict.
You can also experience different cultures by becoming a member of The Ultimate Travel Club which enables you to travel at trade prices. Use our offer code ABEC79 to receive a discount on club membership fees.
Visit Abeceder for more information about both Michael Millward, and Henrik Wilenus.
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Visit York Test and use this discount code ABECEDER2.
Being a Guest
If you would like to be a guest on The Independent Minds, please contact Abeceder.
We recommend that potential guests take one of the podcasting guest training programmes available from Work Place Learning Centre.
If you have liked this episode of The Independent Minds, please give it a like and download it so that you can listen any time anywhere.
To make sure you do not miss future editions please subscribe.
Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abeceder is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think!
Until the next time, thank you to you for listening.
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Transcript
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencaster.
Introduction and Podcast Promotion
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Rest and Recreation, the Work-Life Balance podcast from Abecedah. I am your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abecedah. As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, Rest and Recreation is Made on Zencaster.
00:00:26
Speaker
Zencaster is the all in one podcasting platform on which you can make your podcast in one place and then distribute it to the major platforms like Spotify, Apple, Google and Amazon. It really does make making content so easy. If you would like to try podcasting using Zencaster, visit zencaster dot.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code ABACEDA. All the details are in the description.
00:00:57
Speaker
Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencaster is for making podcasts, we should make one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading, and subscribing to. As with every episode of Rest and Recreation, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
Meet Henrik Villenius
00:01:20
Speaker
Today's rest and recreation guest, who I met on matchmaker dot.fm, is the author, Henrik Villenius.
Rise Up Trilogy and Teenage Challenges
00:01:29
Speaker
Henrik is the author of the Rise Up trilogy, which is a coming of age story ah about Hashim, Alex and Miriam, three best friends on the threshold of adulthood.
00:01:41
Speaker
As a trilogy, Rise Up provides an insight into the way in which teenagers deal with challenges and how adults can best respond. Henrik is from Finland. I have never been to Finland, but if I do go to Finland, I will book my travel with the Ultimate Travel Club because that is where I can access trade prices on flights and hotels and all sorts of other travel things. There is a link and a membership discount code in the description.
00:02:11
Speaker
now. Hello, Henrik. Oh, hello, Michael. Yes, it's a great honor to be in your podcast and I'm really looking forward to our conversation. Thank you very much. Please could we start by you telling us a little bit about who you are and your backstory and how you came to the point where you wrote three books called the Rise Up
Cultural Inspirations and Personal Journey
00:02:32
Speaker
trilogy. Yes, when I was a kid I loved stories about faraway lands and especially stories about the different cultures and peoples and their languages and their religions. And there there was one story in particular that really grabbed my imagination. And that was a story of Siddhartha Kautama, who later became better known as Buddha.
00:03:01
Speaker
For some strange reasons, I really felt that I could identify with him, although we lived in so different worlds. I mean, Siddhartha Kautama was a prince 2,500 years ago in the foothills of Himalaya in in India or he had something that really drew me to him and that was his quest or craving to find meaning in his life. Also realizing that the only way that he can really truly get to know
00:03:41
Speaker
The world is to go out of his birthplace because he had been shielded all his life. and Well, that's another story, but but just in short to say that his father wanted to protect him from the sufferings of the world. My parents were not trying to do that to me because I went to school. My parents had started and lived quite much in the pueblo.
00:04:11
Speaker
I felt this also need to go out and the third thing was that I realized that in order to get on my path, I needed the tool. And that tool was self-discipline. So at the age of 12, I then decided that now I i really wanted to leave Finland. Well, my father especially understood. e My father was a philosopher and he he had had this kind of similar awakening in his own youth.
00:04:43
Speaker
And then he understood what was going on. And and then at age 14, I left ah to France to go boarding school in France. And and and it was really ah in quick succession, somehow the world beyond the Finland opened up to me. Like the first or second week I was there, I got to know my classmate, a French Jewish guy who had been on the plane that was Haychak to Entebbe and then the
00:05:18
Speaker
ah Israeli security forces released the prisoners after attacking Entebbe Airport. And of course, this this one was very traumatic for him. But then also a week or two later, I was spending weekends in Paris with my mom's friend. And his boyfriend was Tunisian.
00:05:43
Speaker
And he kind of took me under his wings and introduced me to North African Paris, Muslim Paris. And I was fascinated by their social relations and how they took care of each other and how they talk to each other and how they took me, not as a 14 year old boy, but as a but that as an equal. So these experiences, then I see them kind of forming me, this understanding that it's not important how I'm different from the others, but what I have in common with others, commonalities.
00:06:28
Speaker
and And especially nowadays in this world that it's so divided, i you know the people miss a chance kind of finding the healing powers of these commonalities.
00:06:44
Speaker
can create between people.
Cultural Differences in Business
00:06:47
Speaker
So although i didn't I didn't think that my future would be in philosophy at that time and I was interested in so many things and politics and sociology too and languages and business. and But then I went to business school and but after a few years I realized that I didn't want to work for a big company.
00:07:10
Speaker
So I started my own and it was a um are sale contemporary art sale and a story tune company. And I did that for four or five years and it was became quite successful and then I had other businesses and more among one of the companies I had was a market research company which I did for Finnish companies how they can operate abroad because I thought that I have this special understanding of other cultures.
00:07:42
Speaker
But quite soon, I realized that, you know, the reports that I was doing, they were not taken seriously. And and I started to wonder, I mean, I met many interesting bosses in quite big companies and and they seem to be quite well informed, especially about the technical sides of their products. But they often lack the understanding how how to work in different cultural environments like let's say Japan was very becoming very important partner for Finnish companies in the 1980s. I started to wonder what is it that makes me, well this time, what makes my understanding so different?
00:08:30
Speaker
and I decided that I needed to try to solve this puzzle. An only way to do it is to try and to understand the inner workings of our mind, but it didn't, well, it included some psychology but but more important philosophy. I then went back to the university and started studying philosophy. But then quite soon I realized that the philosophy wouldn't be able to give me the right questions nor the right answers. The thing that fired my imagination
00:09:12
Speaker
was Rhetorix by Aristotle. Rhetorix gives you seven or eight different points at how to carry a debate successfully.
00:09:25
Speaker
But nowhere there is mentioned anything about that you should try to understand your opening opponent. It's all about winning. Then I realized that in in often in the West, especially in in very kind of competitive surroundings,
00:09:44
Speaker
people lack this kind of empathy or or compassion to really have a dialogue and really learn something new.
00:09:55
Speaker
And this is how I came brighter. Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned that we live in a competitive world and it's about winning. Yeah.
00:10:07
Speaker
It's about being better than someone else. It's about your point, your side of the argument, convincing or cajoling someone else to accept your side of the argument as being better than theirs. And how that doesn't lead to the development of a good relationship. If if someone is always going to have the upper hand, yeah you can't create a relationship that is constructive.
00:10:34
Speaker
And that's unfortunately true not only in the business world, but it is any kind of i mean education field. It's true between parents and and their children. and And I think this kind of this modern technology has kind of diluted our sense of of feeling what the other person is and and and also kind of made us weak in this in human evolvement. Yes. Yeah. It's almost as if the the speed of communication means that we can get a message which can be a few words long and we're supposed to so reply immediately.
00:11:18
Speaker
But the speed of the communication means that our brains have to move at a rate which means we draw a conclusion about that person from one piece of information and respond without actually getting to understand the whole individual.
00:11:34
Speaker
and all the various different things that drive and motivate that individual. And to understand them, it's that, yeah, I get what you mean. It's like to understand the world, you have to sort of understand other people, but we yeah we restrict ourselves from doing that. And I suppose understanding is the result of learnings and... Yeah, and and listening is like the... the key here i think if you don't know but anyway but then again there are i think there's a lot of very
00:12:07
Speaker
successful entrepreneurs or or business leaders like I was just today listening to Jeff Bezos and he he says that usually in the meeting he's the last one to talk and then he listens to and usually the he like the in the in the meeting he has like this six minute memos that people need to think over and rewrite and rewrite and then he starts from the bottom and builds up and I think that's a genius way of kind of getting people out of their shelves and and getting them involved, you know, a bit because right in this this six minute mean memo, you know, everybody does that who takes part of the meeting makes you really think and you can, you know, talk to your colleagues about it and
00:13:03
Speaker
It createes kind of creates this atmosphere of, you know, you you don't have to be afraid to look foolish or something. it's you know and We listen to your voice and in your ideas.
00:13:18
Speaker
What you're talking about is almost something that is quite a change. You know you mentioned the 1980s, the 1990s, that period where there is a problem. I'm going to take control of the problem. I'm going to take ownership of the problem. I'm going to come up with the solution. yeah And what you're talking about is a dick completely different turning that on its head and saying, let's depersonalize it. Let's remove the ownership of the of the the problem, the challenge, remove the blame, the responsibility and look at it in a slightly more detached way and come up with a solution because we're not looking for someone to blame. We're not looking for someone to take ownership. We're looking at the issue as an individual, as a group of individuals, in order to come up with a solution that we can all buy into.
00:14:05
Speaker
So it's very interesting, very interesting. Now you wrote this trilogy of books is aimed at young adults and the people who care for young adults. Yes. And addresses like each one of the main characters goes through a challenge. Yeah. I wonder how does what you've just been talking about relate to the experience of those young people and how did you gain the experience, other than being a teenager yourself, to be able to create the Rise Up trilogy. When I realized that what is important is to find the commonalities in people, and that ah trained my compassion and my ability to listen to people. When you when you try to understand somebody else, first
00:14:59
Speaker
what you need, you need some background information. And I was a voracious reader. I was interested in everything and I read everything but I could get my hands on about the religions and cultures and languages and and all this. So I was kind of i was i was prepared.
00:15:20
Speaker
for these situations. Like when I was 14, when I was introduced to North African Paris, I knew about Islam already that time. I knew what was important to them. So it's it's always, you you need the the book knowledge, but you need also to have had discussions with people, conversations, endless conversations with people. In my process, what happens is that I don't try to figure out what the protagonist thinks. I become that person. I can hear what they think. I can feel in my body the the sensations. i I can see what they see. That's great, but it sounds like it's easier said than done.
00:16:11
Speaker
Yes, oh definitely. But if you think it's the same thing with the good actors, they don't try to act, they become the person. I think it's a lot about doing to do with this this ability to connect you know to people.
00:16:29
Speaker
To take that idea that it's like being a a great actor is not to be like a film star. A film star is someone who appears in films. They're film stars and so you see the film star in a role. What you're talking about is being much more like the actor who, like an Al Pacino or somebody, or m Daniel Day-Lewis, who becomes, learns how to make the dress, learns how to make the shoes, yes yeah and becomes the character, stays in character for the duration of the film, and lives as that character. I suppose in day-to-day life
00:17:12
Speaker
It is impossible to talk to the teenager as the teenager. You still have to be the adult, but you have to be able to position yourself in yet their shoes, in their life and understand it from their perspective.
00:17:30
Speaker
because you've you've you connect almost I suppose with because that's one of the other things I've heard actors say is like you're not trying you're not pretending to be someone you are someone but you're actually drawing upon your life experience to become those, so part of the research for a role if you're playing a doctor is to go and spend time with doctors, if you're going to be a police officer you spend time with police officers so you can draw on that experience and I suppose in many ways
00:18:01
Speaker
as adults, we forget that we have, in order to reach the age of 21, we've passed through that period from 13 to 19 as well. And we have all been teenagers with various varying degrees of success, but we all got to the end of it. That's why we're able to listen. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's very important and you can draw from your own experiences.
00:18:26
Speaker
And but many because many times also of people tend to forget how it was when they were young, or they rather forget because it was ah might have been embarrassing or awkward, awkward time. We say we either forget or we want to forget, but also the young person that we're talking to can be thinking like,
00:18:48
Speaker
Yeah, you were 13 once, but now you're not 13 and being 13 today is completely different to what it was like in the dark ages when you were a teenager. Yeah.
00:19:00
Speaker
Yeah, but in the end, you know, we all share the same feelings. It's just that, you know, they might be ah covered with different factors, but but you know in essence, they are the same feelings. And the thing is that if if if you talk to a young person,
00:19:22
Speaker
re sit and You should never do that when you are in anger or whatever situation, negative emotion you might be going through. That's the worst time. And you have to take care that you yourself, when you go into this situation and you want to talk, you also observe the young one and see that that they are also in a comfortable place. Yes. Almost like we're not going to talk about this now.
00:19:51
Speaker
you are going to go to your room or somewhere else. I'm going to go over here and we will meet in 15 minutes and then we will talk about it when you've had a chance to calm down. Yeah, yeah. Or maybe a few hours later or next day. But yeah, but yeah the the idea should I think, you know, should be this one. And the second is that, you know, right away if you put yourself about your kid, they feel it. Kids are very good in their intuition. They can feel if you try to use your power or if you try to use excuses like, but what would you know about this? You haven't yet lived long enough. Yeah, the because I say so type of line. Yeah. Yeah. So in the book, because this is very interesting, but I do want people to know about these three books, the trilogy the rise, the Rise Up trilogy.
00:20:48
Speaker
You've got these three characters and each one of them faces a challenge. So what are the challenges that each one faces?
Adolescence and Identity Formation
00:20:56
Speaker
when When we grow up in the families from from different cultures and religions, there is always these expectations that we create ourselves and what we what we receive from the people around us. And I think it's in in the gay world we talk about coming out of a closet, but I think every person should come out of the closet. And what I mean by that is that
00:21:25
Speaker
You have to kind of understand the meaning of the expectations that are put upon you and what you have made yourself. And this means that you have to face your insecurities.
00:21:42
Speaker
certain way and also your previous actions because there's ah it is quite often well very early on we start to also gather this kind of feeling of shame.
00:21:57
Speaker
and and not being good enough, and all these all these kind of negative emotions. Almost as if you're saying that that process of adolescence, they're maturing, turning from a child into an adult.
00:22:13
Speaker
Is that period where we decide who we're going to be. Yes. And that's what you mean by coming out. yeah It's a bit like when I do talks in schools and I'm talking to six formers, people who who are studying for A-levels, so they're 16, 17, 18.
00:22:31
Speaker
At 11 years old, everything that came out of your mouth was almost something that you had learnt from adults in your life, usually your parents. So all of your points of view, what you believed about the world came from adults, parents, grandparents, teachers. yeah Now that you are progressing and you are getting older, you're starting to form your own opinions and decide how it is that you want to live. yeah So you'll be faced with all sorts of options. Are you going to drink half? Are you going to take drugs? Are you going to stay out late? Are you going to be a rock fan or a soul boy? You have to decide what type of person you are going to be, yes how you are going to live your life and you have to come out as that person. Yes, definitely. That's not necessarily making a statement about your sexuality. yeah It's making a statement about who you are as an individual. And that is going to be the route to you finding as a teenager and as a young adult, what is going to make you happy in life.
00:23:33
Speaker
Yes, because but that's only start. kind of if If you can open this connection to yourself in that sense that you you start to understand your place in this world and you start to understand your own culture and your parents and the world that surrounds you,
00:23:52
Speaker
It's an ongoing process and never ending to a certain an extent. so But if if you if you get these channels open, and that's what what happens in the novel with these three characters, and they all have very big issues to solve,
00:24:14
Speaker
and And then when they don't have to actually solve all the problems, but when they but become aware and they become open to the solutions that loom there in their future, they path get lighter.
00:24:34
Speaker
And they find their confidence and their ability to thrive and and be open to new things and also the curiosity that could last for a lifetime. Yes. it's You're painting a picture of a of a multi-layered story, a multi-layered journey that young people go on, which isn't an easy journey to embark on, but the, well, the alternative of not going on that journey is a bit, you know, not good. yeah I have maybe 100 reviews in Amazon and there are several of them where people
00:25:19
Speaker
the older people have written that. so After reading my books, now they start to understand generation C. It's because ah stories are the best best way to relay this kind of understanding.
00:25:34
Speaker
I think for the parent who is having problems with his children, you know, this might be eye-opening because then you have your own space to think about them, kind of see how it applies to your life and then your situation. and Which is a learning journey as well for the adult as well, isn't it?
00:25:58
Speaker
Yes, yes, actually, it could be at best, it could be kind of dialogue with the the characters in my books and the person who reads. And I suppose in many ways, as an adult reading about these three characters in this trilogy, they have the feeling that people are becoming aware of their own vulnerabilities.
00:26:24
Speaker
yeah Yes, and that's a very important point. How many are professionals? So you don't can create a positive constructive relationship out of a master-servant type relationship. You do it when you have an adult-to-adult relationship. In order to do that,
00:26:43
Speaker
you have to have an equality of vulnerability. yeah That could be a new expression for ah psychologists and philosophers of equality of vulnerability, yes as whiching which enables people to see each other in the other's shoes. yeah yeah I'm reminded that when you said about going to North Africa and Paris,
00:27:04
Speaker
I'm reminded of one of my good friends, who's Muslim, who explained to me that he got four children. And in his culture, the Muslim culture, that when his children reach puberty, then he was no longer going to treat them as children. He was no not going to treat them as teenagers. He would treat them as adults. And when you explain your experience in that area of Paris, yeah that's what happened, isn't it? You're a teenager, but in that culture that you had entered as an outsider you were you were being treated as an adult oh wow yeah i haven't thought about that that's a very interesting lead to me yes yeah yeah that's yeah it was so different i mean
00:27:51
Speaker
i think Although I was like my parents, especially my father, I was always treated as an equal. I suppose for a lot of adults, their relationship with a child, with a teenager, is one of authority. They are a teacher. You are supposed to shut up, listen, learn and repeat. I am a police officer, I am a doctor, I am whatever I am, I am in a position of authority. yeah I yeah have a role where you are supposed to accept that I know more than you do. And therefore I am in control. I am the one with the power. And yet what you're saying and what you've explained in your books is that the better relationship is one way you can find a way to yes have a more equal conversation. But also remembering, I suppose, that
00:28:44
Speaker
you are the adult, you are the more experienced one. and I suppose instead of being a teacher, where you just tell people things, you become much more of a coach, a mentor in that type of relationship. Yes, and I have the experience in that. that I was 15 years, I worked as a volunteer in Red Cross Youth Shelter, and I didn't have any therapeutic role.
00:29:10
Speaker
So I would go there once a week or something and it was like a home. There were maybe six, seven rooms and 10 to 15 teenagers and then I would just talk to them and then I would start making food for them and then, you know, I didn't need to address any issue. Only thing that I was there for was to be an adult in that sense that, you know, there's somebody to talk to and who would listen to you.
00:29:40
Speaker
Yeah, I get the feeling that you're trying very hard to not use the words role model.
00:29:47
Speaker
yeah no no that's what What you're talking about is just being oh not being there, not being judgmental, just being there and allowing people yeah to open up. And it wasn in that's that that was my inspiration.
00:30:04
Speaker
also the 15 years there that inspired me to write this, because I understood that, you know, we often, as we age, we, our sensitivity. Our perspective of the world narrows, doesn't it, as we age? Yes. Oh, it narrows horribly. And and we forget things and we forget how you know when we were young that how smart we were actually and then we had we had we created all this and then yeah it was a it was a wonderful yes today has been a wonderful time for me i've really enjoyed our conversation and i feel like
00:30:46
Speaker
Well, the different perspective that you've given me of just relationships between people and this understanding the world from other people's perspective, as well as from my own and and finding the common ground and how that can be used to help people through challenging times is really interesting. And I really am
Closing Remarks
00:31:09
Speaker
very grateful. Thank you very much, Henrik. it It's been very interesting.
00:31:12
Speaker
Thank you, Michael. i I also very much enjoyed our little conversation. Thank you. And learned something new. Every day is a school day. Yeah. Thank you, Michael. It's been a pleasure. It has. I am Michael Millward, the managing director of Abecida. In this episode of Rest in Recreation, I have been having a conversation with Henrik Vilenius, creator of the Rise Up trilogy of books for young adults.
00:31:40
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us at abocida.co.uk. There is a link in the description. I must remember to thank the team at matchmaker dot.fm for introducing me to Henrik. If you are a podcaster looking for interesting guests, or if like Henrik, you have something very interesting to say, matchmaker dot.fm is where matches of great hosts and great guests are made. There is a link to matchmaker.fm and an offer code in the description.
00:32:11
Speaker
If you've been listening to this episode of Rest and Recreation on your smartphone in the United Kingdom, you'll want to know that 3 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data. So listening on 3 means you can wave goodbye to buffering. There's a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code.
00:32:40
Speaker
If you've liked this episode of Rest and Recreation, please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by our procedure is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think. All that it remains for me to say is until the next step episode of Rest and Recreation, thank you for listening and goodbye.