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Welcome to Rejuvenaging with Dr. Ron Kaiser. This is the podcast designed to help you lead your life enthusiastically.

Today and tomorrow and every other day of your life. I am your host, Ron Kaiser. I'm a positive health psychologist and also author of the award winning and best selling book Rejuvenaging, The Art and Science of Growing Older with Enthusiasm.

My website is called the Mental Health Gym, that's www.thementalhealthgim.com. It is the source of lots of information about positive psychology, my own brand of it that I call goal achieving psychology, as well as Rejuvenaging.

As you know, most of these podcasts feature an interesting guest who is leading his or her life enthusiastically and has something really major to contribute to help you lead your life with enthusiasm.

Every once in a while, however, I find that I should be doing a solo topic on an area that I think is both particularly interesting and that can help us to be the best version of ourselves that we can be.

It may involve enthusiasm particularly, it may involve positive psychology and it may involve other aspects of general wellness leading to personal growth.

Today is one of those podcasts and I'm calling it bigotry will stunt your growth.

You know, both as a positive psychologist and as somebody who is doing podcasts, I like to have as broad an audience as possible.

I try not to ruffle too many feathers. Well, my philosophy is generally an uplifting positive one.

So I try not to venture into the political realm very much in these podcasts, even though I have some strong opinions and I'm involved politically in my personal life.

But I am concerned about the way that the world has become so polarized and so disrespectful.

In many ways, this is a function of not knowing each other very well in the United States. For example, many decades since the desegregation of schools,

we are still living in largely segregated neighborhoods and many Caucasians don't know many African Americans on a social basis or many Hispanics.

Or in some cases, Asians may not be living in proximity with other ethnic groups and mingling freely.

And it's kind of left to both the imagination and to the kind of teaching that we received as to what our attitudes are toward other minority groups.

Now, a couple of months ago, we saw the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement that has really started to change the way that people think.

It was a wake up call for many of us to recognize that it's not enough to be non-racist.

It's more important to be anti-racist because if we are compiliently non-racist, it doesn't change society in any way.

Now, this is not just a Black Lives Matter issue. Obviously, other minority groups are the victims of bigotry.

And even since the emergence of the movement that has gained wide support as a led to the removal of Confederate statues, the removal of the Confederate flag flying over the Capitol in Mississippi,

and lots of other accommodations, including the fact that many institutions are now having education and dialogue around the issue of Black Lives Matter.

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