Teaser: Hero’s they are literally everywhere in our society today. We seem to need heroes today now more than ever. And there are some undoubted heroes among us right now. We love and admire them deeply. But the question we ask today is what makes a hero so? And how do we boost the heroism in ourselves!

 

Welcome back to the podcast! It has been the summer of interviews at the inclusive activism podcast and that is a very good thing. So far I know you have heard from Dr. Matthew Whitaker, and Luke Black. I think you might even will have heard from the Executive Director of Anytown Eric Tanchez by this time. So I am curious how are you liking these interviews? Are they good are they of value? I also have 3 in the with a few others coming up so sit tight!

 

I also ask because the individual topics still seem to dominate in the rankings at this point so I am hoping to hear your thoughts! So remember you can email me at inclusiveactivism@cox.net or leave me a voicemail at 860-576-9393. I would love to hear your thoughts!

 

Also remember to rate and review us on iTunes, or Stitcher, or if you could please share the podcast on social media, All these things go a long way to making a significant difference for us here at the inclusive activism podcast. Also please subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play as these are great ways for me to show “proof of work to potential sponsors”. It would also go a long way in getting my producer Sara paid for her work someday too!

 

So checking in on my Activism:

Not much as I have been on vacation

 

Self Care:

Also out on Vacation which was a nice get away. I am feeling rested and ready to get back at it though

I have done 2 days of lifting

As well as two days of cardio already!

 

So on to the podcast for today! I got excited about this topic. What makes a hero? How does an ordinary person make the extraordinary choices to become a hero? And if everyone is capable, how can we draw more heroism out of ourselves?

 

First thing: Heroes See Voids of Need better than the rest of us. They see the world differently than we do, and they take more ownership of the outcome of the world than the rest of us. While we drive past the person stranded on the road because we don’t want to be late for work, the Hero decides to be late anyway. The hero in them calls them to help. There was a study done on preacher who were asked to do a sermon on the story of the good Samaritan the man who was supposedly lowly. He took in a beaten man stopped by the side of the road and not only helped him but helped him to the point where he put him up in a hotel and gave him a reserve of money to get better on, and also told the innkeeper to keep a tab if the money was not enough. These preachers were asked to create a message about the good Samaritan to give to another congregation. These preachers were then told they were late to deliver the message and on the way they passed a man who was groggy and asking for help. The amount of hurriedness the preachers experienced had a direct correlation on how helpful they were.

 

Results: The amount of “hurriness” induced in the subject had a major effect on helping behavior, but the task variable did not (even when the talk was about the Good Samaritan).

Overall 40% offered some help to the victim. In low hurry situations, 63% helped, medium hurry 45% and high hurry 10%. For helping-relevant message 53%, task relevant message 29%. There was no correlation between “religious types” and helping behavior. The only variable that showed some effect was “relgion as a quest”. Of the people who helped, those who saw religion as a quest were less likely to offer substantial help than those who scored low on this statement. But later analysis revealed this may not be caused be real religious differences.

Conclusions
Ironically, a person in a hurry is less likely to help people, even if he is going to speak on the parable of the Good Samaritan. (Some literally stepped over the victim on their way to the next building!). The results seem to show that thinking about norms does not imply that one will act on them. Maybe that “ethics become a luxury as the speed of our daily lives increases”. Or maybe peoples cognition was narrowed by the hurriedness and they failed to make the immediate connection of an emergency.

Many subjects who did not stop did appear aroused and anxious when the arrived at the second site. They were in a conflict between helping the victim and meeting the needs of the experimenter. Conflict rather than callousness can explain the failure to stop.

 

See the hero doesn’t just have something on their mind that makes them more likely to help. They see the world differently, and that is part of the rareity. 10% still helped even when in a high hurry. What is the magic in that 10 percent? It is no magic at all it is a practice.

 

When you stand up for what is right, when we see a void of need, when you don’t allow that comment to fly in your presence – that act stopping and doing something is where the hero comes from. It is training the mind not to dither, it focuses on one’s own ability to do something and just doing it without thinking.

 

Second: If this is a trainable skill we need to make brave heroic acts more of a daily priority. We need to step up and make the difference we are capable of… We must own our power to make THE difference. And this comes in a variety of ways. Most people know of the Stanford Prison Experiments done by Dr. Zombardo, where people began to dehumanize one another as part of a role play done at Stanford University, if you know what an IRB review board it is because of the horrific results of that study. Do you know who stopped it?

 

It was Dr. Zombardo’s girlfriend, a grad student who stopped by to have lunch with him and threated to break up with him – even though she was in love with the man. If he did not stop immediately. Two things are important here, one someone saw a wrong and took an action. She saw the void of need. But she also was willing to sacrifice something too.

On vacation my niece who is still in 1^st grade played the hero too! So my parents live in a house built in the 80’s and there has been some weird stuff that has happened there no doubt! So the basement of that house is a very dark and scary place. Both my nieces one in High School the other in elementary school are NOT fans of that basement.

 

My mother had asked me to go and put some food in the freezer. Now I have had some great exposure therapy to the dark and the woods from living there. So I was taking a trip down memory lane in that moment.

 

While I was down there I saw my niece down there looking for me since I had been taking what to her might have felt like a bit too long down there. Normally she never even with lights goes past the first landing of the stairwell to the basement, she was all the way down to the floor. She had a wiffleball bat with her and at the time honestly I didn’t make much of it… Come to learn that she had taken that bat down there to come help her uncle. She even told my mother her grandma that it was going to be fine, she had the bat with her….

 

Two more stories my dogs could not be more different. One loves water and loves to swim, the other is deathly afraid of it and thinks everyone swimming is drowning. She sees tank doing his thing and DIVES, not just jump in dives deep down to try and find her puppy partner to try to grab him by the neck to drag him to safety. No thought just action – amazing.

 

The last one isn’t so much about bravery – it is about seeing people. Tell the gym story.

 

See how each of these people saw things differently? They saw the world in a different way and made a choice to make the difference they could. They make a choice to make a difference. It as not about the size of the choice, it was about making that choice despite the cost. That is what makes a hero!

 

Lastly – Heroes can be made. Now I am not talking about the narrative around what we say to create hero, or hero worship. I don’t think many of those things are helpful. I am talking about finding the hero within you.

 

Let’s be honest the world right now is not bright and awesome. It is filled with doubt and uncertainly. There is incivility all over the place. And it feels like the gap keeps widening. The more we focus on that gap the more we see distance separation or get focused only on us and our needs.

 

We need to pick our head up and be the hero for one another, to reach across that separation. To make that difference! A great way to do is to stand up when people stereotype one another. That moment of having to be “that person” while uncomfortable creates a liberty for someone to be their whole self in a moment.

 

How can we start, we need to practice looking for voids, to slow down and make a difference.

My friend Eric does this just by going around and encouraging people at his gym Lift!

One way I try to do this is I take it upon myself to try and pick up trash whenever I see it.

Now I am not major environmentalist. I like clean spaces and nature but it is not my personal burning issue of the day. But I do it because I SAW the trash and I have the capacity to do something about it, no matter how busy, no matter how stressed. I can be the somebody that picks that up. I want to be that somebody. The world needs these somebodys, and it can be anybody I want that person to be me.

 

I am blessed and highly favored to get to work where I work as I get to be the positive place where people can change their lives and be the people they can be instead of the people they were. That is FREAKING magical!

It doesn’t matter who you were, an addict, an ex-con, as one of my former students put it a former asshole. It doesn’t matter, who you used to be – it matters who you want to become. And how you will choose to matter for someone else. Lily Tomlin said “Somebody should do something about that, then I realized that somebody was me!”

 

Let not just be somebody, lets help one another, lets be the hero for each other. Let someone by your hero, and look for someone to matter for TODAY.

 

 

So in review major points of this podcast were:

1. Heroes see the world differently than we do – They see the voids of need
2. We need to take personal responsibility – with small acts of bravery or mattering we all have time for!
3. We can practice this – we can train our hero response!

 

 

With that – That is all the time I have today! We have voicemails!!

 

SO if this made you think something, if you have a question or even more shocking a critique let me know. You can call me at 860-576-9393

 

This space is a place to talk back ask me questions, hit me with scenarios of how to react to situations real time. Depending on how good your stuff is I will give it my “first take response” or if it’s good it might be a future podcast!

 

Also as always if you’re interested in booking me to bring the power of inclusive activism to your organization you can always do so at inclusiveactivism@cox.net or you can learn more about this organization at www.inclusiveactivism.com