Keep reading after the questions for how you can get your hands on a FREE copy of Noah's book!
What inspired you to write this book?
My youngest daughter had a health scare during which we lived in the hospital for five days. The family who shared our room faced a much longer ordeal including brain surgeries, breast cancer, and numerous drug therapies. Yet they maintained an amazingly positive outlook and ability to respond effectively to their challenges. Their actions were a tremendous inspiration.
These ideas have been written about before, but I think most people have an especially hard time turning the vague idea of positive thinking into concrete, valuable action. I wanted to give readers a practical and easily usable set of skills to respond to life’s challenges as effectively as my friends from the hospital have. I was particularly eager to write a book that went beyond inspiration and draws on techniques from eastern philosophy, positive psychology, and even neuroscience to help readers create and reinforce really positive and resilient behavior patterns.
What are the top 3 things we should stop doing right now in order to "be the hero"?
1. Stop giving others the right to choose your emotions. No one else can make you mad. Your life can’t make you angry or sad or anxious. Only you can do that. So stop giving others the power....
2. Stop looking at the object of your envy. That could be a car or house or money, or it could be kids or a relationship or a job. Focus instead on all that you have to be grateful for in this world.
3. Stop saying that there is nothing you can do. If you are still breathing you have choices. Pick the one that makes the most sense and then proclaim it as a choice. Even if you end up saying, “I’m choosing to stay in this lousy job,” at least you have taken back the understanding that you are in the driver’s seat.
That is so good! It's the concept of Comparison Kills Creativity that I talk about in my book. If we only take away one key lesson from your book, what would it be?
You can choose. Every moment of every day, you get to choose. You can be heroic if you choose to be. When you are taking out the garbage or fighting with your spouse or commuting to work or doing anything in your life, you can choose to think and act in ways that make you feel better and more energized and act more effectively and more productively.
US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, “Most of the things worth doing in this world had been declared impossible before they were done.” Don’t let anyone – yourself included – convince you that you can’t be happy, be effective, create the changes you want to see in your relationships or your work or the world around you. Every day you get to choose. Choose to be a hero.
That quote reminds me of the Apple "Think Different" campaign and commercial. I love that! So what is your favorite story from the book and why?
That’s a tough one. I’ve never written a parable before and really enjoyed weaving the concepts into a fun story. I love the restaurant scenes, especially because of my own passion for food.
But I think my favorite story is about the hike in the Alps, because I think it mirrors what we so often experience. We’ve all had moments in our lives when we think we see things with great clarity. Then of course, we fall back down to Earth. I loved the mountain story because of what it represents in terms of the knowledge we mistake for absolute truth and also our ability to re-climb mountains from our past and find the lessons we left behind.
Anything else you'd like to share with our readers?
Share your journey. Whether you become passionate about a book like Be the Hero or any other that inspires the best in you, share it with others. Talk about it with your friends and family. Make commitments together.
When we form communities of people who share our desires and values for how we wish to live and who we wish to be, we dramatically increase our ability to live up to our hopes for ourselves and for one another.
I couldn't agree more! Building that community is what Real Women Scrap is all about. I love that you've translated it into a book that can reach even more people. We need each other and we need to be the best versions of ourselves too!
Thanks so much for stopping by, for sharing your insight, and for offering a FREE copy of your book for one of my readers!
HOW TO WIN A FREE COPY
First, go to Twitter and if you don’t already have an account there, set one up. It’s free.Then follow me @tasradawson by clicking on the Follow button under my profile. Then, copy and paste the following tweet…
Win a FREE copy of "Be the Hero" from @tasradawson and @noahblumenthal. Pls RT. Details here: http://bit.ly/freeBTH
That’s it. Just follow me on Twitter, send out that Tweet, and you’re done! (If you prefer not to Tweet, you can leave a comment here for entry as well!)
