“Action of belief created the action of accomplishment.” In this episode, Nick speaks with Shel Horowitz about his lifelong journey of activism, from childhood to leading community campaigns. Shel offers practical advice on how anyone can start making a difference in their own way and how small actions can lead to big change. About Shel Horowitz: Shel helps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good—creating and marketing profitable products, services, and MINDSETS that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. He’s also a lifelong activist and is working on his 11th book for elders who want to be activists. https://goingbeyondsustainability.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/shelhorowitzethicalmarketer/ Resources: Interested in starting your own podcast or need help with one you already have? Learn how Nick can help! Learn more about our host, Nick McGowan https://nickmcgowan.com/ Thank you for listening! Please subscribe to the show on iTunes and give us a 5-Star review! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mindset-and-self-mastery-show/id1604262089 Listen to other episodes here: https://themindsetandselfmasteryshow.com/ Watch Clips and highlights: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk1tCM7KTe3hrq_-UAa6GHA Guest Inquiries right here: podcasts@themindsetandselfmasteryshow.com Your Friends at “The Mindset & Self-Mastery Show” Click Here To View The Transcript Nick McGowan: Hello and welcome to the Mindset and Self Mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan. Today on the show, we have Shel Horowitz. Shel, how are you doing today? Shel Horowitz: Great, Nick. How about you? Nick McGowan: Good man. I’m excited you’re here. We do know each other from networking and having different conversations. And when we first started talking before we hit record, I was like, how long have we known each other? Because it feels like it’s been a little while, like maybe a year or longer, because we’ve had conversations, but I think it’s just because we’ve already had in-depth conversations. In-depth, excited that you’re here. Why don’t you get us started? Tell us what you do for a living and what’s one thing most people don’t know about you that’s maybe a little odd or bizarre. Shel Horowitz: Thank you. Well, I help people find their unique sweet spot where business profitability intersects environmental and social good. So I’ve braided together the two halves of my life, the marketer and the activist. And one thing that people probably don’t know about me is that while I if people say when did you become an activist, I generally answer: age twelve, when I went to a Vietnam War rally in I heard a little piece of information that shocked me and basically broke everything I thought I knew about how our government worked, which was that the Vietnam War was an undeclared war. I’m like, holy crap! I didn’t know that. Bam! Checks and balances, you know, out, down it came. But the thing that most people don’t know is that before that, way before that, when I was about three. I took an activist action without thinking of myself as an activist. My parents were throwing a party, and all their friends were in their living room smoking and leaving their cigarette packages on the cigarette and other things, and I, at three, knew that I didn’t want to be breathing that shit. So I was crawling around under the table taking people’s packs of cigarettes and smashing the cigarettes in half. So that was my one toddler action, and then I didn’t do anything more as an activist until another nine years, which was still pretty early. I’m actually working on a book right now, and I’ve done talks about activism at any age. And the book is aimed mostly at people who want to be an activist when they’re 16 and above. But it’s gonna have older sections on youth activists and about how age and youth can work together, and I have come across several activists who, sometime between six and ten,n got their start. So it’s never too early. And then on the other end of things, I have had the privilege of going to two different women’s hundredth birthday parties who were still activists and who used their birthdays to increase social change. Nick McGowan: So awesome. I want us to pause real quick t, though. Let’s talk about it by itself, because people that listen to the show are smart enough to understand that they know most things, but we all kind of create our own definition of what that looks like. So somebody might think activism is just somebody out there yelling with a picket sign or something, or it’s somebody standing by a stream, or it could be something totally different. If somebody were to say to you, like, well, I don’t get what you’re saying, what really is activism? Like, let’s start at the core of that. What is it? Shel Horowitz: Well, it’s going to be different for different people because there have been at least three hundred and forty-nine identified nonviolent tactics of social change. The first one hundred and ninety-eight were by a man named Gene Sharp, and then somebody who I actually met this summer added another hundred and fifty or so. And so for some people it’s holding the sign, and that could be one person, it could be three people on a bridge brigade, it could be A million people protested at Trump’s inauguration. There’s no definition. But the idea is that you are there; there’s an action that makes it better. And there are a gazillion ways to do it. As I said, you could be one of those people that writes postcards and letters or sends texts around to people to get them to vote, or you could be lobbying your elected officials, and I shouldn’t say or, I should say and because none of these things exclude any of the others. And there’s just so much creativity in the movement. It’s really great. So the only thing they really all have in common is that you’re working, usually with other people, but sometimes alone, for social change and environmental good. And sometimes that takes the form, for example, of scientific research. You can be an activist in making the solutions possible that can curtail catastrophic climate change. So activism can mean many different things to many different people because there are, you know, almost three hundred and fifty documented types of tactics that activists can use. And they range from holding a sign, or you can do that yourself, or you can do that with a million people,e or anywhere in between. One of the things that’s gotten very common in these last couple of years is bridge brigades, which you can really do with like two or three people and a banner. I have done some actions where it was just me out on the street with a sign, but I’ve also been part of actions with a million people. I was a peacekeeper at one of those. That was really exciting. I got to help March turn a corner and watch a million people go by all for the same cause. That’s some. But it can also be writing letters and postcards, sending text alerts to get people out to vote, and doing scientific research to make solutions possible. There’s no limit to creativity. The only thing they all have in common is that the purpose is making the world better. And that’s broad. And you know, it’s a long history, too. If there is a documented instance of nonviolent civil disobedience in the book of Exodus. I think there’s the very first chapter of the book of Exodus, where the midwives, Shifra and Puah, tell the Pharaoh. Nick McGowan: Yeah. Yeah, it’s very broad. Shel Horowitz: Who has ordered them to kill the Hebrew male children as they’re born. We’re so sorry, Pharaoh. We just can’t get there in time. These Hebrew women, they give birth so fast, and then, you know, they’re already nursing the baby. We can’t just grab it out of their hands and kill them. So right there in the Bible is this proud history going back more than three thousand years. Nick McGowan: Hmm. If only the people that say they read the Bible subscribe to that. So I think it’s interesting to think about activism just from that broad perspective, because and that’sSo I asked you to, like, just define it, because it is so broad in so many ways that I think sometimes we look at things where we think it has to be a certain way. Like,e I bring up creativity a lot, and there are different people that have told me in the past, I’m not creative at all; I don’t know how to draw. Or I don’t play guitar, or I don’t do this. But then you watch the way they work, and they are just maestros when it comes to creativity in project management or whatever they do, even if it’s managing your kids. Like I see husbands and wives and, like,ke little families and stuff managing their little army of kids. And like three or four of them are like nine too many for me. So I’m like, what do you do? How do you do all that? But that’s all for sure. I’m sure it does. And again, like. Shel Horowitz: It does get better with practice. I have two who are now in their thirties. Nick McGowan: In all reality, like one or two is fine. But also, like, they’re not mine. So somebody else takes your kids back, you know? But if somebody else has all this and they know how the creative process works, some of it is just like, I look at it this way, and it should be this. Like activism. It should be what I’m used to seeing in the movies or what I’m told it is. I should stand out there with a picket or whatever. And also, based even on this broad perspective of it, it sounds like it’s more of whatever you do at home. How you do those little things, like taking the cigarettes from people and breaking their cigarettes and being like, you don’t need these damn things, or even just putting your foot d
