Spinach and Kryptonite

I was a huge fan of cartoons when I was young. My favorite cartoons were the ones starring super heroes. What child doesn’t love super heroes? They have super powers! I used to wonder whether I would have super powers when I was all grown up. After years of searching, I discovered that I did have at least one super power….and so do you! I had two favorite super heroes growing up. The first was Superman. Every little boy loved Superman. Why not? He was faster than a speeding bullet. He could leap tall buildings in a single bound. Everything about the man was bulletproof…arms, legs, chest, cape. He only had one weakness…Kryptonite. Kryptonite was a rock from Superman’s home planet of Krypton that made him weak, powerless when he was in its presence. If he was exposed to it for too long, he would die. However, in every other way, Superman was extraordinary. My other favorite super hero was Popeye the Sailor Man. He was an “every man” super hero. He was every bit as ordinary as Superman was extraordinary. Actually, Popeye was borderline pitiful. Popeye only had one good eye. He stood no taller than about 4 foot three. His neck was skinny like a stack of dimes. In fact, his entire body was skinny except those forearms, of course. But there was one time at which Popeye was extraordinary…after he ate his spinach. After Popeye had eaten his spinach, he could do anything! I used to wonder whether I would one day be powerful like Superman or Popeye. As many of us do, I stopped watching my cartoon super heroes as I got older. Cartoons were nothing like “real life,” I thought. In real life, the Bad Guy wins all the time. In real life, bad things happen to good people. Problems linger. They are not solved in tidy 5 or 10 minute increments. If you spend too much time thinking about the enormity of the world, it can make you feel pretty un-super hero like. Powerless. At the point that I had almost stopped believing in super powers entirely I realized, pretty much by accident, that I had a super power. And it changed the way I viewed the world. My “aha” moment came as I was having dinner with a friend several years ago. She was depressed and she confided in me, sharing all of the things that were going wrong in her life. She was overworked, underpaid and unfulfilled at work. Her personal life was no better. The young man in which she was amorously interest had…well, other interests. Nothing was going the way she had planned. It was troubling me that such a great person: smart, talented and attractive felt this way about her life so I told her how smart, talented and attractive I thought she was and that soon the world would see her as I did. At that moment, I saw a dramatic change in her demeanor. Her depression started to lift and she said something I will never forget. “I always feel better after talking to you.” I realized I had a super power. I had the power to encourage. The power to change the way someone felt about themselves…to impact that person’s life in a positive way. I learned right then that I did have super powers. To the world I may be just one person, but to one person, I may be the world. What power could be more super than that? I became hooked, addicted, to spreading my power around. I started encouraging other friends… and it felt good. I took my encouragement power to work with me and I had more success…and it felt good. And a strange thing happened. The more encouragement I gave, the more encouragement I received in return and the more mighty I became. Then I got carried away. I developed an alter ego. The world knew me as Brian McClellan, but I viewed myself as SuperBAM. I would offer folks a kind word faster than a speeding bullet. I would help people leap tall buildings of negativity in a single bound. I would tell people to stand behind my cape. I wasn’t bulletproof, but I was Hater-proof. The vitriolic verbal bullets of hateful folk could not penetrate me. I had the power! But I had this power all along and so do you. We all walk through life armed with spinach and Kryptonite. We have a choice as to whether we use our power for good or evil. We can use our power of encouragement to help someone who may be ordinary in almost every way to be as powerful as Popeye with a belly full of spinach. Or we can take someone who is extraordinary in almost every way and render them powerless, killing his or her dreams with a few ill-timed, misplaced words. Remember, to the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world. You have super power! You have spinach and Kryptonite? Which will you offer the world?