Growth Instigators Hotline
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Growth Instigators Hotline
#425 Shoes. Someone else’s shoes
What if a common pair of shoes could change how you lead, drive, and judge strangers on a Tuesday morning? We explore a simple, memorable shift: using shoes as a daily cue to practice empathy, slow your reactions, and make better choices when stakes feel high.
A listener named Todd shares a story from grade school where the teacher asked students to switch shoes and walk around for an hour. That tiny experiment delivered a big truth—every gait is different, and so is every life. We take that lesson into the real world: the office where timelines tighten, the gym where fatigue hides, the coffee shop where someone holds back tears, and the highway where tempers flare. Instead of writing stories about people, we learn to ask better questions, listen first, and respond with care.
We lay out practical tools you can use right away. Try a quick presence check wherever you are: look around and imagine the different paths that brought people here. In team settings, start meetings with a one-sentence “current load” to surface context. When conflict hits, use a three-step reset—pause, reflect what you heard, ask one clarifying question. And when irritation spikes, let your shoes remind you that you do not know the whole story. This is not about excusing behavior; it is about leading with clarity and compassion so decisions land cleaner and relationships stay strong.
By the end, you’ll have a handful of simple rituals to turn empathy from an idea into a habit. If this perspective helped you see people differently, share the episode with a friend who leads, parents, coaches, or commutes. Subscribe for more short prompts that turn everyday objects into growth tools, and leave a review to tell us what your shoes taught you today.
Welcome to the Growth Instigators Hotline. I'm Aaron Havens, your host and growth coach. This is Message 425. This week we are talking about shoes, an everyday normal object that we can assign deeper meaning to, something that can grab our attention and represent something bigger. Welcome to part five of five as we dive into lessons we can glean from shoes. Thank you, Todd from Maryland, for the reminder today. Todd left a message about how shoes remind him to practice empathy. He said he had an elementary school teacher that asked all his classmates to switch shoes and walk around the class for an hour. Everyone saw how different each person's walk really was. Great leaders practice empathy. They listen, pause, care, they try to understand before they lead. Where are you right now? I mean, right now, where are you at? Are you at work, the gym, coffee shop? Maybe you're at home or driving? If you are around people, just look around for a few seconds. Each person in your location got to that location in different ways. Each person has a story. Some drove a car, some walked, some just got out of bed an hour ago, and some have been up for hours. Some are calm, some are stressed, some feel healthy and strong, and some are fighting for their lives. Each person is walking their own path. They have their own realities, just like you. We are all on our own journey. So please let your shoes remind you that you just don't know. Please don't judge that person who just cut you off. Who knows? Maybe you would have done the same if you were in their shoes. So today, may our shoes remind us that everyone on earth is walking their own journey. Let's have a little more empathy for the wonderful people we encounter today and just hope they will actually return the favor. That, my friend, is how a common everyday object can instigate growth. I'd like to hear some more of your observations. What growth lessons can you apply to shoes? For those of you calling the Growth Instigators Hotline, I'd love to hear your thoughts after the beep. For those of you listening in on our podcast, visit growth instigators.com and send me your thoughts. Let's never see shoes the same.