Growth Instigators Hotline

#440 Stop Sign. Sign of humans.

• Aaron Havens • Season 5 • Episode 440

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What if the most powerful mindset shift of your day happens at a red octagon? We take a common stop sign and turn it into a practical tool for presence, empathy, and contribution—no extra time, no special app, just a two-second reframe when the wheels stop rolling.

We walk through the everyday scene at an intersection and unpack why that tiny pause is a perfect cue to widen your focus. Rather than staying locked in your own plans, you can choose to notice the person next to you—the one who might be racing to a hospital, heading to a first job, or carrying a quiet loss. With a simple smile or a silent wish like “May you be safe,” you send a signal of care that can ripple into calmer conversations, kinder choices, and a better day for people you’ll never meet. We connect this practice to habit science, showing how anchoring micro-habits to familiar objects helps them stick, and why emotional contagion turns small gestures into outsized impact.

This short, reflective episode also zooms out to the big picture: there are billions of us, each with a story, and remembering that scale shrinks our stress to a truer size. We share a repeatable, two-breath routine you can use at any intersection to reset your nervous system from threat to connection. There’s no preachy tone or fluffy platitudes—just a clear, human way to use what’s already on your route to become more present and generous behind the wheel and beyond it.

If this perspective lands with you, pass it along to someone who could use a calmer commute. Subscribe for daily growth cues, share your own stop sign observations with us, and leave a quick review so more people can find these practical mindset shifts.

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to message 440 of the Growth Instigators Hotline. I'm Aaron Havens, your host and growth coach. This week we are talking about a stop sign, an everyday normal object that we can assign deeper meaning to, something that can remind us of a bigger truth. Welcome to part five of five as we dive into lessons we can glean from a stop sign. Okay, raise your hand if you are human. This is your reminder that you are one of however many billion humans there are currently on Earth. Sometimes we need to be reminded of the bigger picture. That is what a stop sign can represent for us today. I mean, as we slam on our brakes and skid into the stop sign and do our mandatory stop and then speed off again, we are all off to something. We are all thinking about something. We are all going somewhere, just like you, so are the other people at the same stop sign, at the same time and the same place as you. Can you notice them? And I mean not in a creepy stalker kind of way, but in a genuine and friendly smile kind of way. And this is where you can send them good vibes, bless their day, and say a little prayer for them as they speed off. Who knows where they are going and where they came from? Some are having the absolute worst day of their lives. So your smile and blessing could trigger a wave of good human living in their life and in the lives of those they encounter. So just for a couple seconds while at that stop sign, can we notice and stop thinking about what we are going through and where we are going, but notice the other drivers? Smile, wish them well. What a good way to be contributors today. That, my friends, is how a common everyday object can instigate growth. Tune in tomorrow for the weekend edition of the Growth Instigator Hotline as we reveal the object we will be examining next week. I'd like to hear some more of your observations. What growth lessons can you apply to a stop sign? For those of you calling the Growth Instigators Hotline, I'd love to hear your thoughts after the beep or send me a message, text message. For those of you listening in on our podcast, visit growth instigators.com and send me your thoughts. Let's never see a stop sign the same.