What if You are the Bad Guy
[Music]
[Music]
good evening
it is actually quite exciting to see
such a diverse audience
do we have business people in the house
any business people wonderful do we have
students lifelong students
part-time full-time yes we have some
wonderful do we have kidnappers
kidnappers
no okay what about what about arsonists
do we have arsonists
not arsenal supporters arsonists no no
arsonists okay
terrorists at least
wow i could keep on going with this list
and i doubt
anybody would raise their hand so we’re
not so diverse after all
we’re all a bunch of good guys that’s
why i’d like you to take a journey with
me on my train of thought
where we’ll eventually get to a point
where i’ll ask the question
what if you are the bad guy
now for us to be on this you know to
start off from this
same station just to make sure we’re on
the same train of thought
let’s define what a a good guy is
in the early 1900s they lived a young
man
who advocated for environmental
sustainability
he was one of the first in the world to
do this
not only that but he was also an animal
activist
he even wanted to abolish animal cruelty
to a point of saying no more
slaughterhouses
pretty good guy on top of that
i mean it’s safe to assume if that’s how
he would want to treat animals
how would he value human life
and what he did for the people of his
nation
he put policies in place that turned
around the economic situation
where people were struggling to even buy
bread
with tons of cash inflation had gotten
so bad
but he managed to turn there to oh to
put policies in place that helped turn
that situation around
how many of you would say this person is
a hero
no nobody show them hands no okay i see
a couple of hands wonderful
this person goes by the name of adolf
hitler
now i do not have to say more about that
he has already gone from hero
to bad guy he went from you know
hero to villain good guy to bad guy
so for the sake of this discussion let
us find out
where that went wrong because if his
narrative
stopped where i stopped describing him
we would think this was a great man
but what happened and like i said for
the sake of this talk we’re going to
draw a line in the sand
and the reason why he became a bad guy
we’re going to oversimplify it he
crossed
this line that says achieve your goals
do what you have to go for your dreams
even if it’s at the expense of others
and that is where we draw the line let’s
take some
everyday examples that we could relate
to law enforcement officers
they’re supposed to serve and protect
yes wonderful
and they’re supposed to stop crying
now if we know or hear of an officer
who’s taking money from
robbers i mean as children we know cops
and robbers cops good guys
rob is bad guys right but if the bad
guys are giving the good guy
money to look away and not bother doing
anything about
crime does that cop remain
a good guy no
what about doctors awesome people save
lives
they help people and then you find out
that one doctor has been taking
sexual advantage of unconscious women
patients and maybe even sometimes staff
will he still remain a good doctor
so using that simple example and that
simple line in the sand
of the only difference between a good
guy and a bad guy a good guy
goes for a cause so does a bad guy but
one of them
is willing to do it at the expense of
others for an example that is really
close to home
less than 100 kilometers from here we
have
hundreds of families that are not able
to sustain themselves because they’re
way below the poverty line
simply because a few individuals decided
to make sure that their families were
way above the poverty line
are they heroes
now we will get to that question of what
if you’re the bad guy
don’t worry i’m not accusing any of you
of any of these things
so i will make myself a bit vulnerable
and i will tell you
about myself hi my name is harry i have
always had a vivid imagination
and one of the places i realized i had a
vivid imagination is from my
earliest memory of sitting on an
airplane
i could always picture what the air
hostess was talking about
when they were giving up in-flight
instructions
emergency exits that way i could see
myself
walking down the aisle and knowing which
side of the door was going to go out
when they talked about bracing yourself
for impact
i i could see myself doing it
but there was one thing that i did not
see myself
doing the way the air hostess
instructed us and that was the part that
went like this
in the unlikely event of the cabin
pressure to drop
masks will fall from the ceiling gently
pull on the mask
cover your mouth and nose and breathe
normally
up until that point no i’m we’re
together i’m i’m with you yes
wonderful i can do that and i’m seeing
it
and then there’s that extra bit at the
end
make sure you do this before assisting
the people next to you
not me because my babysitters were
superman wonder woman
and batman so naturally i’ve been
training to be a hero all my life
and this would be how i would see that
playing out in my head
in a plane where the cabin pressure had
lightly dropped
the masks came from the ceiling but one
man
decided to dramatically unbottle his
belt
and like at the speed of light helped
the lady clutching onto her two babies
and before we know it was on the other
side of the cabin hoping an old man
with alzheimer’s put his mask on
and like an acrobat he flips and lands
in his seat perfectly
he gently grabs a mask puts it over his
mouth and nose
head breathes
i am going to be that person who says no
not me i i’m going to help you you you
i’m going to rescue this whole plane and
then take care of myself
and i carried this thought for a very
long time like i
vivid imagination it has consequences of
delusion sometimes
and i carried it with me for such a long
time until recently
i heard of a condition called hypoxia
let me tell you what hypoxia is there
was a scientist
on a channel called smarter every day
he explained why you need to put your
mask on first
and in this experiment they flew up into
the air dropped the cabin pressure
and they were all wearing masks and
breathing normally
and he was told okay great here’s a
simple child’s toy
it has four holes and you have four
corresponding shapes
simply pick up the shape you could name
it
and put it in the right hole and he did
very easily
circle round hole square square hole
triangle triangular hole rectangle
in the rectangular hole too easy
and then they said take off your mask
and he unclipped it
in no time he was asked to repeat the
experiment
and this is what happened he picked up
the triangle
said circle and tried to put it in the
square hole
and he failed this experiment dismally
and it got to the point where they had
just given up he’s not going to get
this particular thing right
so they asked him well first of all they
warned him and they said to him
we’re monitoring your blood oxygen
levels
and in a minute you are going to die if
you don’t do
what you know you should do can you do
that
and he responded with a humongous smile
on his
face and said i don’t want to die
but did nothing about it he was
suffering
from hypoxia the inability to function
because of oxygen deficiency
well that killed my dream of being a
hero
because then i realized if i have
hypoxia
i’m not going to be able to get to that
man with parkinson’s and say
breathe normally i’ll collapse
i would not be a hero why do i bring
this up
why do i bring up hypoxia
because very often we say to ourselves
or you know this argument that we have
if we do something at the expense of
others
we’re delving in the realms of being a
bad guy but
sometimes we forget that those
others include ourselves
so i asked the question again what if
you are the bad guy
let me share something that’s more real
life out of not in my imagination but
happened
an electrician came over to my house fix
the problem that we had
and he also went above and beyond
by fixing other long-term problems we
had that other electricians twice his
age
could not solve i was thoroughly
impressed with this young man
i’m definitely saving his number and
he started fumbling when i asked him the
question
how much do
um i i don’t know how much do you want
to pay me
so i could tell he was an expert he was
inexperienced
still knew in the trade and
didn’t know how to navigate around this
business that he’s going to venture into
so i pulled him aside and i said okay
when you’re looking at how to charge or
what your customers should pay
take these into consideration what are
your goals with this oh no i want to
start a business
wonderful so this is what we’re going to
do this is what i’m going to do
i will give you a phone number of a
friend of mine who can help you get
those things registered
you know help you with someone he’s
reasonable and on top of that
also take this and that into what was i
doing
i was facilitating someone’s dreams
i was helping out at least pointing him
in the right direction
and yet when it came to myself was a
different story
a long while later i call this young man
because we had a major problem and it
needed to be fixed
now in a brilliant electrician as he is
wonderful businessman he came with his
branded truck he came with his equipment
wearing his overalls in uniform and
professionally
handled it i had to go to work before he
finished
at the end of the day i received an
invoice
with a letterhead and even at the bottom
if it’s not paid by this time this is
the interest i’m going to charge
i’m like yes i felt like a proud
mentor and yet
i was in a place where i was not
facilitating my own dreams i was not
facilitating
my own brain children if i can say that
so i started to realize that in my life
i have my other forms of hypoxia
so at whose expense have i been helping
others
when i encourage people to study yes no
don’t give up
and yet i don’t do that
at whose expense is that am i still
being a good guy
at least myself when we tell people
yes eat healthy exercise and we do the
total opposite
are we still being a good guy
now we get to the point where i ask the
question
what if you are the bad guy
well it doesn’t just stop at
acknowledging or figuring out that you
know what
there might be some places where i could
treat myself better
where i can still do good without it
being at the expense
of my own well-being
the first thing i’m going to say about
that first road to cure
is have a taste of your own medicine
because a lot of times we are so quick
and ready
to give good advice and we see it make
the people flourish and succeed
and yet rarely apply it to ourselves
let’s look at some scenarios when i said
how many kidnappers do we have
some of us are holding our own dreams at
ransom
for the sake of other people’s dreams
and when i said how many arsonists do we
have
some of us have burned bridges to
relationships that we actually need
people who are daring enough to be
honest with us
to hold us accountable to challenge us
but like an arsonist we burn that bridge
and we use that we lose a valuable
relationship
and then i said how many of us are
terrorists
how many of us have exercised
self-sabotage we’re on our way we have
finally got our head on straight things
are working out circumstances are not
unfavorable anymore and we’re moving in
the right direction
but maybe
picking a fight with the wrong person or
the over
drinking or the over-indulging in other
things
lack of planning poor prioritizing
or even just start
to you know start going to work late
start disappointing your clients
and yet you were on the right path you
just had
to continue
and we can come up with so many
different examples
beyond the kidnapping of your dreams
beyond the
burning bridges like an arsonist and
beyond being a terrorist
and being self-destructive
there’s tons of them so i would like you
at this particular point
to take a look at yourself
and ask what if i’m the bad guy where
am i being the bad guy and when you
recognize those places
you are now in a good space because if
for example you realize your temper
is your hindrance to building meaningful
relationships
you can start working on it what advice
would you give someone with an ill
temper
would you give them good advice yourself
or would you direct them to someone who
would
move from the line of willing
to do it at your own up to to lose
yourself
and get into the side way you can
actually say this
is where i need to be
because i don’t have to do this at my
own expense i can do it with somebody
and it’s important to ask yourself that
question
so this thought doesn’t end here i hope
it continues to echo
and resonate and keep finding those
places
where you’re not being a good guy to
yourself and to start fixing those
thank you
you