Author: Allen Bingham

I am a follower of Jesus, husband, father, and pastor of Haymount United Methodist Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA.

Pay Attention to Your Surroundings As You Go

Social Fitness Challenge #13: On the way to and from work/school, use all five senses to take in information about your surroundings. Share what you notice with a friend.

Have you ever left a room and turned off the light, only to realize someone was still in there? Or maybe you took the wrong exit out of habit of driving to a certain location? Every day, you probably engage in acts that seem to occur automatically or unconsciously. Running on autopilot is normal and, in many cases, helpful. However, when you overly rely on automatic behaviors, you begin to miss important details in your environment. This week’s challenge is to encourage you to turn off your autopilot and observe your surroundings in a thoughtful way. You may notice the smell of a restaurant you didn’t know was there, the view from the bridge you drive over, or the grumbles of someone in need. Reinforce what you learned by sharing your insights with a friend. By being mindful of your environment, you are practicing an important trait of an everyday hero.

Start a Conversation with Someone You Barely Know

Social Fitness Challenge #10: Have a conversation with someone you don’t usually talk to.

As humans, we tend to unconsciously group people into categories. This can cause us to treat certain people preferentially or with prejudice, without us ever realizing it. Any group of people that we feel that we belong to is considered an ingroup, and they are usually made up of people we feel united with due to a common origin, belief, goal, culture, or situation. People that we do not think of ourselves as being a part of are referred to as outgroups. The people whom we categorize into our outgroups are usually different from us in some fairly obvious (to us) way, such as appearance, culture, or religion. They also tend to be people that we do not know as well. Therefore, a great away to begin to break down outgroup prejudice is by having a conversation with someone you don’t usually interact with.