In Search Of Heroes Spreads Good News About Everyday, Real-Life Heroes Who Deserve Recognition For Their Good Works

Ralph Zuranski: Well who helped give you the willpower to change things in your life for the better?

Willie Crawford: My grandmother whom again, my father and my mother separated and my mother left me and my two younger brothers with my grandmother. We were like three or four years old and then she went up to New England to find a better job.

My grandmother was a short fat lady, but I just watched her interacting with the world and even though she didn’t have a lot of wealth she had no wealth really. I mean we had a $365.00 a year house payment and she worried about making that payment. She had a Farmers Home Administration loan yet the way that she dealt with the world showed me that there is nothing to fear you know.

There is absolutely nothing to fear. And lately I have run into a few people on line who are coaches or mentors and they’ve also taught me the same little basic lesson which is, most people fear things that they don’t need to fear. So if you can get beyond that then life is good. Yeah.

Ralph Zuranski: Well how important is it readily forgive those that have upset, offend and oppose you?

Willie Crawford: Well that’s an interesting question. You know as a black person, as a soldier, as someone from the South, I have been offended, I’ve been discriminated against.

When I was in the military I got back to my barrack but again I talk about a unit where the commander of the unit basically took care of those who went to the same school he went to. And so you were treated unfair if you weren’t one of the inter circle you know, and that was pointed out to me very quickly in that unit.

I learned that we are most comfortable with people just like us. People the same background, the same whatever just like us. And so once you go to understand that, it’s… if you’re different than me I don’t know what you are all about, I don’t trust you. I don’t feel comfortable around you. You grow to appreciate why people do what they do.

I don’t allow others whose smallness makes them racists or sexists or ageists or whatever to impact me at all.

I try to understand where they’re coming from you know. But I don’t allow them to impact me at all. I try to figure out why they are the way they are you know. If you don’t like me because of my… whatever… I want to know why I want to know what makes you that way and I want to understand that.

And I want to know maybe I can change your perspective. But I don’t want to change your perspective by arguing with you. I want to change your prospective by showing you that I’m, I’m different.

That I care about you, that I want to make your life better and I don’t want to argue with you. I don’t want to change your perspective by discussion, I want to change your perspective by demonstrating that you’re wrong and leaving you to that logical conclusion.

But if you don’t like me because of my race, my religion, my age, whatever, that’s fine you know. It doesn’t impact me at all. I worry about things that I can change and the things I can’t change I don’t worry about.

Ralph Zuranski: So you feel that it’s important to forgive those that injure you in some way either emotionally or physically just because…

Willie Crawford: Absolutely, 100%, 1000% you know I have often set in traffic, and or driven in traffic and just watched somebody riding their horn and then they are off down the freeway.

And that person may be fuming you know a ten miles away, while the person they honked their horn at should have gotten over it and the only person that is being impacted now is the person that is harboring that ill feeling.

The only person being affected is the person who can’t let go. So I’ve learned to let go. I’ve learned to just let go that it doesn’t matter. It’s not worth spending hours or even minutes harboring ill feelings toward someone.

Harboring resentment, just you know life happens and the minute it happens if its worth paying attention to, you pay attention to it that minute and you ask yourself what can I do.

I am also about positive energy. I am about it has been proven to me that if you surround with negative people, negative events, negative things that you attract negativity. If you surround yourself with positive people, positive thinkers, positive doers you attract positive things into your life.

I firmly, firmly, firmly believe that and so I let go at things that are negative I push out of my life. I don’t they are not admitted in my life at all.