[002] Leave it better than you found it.

[jingle]: 00:02

A broadcast for a greater world. Log off. Spread love. BeGreater.FM

Garrett: 00:09

Welcome back, friends. You're listening to Be Greater.FM - the broadcast for a greater world. In this transmission we're going to talk about the exact moment that kick started this entire "Be Greater" idea and movement. But before we get into that, we're gonna start this episode the way we start every episode, with a little bit of:

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Good news from Earth.

Garrett: 00:40

This is Be Greater. FM checking in on the surface of planet Earth for signs of good news

Garrett: 00:46

and it turns out there's a lot to choose from. Here's something to give you a little more perspective. In the year 1900 the average lifespan for humans was about 32. Thirty two. Today, it's about 73.

Garrett: 01:02

So in a little over a century, the average human lifespan has more than doubled. And just think about what that actually means. For most of human history, things we barely think about anymore could kill you. An infection, dirty water, childbirth, a bad injury, or diseases we now prevent with a vaccine or treat with medicine. Obviously none of that means the world is perfect.

Garrett: 01:29

People still die too young and huge inequalities still exist. There's plenty of work left for us to do together. But zoom out for a second. Human beings figured out sanitation, vaccines, antibiotics, safer childbirth, better nutrition, Modern surgery and emergency medicine. Thousands of improvements stacked on top of one another until the average person got roughly forty more years of life. Forty years!

Garrett: 01:58

More mornings. More sunsets. More time with the people you love. More time to figure out what in the world you're doing on this big floating rock. And I think that's worth remembering. Because when you experience the world one headline at a time, it can feel like everything is falling apart.

Garrett: 02:16

But history doesn't happen one headline at a time. Sometimes you have to zoom out far enough to see what humanity has actually accomplished. We're nowhere near finished, but we're getting better at some pretty important things. This has been Good News From Earth. Thanks for listening.

[jingle]: 02:35

Good news from Earth.

[jingle]: 02:36

Good news from Earth.

Garrett: 02:43

Wow, that is some great news. You hear that word? If you're 32, your new life is only just beginning.

Garrett: 02:51

Alright, so we just zoomed way out for a second to talk about humanity and adding decades to the average life, which is a huge accomplishment. But to be honest, most of us are not going to invent a new antibiotic, and we're probably not going to redesign the city's sanitation system or negotiate a giant international agreement.

Garrett: 03:15

Most of the opportunities we get to make the world a better place are a lot smaller than that. They're usually sitting right in front of us. Because I think there's these choices we encounter all the time in our day to day lives. You notice something that isn't quite right. Maybe something's dirty, something's broken, somebody needs help, something could just clearly be better.

Garrett: 03:40

But you look at it and sort of justify walking by or driving by and saying: "Well, I didn't do that. It's not my problem." And technically, you are completely right. But you could also be looking at it differently and asking a different question. You could be thinking, Is there something I could do about this to make it better?

Garrett: 04:01

It's two completely different ways of looking at the world and moving through our day to day life. It's a different mindset.

Garrett: 04:09

Which brings me to the very beginning of the Be Greater story, to a little hilltop surrounded by trees. I would go out skateboarding in my neighborhood, and eventually after wandering far enough, I discovered a secluded area on a hilltop overlooking an entire neighborhood. You could watch the sunset perfectly on the horizon.

Garrett: 04:35

But way back then, Be Greater wasn't even an idea in my mind yet. I was just going outside, enjoying my summer, skateboarding, and trying to be in nature more. And so I would go to this hilltop spot, sometimes with a blanket to just sit out there and look at the sky or watch the sunset or even read or meditate if I was being very productive that day. But it was very peaceful and secluded, that's why I liked it. But there was only one problem with the spot.

Garrett: 05:11

There was litter and trash pretty much all around it. In the entryway, in the grass, you had to walk right by it to get to the spot. And it always bothered me because I was in this beautiful natural spot but there was all this man made garbage just scattered around carelessly. It's the kind of thing that makes you think, Man, people kind of suck sometimes. This is like a beautiful space and we're ruining it a little bit with all this mess.

Garrett: 05:41

And so I thought, I mean, I can make it a little bit greater. I can bring back a piece of trash with me every time. And so I would make it a habit every time I go to that spot that I would bring back some trash with me and either throw it away or recycle it. I didn't make the mess but I was doing a little something extra to make the spot a little bit more clean. But honestly, it wasn't making much of a difference.

Garrett: 06:08

New litter or garbage would accumulate faster than I was cleaning it up. It was really just making me feel better about doing a little bit more than the bare minimum. And so that's when I decided to do more. Not just do something good, but "be greater", so to speak. When I was sitting out there on the beautiful hilltop surrounded by little pieces of litter, I was thinking to myself: "I have the power to just grab a trash bag and clean all of this up right now."

Garrett: 06:43

So I acted on that thought, I decided, okay, let's actually do it. I live very close by, it wouldn't be that hard. So I skateboarded back to my home, I got a trash bag for garbage, and I got some gloves to keep my hands clean. And this time I drove back up to the spot so I could carry back whatever trash I picked up. And yeah, I just cleaned up all the litter and garbage that I could see. Outside, in the entryway, in the spot, whether it was bottles, plastic, glass, whatever it was. And so I completely filled up one trash bag full of litter and garbage that was not supposed to be outside.

Garrett: 07:29

And before I left, I sat there in the newly cleaned, more beautiful spot and enjoyed the sunset. And it was so much more enjoyable. And then when I was ready to leave, I grabbed the trash bag and threw it in the back of the car and drove to the dumpster and threw it away properly. And then went back home and obviously showered and slept like a baby that night because I was tired and I was very satisfied that I felt like I did a good deed that day. And yeah, that's the story of cleaning up that spot.

Garrett: 08:05

It's not a big deal, but it explains the mindset of how you can go from viewing a problem and walking around it and justifying that, or you can have the thought of "How can I make this better?" and then actually doing that and making a difference in the world.

Garrett: 08:34

And to me, that's really the point of this whole story. It's not about picking up one bag of trash. That's not the point. There's people doing huge cleanups that are way more important.

Garrett: 08:45

I think the more interesting part about the story is it's like an experiment of seeing the exact same situation over and over and deciding to react differently, realizing what actually makes a difference and what doesn't. The first time I visited the spot I was thinking, Oh, this is kind of messy, but I didn't do this. Why should I deal with it? And it was technically true. I wasn't the person who made the mess.

Garrett: 09:13

But then again, over time, I started realizing that there was a difference between: "Whose fault is this?" and "What can I do about this?" It's two completely different questions. Because we run into choices like this all the time in our everyday life. Maybe somebody left a shopping cart out in the middle of the parking lot, or you see litter off to the side of a walking trail, or one of your friends is having a rough day. Maybe a conversation starts getting unnecessarily hostile.

Garrett: 09:47

Maybe a part of your neighborhood could use a little bit of care. None of these things necessarily started with you, but you still get to decide what kind of person you're gonna be when you encounter them. And I think there's something really freeing about realizing that. Because the alternative is waiting around, waiting for somebody else to care, waiting for somebody else to fix it, waiting for the perfect organization or the perfect politician, the perfect system, or the perfect moment. And those bigger systems absolutely do matter. You can't personally solve every problem you come across.

Garrett: 10:28

You shouldn't try to. But I think there's a danger when "Not my problem" becomes the automatic answer to everything we see. Because then eventually everybody's waiting around for someone else to step up, and then maybe the trash stays on the hill forever.

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You're listening to Be Greater. FM. Enjoy.

Garrett: 10:59

So I guess the next part of the story is how any of this actually turned into this whole Be Greater movement. Before Be Greater had this name, before there was a radio show or a newsletter or even a website, I decided to start making little positive videos online. The very beginning of Be Greater, the channel was called 30 Second Vibes, and it was pretty much what it sounds like. Short, thirty second videos that were just supposed to be positive or good vibes. I didn't know exactly what that meant, I just knew I wasn't that good of a creator, but I wanted to create something, and I could handle thirty seconds of creation a day for sure.

Garrett: 11:45

And so that's how it started. Just thirty seconds of positivity every day. And day one was on my grandfather's birthday which was also Valentine's Day. And after that, I just kept going day after day. But somewhere between two weeks and one month of that, I wasn't really loving it.

Garrett: 12:06

And this was around the same time I went to that hilltop. So I decided to make an actual real positive video of making a real change. So that whole trash cleanup I did, I documented it with my iPhone and made it into an old school VHS YouTube video. I like the idea of using the internet to put something good out into the world since we spend so much time there. And the internet is incredibly good at spreading things.

Garrett: 12:35

Outrage spreads. Trends spread. Bad habits spread. Cynicism spreads. So I started thinking, surely better things can spread too.

Garrett: 12:47

The kindness or positivity or something old school and retro. Surely that kindness can spread too. Why can't somebody see a video of somebody cleaning up a place and think, Alright, maybe I'll do that too. And that hilltop cleanup was just kind of a turning point for me because it wasn't just a positive message anymore. I wasn't just saying, Hey everybody, go make the world better.

Garrett: 13:12

I had actually gone and made one little part of it better. And then I made that video about it, not because picking up trash is a huge achievement, but because I realized something. Maybe the message is stronger when people can actually see what it looks like. Maybe Be Greater shouldn't just be something you say, but it should be something that you can point to, something you do, something that other people can copy. And I think that was one of the moments where this started becoming more than just positive content.

Garrett: 13:43

It started becoming a standard. And that standard eventually became one of the simplest ideas behind this whole project. Leave it better than you found it.

Garrett: 14:01

Leave it better than you found it. Obviously, this applies to literal places.

Garrett: 14:07

If you go somewhere beautiful, don't trash it. And if somebody else did, then maybe pick up some trash on your way out. But I think the idea goes way beyond that. You can leave the room you enter a little bit better. You can leave the conversation better.

Garrett: 14:26

Leave your relationships better. Leave your neighborhood better. Leave the Internet a little bit better, leave the culture a little bit better. Because eventually, all these actions accumulate and we're gonna leave the world a little bit better. You don't have to leave something perfect, that's impossible, just better than it was before.

Garrett: 14:51

And I think that makes the whole idea feel a whole lot more doable. Because make the world a better place can sound enormous and very vague, like you need to become president or start some giant organization or solve climate change by yourself. But the world is made out of little places and little moments. The people around you, the spaces you spend time in, the conversations you have, the things you put online, the choices you make when nobody is really watching or paying attention. And every once in a while you get a chance to leave one of those things better than it was before you got there. That one hilltop didn't change the whole world but it changed part of the world and it changed the way I thought about my place in it because I realized I didn't need permission to start. I didn't need an audience or some giant plan.

Garrett: 15:52

There was something within reach that I could make better and so I did. And maybe that's how a greater world gets built anyway. Not through one person fixing everything, but through a lot of ordinary people deciding that the little piece of the world in front of them matters too.

Garrett: 16:17

So that's really the origin story for how Be Greater started. It was never some giant plan, it was just a simple idea that went into practice.

Garrett: 16:28

Seeing something that could be better and if it was within reach, doing something about it. Because a lot of the choices that actually shape who we are happen when nobody's watching or nobody's making us do anything. Nobody was standing out there on that hilltop telling me to pick up any of that trash. Nobody was going to reward me for it. No one would have even known if I just left it there.

Garrett: 16:57

And that's the point. A lot of character gets built in the little moments where you technically could walk away unnoticed or even unblamed? Do you clean up after yourself when somebody else is gonna get paid to do it anyway? Do you always put the shopping cart back even if nobody's there or watching or cares or it's far? Do you help somebody when there's nothing in it for you?

Garrett: 17:21

Do you tell the truth when a lie would be easier? Do you make the place better even if you're the only person who notices? None of these choices look very dramatic, but when you make enough of them, eventually they start becoming who you are. And that's why I think Leave It Better Than You Found It is bigger than just a rule about litter. It's a way of moving through the world, a mindset.

Garrett: 17:47

We inherit things for a little while, a place, a relationship, a community, a culture, eventually the whole planet, and for however long those are in our hands, we get some say in what condition we pass them down in. And I think that's a pretty huge responsibility. But I also think it's hopeful, because it means we're not powerless. You probably can't fix the whole world. None of us can alone.

Garrett: 18:18

But you almost always have some influence over the little piece of it that's within your reach. And maybe that's enough to start with. See what's in front of you and care about it. Make it better.

Garrett: 18:34

And before we finish this transmission, we're gonna end things off the way we end every transmission with a little bit of:

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Gratitude because it makes you happier

Garrett: 18:45

That's right folks, it's been scientifically proven that being grateful and practicing gratitude can make you happier. So be more grateful and be happier.

Garrett: 19:02

Something I'm very grateful about today is the fact that the sun is shining here, the birds are chirping outside the window, the breeze is blowing, and I'm grateful to be in a place with nature and little hilltops where you can watch the sunset. And the ability to clean up an area and make it better. Give a little bit of that love back to the earth that's loving all of us by holding us and supporting us and letting us stomp around on it all day every day. The earth is awesome, it's home to all of us, and we're here sharing it together.

Garrett: 19:41

So remember to be a good neighbor, check on the people around you, and see if they need help. Offer a little bit of positivity, encouragement, support, or just a smile and a wave. But whatever you do, get out there and try to make the world a little bit greater. Even if it's something small, make your little corner of the world a little bit nicer.

Garrett: 20:09

Thanks for tuning in to this transmission of Be Greater. FM. Remember to log off, spread love, and be greater.

[jingle]: 20:19

A broadcast for a greater world. Log off. Spread love. Be Greater. FM