By Saleem Rana
Interview by Allen Cardoza
July 16, 2012
A business expert on leadership and a community leader, Dr. John Izzo has written thought-provoking books on taking responsibility for your life and contributing to the world. His latest book, “Stepping Up: How Taking Responsibility Changes Everything,” follows after four other successful books on business principles, values, and creating optimal workplace environments.
Speaking with Allen Cardoza, host of; Answers For The Family radio show on L.A. Talk Radio, Dr. Izzo outlined how ordinary people can step up to the problems in our world to make a difference. Almost every problem, he said, ranging from environmental pollution to reversing bad political decisions could be changed if enough people agreed to accept responsibility to make a positive change.
What Does It Mean To Take Responsibility?
Challenges in our world can be resolved when we stop blaming others and feeling victimized. Dr. Izzo illustrated his point about empowerment by sharing a story about how two boys stopped bullying in a school. After a bully picked on a boy with a pink shirt two boys encouraged others in the school to wear pink shirts until almost the entire student population wore pink shirts. This dramatic visual protest created an international ripple — and students in hundreds of schools across the world began wearing pink shirts to protest against bullying.
Will You Take The Plastic Pledge?
Dr. Izzo also described his project of asking people to take a pledge against plastic products like plastic shopping bags, plastic water bottles, and plastic straws that are creating an ecological disaster on our planet. His website, noplasticpledge.com, encourages people to take a pledge and stand up against global plastic pollution.
One of the biggest environmental problems we have in the world today is the proliferation of plastic. Americans, for example, use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour, and most of those bottles end up as litter that will take 700 years to decompose. The result of industrial overproduction of plastic has created global plastic pollution, including the prevalence of a plastic island as large as the state of Texas in the North Pacific, baby birds fed on plastic-laced food dying, and toxins in the ocean contaminating fishing.
Final Thoughts
Instead of relying on other people to come up with solutions, change could be precipitated by just one person setting an example. Responsibility ripples from one person to another, a phenomenon Dr. Izzo called creating an “aggregate influence.” When one person does something noteworthy to stand up against a wrong in the world, others are inspired to follow and make a difference.
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You can listen to this interview in it entirety on http://answersforthefamily.com/stepping-up-how-how-taking-responsibility-changes-everything-john-izzo-phd/
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