You Can't Eat Flowers

Glenn Beck: You can't eat flowers

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March 5, 2009 - 12:22 ET

The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life
By Ben Sherwood
GLENN: Shawn, I pray for you and God bless you. Thank you so much for calling. Things will get better. And listen, America, I just, I have a couple of friends who are losing their houses and they don't have anything. They don't have a job. They have nothing. And they -- you know, one of them just said to me a couple of days ago, crying to me, "Glenn, I did the right things. I did my job but then everything just changed overnight." And the best thing I could say to him is you're not alone. Anything I can do to help you, I will. You know, you need food, whatever, I will help you. Because I'm going to be in that situation, too, most likely. We all will. You know, if this thing spirals out of control -- and hopefully it doesn't. But if it does, we're going to need to depend on each other. We need to be the people that we promised we would be on September 12th. We're going to have to depend on each other. So reach out to each other. Let people know that they're not alone and that you do have compassion, and we've got to be the people that our grandparents were during the Great Depression and helping each other out.


Let me go to Ben Sherwood now. He is the author of the Survivors Club and Ben and I kind of e-mailed each other back and forth the other day. Excuse me, Ben. You have a new quiz out on the Internet that shows you what kind of an economic survivor you are.


SHERWOOD: That's right, Glenn. First of all, listening to Shawn I think that he identified exactly the survivor personality type that you and I have discussed before as the kind of person who bounces back from adversity is the person who refuses to get knocked down for good and they pick themselves up and they dust themselves off. He was laid off twice, but he goes out and he finds a part-time job. That's a real survivor personality and you know that he is going to make it. There are two facts that sort of jump out at me right now and the world, this recession, the great recession.


GLENN: I'm about to change that to the depression. I was at a dinner last night with leaders of two extraordinarily large corporations, gigantic corporations, and one of them said, you know, this depression -- and I said, excuse me, hang on. Did you just call it a depression? Both of the CEOs both looked at me like I was nuts and said, what are you calling it? And they are both liberals. They are both liberals. Anyway, go ahead.


SHERWOOD: So the two facts are first that one industry that is flourishing right now is the vegetable seed industry. Sales are up double digits and flower seed sales are down, and the reason is that in this recession people are realizing that you can't eat flowers and that to me is a sign of the kind of adaptability and hard thinking that people are having to do that is literally grow their own food. And there are actually seed companies, the world's largest seed company right now has a money package that's out there where they offer you $10 worth of seeds that can grow $685 worth of food for yourself. The second fact that I saw out there, again it goes to the survivor personality that we're going to talk about is that in recessions, going back to 1968, the enrollment and membership in evangelical churches grew 50% during each recession as people turned to faith and belief in God to get them through their ordeal. So this quiz that we put together that's available on your website, part of the Survivors Club philosophy is if you know what kind of survivor you are in an economic crisis, are you a fighter, are you a believer, are you a realist, you have a head start dealing with the challenges that we all face: Unemployment, foreclosure, bankruptcy. And so this quiz, in just a couple of minutes on your website, tells people what type of survivor they are and guide them to some resources on the Web that can help them through the different crises that they face.


GLENN: How does that help -- I can't remember what I was. What was I, Ben? I was a --


SHERWOOD: Connector. Connector.


GLENN: Connector. What does that mean and how would that help me?


SHERWOOD: Well, if you listen to what you were just saying earlier, sort of your message to your listeners this morning, we are not alone was sort of the central message that you put forward, that we need to reach out to other people, that you're there for your friend who's going through foreclosure and you'll help him in any way you can because you know someday you may face the same kind of challenge. That is the core connector philosophy. That's an idea that you're not one man against the world, that you belong to a community of people and that that community, your street, your neighborhood, your friends, your family, your church, that that community is your most powerful survival tool and so by knowing that you're a connector and digging deeper into the connector personality which I sort of lay out in great detail, you can begin to do things to pick yourself up, to pick your neighbor up and to get through this recession.


GLENN: How am I a connector if I am so against the global community? I am so against the government doing these things. I mean, that's what Obama -- I bet Obama's a connector. Isn't that the same --


SHERWOOD: You know, I -- that's sort of beyond my limited focus which is surviving and thriving against any challenge, whether it's economic or health. You know, I think what we study in the Survivors Club is what are the personality traits, what are the qualities that help some people bounce back and others don't, and --


GLENN: And is one stronger than another?


SHERWOOD: I don't think so because I think that believers, for instance, when I interviewed survivors around the world, people who were, as you know, attacked by mountain lions.


GLENN: Yeah.


SHERWOOD: Slammed by 20-ton trash trucks, left for dead after violent crimes, believers had the same kind of power to overcome adversity as fighters. Connectors had the same strengths as realists or thinkers. So no, I don't think any one particular type is better than any other.


GLENN: And how come I was a fighter when it comes to the other test and a connector when it comes to an economic?


SHERWOOD: Well, it's interesting because each situation calls upon a different set of traits that you have and as I've said to you, the deeper, richer profile, so we have a much deeper, longer test that comes along with the book that gives you the top three strengths that you have and the bottom three and it's sort of a longer, richer analysis. The quick glimpse on these quizzes gives you the top line of, for instance, what you're like in a survival challenge or what you're like in an economic challenge. So what we find in your test is that you're somebody who's going to rally your friends, be there for your friends, help your friends in the event of an economic challenge, whereas in a survival challenge, say outdoors or in a plane crash, you're more of a fighter type. You're a person who is going to be on a mission to lead people through the fire to solve your problem.


GLENN: Okay. The quiz is up at GlennBeck.com, and I want to come back to you just a little bit and talk about economic survival and what people need to survive. Ben Sherwood is on the phone. Ben Sherwood is the author of the Survivors Club. He went and he interviewed survivors of almost everything, from being eaten by a mountain lion to economic collapse and found out what they all have in common and it's fascinating stuff. If I'm not mistaken, one of the main points that you -- Stephen Colbert just ridiculed me last night for almost a half hour on our war room episode of looking at scary scenarios. And, you know, Ben, you are the guy that really showed me the importance of "Name the monster in the dark." Just look at the unthinkable and then you're not afraid of it anymore.


SHERWOOD: The Air Force has a phrase for that: Hug the monster. Name the monster in dark, hug the monster. When an Air Force, when an aviator is shot down in enemy territory, they train their pilots not to freeze and panic because you're behind enemy lines, all you've got is a pistol and a survival kit. They teach those aviators through incredibly rigorous training that I actually went through some of it in the woods of Spokane, Washington. They teach those aviators to go right up to that fear, grab a hold of it and wrestle with it because the more you are exposed to that fear, the more you embrace it, that fear stops terrifying and it actually becomes the main motivator to do something, to take action.


GLENN: It's the -- I mean, I tell you a lot of life answers could be found in "Star Wars." It's why Luke went into the cave and saw Darth Vader. It was with Yoda, right? I mean, it's the same thing. Face your fear.


SHERWOOD: Exactly, face your fear. The other thing they teach is this phrase that I love -- the Air Force is full of memorable phrases. They say eat an elephant one bite at a time.


GLENN: Right.


SHERWOOD: That means if you try to devour an entire elephant, you are going to get sick or you are going to give up.


GLENN: You wouldn't even know where to start.


SHERWOOD: Exactly. If you break your economic challenge into little parts, if you divide it up into small achievable tasks, you begin to develop some momentum and suddenly you're no longer sitting on your couch unable to open your 401(k) sheet or unable to deal with the fact that your company, your factory just closed and suddenly you're getting up in the morning, you're on the Internet, you're going to the library looking for resources. As some job counselors in Ohio have counseled, you are going to construction sites to see where the building is still taking place and asking what businesses are coming. Maybe you are going to a church pew and leaving behind a little sheet of paper that says what your qualifications are because as one expert in Ohio told the Wall Street Journal, churchgoers are generous and giving people and if they see you are showing initiative and you are trying to do something by leaving behind in church pews a church card that says you are available to do work, generous people may be inclined to help you and give you a lift and a hand and a job. So it's that attitude of just doing little things, suddenly you're on your way.

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