Size Matters More in Measuring Up Character. Not only Numbers

as we watch the Democratic National Convention. Keep going as hard as the road ahead is, and the hard as the road behind us was, you keep going. It also brings up two terms that came to mind lately, but particularly last night, when I was watching former First Lady Michelle Obama give a powerful, powerful speech at the Democratic National Convention twenty twenty four in Chicago, and she said

something that really drove home. Well, a couple things came up during the evening that really drove home what I want to talk about today, which is really to size matter. Okay, out is size matter? You always hear that term size matter. Size doesn't matter. You know, people measure you, people take your measurements, et cetera. And I want to talk about when size matters and when it doesn't, and to be sensitive to it because there are a lot of ways you size people up. You think of somebody as big,

somebody is small, et cetera. Small is great. I'm going to start with why small is good, and I'm going to talk about why big is good, and then I'm going to tee why both need to be rethought. In other terms, I support small businesses. I love small colleges that are accessible and affordable to people who can't go to the big ones. I like small schools. My husband one to one with a large student student teacher ratio, there are fewer students, so more access to teachers. I

like eating small meals. It's healthier, taking small bites, it's healthier. I like downsizing when you have too much so that you can live within your means. That's actually not small, that's rethinking abundance, which we'll talk about. I lived in a small town in the Hudson Valley, a village really, but there were small minded people in it, which was jarring, which we'll get to. Small doesn't mean bad. It doesn't mean minimum. It doesn't mean too little, too small, frail,

does it mean any of that. And it certainly doesn't matter in terms of the size of your crowd in your cheers. And it really draws me crazy when I go and present both of my shows Fearless, Fabulous You and The Connected Table to potential sponsors, because obviously I do this as a labor of love, but we do

try to get sponsors and paid content. And the first thing that comes out of the prospects mouth after we've made niceties and this and that's and how are you and how's business when we start to present our shows and they say, what are your numbers, how big is your audience? And I bristle are trying not to because size doesn't matter all the time. And I'm going to give you examples where size doesn't matter all the time. It doesn't matter how big your audience is if it's

not the right people you're speaking to. Quality is better than quantity. You can have a lot of money and you can have a very small mind or a limited way to spend it. You can have a lot of money and lack large generosity. You can be a diminutive person with an amazingly large, mighty strong will and big ideas. You can be a small person and people besize you up and think that you can't do the job you're too frail. But boy, you can knock it out of

the ballpark sometimes again with your strength of will. Small is good when it is embracing, when it's beginning, when you're starting out, you take small steps so you don't bite off more than you can chew. Particularly when you're running a small business and you seek to grow it, I always advise it goes small, think big, start small. Small is wonderful when you're embracing local, supporting local, like local businesses and independent bookstores and restaurants versus buying from

the large companies. When you know that that money you're spending and buying that book from the small author in the small town where she may not have any funding from her publisher whatsoever to do the marketing, you know that when you buy that book, she will get the money and not somebody else. That's supporting small and I do support small businesses. I look for small, out of the way places to visit when I travel, I look for small diners and little places and roadside stands, not

the big chains. I respect small people because I know they bring a lot to the party in big ways. I don't size people up based on how they how much they weigh, how tall they are, or how they look. You shouldn't size up anybody. But we're talking about size for a reason because it's not about the size. It's how you approach things, and size does matter in those ways. Last night, Michelle Obama just laid a lot of fabulous word bombs out there that just knock get out of

the ballpark. She's an amazing woman, but this one really really resonated with me because she was talking about the importance of taking risk. And she said, you know, small is not good when you're cutting back. It's small as good when you're cutting back excess. It really doesn't matter in terms of your health and well being. But it does matter when you're cutting back healthcare, freedom of choice, shutting down services that help people who are underserved. Small

is not good when it's small minded. And what she said that I thought was really important was going small is never the answer. Going small as the opposite of what we teach our kids, going smallest, petty, it's unhealthy, And she said, frankly, it's unprecedential. That's the mental small, and I'm going to talk about that. So the physical small.

You know, there's beauty and very small things. You don't have to have the biggest diamond, you don't have to have the biggest car, you don't have to have the biggest anything. And measuring people up by how much they have and how big their houses and how big their car is, and big versus small, it doesn't matter because what really matters is how they think and how they act. And that's when you really size somebody up for their worth.

It's not their net worth in terms of what they have, but their self worth and the value they bring to the table in other ways. And it starts with not being small minded. It's about being big It's about being big hearted, being led have a large spirit and large capacity to embrace ideas and understand that we're not all alike, assuming we all should be alike. Is being small minded.

Embracing and accepting and appreciating people for who they are, no matter their backgrounds, religions, where they're from, where they had money or didn't have money, how they made it or moused it or lost it. That's a large spirit. And we want people with large spirits in our orbit and in our nation, in our lives, and not small. When I lived in a small town, it was wonderful.

I had lived in New York City and one of the greatest cities in the world, and yet when I lived there, my neighborhood was small, and I felt at home in my small, little neighborhood. And that was comforting, because often when you live in a very big area, even here in New Orleans, your neighborhood becomes your small

area of comfort where you can nestle and hide. So even in the biggest areas, you find your little, small nest, and that's a good thing, provided that you don't bar anyone from entering or accept that other people may have other neighborhoods and nests that they live and that they think is their little place. And you don't judge them by where they live or how big their houses or what they do for a living, because you don't know,

you don't know whether you know. I've heard stories about very wealthy people who made it on their own or were football players, and they made a lot of money, and they blew it all material things and didn't know how to invest well, or they inherited it and they just rested on their laurels and just used that money

to build more wealth. And I've also heard of janitors and housekeepers and teachers and people who've lived on smaller incomes and smaller houses and smaller means, but knew the importance of saving, investing and putting away money rather than spending on access to look big and spend big, And they ended up financially a lot better than those other people in the long run. In the long run, they had the money to retire, and they learned to live big with less. That's been big is good learning. To

live big on less very important. You know, in this election, it seems like everything is about how big is help that you know the size of your your crowd, your golf game, this, and that everything keeps being measured up. How how are your polls? Are the polls how much money you've raised? The only one that really matters, not poll You know, I understand poll numbers are important to assess and evaluate. I understand you need size of uh,

you need donations to keep going. But in the day, the only one this commitders the vote, and we should all vote because we should all care. I want to go back to regular people, forget the election. I just wanted to bring it up because I thought what Michelle said was really really important. But small is important because a lot of us come from small towns and small families and small limited means not. Most of us were

not born with silver cups and lots of wealth. In fact, many of us are born with no wealth but an abundance of love in our families, and that's better than wealth. And a lot of us have grown up thankfully with big.

may be. That's sinking big. And I think that's really really important. You want to be a thoughtful listener, a big, open mind. That's thinking big. Thinking small is a closed mind. Thinking small is putting limits on people being thinking smallest. Labeling people. Nobody wants to be labeled. I mean, even now, it's like people are peeling away, even at gender labels. Nobody wants to be labeled for anything. Nobody wants to be judged or labeled by who they are, where they

came from, even what they're wearing. You know, I had to laugh today in the New York Times. You know, I love the New York Times. Sometimes I do have to eye roll, and one of the articles was like, Kamala horror, Kamala Harris wore a tan suit. What does that mean? Maybe she just wore a tan suit, but it did like nobody wears tan. It's the wrong color.

they big hearted? That really matters. I wish we'd stop thinking about the world in terms of numbers, but we seem to be going worse, not better. Everything seems to have a numerical, transactional aspect to it. It's disheartening. It makes me sad. It makes me very sad as I see people's incomes go down or up. But the cost of living go up. It makes me sad that food

is expensive and accessible nutritious food is less accessible. I had an interesting conversation with a guest who's actually going to be on the Connected table my other show today about how his organization, the Aspen Institute, is trying really hard to promote food as medicine and nutrition to help eradicate or reduce the incidences of epidemic obesity, diabetes, and

of course cardiovascular illnesses and other major illnesses. And ninety percent of some major illnesses can be risk reduced, not eliminated, but risk reduced through healthy lifestyle changes. Those are small steps. Okay, that's been small. It's good taking small steps to improve your health and wellbeing and help your family. Taking small steps to say for the future, small steps to eat better,

exercise time for yourself, small things. Those are great. But you said one of the big challenges, because where there's small ideas that think big, there's also big challenges. Is that accessible food that's already pre prepared, so prepared meals that are also healthy, accessible and affordable are not available and out there in the marketplace. That surprised me, but it's true. Most people are just struggling to put food

on the table. They're struggling to make ends meet. So they're you know, knocking down at least one job in a side hustle. One or both parents may be working, or there may only be one parent. So who has time to cook? Who has time to go to the store by the ingredients, cook and put it all together. So they go and do the easier thing. They go to a big fast food company and just buy the super sized dinner. And here we are again with size. You go to the big change, you get the super

sized thing. You pay a little bit more because it's attempting to pay five dollars for the big meal versus fifty dollars for a few smaller meals. I'm just saying that we need to rethink the numbers. We need to rethink the numbers and how we add up life and how I'll be out of your life. And I think, you know, start small, smart, small with yourself if things don't seem to be adding up in your head emotionally, financially, whatever. And I think a lot of people are feeling a bit.

I think there's it's interesting. I think there's a ground swell of optimism hopefully, but I think there's also another ground swell of pessimism. And if things are not adding up in your life, because this show is about size, if things are not adding up in your life and you're feeling small and insignificant in the scheme of things, or things are not adding up in your life financially, or things just aren't adding up in terms of where you want to be in life and where you want to go.

size and size matters. What is the one small thing I can do today, every day, this week, once a month that will make a big impact and make me feel better, make me feel more positive. On the flip side, what is the one big thing I can change in my life that will make things better in the long run. Short run, long run size length. But that's how you have to think. You've got to think about the small things that you can do today to make big changes later.

And you can stop sizing up how you're doing compared to other people, and you get sizing up other people and judging them for what they have or don't have. You can stop thinking about or being petty or teaching your children to be petty, because Petty is small. Petty is bulling, Petty is thinking small. Petty is to writing people. Petty is name calling. Petty is building yourself up by

tearing other people down. That's petty. Petty is being stingy for the sake of benefiting yourself and not thinking of others. Generous and generosity and compassion and gratitude are all big ideas and big thinking, and they build hope. And hope is big. Hope is boundless. There's ever small hope, there's

always big. Hope has no boundaries. And that's a good thing because I think we now live in a country where we need hope, and we needed to stop judging people belittling, And I say the biggest challenge one of the biggest challengs we have is besides watching the elections, is social media. I'm a ball actually at how many small minded, petty people are saying really mean things to people they don't even know on social media. Whether it's your accused of being as you know, I've been. I've

had people level things at me as well. I think we all have. But that's like, when do we all become so small minded?

Because we can't live in small and petty them We can't live in a small, petty world. We have to live in a big world. It's inevitable, it's here, and so think about what small steps you can do to take things that are petty and upsetting to you to help change them, whether it's on social media posting positive images and positive things and don't join the negative conversation,

unfollow people that do bother you. But if you see something that is wrong, and you see and read something that is inappropriate and petty and bullying and mean spirited, speak out, say something. Don't hide from it, because it won't change unless somebody says enough enough. I'm not taking this and frankly and I try not to be political on the show, but I'm a frame of mind where I'm going to say, if you don't like what you're seeing happening either way, your choice. I'm not going to

judge you. Your way of saying enough is to buy voting. And if we can do one thing in November of this year, one small thing, it is just voting. I don't really care who you vote for. I do, but I'm not going to on this show, but just vote and encourage people to vote. Because if we don't take action you, we don't speak up, and we don't think big and beyond, and we don't take small steps, we'll never make it to the big steps. We'll never make it to the long run and to the finish line.

Every finish line starts with a step and hope and thinking big and not being small minded. So size matters in terms of thinking big and being generous and large of spirit and large of hope and generosity. It does not matter when it's about material things and money and size and whatnot, because you can lose all of it in a hurricane and a bad financial deal, in bad health. No matter how much you have physically and in the bank,

it can all go away in a poof. But no one can really take away or should take away, your generosity and kindness and large spirit. It's something you hold inside of you, and nobody can can try to drain

it from you. They can discourage you, they can make you feel bad, But your largeness is holding on to that great strength, and if somebody's eroding it, then hould back, take a few steps to the side, take a pause, rethink and resettle and realize that maybe that person is not necessarily the best person to be in your orbit, and move on, or face someone and say enough, I don't want to hear this anymore. Enough, let's settle it or get involved to help be part of a change.

If you don't like what you see going on in the world. You can volunteer, taking a small step by saying I want to help. How can I volunteer? Write a small check? Even a five dollars donation is good. You don't have to write five thousand.

I didn't, I would be simply walking. Your feet can take you a lot of places. So this particular it's not really a poem, it's an essay, and it was first introduced to me, believe it or not, by my mother, who felt I was being small minded as a young girl. I lived in a small town and I was being snobby. I was acting like a snob because I was in part of a group. It was snobby and we got in to fight. My mother and I got in a fight. She would have been ninety yesterday, by the way we

celebrated her birthday. We got to fight, and I didn't want to talk to her. I was like ready to say, you're a terrible person. You know you're youre a teenager, you fight with your mom, and then when she's gone, you go, wow. Was that it was such a small minded fight. But she left me this quote because not a quote but a statement, because she felt I was being petty and small minded and she wanted to remind

me and put me in my place. And I'll be honest with you when I read it, it changed my life in terms of how I think about things, and even today when I feel unsettled and my spirit feels a little bruised. It's one of the two poems I read, or statements I read to remind me to reset. I'll read another one another time, but this is this one, and it comes from the great aunt Landers, remember ant Landers, the advice columnists, And it goes like this, It's called

what is class. Class never runs scared. It is surefooted and confident. It can handle anything that comes along. Class has a sense of humor. It knows a good laugh is the best lubricant for oiling the machinery of human relations. Class never makes excuses. It takes its lumps and learns from past mistakes. Class knows that good manners are nothing more than a series of small, inconsequential sacrifices. Class bespeaks in aristocracy that has nothing to do with ancestors or money.

The wealthiest people may lack class, while individuals who are struggling to make end meat may be loaded with it. You can be descendants of nobility and lack class, and you can be descendants of coal miners in Kentucky and be full of it. Because it's a spirit and a way you approach life. Class is real. It's authentic. You can't fake class. It's in you. It's ingrained in you. You can radiate it, but you can't buy it. You can't purchase class. Class never tries to build itself up

by tearing others down. Class is already up and need not strive to look better by making others look worse. There is no room for being petty and small minded when you have class. That's me adding my comment. Class can quote walk with kings and keep its virtue and talk with crowds and keep the common touch. Everyone is comfortable with the person who has class because that person

is comfortable with himself. And I truly believe that when you're tearing other people down, it's because you're trying to build yourself up. And you just look closely at that person because if they're so busy tearing other people down to build themselves up, they lack class. But they also lack a sense of self worth. You have to wonder what is their problem. If you have class, you really

don't need anything else. No matter what else you have, it really doesn't matter, and no matter what else you have, it won't make the difference. Class is something you can't buy, you can't fake, you can't make, and you can't take away from the person who has it. So I hope that's food for thought and striving to be better by not making others look worse, not sizing people up to make yourself look better, feel better, accepting people, and living

with largesse of spirit and not pettiness of mind. Because you have the choice in life to live life on your terms and not be dictated by other people, whether it's people, societies, laws, or government. If you don't like what you're seeing, take small steps, join large groups, join small groups, but be active because you are, in your own individual way, a force to be reckoned with when you choose to live life on your terms and use

your voice to speak out. I'm Melanie Young. This is fearless, fabulous you and thank you for joining me.