Heroes.

Julien Tromeur

Does anyone remember the “What Will Jesus Do (WWJD)” trend of the 90s?

Its origin was from the American Congregationalist minister and a leader of the Social Gospel movement, Charles Sheldon's 1896 book In His Steps was subtitled "What Would Jesus Do?” and later in the 1990s by Janie Tinklenberg, a youth group leader, who began a grassroots movement to help the teenagers in her group remember the phrase; it spread worldwide among Christian youth, who wore rubber bracelets bearing the initials WWJD.

The point of the bracelets was to serve as visual reminders to act in the way Jesus would when one is at a moral crossroads, even though the bands which came in so many vibrant colours and stacked so many up on our wrists became less of a signpost to guide our decisions and more as fashion/ coolness statements. 

One of my older friends once told me that when he has a knotty problem to solve, he would pull out empty chairs and imagine big bible figures like Solomon, David and Jesus sitting on each, he would then sit in front of them and ask them how they would solve a problem. At the time, I thought that was rather dramatic and drastic but I guess he was onto something.

Ayse Birsel also uses what she called Heroes as a creative problem-solving tool to help her think differently. For her heroes could be real or fictional. The heroes will typically have qualities that set them apart. These qualities that we can embody or channel when trying to see things from their point of view.

Having an out-of-body experience, where you step away from yourself and imagine a mentor or someone you admire being in the situation you currently are in, getting into their heads and imagining how they would solve that problem can be the trick to finding solutions to problems we struggle with this is because when we are too close to a problem we get tunnel vision and clouded with bias that prevents us from seeing things objectively.

Keep going,

Ije