When the Guidelines 2015 materials were released the American Heart Association added an optional activity at the beginning of the course. I don’t have a 2015 book handy to quote it exactly, but it was something like “What is your Why?” What drives or inspires you to take a BLS, CPR AED, or First Aid course? For the AHA … Life is Why. They want to train a world of people who know how to save lives. I only did this activity a few times in 2016 as most people in class just said “I need this for work”, so I stopped adding it to each class. This activity is not in the new Guidelines 2020 Student Materials.
Since then I’ve been at a few AHA related things and there is always a station or table with a Life is Why and What is your Why? activity.
This morning I was catching up on some email newsletters that have been piling up in my inbox. In one of them it was written that knowing why you do what you do is critical. They added “Why do you get up every morning and do what you do?”. This got me to thinking about my Why.
For a long time I’ve said my Why is my family. If something happened to them I’d want someone to know what to do. Recently this has been super reinforced as my husband is now recovering from Sudden Cardiac Arrest. He fortunately collapsed in front of trained providers and he is now home recovering as we go through tests to determine what happened and how we’ll fix it.
My Why is that I want everyone I train to be able to help or save someone’s life if needed. I want to make sure everyone leaves my class knowing the skills and what to do. I get up every morning to schedule classes, teach classes, and email people about classes because the life you save may be mine, a member of my family, a member of your family, a close friend, or a total stranger. I truly believe that we all have the ability to help someone when needed. My Why is that I want to you to know what to do to be able to help when someone needs it. Basically you are part of my Why.
My family is my Why. My husband is my Why. Supporting you through training to save lives is my Why.
