Episode 10: Focus on Your Desire to Change - featuring Giant

Summary

In this interview, Andre Norman speaks with Giant, also known as Hassan, about his journey from New York street life and incarceration to personal-development work. Giant says he grew up with a supportive family and strong values but chose to follow friends into street activity. After prison, he turned his experiences into a mission to help people rebuild through words, education, and exercise.

Key Lessons and Practices

• Change the way you think. Giant says mindset shapes attitude and choices. He encourages people to examine their beliefs and replace “stinking thinking” with thoughts that support growth.
• Choose your influences deliberately. While incarcerated, he sought out people who were reading, learning, and doing things differently rather than joining the yard’s usual routines. He also describes setting boundaries with friends while focusing on change.
• Keep trying at education. After failing the GED test twice, encouragement from someone who believed in him helped him try again. His message to others who fail is to retake the test and keep investing in themselves.
• Read to expand your possibilities. After earning his GED, Giant rediscovered a love of reading and explored books on many subjects. He says reading helped him think beyond the street concerns that had occupied him before.
• Use exercise as therapy and self-investment. Pull-ups, push-ups, and dips gave him time to focus on himself and helped build discipline and calm. He developed this approach into Bartendaz, using exercise and conversation to encourage personal growth.
• Build and maintain support. Giant initially tried to focus only on what he could control inside prison, but later realized that contact with family and loved ones mattered. He describes support as a source of hope and balance.
• Challenge harmful lessons and patterns. Reflecting on advice he was taught about responding to conflict, he offers a different principle: defend yourself when necessary and walk away when possible. He also urges people to question inherited ideas that have led to harmful outcomes.
• Maintain hope through difficult periods. Giant encourages people who feel trapped or forgotten to stay consistent, believe change is possible, and put that belief into practice. He stresses that people with past trauma—including incarcerated women—can rebuild their lives and support others.
• Practice character and self-reflection. In advice directed to Muslim viewers, he encourages studying oneself and role models, correcting wrongdoing when possible, and beginning with one’s own behavior.
• Make health a shared practice. He encourages exercising with family, walking in the community, greeting others, and starting conversations about health and wellness.

Giant’s Name and Work

Giant explains that GIANT stands for “Growing Is A Noble Thing.” He says his organization took shape while he was incarcerated, and that returning to prisons to teach and lead workshops became a central part of his work.

People, Places, and Items Mentioned

• People: Andre Norman and Giant (Hassan)
• Places: New York City neighborhoods including Harlem, the Lower East Side, Avenue D, and the Baruch Houses; Rikers Island; and prisons in South Carolina and Michigan
• Organizations and programs: Bartendaz and its pull-up-bar training
• Education and books: The GED; Who Not How; Ambassador of Hope
• Fitness equipment: Pull-up and dip bars