But how do we empower people to be ready before the event happens?
Welcome to the Firefighter Craftsmanship podcast where we give you real tools to
train ultimate humor performance both on and off the emergency scene. I'm your host Kevin Housley,
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Hey everybody, Kevin Housley here excited for another episode of the Firefighter Craftsmanship
podcast. Today we're going to talk about building resilience before you need it.
If we look at a historical perspective of the fire service at least since I've been involved in
fire service or emergency services starting in 2005, the narrative around resiliency, mental health,
things like PTSD, recovery, mental fitness is all pretty new. And if I already think back to when
I was a probie sitting at the firehouse kitchen table, there was really no conversations happening
around resilience or mental fitness other than, yeah, and you just got to suck it up. Like we're
going to see some bad stuff sometimes and you need to figure out what ways to deal with that. I remember
the interview process had a question specifically about how are you going to deal with tough days
at work, but it was all call based and related to the calls. And from even having that question in
the interview process, it really started to give permission to us as emergency services personnel
or firefighters specifically. It allowed us to start kind of considering that and realizing, hey,
this might be kind of an important thing. And over the last 18 years, that's really kind of grown
into a much healthier conversation, but we still honestly have a long ways to go. And a lot of
organizations when we talk about resilience or the organizations that we're fortunate enough to work
with with firefighter craftsmanship, they do have tools and processes in place, or at least they're
starting to work towards that things like peer support teams, professional organizations that
they're working with psychologists that are maybe not necessarily on staff, but on retainer where
people can use it, EAP programs through their health insurance, all really, really positive stuff.
But when we look at most emergency services organizations or any organizations, mental
health programs and processes, almost all of them are built on a reactionary state,
other than physical fitness. But physical fitness for a lot of our organizations is just something
that we're either mandated or encouraged to do. And some of you, what we've seen across the country
teaching classes, you literally have $0 of budget for physical fitness equipment, you have to bring
it in from your house or round up some dollars from everybody at the firehouse and buy your own
equipment. And you do you figure out how to make do. But that that's really what it's about is
like, Hey, you guys should work out fitness is really, really important. It's, you know, cancer
is certainly in the conversation now, but still a lot of departments site cardiac is being the
number one killer of firefighters, and we really need to be physically fit. And that's where that
conversation starts. So or stops. So today, we're going to talk about building resilience,
both physical and mental resilience, but not in a state where like, Oh, man, I hope I can deal with
whatever the traumas are that I'm going to experience or see along the way. But how do we empower
people to be ready before the event happens? And there's some pretty good stuff out there right
now that Hey, maybe the biggest stressor on our people and on ourselves isn't actually the trauma
that we see based on 911 response. Maybe it's the things that are happening from organizational
culture, firehouse culture, culture off the job standards and unforeseen or unprecedented
requirements that we place upon ourselves and the chronic stress that's associated with that.
So let's dive into resilience and what does that actually mean and how can we build resilience
before we actually need it? So the definition of resilience from Webster is capable of withstanding
shock without permanent deformation or rupture, or tending to recover from or adjust easily to
misfortune or change. So basically, can it bend and not break and spring back to form? And that's
a pretty good place for us to start. But I'd encourage you to think about what is resilience
or being resilient actually mean to you personally? And for me, I think resilience is not an avoidance
of pain or necessarily necessarily seeking it out either. Yes, we need to put ourselves in
compromised situations in places like the gym and or a cold bath or maybe even heat exposure,
things like that, where we're intentionally stressing our body. And we can control those
those factors, we definitely need to be stressing our body and basic skills training as well,
but not 100% of the time. So not an avoidance of pain or necessarily seeking it out either of just
how can I suffer better longer? But instead really resilience me as the ability to bend morph adapt
to various situations both on the job and off the job, meaning in the firehouse, at home,
at the kitchen table trying to help a kid with homework, or even out in the community, right?
When you're driving down the road and somebody cuts you off, are you being resilient and how you
react to that? Does that resilience change? Is it the morning after shift change? Is it a couple
days after? Are you getting mandoed every third fourth day and working way over your 56 hour
work week? Are you working 80 hour work weeks? How does that impact your resilience? The reality
is things are going to sting on this job. We're going to run some nasty calls and that's what
we've raised our hand and said that we would do. And we need to be prepared in our physical fitness,
our mental fitness, and our basic skills to be prepared to figure out those situations,
overcome them, and try to do the best good that we possibly can for the customer. So we know that
things are going to sting. But we also know things are going to sting in relationships. We know that
as a leader, as you work your way up as a leader, whether you're promoted or not, if you're a leader
in the firehouse or in the police department or an EMS division, you're going to have to have
rough conversations and you're going to have to have resilience to have those things. You're going
to experience feedback that's maybe negative, maybe undue criticism. You're going to have to
have resilience on how to overcome some of those things. So it really also empowers us by really
when we start to dive into what does resilience mean to me. It empowers us to be okay asking for
help. We can use things like physical fitness, mindfulness, sauna, cold exposure, yoga, nidra,
sleep replacement. And then certainly we can use professional help with psychologists, EAP,
peer support teams. And we can also use those relationships that we have both at work. So
your crew, hopefully you have healthy positive relationships or you're working towards positive
relationships with your crew, your shift, and also off the job. And so are those relationships off
the job, a positive force for you that are helping you build resilience or they taken out of that
resiliency pot. We really need to make sure that we're, you know, including dumping the bad stuff
so we become tougher and more pliable along the way. And when I talk about tougher, it doesn't
mean that I'm tougher in being able to bend even further and not be able to have anything bother
me and to lose all empathy, to have less humility, be standoffish or disengage with the job. That's
not what I'm talking about. So we don't want to be so tough that we're actually really,
really brittle. We want to become tougher that it's like, Hey, I start to identify those internal
cues of, All right, it's time to go talk to my, my psychologists that I can work with or my peer
support team or my counselor, or I need to make sure I take a rest day to day because I'm feeling
really rough and I don't need to get after it in the gym so much. I'm going to go actually
take a nap instead. Or the vice versa, right? Like I'm taking tons and tons of naps. I can't
ever figure out how to get unsleepy. I'm really apathetic. We need to figure out how to get
tougher there too. So when we're, we're overly parasympathetic, when we're in apathetic or depression,
we figure out ways to get a little bit tougher where we can kind of write the ship and get back
into that good level playing field within that window of tolerance, like we talked about in
episode one. So how can individuals, how can we as individuals build resilience before we need it?
I think the biggest thing it starts is exactly what we're talking about is what's a healthy
perspective of what resilience means to me? How do I define resilience? How do I track if I'm being
resilient? How do I give my, my self permission to not always be completely resilient? Like some
stuff that we do on this job should bother you, right? But it shouldn't bother you for long,
long periods of time. And there are tools and resources out there to help you get rid of that
stuff. But if nothing bothers you on this job, that's also a serious indicator that you probably
need to go talk to somebody and use some of these resources that we're talking about,
or potentially even look for a career change. I think we also need to have a healthy perspective
of what this job actually entails. We know that this job is going to try us. There's going to be
days that are really, really, really hard. And there is a time to suck it up, pull up your boots
and get after it. And then once that event is over, all right, now let's use our healthy
things to get rid of that trauma and get rid of that stress, which doesn't necessarily include
the whiskey bottle. Okay. So what are those things healthy perspective of what this job is, is what
it's going to entail and what the possibilities are. The emergency services are tasked with doing
lots and lots of stuff. And if we look at, you know, 2023, compared to 2005, there's a whole new
risk that we have to deal with out in the community on multiple different factors.
So really building resilience before we need it starts with awareness and awareness is foundational.
Where am I today? What are maybe some of those hot points that I need to address? What are some
things that I'm pretty concerned about? And how do I address them? What's that conversation? Once
I start having awareness about where, where am I actually at today? Where is that conversation in my
head? And is that a positive or negative conversation? We need to have sounding boards, we need to have
quality relationships, both at work and at home. And so build those things. And if you don't have
those, call an academy mate that you went through or call somebody that you know from another fire
department, right? Reach out to us. We'll try to connect you with people in your area that,
that are doing positive things. Hit us up on social media. We'll build a community of people
that are doing positive stuff in the human performance space. And you'll have plenty of
people to use as sounding board and to fact check you and give you good tools and resources along
the way. Building routines that are healthy with sleep, nutrition, hydration, also including
quiet time rest days, which and quiet time specifically without your phone. And so we've
talked a little bit already about the impact of social media that data is out there. We know that
there are thousands of the smartest PhDs and MDs that are working for these major social media
companies. And they're trying to figure out how to make their platforms even more irresistible,
because your eyeballs are the commodity that they're selling to advertisers. So that's a really
hard battle to win by ourselves. So just realize like you need to make sure you put the phone down,
you put the computer down, you turn the TV off and you have some good quiet time without that.
Things like mindfulness practices, sitting in a cold tub, working on a breath routine,
just going outside, going for a 30 minute walk, all those things are really, really good. So what
are your routines that are healthy? And as soon as you start to deviate from those routines,
do you realize that that's happening? And can instantly recognize that of, hey, I don't,
I used to take a walk every single day. And now I don't, I haven't taken one in two weeks.
That's probably a good red flag for you to tie into of, hey, something's off and I need to figure
out what it is and how to get rid of it, and then get back into a good coherent state.
Take a day off every once in a while, not necessarily calling in sick or but definitely
use your paid time off. So take a day off, take a rest day from the gym, just enjoy it,
spend some time with your family, go on a hike, go skiing, go to a hockey game, whatever it is
that you really enjoy doing, just take a day off. Focused physical fitness training that
balances how you are actually feeling. And so meaning if I get off work and we worked at 48 and
didn't get any sleep, I probably shouldn't go to the gym and get after it on the air bike.
That's not going to be a good choice. And so yes, that's going to help in some circumstances to get
rid of stress, getting after it on an air bike. But in that situation there with sleep deprivation
and all that stuff, that is not what my body needs is another acute nasty stressor. It needs
rest and recovery. And then maybe on day two, day three, I can get back into how that goes. So
what is your focus physical fitness training look like? And are you intentionally using things like
period, periodization that really, really can help you be focused and stay on tasks. So you're not
just always lifting one muscle group overuse injuries, things like that. Use the resources that
you have before you need them. This is a huge one. So hopefully most of your departments out there
have peer support teams, peer support groups. And they also have professionals that you can
that you can use. So use those people and go talk to them and figure out what other resources
of talk therapy isn't for you. That's great. Figure out something that is but use the resources
that you have available. And if they aren't available to you, then do the hard work and create
them because there are not only do you need them, but other people on your fire department need them
and your communities that you serve both internally and externally need that.
Breathing and we're going to talk about breathing a whole lot on this podcast
and making sure that you're breathing right all the time. Okay. So we talked a little bit about
that on the window of tolerance and gave you a little bit of breath protocol. So check out episode
one window of tolerance. So give you a good breath protocol to just down regulate. But how are you
breathing? How are you breathing when you're sitting there watching a football game? How are
you breathing when you're watching TV? How are you breathing when you're warming up working out?
How are you breathing when you're having that tough conversation at home or at work and start to be
tie it back to awareness is foundational and figure out, Oh man, I start to hyperventilate
when I get in those situations. Okay. Be aware of the conversation that's happening in your head.
So the most important conversation that happens is within that six inches between your ears.
And really, are you talking to yourself or are you listening to yourself? And we really want
to make sure that we're talking to ourself that we're controlling that inner voice. I like to
call it the drunk roommate that lives between our ears. So are we controlling that voice or
we just listening to that voice and that voice more often than not as negative. So if we can
control that voice, now we can spin that into a positive situation and positive outlook on things
and a positive internal narrative builds resilience by itself. Now, if you're in a position as a
formal leader and you're promoted, or all of you are informal leaders, so everybody here is a leader
for sure. So how can we as leaders build cultural or team resilience at our level of influence?
And I don't care if you're a probie with one day on the job, or you're a fire chief with 40 years
on the job, you both have tremendous amounts of influence. One of you has more impact than influence.
As Chief Brush talks about, you know, if a fire chief makes a decision and puts it out to the
members, like that has tremendous impact, but it doesn't necessarily have influence. They're
going to do it because they were told to do it. Where a junior member who's really getting after
it and has has a good positive outlook on things and is building programs and providing tools
and doing the hard lonely work and including other people, they have a ton of influence. They might
actually have the most influences depending on the size of an organization. So as leaders, I think
if we can establish the culture of where we are as a as a as people first, and then where are we as a
crew, as a shift, as a station, however your department works, we create a culture where it's
okay to talk about mental fitness, talk about mental health, to use each other to build positive
relationships to make these as as good as we possibly can be. So are you building a culture
where it's okay to talk about this stuff? How about your fire department is okay to talk about
mental health, mental fitness, resiliency, or are you met instantly with negative connotation of,
hey, you just need to suck it up. So that's probably a culture that we really need to work hard on
changing. Realize that frustration is a normal human emotion. And it typically means that people
actually care, which is a really good thing. Frustration over really long periods of time that
never goes away is toxic. It's toxic for you. If you're frustrated all the time, that's toxic
emotion for you. It's toxic for the people around you, and it's only going to get worse. So use the
tools that are available to you. And those tools can be free, like a breathing practice, in and
out through your nose, you can work on box breathing, you can work on cadence breathing,
anything like that. And again, lots more resources coming on how to use breathing
for human performance. Got to establish healthy parameters around conflict and define what conflict
means for each member. Some people don't shy away from conflict, but they have bad delivery.
Some people don't shy away from conflict, they have great delivery. And some people really
shirk from conflict and they just let stuff fester until it blows up, or they just remove
themselves completely and either leave that shift leave that crew, maybe even leave the fire
department because conflict is not welcome. So how are you addressing conflict? How do you
deal with conflict? Do you look at conflict as a positive or negative right when I say that word?
What is that emotional attachment to that word conflict? And as a crew, as a team figure out
how are you going to address conflict? How you know, who's who's allowed to initiate conflict?
Can the most junior member initiate conflict with the chief or department if they don't agree with
something in a positive and respectful way, but say, Hey, chief, I don't I have some concerns
with this and they are boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, how is that going to be received? I'm not
sure very many fire departments, that's going to be received very well. And that's an opportunity
for us just at the crew level to really kind of start to change that narrative.
As a group, come up with a clear cut why you exist as a company, as a team, as a crew, why are you in
the job that you're in? And this will this is a little bit easier when you do this as a group
exercise, but you also should do it as an individual exercise. And there's a whole section on this
and our presiliance for the emergency scene class. And all that information is going to be in the
show notes. But look at how why are you there? Why do you get up and go to work every single day?
And what are those identifying principles that actually define who you are as a human,
not who you are as an emergency service as a cop, as an EMT as a paramedic as a firefighter,
or as a sport coach, whatever, whatever you are, what are the actual things that identify you?
Really important that we understand that. And we can go back to those things. So that way,
when we experience struggle, and we do have to have resilience, we can rest on those identifying
principles, and we really know who we are, more to come on identity for sure, in relation to sport
psychology. When we talk about identity as a group, really allow those people around you to kind of
drive that conversation and figure out who do we want to be as a crew. And just listen, you know,
really, what do we want to be what what identifies us and how are we going to attract if we're meeting
those metrics or those marks. And I think you're going to be really surprised at the positive
conversations that come out of that. And the reasons why people show up every day. And once we can
make that connection, and we understand what the identifying principles are of each person on our
crew. And then we also understand what the identifying principles are us as a company.
We can really start to grow leaps and bounds, which builds greater resist resilience before
we're ever going to need it. Clear cut expectations is a huge one. So ambiguity creates a lot of
strife and pain and stress in people's lives. So when things aren't very clear as to what's
expected, who's doing what role clarity, things like that, you're going to have people that are
very, very stressed out, which leads to lower overall resilience. So talk about expectations
from from every rank level, if you can only control that at your crew level, that's fine.
What's expected of the most junior member, all the way up to the officer in charge,
and then hold each other accountable to that hold yourself accountable to that.
These need to be able to grow, change, and progress along the way. So these things that we're going
to write them down, we're going to post them, we're going to share them, we're going to give them to
people that are working overtime or trades on our crew. We're going to create an environment that
it's okay to kind of challenge. We're going to have a good positive mentality, we're going to know
who we exist, we're going to know how we measure why we exist, and we're going to know how we measure
those metrics. And we're going to invite those people into that because they're the guests with
us that day. And we're going to really establish that culture. So expectations are going to know
what to expect of me, and then also what I expect of them, and we eliminate that ambiguity. And then
that way on the emergency scene, we can get after it and do what we do because we've already had
those conversations. And finally, I think, you know, as a company or as an organization, you know,
sweat hard work within areas of competency. And for us as firefighters, or us as emergency
responders, basic skills is really where we like to train. We really, really like to train in
competency because it's very, very important when that 901 call happens, we got to be ready for
whatever that 901 call is. And we need to come up with a solution for the customer. And so sweat
hard work doesn't only mean necessarily on the drill ground, but in this connotation, I'm going
to say competency, we got to be competent in how we communicate, we got to be competent within our
roles. And we got to be competent for the customers, both internally and externally, so own your
position, and be competent. And if you're nervous about something, then ask for help. I think if
we have some good humility, and we say, Hey, I'm really nervous about if I have to throw this
ladder by myself, can you come out and teach me something and help me? And if you meet resistance
with that, well, they probably are in the same way. So have a good healthy conversation about, well,
why won't you come and help me? Maybe we can learn this together. Or I bet you're going to be surprised
by the that salty old dude is going to get out there and he's going to show you something that's
pretty awesome. And maybe you're going to start to change that training mentality within your
company right there, going to connect with those people. So in conclusion, resilience to me is
very, very important. And we need to keep tabs on this from when we start the job, all the way
until you retire, however long that is, or you decide to leave this career, firefighting specifically,
resilience is a very, very foundational concept that you're going to have to play off of for your
entire career. But I don't want you to only think about resilience of, well, I'm going to see some
bad stuff on 911 calls, we need to be resilient and all aspects of our life. So that way we can
stay happy, healthy and strong and finish happy, healthy and strong and retire happy, healthy and
strong. So thanks for spending a few minutes with us, please rate review, follow the show.
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