It's one of the cool things about this form or this piece of our overall resilience or
overall mental toughness mindset is that we get to make a choice on how we approach different
situations.
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.
Let's get to it.
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Welcome back to the Firefighter Craftsmanship Podcast where we coach you to deal with the
stressors of the job as a first responder as well as how to thrive off duty.
Today's topic we're going to talk about mindset and how to win the day.
The definition from Webster on Mindset is a mental attitude or inclination or a fixed
state of mind.
It's kind of an interesting paradigm there where we have one definition from the dictionary
that kind of talks about like an attitude and an approach or maybe just a general trend
on how you approach things with an inclination and then a glaring contradiction to that of
a fixed state of mind.
When I hear fixed state of mind I think, oh wow, that's pretty hard to break out of.
And for sure for some of us and depending on the situation for all of us we absolutely
have an inclination, a certain approach, a certain attitude and at sometimes a fixed
state of mind.
So in preparation for this podcast I thought I should probably write down what is my definition
of mindset.
What I came up with was an approach or choice and how you react, calculate or forecast a
situation or event.
And so with our mindsets that's one of the cool things about this form or this piece
of our overall resilience or overall mental toughness mindset is that we get to make a
choice on how we approach different situations.
And sometimes in our job as emergency responders that choice is just a default.
So based on what you get dispatched to you might have a default mentality towards that
sort of call.
It might even be tied to a certain address or if you know what patient you're going
to see that mindset might change.
It might even change from the first time you see that patient in one shift to the third
or fourth time you see that patient in the exact same shift.
But really when it comes down to it is mindset is a choice.
And so today we're going to kind of dive into how can we influence and control our mindset?
How can we build it?
How can we train it?
And then I also get into just some brief brain neuroscience on kind of a cool new development
in the scientific world at least cool new for me of called Myelin.
So let's jump in.
So we have roughly 70,000 to 80,000 thoughts per day.
And these thoughts all contribute to our over mentality and overall approach to different
situations.
So again, we'll talk about awareness as foundational.
Have you really ever thought about what you're thinking about?
Or do those thoughts just kind of come and go?
Sometimes we jump on on those thoughts and we ride them positive thoughts, negative thoughts.
Sometimes we create a bunch of narratives that turn out to not be true.
Sometimes that we try to forecast those narratives and they do become true.
And sometimes really based on our mindset and our approach or our thought life, the
things that we start to think about become true because we're kind of forecasting them
into the world.
So kind of the exercise right from the jump for this week is really start to pay attention
to what are you thinking about?
What is your mindset?
What is your approach?
And then start to track that and look at that all through different situations.
Is your mindset and approach different when you're driving to work than it is when you're
driving home?
Or is your mindset different if you're working in a different station or with a different
shift or overtime or something like that?
How does your mindset ebb and flow?
How about after the new year and maybe you have some of those resolutions, which we kind
of talked about in last episode.
How does your mindset help you or hurt you when you're trying to break old habits or
build new habits?
How do our routines play into this?
How about our sleep?
Or if you're having trouble sleeping or having trouble falling back asleep, what is your mindset
that's tied to things like your bed or your bedroom or your sleeping arrangement if you're
on a 24-hour shift or something like that?
And figure out maybe if that's where you're having a little bit of trouble falling back
asleep, it might just be tied to what is your general overall approach?
And we're going to get really deep into sleep here coming up soon.
But just start to think about what is my mindset around rest and relaxation?
What is my mindset around tactical fitness?
What is my mindset around 911 response on and on and on?
What is my mindset around relationships?
Am I setting myself up for success?
Or am I walking into that situation already on edge or apathetic or anxious?
Start to try to pin these things down a little bit.
And why this is so important is really our thought life when we have 70,000 to 80,000
thoughts per day, especially if we have a thought where we ruminate on it, meaning we
keep coming back to it or we can't let it go or we just think and think and think and
think and think on it and we just can't really ever escape the confines of that thought itself.
When we do that, we start to build basically super highways in our brain.
And so the more that we think about something, this is habit formation as well, the more
that we do something, the more that we think about something, the more comfortable it becomes,
the more we actually don't really think about doing it.
We just, we walk in the door and maybe you'll always hang your key in one spot.
Well, that probably didn't happen right from the jump.
You probably lost your keys enough where you got frustrated enough, you had enough pain
where you said, okay, I'm tired of losing my keys, so I'm going to hang them in the exact
same spot every time.
And so that would be that thought pattern that now when you walk in the door, you just
have this habit where you hang your keys up and you don't even really think about it.
That concept applies to your mindset as well.
And so let's take a step back here real quick and look at the three different types of mindset
that we can have.
We can have a positive mindset, we can have a negative mindset, and then we can have the
no mind.
And so no mind is really flow and we're not going to talk about flow in this episode specifically,
but flow would be that time where you've been able to either in a creative environment
or hopefully at work, you've experienced flow as well, where you are just connecting things
together without consciously thinking about the thoughts that they're producing or the
actions that you're supposed to do.
And so this would be back into that automaticity principle of things are just happening without
you actually thinking about them.
You might be looking at other critical factors on the emergency scene and your basic skills,
your transitioning back to those basic skills and you're just connecting the dots, whether
that's on an emergency medical or on a different type of emergency scene, the fire ground,
et cetera.
So let's look at how do we get to that point where we can create automaticity.
And there's this cool thing that I just really heard about in a book called the talent code
by Daniel Coyle and I'll link that in the show notes description here about some new
brain neuroscience that's happened here within the last 10 to 15 years really.
And they're studying a thing called myelin.
So let's dive into what myelin is really quick.
And myelin is basically like an insulator that wraps around the neurons and helps those
synapses fire more effectively.
So when we think about building super highways in our brain or those habits that we have
that we don't even think about, or maybe even that basic skills training, let's say ladder
training, for example, where you can throw ladders without even thinking about it or
forcing doors or stretching hose lines or pulling out your weapon if you're a police
officer, all those sorts of things you've developed enough myelin around those processes
around that specific neural circuit that that is happening at a hyper speed.
And one of the things I picked up from that talent code book was with myelin and when
we have good myelin sheath around that neural circuit, we can increase processing speed
by up to 3000 times.
So basically the more myelin grows, the faster we're able to process synapses and electrical
activity in our brains, which hopefully is accounting for positive results.
But if we continue to stress and we continue to ruminate and we continue to create and
sustain bad habits, then we're building myelin in an unaffective way that's actually hindering
our performance overall.
Because the fact of the matter is, is myelin doesn't care.
It doesn't care if you're working on a positive habit or a negative habit or a positive mindset
or a negative mindset, it's going to respond to actions and deep practice.
And so if you have a negative mindset where you are apathetic or negative towards work
and sometimes you might even be saying that stuff out loud, it's not just happening in
your brain, you are actually processing those those neural circuits and responding to that
deep practice of having a negative mindset towards whatever is occurring at that point
in time.
The other interesting thing that I learned about myelin here was myelin, you can't just
unwrap it.
So it's not like just taking tape off the spool and saying, oh, I'll just undo that.
You actually have to build an entirely new neural circuit and then develop myelin to
act as that electrical tape or that insulator around those neurons to help build maybe that
new positive outlook, that new positive mindset, that new positive habit.
And so it's not impossible to do, but just realize it takes long term diligent practice.
It takes that good hard work and it also takes failure.
So to activate those specific neural circuits, different things have to happen.
But basically it needs struggle, it needs failure, it needs success and it needs reward
for that myelin to actually start to build.
So with this myelin concept in mind, just kind of take that into different situations.
What is your approach towards work?
What is your approach maybe towards admin tasks at work or different things at work?
What is your approach towards when the tones go off at work?
What is your approach to physical fitness that maybe is relevant to your job?
Again, what is your approach to sleep?
What is your approach to home life?
What is your approach to the relationship with yourself?
What is your approach to rest and recovery?
All those sorts of things are going to play into this whole neural circuit superhighway
thing.
And just remember as you're trying to build positive mindsets and positive approach and
start to make that choice of, hey, I control my mindset, which means I can control today,
I can win today with my mindset alone.
Even if everything goes wrong, I can win today just through my mindset.
But you're going to start with that little teeny trail where you're going to be kind
of bushwhacking through the woods in a grander scheme of things in brain science speak.
And you might be competing against that superhighway that's been built for many, many, many, many
years.
So start to work on this concept and just realize like the harder you work and the more
pain and struggle and effort that you have, it's no different than trying to build physical
fitness or build muscle or anything like that.
That's essentially the exact same thing that's happening with myelin in the brain.
So what are a couple of different ways that we can focus on training our mindset and as
a byproduct, building this cool myelin sheath.
So one of the easiest ways really is to actually conduct mindfulness.
And so with mindfulness, what the whole point of that is is allowing your mind to learn
how to be calm and to notice things, but not necessarily jump on them.
So if rumination is a problem that you deal with, which a lot of us do, things like talk
therapy, peer support, all that stuff is amazing stuff, but a mindfulness practice might also
help you out.
And again, you can check out Headspace, you can check out Calm, you can get on YouTube,
I know Spotify, Pandora, all those have mindfulness things that are out there, some are paid,
some are free.
But mindfulness is a great way for us to start to train how to control our mind and at least
pivot our mind.
So once we become aware of what is that 70 to 80,000 thoughts I'm having in one day.
Now how do I pivot that to my advantage?
So most of the time that pivot is going from a negative mindset to a positive mindset.
And as humans, we are born to be a negative mindset.
That's what's kept us safe.
That's how our fighter-flight or our parasympathetic and sympathetic response is built.
It's trends us towards negative because it keeps us out of trouble.
So being positive and having a positive mindset, a positive approach, really at the end of
the day comes down to being a learned skill.
So mindfulness is a great way to start to train that.
It trains us to be in the present moment.
It trains us to be able to focus on what's important, which has lots and lots and lots
of positive benefit.
Another way to train it is to do hard stuff like tactical fitness that's relevant.
So make sure that when you're getting after it and you're doing physical fitness, or
if you're trying to get over that hump and get into a good physical fitness routine,
toward yourself with, hey, maybe I'm not where I want to be yet, but I'm working towards
that.
And today I won because I went to the gym or I got in the cold bath or I finally took
a minute for myself as a rest and relaxation.
But think about like when you're doing specific tactical fitness and you're really getting
after it and you're in that 80%, I guess really it could even be 60% or higher of your maximum
heart rate.
Where does your mindset go?
And your mindset's going to start to trend negative of, oh, I just can't do one more.
Oh, I need to rest a couple of seconds longer.
Because again, that is a safety mechanism that is built into us.
And so that's usually controlled from a thing called the glia cells, which is actually a
quit response.
We're not really going to get into that brain science.
But just realize that there's parts and pieces of in our neurochemistry and our neurobiology
in our neuro neurology that is intentionally built to make us stop and to make us be negative.
So when we focus on, hey, can I get into a pretty tough workout and have a positive mindset
throughout or chunk it up into manageable bits and not slow down the amount of work
that I'm producing, you are winning that battle and you're going to start to trend more and
more and more towards positive mindset on things even when you haven't ever really seen
that before on tasks that you don't like to do or things that you might be apathetic towards.
Another way to train mindset is through the use of imagery.
Some people would call that visualization, but I think imagery is more appropriate because
it's not just the visual sense.
When we perform imagery, we can really encapsulate all of our senses.
We can hear it, we can see it, we can feel it, we can smell it, we can taste it.
And that would be the difference between imagery and visualization.
And so when we try to use imagery for mindset, think about those situations.
Let's say you're coming up for promotion or you're going to start to test for promotion
and maybe you have some stress around that or you have some test anxiety or things like
that.
So right away, if I say, oh, I have test anxiety, so I'm probably not going to do very well,
do I have a positive mindset or do I have a negative mindset?
Well, I get to choose on that one.
So I might say, hey, in the past, I've struggled a little bit with some testing situations.
However, I've put in the hard work.
I've been working hard.
I've studied my policies and procedures.
I know that I'm competent with my basic skills.
I have mentors around me that are helping me.
And so now I'm starting to build, hey, I have all of these positive things that are confidence
builders, but it's changing my mindset from I have test anxiety, so I'm not going to do
well to I've been putting in the hard work.
And now I can also say, hey, I know because I'm putting in the hard work and I've had
some struggles in the past and I've overcome those struggles and now I'm changing my mindset.
I'm building this cool myelin sheath that is going to help me be positive and to succeed
further in the future.
So practice that in your imagery as well.
So look at that testing situation and feel what it feels like to sit in the room.
You can even feel what it feels like if you are in front of an oral board in your stumbling
or they ask you a question and you have to sit in that silence that as the candidate
you really, really don't like.
But to be honest from being on the other side of that table, when there's silence, the
interviewers, they don't really care about that.
They're like, OK, at least he or she is able to cognitively think to calm down in a situation,
to put some thoughts together.
And those are the things, especially like in a promotional sense that that board wants
to see is are they able to address challenge, to consciously think through that challenge
and then to come up and work to the best advantage.
The thing with imagery is we always want to finish on a positive.
So you can certainly use imagery and look at struggle like we're using in this test
anxiety example.
But when you finish, you want to see yourself winning.
So you want to see yourself coming over that.
So that way we're building that good neural circuit.
We're starting to build that trail through the woods, which now becomes a two track road,
which becomes a dirt road, which becomes a paved road, which now becomes a super highway.
And it shows me that I win.
But I know along the way I'm going to experience struggle and I'm going to overcome that struggle.
And so there's a really, really good way for us to use imagery and to get lots and lots
of reps with nobody even knowing that you're doing it.
Another great way to do this is, and we talked about this in episode nine, psychological detachment
from work is that end of day journal.
And so you can really start to write down and capture and put pen to paper in a journal
that says, Hey, here's three wins that I had today.
And when we talk about wins, wins are correlated to a positive mindset.
And so don't write those things down that were maybe struggles or you write those things
down of, Hey, today was a win because I struggled with this.
And this is how I came out on top.
Or if mindset is something you really want to work at and control in your thought life
is something that you really want to work out here in 2024, you start to write down
those wins.
And again, we're starting to build that mile and sheath around those positive neural circuits
that we're building.
And those things will start to grow.
And then those other circuits that we've had forever, they'll still show up every once
in a while, but it's going to be easier for us to exit that super highway and get back
on the positive mindset highway.
So start to pay attention to what's your thought life?
Whatever those 70 to 80,000 thoughts, what do they consist of?
And are they helping you?
Are they hindering your progress?
And really start to intentionally choose to have that positive mindset.
And then also help coach those around you.
And I'm not talking about like coming in there and everything is all rainbows and unicorns
all the time.
And oh, it's always the good ship.
That's not what I'm talking about at all.
But how can I approach situations that are sticky, that are difficult, that maybe I don't
agree with, especially in the business or the work world, the emergency services world,
how can I approach those things to change my attitude and make this a positive at the
end of the day?
So get out there, try to train this stuff, start to pay attention, especially when you're
doing tactical fitness or you're doing things that are hard, or when you're doing things
that you're really apathetic about, maybe writing reports or, you know, it's performance
review season, that sort of stuff, or maybe not a lot of us are super excited about that.
But maybe you can start to change your mindset about that and say, hey, this is actually
important or this is a job requirement.
So I'm going to do the best that I possibly can and make sure that I do the job that I'm
tasked to do, even on things that I don't necessarily want to do.
Try that imagery trick and see if you can start to change and use imagery to say, hey,
can I forecast in a positive way things I can start to see struggle?
Or if you have things that you're hesitant, whether it's basic skills training or promotional
processes or things like that, how can I change my mindset from a negative to a positive
one using the imagery, five senses, full immersion, and then I can see myself winning and I can
start to build those positive mindsets.
And then that end of the day journal, just write down three wins for the day, and that's
really, really going to help you out as well.
So thank you for spending your valuable time with us.
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tools to train ultimate human performance both on and off the emergency scene.
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