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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast as always my name is James Gearing and this week
it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show retired naval commander, former head
psychologist for the Navy SEALs and co-author of Learned Excellence Dr. Eric Potterat.
So as you can imagine there are very few people more apt than Dr. Potterat to talk about mental
health and mental performance in the uniform professions.
So we discuss a host of topics from the space program, working with the LA Dodgers, SEAR,
the concept of learned excellence, stress inoculation, overcoming fear, his work with
Dr. Kirk Parsley when it came to sleep deprivation in the SEAL teams and so much more.
Now before we get to this incredible conversation as I say every week please just take a moment
go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and
leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast therefore making it easier for
others to find and this is a free library of almost 900 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so
I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said I introduce to you Dr. Eric Potterat.
Enjoy.
Well Eric I want to start saying two things.
Firstly thank you so much to Ted Brown one of my fellow 7xers when we went around the
world about a year ago today and secondly I want to welcome you onto the Behind the
Shield podcast.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me James.
We're really honored and it's a privilege to be here looking forward to the conversation
today.
So how did Ted's and your path cross?
So I started working, I started becoming deeply embedded in various business verticals trying
to really teach performance optimization from the neck up and between the ears and evidence
based practices all of that to various business verticals and insurance was one of them and
locked and worked with them for about seven years or so and Ted and I have worked a lot
together on both him and the organization.
Fantastic.
Well we're obviously going to focus more of the in uniform side.
I mean I listened to one of your episodes with Ryan Hawke on his podcast and it was
excellent it really was but it seems like that's another entire group of people that
are going to find all the value in your latest book but the parallels in the life journey
that you've been through I think is going to be invaluable especially for the people
in uniform.
So let's start the very beginning of your own life journey then.
So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what
your parents did, how many siblings.
Yeah that's great.
Thank you I was born in Redding California very top of the great state of California
about 60, 70 miles from the Oregon border small town about four hours north of San Francisco
so truly northern California.
Born as an only child two parents obviously mom and dad.
Dad was an immigrant from Switzerland I think immigrated when he was 12 in 1956.
They then moved to first Atlantic City and then ultimately Santa Monica California where
he met my mom they went to high school all of that good stuff and then they moved to
Redding California was born and raised there very small town.
I mean I grew up and it was about 20,000 people and then I think maybe 80 or 100,000 now went
to you know completed high school then went to college at UC Davis down by Sacramento
got a degree there in psychobiology.
Took about boy oh boy almost two years off after I graduated first year kind of just
hung out and wanted to with my college roommate went to Europe with a backpack and just tried
to do that you know proverbial Odyssey and try to see a bunch of the things we had been
studying and reading about.
And then I started working in psychology at a bachelor's of science a BS in psychology
started working in psychology with severely emotionally disturbed kids.
It's not much you can do with a bachelor's degree but I felt like I wanted to make an
impact and kids that were like in foster homes and whatnot did that for about a year and
one of the clinical directors at that program in Sacramento had a PhD in psychology and
took me aside and said hey have you have you thought about you know going further in your
graduate studies and maybe applying to graduate school and said I had.
So long story short kind of launched I don't know if you want me to keep talking about
this but it launched you know towards towards a professional degree my PhD so.
I want to go back just for a moment and obviously we'll move forward again.
Obviously I love the immigrant stories obviously as you can tell I am an immigrant to the US
and there's so many different kind of experiences some purely positive some quite negative.
I would imagine someone coming from Switzerland if they found themselves amongst people that
weren't aware of the differences in European countries very soon after World War Two could
possibly have some negative experiences too.
So what was your father's experiences of coming to the US.
Yeah I have to I have to kind of pay homage and give kudos to his parents as well because
that that I mean we've all experienced adversity and I'll never I don't get paid enough to
judge anyone's adversity but I can't even imagine the risk of literally taking your
family my dad has two brothers or had two brothers one has passed and literally when
they made the decision to come to the United States in 1956 they actually left one of the
sons behind you know they had a couple hundred dollars and a few chests full of all their
belongings by the way one of those chests ended up being stolen you know gone when they
arrived to Atlantic City so literally arrive with you know a little bit of money and one
of the two chests of all of your life belongings and not knowing much English and to your point
I mean you know the schooling system in the United States and it's my dad and his brothers
eventually the other brother came over as well as well as my paternal grandparents literally
you know came to the land of opportunity and and had to kind of from the bootstraps you
know really earn everything and start over so that was a challenge for sure.
Now what about you in the school age you ended up working from the psychology point of view
with some of the most elite teams in the US what were you playing as far as being a young
boy?
So I was I was always into like you know soccer and first baseball and baseball kind of bored
me and we'll get into that later and then got into soccer and then I really found my
niche in tennis I really enjoyed highly competitive tennis from high school and beyond you know
started avidly following people like Boris Becker and you know just really trying to
I was you know this was back in the day obviously pre-internet and we had VCR so I would record
literally every match of these gentlemen and put them on you know super slow motion speed
so I could watch exact placements of feet and hands and nowadays technology is markedly
different so yeah it was just I certainly enjoyed tennis a lot as an outlet as a young
kid so.
Now you touched on baseball this is going to be an interesting kind of perspective that
you bring.
When I first moved to the US it was almost like jarring hearing over and over again what
I call the uncle Rico story so I would meet men around my age you know late 30s early
sorry late 20s early 30s and decondition now and it was always the same it was like well
I played in high school I played in college at this high high level until ACL MCL whatever
the thing was and then it was a complete screech hole to their movement journey if you like.
When I contrast that to Europe a lot of us we just don't play at that higher level in
school or in college but there seems to be longevity in sport so you have you know pub
leagues and local leagues and you'll see men in their 40s and 50s in the UK still playing
football rugby all the things.
What is your perspective on youth sports obviously I'm talking about the physical side but for
more from the psychological side because what I see is the the lines between performance
and wellness sometimes are blurred and sometimes the success of a sporting program comes at
the detriment of some of these young athletes.
Yeah so this a this is the first time I've been asked this question b it's arguably one
of the best questions I've been asked and I'm passionate about this so I'm not a big
social media guy unfortunately I guess but I do do LinkedIn and I posted maybe a year
ago a while ago very seminal kind of synopsis and research from the Norwegians on precisely
what you're saying and what you're what you're talking about are the difference between kind
of being generalized or being specialized and in the US I'm going to pardon the pun
I'm going to generalize for the US because there are certainly people who don't do this
but for the most part within the US they we have focused for years it seems on a very
specialization heavy focus whether it's middle school high school you know start really believing
that your son or daughter is going to be the next thing since whatever and all the energy
and all the passion the parental passion and energy I'm going to be polite on some of these
soccer fields and and baseball fields is just frankly appalling at times but nonetheless
I think philosophically back to your question the Europeans and particularly the reason
the Norwegian study was so interesting to me was because Norway just cleans everyone's
clock in in the you know in the Winter Olympics and when you look at per capita they really
shouldn't be doing that so it really I think causes a lot of people a lot of the so-called
experts to really look under the the hood and see why that is and in fact they really
do emphasize not unlike what you just said James this generalized approach they want
their their youth to really experience many many things as the brain is developing rather
than emotionally and physically and identity wise get attached to one and that seems to
be learning leaning towards a lot of burnout as well which I think you're alluding to so
well we'll get into the the parallels later when it comes to in uniform but even in this
there's a fallacy I think that you know if you want to squeeze out elite performance
it's got to be at the detriment of wellness to a point but then conversely if you take
Finland and their education system their days are shorter there's a lot more play I had
a guy Pasi Sauberg on who's Finnish but he lives in Australia now and tours the world
talking about their system and they look at the holistic child as a whole and they put
more money into the schools that are struggling so it's kind of the opposite of what we do
here yet when you look at the league tables as far as academics again as you said they
clean everyone's clock educationally.
Yeah fascinating to me it's not a surprise and I think look I can go down this rabbit
hole I think it is somewhat sad and again I'll just make this my personal opinion but
I think it's sad because I think the data is fairly clear I mean regardless of discipline
and we'll get into this with respect to balance the more balanced people are the more balanced
performers are and you can define performer as men and women in uniform men and women
in a sport uniform business it doesn't matter the evidence is clear when you look at the
meta-analyses it's clear as day I mean people who have balance are more innovative they
live longer they live healthier lives ironically they're more productive in their craft which
is interesting because you know the old wives tale is you can't be balanced and be good
at what you do in fact that's that's not only wrong it's dead wrong so.
Another interesting perspective that someone recently said to me and it was so spot on
because I was seeing it in my son at the time was you already have these kids that maybe
are driven down one lane of specialization but then they have this I must earn a scholarship
thing and I watched my son do the same thing he ran track for the last two seasons he got
down to basically a sub just just under a five minute mile so it was on track but I
watched I watched him burn out and he wasn't even being pushed hard you know it was just
the training that he was being expected to do but mentally he was ready to do something
else and today he's actually trying out for the volleyball team and I think he was almost
worried about how we would react and it's like Ty I want you to enjoy sport that's what
it's supposed to be like but what are you seeing as far as that added layer of extrinsic
negative stress that it's not even the sport it's this thing outside of the sport that
these children are feeling like they have to achieve as well.
I agree and most of that you know I'm going to create a lot of hate mail I'm sure in coaching
staff or parents here and I don't mean to do that but I'm you know I'm just going to
be honest I mean this is I when you look at statistically just you just take a look at
like analytically the parents that usually have the most venom and most passion if they
had spent half of that time really having their kids just have fun that's the f-word
that everyone's forgetting here and we talk about this in the book not to mention the
book but with Nathan Chen who is probably the the the greatest example of this you know
for America he was you know the the the guaranteed gold medal in the you know 2018 Olympics and
faltered and then really unpacked that himself and found that he wasn't having fun he was
winning everything prior to that but was really focusing on the wrong thing so he and I engaged
and we really got back to the basics for all of the listeners out there the parents and
the coaches and support staff for you know in uniform as well like at the end of the
day this is the most important thing is your son or child or are you having fun at what
you're doing and I think that this push to come full circle to what you said about scholarships
I mean my goodness the odds of your son or daughter becoming an Olympic gold medalist
or a professional you know insert the blank footballer baseballer doesn't matter they're
very slim I hope it happens but you're more likely to happen if the person is having fun
and on an incremental trajectory of improvement rather than my gosh you have to get that scholarship
you know it's crazy I mean literally crazy so
Athletically I've heard over and over and over again it's amazing when you have you
know almost 900 episodes the Venn diagram really overlaps and you see a lot of truth
and these people are from all walks of life but the multi-sport athlete seems to be a
lot more resilient physically what are you seeing as far as psychologically
Same absolute same I think that the more varied experiences that you can give the human brain
I mean we're talking about at some level not to be too geeky here but we're talking about
stress inoculation right I mean we're talking about giving the the the neuroplastic brain
that is developing continuing to develop but absolutely developing especially to the ages
of like 18 to 24 I mean adolescent brains are very plastic I mean they are they are
developing at an incredible rate and if the brain is firing the brain is wiring and therefore
you want it to have as many different stages of exposure as possible so I'm a big fan philosophically
and practically it's just exposing youth exposing young adults to just a variety of things music
languages different sports just just for exposure sake as opposed to I need to become an expert
in this craft that's where the narrative I think and we can get into all sorts of side
tracks as to why that is with social media and you know various spokespeople in different
platforms whether they're athletes musicians and the irony of all of this to be honest
James is when you when you actually sit with these high performers literally most of them
literally will will will will set a breadcrumb history that all you need to do is follow
and they've been exposed to a lot of different things a lot of micro failures a lot of challenges
where their their plastic brain was developing now a lot of them have great coaching staff
great mentors great co-workers great teammates that help coalesce that and craft that and
kind of chip that diamond along the way but anyhow long story short yes I think exposure
to a variety of things is where people ought to be focusing let's take that tangent because
almost every single person I've had on here when we've discussed the mental health of
our youth social media comes up over and over and over again so I'd love you to unpack that
a little bit more yeah I mean this is this is one of those sheesh it's a double-edged
sword right I you know just a book released last week with a co-author and so I mean obviously
social media helps helps catapult careers helps catapult exposure that's just the the
nature you know we're all kind of plugged in as it were so I will say this for the developing
brain I'm more concerned about identity early on and I think social media by definition
is very reputationally based meaning I often say you know I can post a picture of anything
a slice of pizza a sunset and I'm literally going to be judged by thumbs up or thumbs
down how many likes or dislikes I have to that image that I'm posting now we can go
past images as well we can have narrative right I can have an opinion that I post and
I can be judged on that the immediacy of the feedback is profound so I am you know I don't
want Facebook LinkedIn or whatever to start sending me hate mail I think if it's if it's
weaponized and used carefully and properly it can be a powerful thing for just consuming
knowledge right it shrinks the world so we can assuming the the information is valid
and vetted and we can get into that later but I I'm I'm mostly agnostic with a leaning
in towards we need to be very careful in the developing brain on how identity is tied to
social media so well firstly I want to put this out so your book has learned excellence
feel free anytime to insert anything from the book because I mean there's so much wisdom
in there and I don't I wasn't able to get a copy in the end it never came through so
I haven't had a chance to look at it yet but I'm looking forward to coming out actually
it's just come out isn't it the ninth is that right yeah as I came out on the sixth I'm
you know shame shame on our publicist we'll make sure you you get that for sure so no
problem at all and this is what I love about podcasts so you can usually glean some of
the the pillars at least with that being said though while we're on the subject and again
especially from a psychological psychological lens it appears to me that there is far more
narcissism in the world than a lot of us realize and I mean that empathetically because to
me narcissism is an expression of a void an expression of maybe some mental ill health
but when you look at men women children on a lot of these social media platforms it is
a lot of selfies and look what I can do so what has been the reception of social media
and has that come up because I don't think it's evident you know when you didn't have
a platform that showed millions and millions of people you didn't really have a baseline
on whether that was actually a pretty significant mental health issue and other people I look
I think you hit the nail on the head I'm not sure I could I mean that's that's beautifully
stated I think by definition a lot of social media is fueling kind of a me my eye culture
within self as well as the ecosystem of around that person but it really is me my eye driven
when you look at a lot of other organizations they're more we us hours driven whether it's
the military I mean true quiet professionals doing the work that they do without fans without
blogs without agents and the same can be said about you know first responders I know obviously
the the media is sometimes there but generally speaking you know firefighters and policemen
and women they don't have a fan base that is like literally following following them with webcams
or whatnot so or jerseys sold or you know this stuff so I do think this me my eye culture
that's being fed by by social media is definitely clearly affects one's developing self for
sure absolutely well you mentioned the military as a perfect kind of segue then so you're
in the psychology space walk me through how you entered the Navy yeah so I eventually
had some options but I chose a first a PhD program that was both research and and kind
of practically based you know clinician a traditional kind of research clinician program
there are programs out there that it can help people earn PhDs to do world-class research
but I really wanted to hang I wanted to have a fundamentally sound research background
but focus also on on the clinical side meaning the human side as well so I ended up down
here in San Diego got into a PhD program and within that PhD program it's great a fantastic
program but at the end of all PhD programs not unlike medicine you have to do in medicine
they call it a residency in psychology call it an internship so you have to do an internship
that's outside of the institution so in order to kind of complete your PhD so one of my
professors pulled me aside and I was applying to traditional APA American Psychological
Association internships all over the country and one of my professors said have you thought
about the military and I thought actually no I hadn't tell me more and he he actually
was from he'd done a years prior a military internship so I ended up going to an open
house long story short for both the Air Force and the Navy and frankly James I was and I
hate to say it this way I was literally blown away and really surprised I did I probably
went to the open houses more to appease the professor to say hey at least I checked it
out I kicked the tires took a look at it but I was taken aback I was blown away at at how
much they were training early early clinicians and and really their focus on a multimodal
approach assessment selection inpatient outpatient health psychology operational psychology and
then you throw in things like hey you can get backseat qualified in F-18 and go up in
jets you can go on ships you can get catapulted off carriers so long story short I won't bore
you with the details that really threw a wrench in the works to where I thought I was going
to go which was more the traditional academic programs and my wife and I stayed up all night
and we had options in our hands and we chose the Navy option and what that meant is a one
year very robust comprehensive internship with a three-year obligated payback in uniform
so completed that internship here in San Diego they send it to what was then called Officer
and Doctor Nation School OIS to teach you how to be an officer very quickly along with
other physicians lawyers nurses etc teaching you know military law how to march who to
salute all of that stuff for six weeks and then bingo show up at the internship and then
guess what there's that three-year obligated payback that payback was here in San Diego
where I was a kind of very traditional Navy psychologist really neck-deep in clinical
work helping people who didn't feel well feel better doing assessment selection you know
fitness for duty evaluations critical incident debriefing some operational work as well and
then my obligated service was about to end to answer your question I'll come full circle
here and the Pentagon the in the Navy they call them the detailers as well they decide
through big Navy okay this person's getting out their obligated service is done you can
leave and they made an offer I said hey I know we know that you're about ready to finish
your obligated service how would you like to go to southern Spain and be a department
head at a hospital there and I'd said no I'm not a gamey guy just said hey no thank you
we had a one and a half or a one-year-old daughter at the time my wife was working here
in San Diego it just didn't make sense to up you know uproot and move to Europe and
that night my wife and I after I said no thank you it was very polite my wife and I went
to dinner together with our with our one-year-old and my wife made the comment you know what
are we doing this is an opportunity to live in southern Spain this is phenomenal are we
sure about this so we kind of kicked around over dinner and maybe a glass of wine maybe
her taking a leave of absence from her then job and so long story short call back the
detailer on Monday and said hey that job that you had available in southern Spain there's
a chance we can pull this off but we need to come back to San Diego if that's the case
after Spain is that possible so long story short they made it possible and it ended up
going we ended up going to Spain at the Naval Hospital there for three and a half years
which by the way ended up being the best three and a half years of our lives phenomenal time
to have a preschool child immerse ourselves in the culture of Spain the language we lived
out in town on purpose and and then to answer you very directly and then I'll shut up here
for a moment 9-eleven happened during that time so about halfway through that tour 9-eleven
happened and there was no way in hell I was going to resign my naval commission my naval
officer commission in the midst of that so that's that was a game changer and then got
me started kind of in the operational side more survival evasion resistance and escape
seer school and then my last 10 years as the psychologist for the Navy SEALs so I ended
up making a career out of it when I never thought I would so well let's talk about Spain
for a second my mother and my brother both moved to the Algarve south of Portugal and
I've been to Seville that's the only place I've been in Spain at the moment but it's
beautiful so whereabouts did you find yourself yeah we were I was a department head at a
naval hospital in Rota Spain which is about 45 minutes dead south of Sevilla Seville as
you say and then it's across the bay from Cádiz C-A-D-I-Z there's a small there's a
status of forces agreement allows the United States to have a presence there it's it's
also a Spanish naval base as well it's one of the few places in the world for the US
that is you know both has an airfield and a naval port so very strategically a relevant
place obviously the mouth of the Mediterranean all of that as well so it was a southern Spain
was lovely Andalusia was fantastic so and what about the 9-11 day for you I mean there's
so many different stories so many different perspectives you're already in a military
base you're not too far from the Middle East at that point what was your 9-11 experience
and what did you kind of see obviously not specifically operationally but what was the
overall culture shift after that attack yeah I mean I'm juxtaposing I mean literally for
the audience I can't we had a young child at the time we had uprooted navigated some
guilt about pulling your grandchild you know the grandchild to the parents on both sides
of our family you know as far away as Spain but we were there lived literally on the beach
in a I'm just kind of painting the picture I'm working in a naval hospital the philosophy
at the time pre-9-11 was hey just get the work done and go travel we're all you know
we all took this job overseas and the commanding officer of the hospital was phenomenal he's
like hey just make sure the work is done and I think we had traveled to about 19 countries
you know during our vacation time there and during the first one and a half years there
I mean sunflowers I would ride my bike to work I'm just trying to answer the question
like how to juxtapose this with the nightmarish scenario that then happens and then one afternoon
I'm you know walking in the hospital I see everyone huddled around televisions on the
quarterdeck near the main heart of the hospital and I paused and I looked and I saw the second
you know another plane hit I'm like oh my god it was all in it was surreal it was slow
motion and and you know after that initial shock at that point I think those of us in
uniform knew it's like okay this is life here in southern Spain and life in the military
life in the US in general is going to change markedly and I won't get into the details
but for the coming days and weeks afterwards obviously because of the way Rota was positioned
as the base I just described I mean it was clear we were ramping up for what was going
to be an extended engagement for sure so finish my last year there and then transition to
survival evasion resistance and escape seer school where you teach for those audience
members that don't know this is where we teach high risk of capture US assets or US uniform
members how to navigate survival evasion resistance and escape how to navigate captivity how to
procure water how to do celestial navigation all of that so I was the head psychologist
there for three years as we're training people how to go into harm's way and survive if bad
things happen so I want to hit a few of the kind of topics that I've got down here and
this is probably a good place to put them in so firstly the topic of stress inoculation
I know that seer has a big stress element with it you know the food and water the sleep
deprivation but this is a topic that's brought up sometimes in the fire service as well and
there's obviously a spectrum of ways that people are interpreting it from setting up
nightmarish scenarios and putting through people through hell and playing loud music
and screaming sounds and all the other things all the way through to you know the converse
the Disney version of what are some of the principles that you've used over these years
to build stress inoculation that could maybe be applied by a fire police EMS etc.
Yeah so stress inoculation I mean if for the audience if you just think about the inoculation
is a good word right or think vaccinations and I'm not being political pro or con vaccine
that's not what I'm trying to do here but back in the day when someone gets a vaccine
let's call it a flu vaccine the idea is that you're getting a little bit of a bad thing
in the hopes that your body when it's facing that real strain of flu or that real strain
of whatever that it has it can it can marshal a response to that immune response etc. so
the idea is to give a little bit of a bad thing in the hopes that when your body sees
that it copes better so now that's physical if we think about mental and the stress inoculation
the ideal behind the theoretical you know underpinnings are as if you can expose the
human being to what they're likely to see in a small amount of maybe bad then they have
a psychological response that copes better so the the most the high-end example of that
would be survival evasion resistance would be boot camp would be Navy SEAL training obviously
hell week these are really high-end things as well as obviously firefighter and and police
academy work as well the idea is can you expose incrementally the human being to things that
they're going to expose and then teach them or be exposed to and then teach them ways
to navigate through that there are parallels in business in sport as well right there are
a lot of great organizations out there liminal collective is one obviously that that you
can get these groups of experts together and bring businessmen or women or bring firefighters
or cops off duty through as well and they get exposed to these things so the whole idea
but I mean it's it's not only theoretically sound it's practically sound where people
make a mistake is it's not just putting people through hell in hopes that they are going
to navigate on their own ideally you want to put people and expose people through things
that they're likely to see with then sprinkling in ways that they can navigate and and be
successful in that but there needs to be forced attention there needs to be a little bit of
wow this is real and this sucks right in order in order for it to work properly so once in
a while someone suggests to me that we need to expose recruits to the horrors that we're
going to see in some way shape or form whether it's a you know photo collage or I mean I
don't know what the other ideas are is there any value to that kind of exposure when it
comes to some of these professions boy that's a great question I would have to defer to
I mean I my mind goes to some bad places there to be honest where you know you could end
up doing more harm than good it the key word that I think people forget is incremental
as well if you if you do too much too soon you're going to scare the hell out of people
or really expose their brain to too much that said the professions you're talking about
you know obviously firefighting obviously police obviously military these men and women
are very different than most because they're running towards danger right whereas most
most of humanity says oh god I'm out of here so it's there's not like a it's not Disneyland
right I mean they're seeing the under underbelly of society they're seeing death destruction
all of these things so it's it's if it's not going to be exposed with photos like you're
saying it ought to be exposed with mentors that can help guide and be honest about these
professions early on and what that means and how to more importantly and that's I think
where backgrounds like mine come in place you know how do we how do we take evidence
based research based tools and techniques that we know can improve performance in high
impact high leverage high stress environments if we can if we can teach people these tools
early then they at least have the tools to navigate through some of this or all of it
versus hey you're on your own let Darwin take his toll I mean come on that that's crazy
absolutely well that that's a good segue to something I wanted to ask you through pure
blind luck of starting a podcast seven years ago especially when I interviewed Jake Clark
who's the man behind Sabre Warrior I was enlightened to the fact that a lot of us that wear a uniform
had a pretty significant traumatic early life now what I've come to learn seven years later
is that that can be a beautiful thing this is this is my perspective I urge you to correct
me if I'm wrong on this but it seems to me that a lot of us become good soldiers firefighters
etc because of the trauma on our past however the the element that seems to either set us
up for success or maybe potential you know trauma later is whether that childhood trauma
has been processed prior to putting on the uniform so what is your perspective of the
the amount of childhood trauma that you are seeing if any in the men and women that you've
you know had the opportunity to work with and then talk to me about you know if unaddressed
what are the consequences and if it addressed you know can that become a strength can that
become resilience then so I'm going to answer this in a in a multi-pronged multifaceted
way and I'm I hope I hope I don't sound like too much of a nerd or a geek here but first
off let me just say I'm going to answer this carefully because I want to be clear as day
for me I in my answer I'm not I do I do not want to suggest that one has to come from
a heinous background in order to be a high performer in fire in police in the in the
military however let's talk about my 10 years with the SEALs okay as their psychologist
right I was active duty I'm not a SEAL obviously no way in hell I could ever be that good but
if Bud's if the hardest level of training is the first adversity that that SEAL candidate
has ever seen I'm not going to say it's impossible but it's extremely improbable and that's what
the data was suggesting I mean it was it was very very clear now where I need to be careful
and I mean no disrespect I when you say trauma that's that's where you lose me a little bit
instead I'm gonna say just hard things I think that when you and you know we have five four
family members who were cops on my wife's side on my side I have my dearest friends
are firefighters and we can get into that we we talked about a few in the book as well
I think that their trajectory their lens their identity their development their adolescence
they've just been exposed to a lot of either macro or micro failures and have learned ways
to navigate those now the underpinning the the under or I guess overarching question
that you're asking really gets me excited because there's a lot of work on kind of post
traumatic growth even though I'm moving away from the word trauma but I you know I had
a mentor once that said there are really three types of people you know we can boil down
psychology into three types of people in the world there are those who are victims there
are those who are survivors and those who are thrivers so whatever that difficulty is
and notice I'm not using the word trauma because for a lot of people it might be like I
missed a penalty kick as a nine-year-old when everyone was watching me we could have won
a championship for nine-year-olds and that can be traumatic for the individual and I'm
holding up hand quote you know finger quotes here or it can just be adversity now is that
person gonna say I'm a victim it was the ball's fault it was the winds fault it was the referee's
fault or they're gonna say hey I survived something pretty bad in my mind and I'm gonna
manifest that I'm gonna make sure that I am okay with that or ideally how is a person
gonna thrive through that adversity so when you're someone like me who's a clinical performance
psychologist I want to move people away from the victim mentality to either the survivor
or or thriver and I know I'm going way deep into your question here my answer is yes I
do believe you're asking me as a person and me as a professional what I've seen through
30 years roughly 25,000 touch points with some of the best performers on earth some
of which are in first responding community some of which are obviously in the military
I think that those individuals did not show up hence the book and I hate to bring in the
book but I firmly believe we chose the title on purpose learned excellence these people have
become really good at what they do through a life of navigating adversities micro and
macro adversities whether those are on in this in the classroom whether than the boardroom
whether you know on on the battlefield so let me pause there no well firstly I mean
that's that's a beautiful answer and I agree with you I mean the problem is we get stuck
in labels sometimes and I I think what's missing from certainly in the first responder community
and I'll be interested to see if it's the military as well but we kind of got hung up
on okay we smashed the stigma like okay well great now you accept that it's the thing what's
next and I think what's missing is the hope that is from post-traumatic growth and with
a lot of the people have come on the show a lot of them have had this amazing growth
you know after whenever it was and some of them you know had horrendous things happen
I mean parents murdered and you know growing up around addiction and sexual abuse and all
these other things so pretty significant difficulties to have to overcome but then they found ayahuasca
or horse you know equine therapy or whatever their kind of perfect storm of beautiful healing
modalities was and now they're a better person I think this is such an important conversation
because I've talked about this several times on the show I never really struggled deeply
like some of my brothers and sisters in uniform have I've never had a gun in my mouth I've
never been dragged into the world of addiction and I'm just a normal human being there's
nothing special about me at all but I grew up on a farm in England I grew up around horses
my dad was a healer he's a veterinary surgeon we had people from all walks of life come
through the farm you know so I had daylight I had nature I had all the things that we
identify now so by chance and I was one of five kids so what by chance I was given this
accidental environment to continuously process the fact that I almost died in a house fire
when I was four and my parents had a horrible divorce and there's another near-death moment
so there were things there were definitely things but it was like equally and opposite
there was these healing elements so it allowed me to function as a firefighter have my highs
have my absolute lows my divorce you know for example but never go down to that deep
pit that all of our men and women find ourselves and I think that when you reframe this as
the other side of this PTSD, PTS whatever you want to call it the other side of you
know this struggle that you're going through is not just oh you'll be all right but you
are going to be a stronger more resilient version of yourself to me that's the next
step in the mental health conversation.
I totally agree I mean we could maybe we're going to go there anyhow but I mean I for
the past probably 12 years even during some of my active duty time I've been out of the
Navy I retired in 2016 and you can see in the book as well we interview the former police
captain for I'm sorry the former police chief for Reno there's a firefighter from Philly
in there as well and I've spoken to a lot of these departments and agencies over the
years and PTSD always comes up and my response is the same not to sound like a bumper sticker
or cliche but I mean I think the PTSD symptoms are normal reactions to abnormal events I
want to say that again these symptoms are normal reactions to abnormal events the old
the old pieces of industry whether it's fire police military there was a stigma right and
I think that is slowly moving in absolutely the right direction we can talk about all
the things that have been done to help with that but at the end of the day I think what
you're alluding to James is you know you bring up your form example that's a great example
of those quote-unquote muscles for outlets whether it's light whether it's equine whether
it's just exercise whether it's sleep those muscles were were reinforced almost unintentionally
right I mean that you just had that equal I call it that ecosystem so I think what ideally
what you want people to understand is we can I call this evidence-based we can look at
evidence-based things and sprinkle that into the infrastructure of fire academies police
academies military boot camps all of that and continue with continuing education just
like we do with strength and conditioning just like we do with nutrition just like we
do with you know whatever so I'm excited because I look does PTSD exist of course I'm a clinician
I don't want to lose my license but there's a lot of this boogeyman narrative out there
that it's like no we can deal with it and there's a reason it happened I mean we were
I think we're starting to understand a heck of a lot more about it now than we have say
for example 10 years ago but it's not a showstopper it's it can be an absolute I think way to
vector and thrive as a result so I want to put an idea to you that kind of hit me I don't
know it's probably been a couple years now but because I had a kind of gypsy experience
as a firefighter start in the Miami area went to California for a few years worked for Anaheim
and then spent the last 10 in the Orlando area for two other departments I had to go
through all those new hire processes and three of the four I had to do a polygraph and I
said this I had to lie through a polygraph because I learned very early on that if I
told the truth about things that I'd done that I was immediately dismissed from the
process so this facade of wanting choir boys to be soldiers and firefighters is another
whole separate conversation but the other thing was the psychological test was the MMPI
for the Minnesota multi-phasic personality interview have I got that right?
Inventory, yeah.
Inventory, thank you and it's a standalone test so that's the only one that you do you
know thousands of questions you know do you like flowers do you like badgers do you like
touching kids do you like going on holiday and you're like what and as I talk to people
in your space now I'm discovering I mean I know for a fact that the polygraph is bullshit
because I lied my way through three of them and then you you know it's smoke and mirrors
getting you to admit to something and that's not me bragging it's just it was the only
way I was going to put a uniform on is to be dishonest in a profession I was staunchly
honest the rest of my life but the MMPI you learn doesn't have any value to truly discern
if someone is going to be a good first responder on its own so with that knowledge these departments
are spending arguably thousands on those two combined and then they obviously time with
the psychologist based on those results what is your perception of if they took that money
knowing that many of these people have these unaddressed traumas difficulties that they're
bringing into the profession that you instead use that for just making up a number five
or six counseling sessions through their first year so they have an opportunity to start
discussing some of the things that maybe were bothering them before they've normalized the
mental health conversation and you've removed to the barrier to entry because now they have
a go-to counselor from day one I think it's a reasonable idea I mean I you know we assessment
and selection the ANS piece that you're talking about I mean MMPI is is merely one of you
know dozens of tools out there that are that are valid they're reliable but it depends
on how it's it's like I'm trying to equate this as kind of a different a different analogy
like a tool like can I use a hammer to break a window can I use a hammer to break rocks
can I use a hammer to hammer a nail I mean tools a tool right so there's a time and place
for assessments I don't I'm not opposed to what you're saying at all I'm gonna go down
a different rabbit hole assessments are generally used for one of two reasons either to rule
someone out or rule someone in now it depends and I would be a fool to say that the fire
agencies and the police agencies I don't know until I sit down with that person who is that
gatekeeper and how they're interpreting that but I like the idea a lot of of resourcing
from the neck up in between the ears some of the evidence-based things that become culturally
part of a program I'm a obviously a big fan of that so I think there's a time and place
for assessment I'm not opposed to that I'm a big fan of assessments in general but there's
a caveat it depends what answer or what question you're trying to have answered so yeah so
the way I would look at it was your selection process would be the background check the
written test the physical test that we all go through so now you know am I fit enough
am I smart enough and am I you know good enough of a person I haven't been doing some of the
really horrendous stuff that allows me then to be a good firefighter and the MMPI seems
like it's a kind of box checking thing so god forbid James goes crazy like well we tested
him it's not our problem is kind of how I'm receiving it from both sides from the people
in uniform and the people that have been part of the psychological side that being said
what would be how would you advise the first responder professionals if up to this point
they've just been doing the MMPI is there a better gamut of tests that actually would
allow them to predict if someone was going to be a good first responder or not so it
depends how do I say this it depends the question that's being asked you just you I think you
asked it at the end if someone's going to be a good first responder or not generally
speaking I'm gonna generalize here okay I'm gonna I'm gonna caveat with a huge red line
I'm generalizing but generally speaking assessments are really good at they're better at predicting
failure than they are success let's just leave it at that I mean they can identify people
who have a low likelihood we found this with with the Navy SEALs as well the first job
I had during my 10 years with them was three years at Bud's where SEALs are made or you
know that that threshold of having to go through hell a week etc. and we found that we developed
a computerized special operations resiliency test and what that assessment was really good
at doing was predicting with incredibly good accuracy who was going to have a difficult
time making it through when you married those resiliency traits on top of performance traits
so a combination of the two so in other words people who are likely not going to have a
return on the investment of training as it were I know that sounds awful but that's the
way to look at that what you're saying I think is is there a way to look at traits one of
the words that I don't like James is I don't like the term weakness I much prefer the term
area for growth if we're gonna give an assessment let's identify some personality strengths
that this person has and moreover let's identify some areas for growth and then ultimately
how do we strengthen those muscles to make them a better whatever baseball football firefighter
business man or woman surgeon I don't care so instead I'm a bigger fan of not using assessments
to rule people out but instead as a snapshot to hey this is your nutritional profile right
if we take a blood work and we say hey James you need more vitamin b12 you need to eat
more celery you need blah blah blah that doesn't mean you're weak it just means this is a path
for you to perform better this is a model that seems to work beautifully in sport and
I'm not trying to make that transition but when I left when I retired from the military
obviously I took a job in the front office of the Dodgers and we were going to move over
the assessment selection and more importantly the development and enhancement programs that
we perfected in the military to now how do we identify and build a better baseball player
so if you're thinking about this and again a long-winded answer your question if you're
thinking about this for the fire and police communities let's identify a better way to
build not identify weakness and say no you can't but instead let's identify a profiling
system and maybe that's the wrong word that's you know going to get me cancelled if I say
profile but a profiling system on how do we identify the areas where James can grow and
then give him an evidence-based framework readings podcasts a framework of power points
and whatnot it doesn't matter I'm adding we can get into the details I'm agnostic to what
those look like but how are you going to strengthen those resiliency muscles because I think we
kind of know that firefighters and police officers are going they're going to see some
pretty hard things and we need to strengthen those muscles so see I love that and I agree
with that completely because when I I just was part of a study in November and it was
um IHMC I don't know if you ever came across them but they work with the SEALS and NASA
and DARPA and all the all the agencies and high performers um and that was kind of put
up how because we there was a local businessman that put money up because we lost several
first responders in my county where I live to suicide and the conversation got to well
how can we weed out the people that are going to kill themselves basically is what the conversation
was and I'm thinking while I'm you know biting my tongue um or how do we help those people
grow how do we you know help them as we talked about the post-traumatic growth because I
would argue that storied childhood is an absolute superpower for a first responder for a soldier
and again like you said it doesn't have to be but if you have it the empathy the resilience
that you develop overcoming things can become an incredible strength if you are given the
tools to actually grow from it so this is precisely I mean I'm smiling this is precisely
and I hate to and I'm going to say this this is precisely so keep in mind I did 20 years
in the military thousands of elite performers my last four years three years there I started
really working closely and dearly with both fire and police agencies and we can get into
the details as to who and when and why some of that is in the book probably because one
of my dearest friends in the world was a sheriff's deputy and I'll come back to your thing but
I want to say this and one of the things I noticed as we raised our kids together literally
lives right down the street from us as we raised our kids together I was active duty
in the military and seeing you know our men and by the way and women who were doing incredibly
heroic and difficult things during deployments etc and seeing the toll that was taking but
then they would come back and we would we would have programs in play and for the most
part and again for the most part I believed in the programs that we had created for naval
special warfare in the SEAL community and all of the support staff etc but then I would
juxtapose that with being on a tee ball or soccer field with one of my dear friends who
again we raised our kids together who happens to be a sheriff's deputy or happened to be
he's retired now and I was blown away James I was literally this is how naive I was even
though I was working in police agencies and then I was blown away at how he was always
deployed and here are my quotes my finger quotes unlike the SEALs and again they do
incredible work and the most impactful valuable work I think that the world will ever know
or maybe not know short of that though when they come back they can decompress for a while
and get on training cycles for the next 18 months before they deploy for another six
and it dawned on me that these policemen and women these firefighters they're they're deployed
always like that and we don't even need to get into the human stress response and the
hypothalamic pituitary adrenal cortex and adrenal burnout but I was I was appalled and
floored at that so now how do we come full circle so I spent again 30 years of my career
roughly 25,000 touch points with all of these men and women and for me before I call it
quits and I retire and I'm done and I just want to sail somewhere and sit on a beach
with my lovely wife this was the genesis behind the book and the reason I'm bringing this
up isn't to talk about the book it was I wanted a reference to what I believe a framework
that could be applied to anyone in high stress high performance situations and it really
focuses on identity focuses on mindset really impacts adversity tolerance tactics balance
recovery to really strengthen these muscles that we're talking about hey if you are going
to be a high end performer run away from the narrative of he or she was born that way it's
complete nonsense it is how and what they've learned along the way that make them good
at what they do but the where the vacuum was is there's very little that I saw that I was
satisfied with like hey this is a good not a be-all end-all but a very good reference
to how we can strengthen some of these above the neck in between the ears muscles starting
with identity reputation mindset all of that so sorry no don't say sorry that was beautiful
and this is the thing I mean I've had so many people from the special operation operations
community talk about how much they admire the first responders now firstly a lot of
us forget that they're our heroes yet when they're deployed who's protecting their families
we are the ones but secondly they've made that observation over and over and over again
when I go back to the UK Australia America wherever they're from there's no reminders
of what we did really you know it's a completely different topography a completely different
community that we're in but most first responders especially the volunteer firefighters they
live and work they run on their friends you know when it's 9-1-1 you know it could be
that their local farm burning you know whatever it is and for a lot of us if I drive through
Anaheim if I drive through Orlando certain corners I still see the faces of the people
you know and they don't have that so another area I also want to put in that I don't think
the average person understands is the immense sleep deprivation that our first responders
encounter as well so I'm gonna gonna open another entire rabbit hole now I had Dr. Kurt
Parsley I don't know if you you cross paths he's a very dear friend we worked together
for three years actually four years with the seals and very I mean I took we talk probably
once every week I mean he's amazing yeah I literally credit him with the inception of
this podcast because I heard him on barbell shrugged years ago and I was just driving
to work you know sleep deprived as always just why are we not talking about this how
how can I have been an athlete I'm an ex-phys major how do I not know about sleep deprivation
this is this is crazy so Kurt was I think episode six of this podcast and he's been
on three three other times since but when I started listening to the impact of sleep
deprivation acutely on performance and then chronically on disease it was everything that
we experienced and a lot of what we call the line of duty deaths they're actually in fires
in traffic accidents I'm starting to question how many of those were sleep deprivation and
then the cancers the suicides the addictions I mean all the things globally in the human
body you start realizing that sleep deprivation is a huge element too so massive subject but
I'd love to open the door of you know performance and then obviously the parallel conversation
of actual health so first off I'm always going to defer I mean Kirk is literally a world
expert there are some incredible I mean Peter Peter Attia as well I mean some of these men
and women out there are way more to cutting edge than I am but I'm an all-in believer
I'll push the all believe I believe button all day long on on the power of sleep you
know the World Health Organization years ago called shift work a carcinogen and that's
a fancy word for a cancer causer so I mean when you talk in it and now I'm dumb but I'm
not stupid I often say that like shift or we we can't just eliminate shift work right
but we can really think about how we're titrating that and how we're shifting the shift work
etc etc shifting the shifts of the shift workers etc so it all starts and ends with sleep I
think it's the one someone asked me a year ago on on a different interview like what's
the most important thing I think sleep is the most important rejuvenative phase and
thing that the human being experiences and when we start to mess with that man oh man
and then you start to talk about things like alcohol caffeine and how they have they chip
away at normal sleep cycles as well so it's a again it's I hate to use this word again
but it's a multifaceted issue I think that most and watch this we want to see me get
cancelled in hate mail most things can be I think solved pretty well if the human being
eats well hydrates has social connections exercises and gets sleep we are built in such
a way that we can recover from a lot of things if we just focus on those five and sleep is
that fifth one yeah so I mean we could talk about sleep literally all day long that's
it's so important and it is built into I mean we we built in very specific programs that
I'm sure Kirk talked about within the seals when I was their psychologist Kirk and I work
hand in hand he was the physician I was a psychologist and we were building those programs
for how seals were redeploying and circadian rhythms and shifting circadian rhythms and
then when I transitioned to professional sport again I want to talk about first responders
today because that's your audience but most of the athletes that we watch on television
a lot of those athletes play mostly in the evenings or at night right and then they finish
their game their adrenaline is high they eat they work out they go back to their family
so their circadian rhythms are messed up as well not to mention they then travel all over
the United States to play in the stadiums or fields of their choice different time zones
different circadian shifts etc so yeah it's a it's a big big issue for sure so what I
think the difference is between a lot of the the special operations groups are spoken to
and police fire is they have Kirk Parsley's so for example Kirk talks about doing the
blood work you know and seeing you know these these uber tactical athletes with blood work
of an 80 year old woman and he's scratching his head and then a year later he figures
out the the ambient epidemic is happening in his men in that particular example and
then as you said switching lifestyle elements and training times and those kind of things
and that alone getting them off ambient and now that blood work returns to how it should
be the American fire service of a hundred years ago did sit around fire stations smoking
cigars playing cards and waiting for a fire the American fire service of 2024 most urban
and suburban departments are running pretty much 24 hours straight now there might be
periods of short sleep obviously very poor quality sleep because you're waiting to have
the shit scared out of you by the next alarm but they are working when you average it out
24 hour shift with a 48 hour period and then 24 hours for 10 20 30 years of their life
what's happening now on top of the massive hiring crisis because I think people are realizing
how detrimental it is in this internet age as you said when we were young you couldn't
google what are the health effects to a firefighter and now you can but they are just absolutely
bleeding money on overtime filling these holes you know workman's comp claims medical retirements
line of duty deaths lawsuits from mistakes we make because we're so tired and so it's
a complete knee-jerk reactive element and what I'm trying to get you know our profession
to understand is that if you put more rest and recovery between shifts so an extra 24
hour period which should bring it to a 42 hour work week which everyone else works anyway
we would then I think hugely impact the mental health crisis the obesity the you know the
testosterone issues all the things that we're seeing because it mirrors what Kirk was seeing
you know with his own eyes with you you know whatever it was 17 years ago yeah so and
again I'm gonna always I'll always pay homage and defer to those experts in you know psychophysiology
etc but if we just talk about the human stress response for a minute I'm gonna bring it back
to what you just said and I wish I had a chart where your audience could see as well but
we'll hopefully all verbally explain this the human stress response the hypothalamic
pituitary adrenal cortex the we call that the HPA axis okay so the HPA axis when a stressor
happens whether it's a fire alarm whether it's a grizzly bear whether it's a strike
out whether it's a screaming person road rage whatever that is the dominoes start to fall
and certain things happen so you interpret that and then all of a sudden cortisol adrenaline
glucocorticoids get pumped into the bloodstream then a cascade of things happen there's a
physiological response to stress which is vasoconstriction increased heart rate blood
migration away from the extremities towards the center of the body to protect the human
organs digestion starts to slow down because the body basically does a hierarchical okay
I don't need to digest that hamburger right now I need to get out of the way the grizzly
bear or the fire whatever it may be gunfight whatever it may be the cognitive effects are
also equally as powerful right that affects the executive functions of the brain so those
are those higher end functions that allow us to think abstractly problem-solve if then
thinking think critically so those go pardon pardon you know to hell in a handbasket pardon
my French so when we think about that human stress response of an influx of adrenaline
and cortisol into the blood and and my fingers kind of moving up this chart imagine a chart
where all of a sudden you have this huge pop up of these chemicals that we know affect
physiology and we know affect psychology and cognitive functions if we take the human being
out of the stressor we again have adapted over time through nutrition through hydration
through connection through exercise and here we go again sleep to start to metabolize that
stress response so that peak that immediate influx starts to be metabolized in the human
being and they come back down to whatever their baseline normal functioning was here's
the problem and this ties beautifully into what you just said and it's what we saw in
naval special warfare with our operators as well and Kirk I'm sure probably spoken of
this already when we have that influx of a our guys who are deployed they go out and
they do incredible missions literally every night so you have this pop of cortisol pop
of adrenaline which we know affects physiology and psychology and then it starts to metabolize
as they come back and they try to sleep during the day because they're working at night okay
we haven't even talked about the circadian shift and then before it formally metabolizes
and they get back down to a baseline level boom it pops up again because they're redeployed
with another stressor now let's make it in your world firefighting or police officers
police men and women you have a fire you see horrible things death destruction and then
you get back and it's metabolizing if you do those five things I talked about I'm not
simplifying it but I'm trying to like those five core elements if we focus on those we
can recover from most things beautifully okay boom cortisol spike boom boom so what we start
to see is the baseline or what we the experts will call adrenal burnout and I started to
see what we called I think someone just wrote a book on an operator syndrome or what I like
to call in the police work and the police agencies I work with blue drift we start to
see incrementally things like a cumulative subtle change in personality right because
they get irritable and they're not getting the proper sleep emotionally numb cynicism
sarcasm dark humor pessimism just in the psychology part because they haven't been allowed time
they haven't been afforded time to let the body repair and let the mind repair itself
and I know that sounds simplistic but it's really powerful it makes sense right back
to cavemen and women right if you see a t-rex or you see a grizzly bear and you and you're
lucky enough to survive that heinous trauma back to the very first part of this podcast
then you go back to the cave and you rest you recover you tell stories about that you
unpack that you get it off your chest while you survived there's a community you can educate
others about what to do if we ever see that t-rex again but if every time you go out to
forge for food you see a t-rex and you're not afforded the ability to recover you're
going to see a markedly different caveman or cavewoman so anyhow yeah no that's that's
absolutely beautiful and I'm actually you said adrenal burnout I want to put something
to you and it's funny because I think I told Ted because we were on 7x I've skydived twice
in my life absolutely terrified before the first time I will put my hand on my heart
I went to McDonald's and went into the bathroom and God help the people that clean that bathroom
after but I was really scared and then ended up flinging myself while being attached to
a dude he flung us out of the airplane in New Zealand and by the time I landed I was
ready to become an instructor it was so much fun so it was that fear of the unknown but
I remember the immense fear the immense adrenal response I had that time now fast forward
literally about 20 years later now we're in Cairo and they told us so we're going to get
a free free skydive the difference was when we jumped out the plane the plane was doing
a hundred and whatever miles an hour so it wasn't a drop it was a glide well this time
they're like oh by the way you're jumping out of a Russian helicopter so I'm like well
this is going to be really interesting because I feel like my adrenal glands are just spent
now you know of course physiologically there's still an element but I really feel like they're
diminished what a great way to test it I know how scared I was the first time I did a skydive
now we're going to plummet from this helicopter and to add it's funny to add it insult the
injury my instructor forgot my glasses so I had to raw dog it all the way down as well
but the moment we dropped and I'm expecting this big adrenal spike there was nothing I
mean the same as we're sitting here now it was bizarre so I've had people poo poo kind
of adrenal fatigue adrenal burnout to me what I experienced there's no real other explanation
I lived in a high stress level for 14 years in uniform and you know and obviously the
shift work as well but what are you seeing as far as it is it is it actual you know almost
like a exogenous trt element whereas a diminished physiological response or what are the kind
of underlying elements to a dream or now to the you know the phd physiologist or you know
you know some of the some of the physicians as well look the data is clear like as an
interpreter of data as a as a guy who can read research I mean anyone who's poo pooing
the the the the fact that adrenal burnout doesn't exist I mean these might be a hop
skip and a jump away from flat earthers as well I mean you're not going to convince I
mean I'll just leave it at that so I will say we can make this tactically relevant if
we talk about firefighters and police and military or athletes or businessmen and women
and the reason this becomes tactically relevant is look at it this way one of the physiological
effects of a stress response so whether it's road rage whether it's a spousal argument
whether it's striking out with bases loaded I don't care what the how you define stress
but when stress happens okay we know the physica I go back to this the physiological response
vasoconstriction increased heart rate rapid shallow breath but here's a tactically relevant
thing that if I'm a leader in fire and I'm a leader in police and I'm a leader in military
this one I go oh okay now I can make this relevant to my operators the people who are
fighting fires for a living and one of the things that happens during the human stress
response is called blood migration so because vasoconstriction happens the veins are constricting
it's forcing blood towards the core of the body from the periphery so blood is moving
from my hands and arms and my legs to the core towards the core element of the body
the reason it's doing that is it's protecting it's protective right it's it's basically
saying okay back to the grizzly bear I can lose an arm or a leg but I'm going to keep
the vital organs supplied with blood so that we keep the organism alive why am I talking
about this because tactically speaking if we go back to the seals or people that shoot
for a living right I need them to have fine motor control they need to learn ways to control
the human stress response because blood needs to be in their weapons which are their hands
and their fingers to pull the trigger and in their executive frontal lobe of their brain
to make critical decisions shoot no shoot now we make this about fire police it doesn't
take you long to figure out that as a firefighter I need the firefighter I assume I'm not I
don't want to offend because I'm not a firefighter but I assume I need he or she to have absolute
vascularization in the hands and legs and arms as well as the brain so to me pardon
the pun if you're not teaching techniques and you don't believe in techniques that are
evidence-based to teach your firefighters to perform then literally you're robbing of
a tactic you're robbing them of a tactical advantage to not only control the longevity
of their health but actually to put out the fires I mean that's let's just make this
simple I need the blood in the hands arms and legs and brains of the people that do
this work for a living so yeah and so the adrenal fatigue basically comes from us constantly
sub well should I say subconsciously dampening our stress response so we're able to function
at a higher level and or I agree yes and or the the the adrenal cortex can only pump out
so much because it's not being allowed the time afforded I shouldn't say a lot it's not
being afforded the time to recover with those big five proper nutrition hydration connection
exercise and most importantly sleep the body will heal with proper sleep most things beautiful
all right with another area we talked about you know the the mental health conversations
and stigma one kind of aha moment I had a few years ago was if you have a little resistance
you can come from a different approach and still basically affect the same outcome and
the person who spawned that for me Logan Gelbrick who is was a major league baseball player
and he was talking about one of his you know flow state moments and he underlined to have
to get in the flow state and again please this was years ago I'm probably butchering
this but he was saying you had to have you know the practice that the tens of thousands
of reps you had to have stress but you had to have a clear mind and it really resonated
with me because say you've got the person who pooh-poohs the mental health conversation
well let's talk about the firefighter as far as performance or the paramedic or the seal
all right well you don't believe PTSD or you know stress or as you said overcoming difficulties
is a real thing but meditation you know whatever the therapies are are also going to allow
you to perform at a higher level so talk to me about mindfulness and some of these other
practices with the elite performance that you've worked with even if we're not talking
about overcoming you know challenges or a busy mind from a mental health perspective
talk to me about the flow state or the pursuit of flow state and a high performer instead
yeah so flow I'm just going to put it out there this is a controversial term I tend
to be a little bit on the fence here research wise and from what I've seen I'm leaning towards
flow let's put it that way but I still am on the fence Stephen Kotler talks about this
other researchers talk about this as well I guess maybe it's a semantics issue here
I am more comfortable with complete presence than I am this term flow because some of the
flow stuff that I've seen is just it's a little bit spooky to be honest but I do like where
I think mindfulness we did one controlled study in a peer-reviewed journal with mindfulness
in Marines as well mindfulness it absolutely works I mean it's clear yoga works the reason
a lot of these practices work is because it forces presence you know there's a lot of
good meta-analyses and studies out there to suggest that most high performers are you
know 60% of our thoughts are roughly in the future so we're very future-based and that's
why we're successful to begin with right we have deadlines we have routines we're forward
looking we can see danger before it affects us so I don't like to tell people to not think
about the future but where focus or flow I think happens is becoming fully as fully present
as you can in the moment or the experience that you're experiencing and I think that's
why mindfulness is so powerful and so addicting to a lot of people as a technique that helps
kind of catalyze the mindset of whatever they're doing in that moment so I'm a big fan in
general yeah yeah that seems to be the way you sell it to to some of the other people
it is just simply performance okay you know if if you want to be at the higher level like
you said whether that's cold flow state or presence is exactly that like you know not
being distracted by everything else when you're myopic on that thing that you've got to do
that you need a calm mind and so if you have unaddressed trauma struggles whatever you
know label you want to put on it that is going to be detrimental to your performance as a
police officer maybe that's what makes you make the bad decision for the teenager reaching
for his license and you think he's reaching for a gun so I think this is a really important
conversation not only from the mental health perspective but the performance as well and
again you add in sleep deprivation now you're kind of you know swimming upstream in the
first place I agree we talk about this in the book we have a couple chapters but one
in particular really dedicated to talking about how we how how we catalyze different
mindsets for every role that we play and if you think about fire police I mean a lot of
these men and women obviously are partners they're they have children their neighbors
their church members as well so where I think the word I really like here is is if we can
use pre and post performance routines to help kickstart and and catalyze a mindset that
forces presence that's why routines exist that's why these pre performance routines
if you're a baseball player you have a walk-up song am I saying that each firefighter or
each police officer police men and women need a walk-up song not necessarily but they do
they ought to I shouldn't say need they ought to think about a very structured pre performance
routine for okay and we have a firefighter who talks about one of these in the book actually
he's a he's a volunteer firefighter out just outside of Philly in a small town called Narborth
on David Wurzel and a brilliant example of how these performance routines helped kind
of kickstart and here it is force presence if you if you have a certain routine it's
going to force you to be more present and I think it actually comes close to kickstarting
what what you might or others might refer to as a flow state as well so have you ever
come across the technology newcom I have not what is oh my goodness it's funny there's
several things foundation training which we talked about before we hit record amazing
for back health but newcom it was involved somewhere I don't know if it was dev group
but it was that their technology was somewhere but they basically have neuroacoustic and
it's not not the beats even it's the the foundation is almost 30 years ago there was an incredibly
intelligent scientist who we had in the US who passed away just a few years ago but he
identified the frequencies that the brain was at at certain stress levels and then I
think that took him 15 plus years and then he figured out how to actually manipulate
the brain through earphones to get you know to up regulate or down regulate and again
you know there's there's so much out there and okay it's another snake oil thing I can
tell you hands down I am I am hugely skeptical of many many things but it's not only helped
me my wife uses it my son's use the sleep version every night my mom uses it and just
said that her Portuguese housekeeper was literally doing it when I called her because she was
having anxiety but the reason I bring this up it's so hard to punctuate just as you as
you mentioned a police officer a paramedic a dispatcher a firefighter the end of their
shift with high stress and God knows what we've seen and done to walking through the
door as mom dad you know whatever relationship you have and the new calm has a 20 minute
they call a power nap where you literally throw on a sleep mask you could be in your
car in the bunk room of a fire station wherever take 20 minutes and it I mean it genuinely
down regulates everything and I think it's such a beautiful way of punctuate in between
work and then going home again I like it I just wrote down notes as you're talking I'll
definitely look it up one of the things that we talk about in addition to I mean this is
a perhaps you know I'll kick the tires and I'll look at it more one of the things we
talk about a very simple hack if you will is to have the member really document the
top four to six roles that they play so I'm gonna pretend you know I'm Eric the firefighter
I'm Eric the husband I'm Eric the father and really identify keep it simple three words
that you think you need to perform optimally in the mindset of that role so as a firefighter
I need these I need to really focus on these three words for the optimal mindset for performance
as a father these are the three words as a husband these are the three words and to really
the hack it's really powerful as there's a chief marketing executive in the book that
we interviewed that talks about how this changed her life and it's just a simple mantra as
she was moving from her marketing job in New York literally at the end of the day to be
a mom and to be a wife usually I mean simply using and repeating three words in her mind
forced her to say okay now I'm gonna focus on the mindset I need to perform ideally performance
wise as a mother and that helps so maybe that coupled with new com or whatever is a way
to the whole point is there's how do we catalyze a mindset for the role that we're going to
play now which by the way forces presence so when you were talking to Ryan on the podcast
and you were obviously really diving deeply into the book what I loved was you touched
on identity and you talked about amateur versus professional and it's something that I'm hoping
he'll come on the show one day but Steven Pressfield wrote an amazing book called the
war of art which I read before right in my latest book and it was so powerful because
he and this is something I'm struggling with because I'm still an amateur writing because
I haven't gone all in and I want to get to scheduling and time management with you in
a minute as well but he described that an amateur identifies as that thing they're all
in and a professional knows how to separate what we do and I just was such a great parallel
to the firefighter who becomes only a firefighter and forgets that they are the husband the
father etc so talk to me about your perspective of the amateur versus the professional and
these identity roles that you just talked about sort of the quotes that I use in the
book is amateurs focus on outcomes professionals focus on process or processes and I think
that what you're alluding to in my career that probably that the saddest things I've
seen to be honest not the most dire but just like emotionally makes me sad are these world
class performers whether they're military fire police athletes who have spent most of
their identity focusing on what they do they've become what they do and they forget that who
they are is markedly different what they do is a piece of who they are but when that morphs
man oh man that's a tough one and we all see that those are the folks that retire and then
have a really difficult time whether they're athletes fire police again I don't a magnetic
as to the role so I one of the things you're bringing up I think is very relevant here
is you know how do we carefully monitor those different roles that we play and how are we
feeding and watering those and falling back on some of those to make sure that we have
we're built on more than just one pillar of what we do I think the amateur also rushes
to do a lot of things the professionals are very deliberate and it's ironic because you
and I began early on in this podcast talking about different modalities for sport and youth
compared you know Europeans compared to Americans and we talked about the difference between
specialized which it seems to be very American versus generalized which generally pun intended
seems to be more European per the Norwegian studies etc. I will say this that when we're
young we want extreme exposure to a lot of things young firefight young you know pre
firefighter pre police exposure exposure exposure but truly professionalizing is then being
very deliberate not necessarily think of an athlete I work with the number one female
surfer in the world currently and she's at a point now where she's not going to go out
and just ride waves for eight hours that doesn't make sense like when she was young and she's
five you want the brain which is a neuroplastic ride as much as you can try as different thing
go play tennis good whatever but now as a professional the professionals start to hone
and they're extremely deliberate on what they're doing every day and what it is they're focusing
on improving so I think that's an also an overriding statement to not only do the amateurs
focus on outcomes when they should be focusing on processes but the amateurs focus on just
a bias towards action in general which is wrong right there should be the focus on the
right action why am I doing what I'm doing today how am I trying to improve my craft
just ever so incrementally today in one area not 25 so another thing that you were talking
about which kind of ties into this was feedback and I think this is really pertinent circles
around our social media conversation earlier as I've matured I've realized that I'm only
interested in feedback from people that I respect and it can be I'm shit I'm fine as
long as it's from someone that is worthy hearing to it I was literally just talking to a friend
of mine who's Palestinian American one of the most beautiful human beings you will ever
meet I mean he's done so much relief work in Syria and all kinds of places and he was
as you can imagine there's a lot of negative stuff when images are posted from Gaza at
the moment where atrocities are it's not politics there are innocents on both sides of this
conflict being killed and that's an absolute truth and he was getting wound up by these
comments and I'm like you you've got to think about who who are you allowing in you know
do you value that that opinion in the first place but that's obviously a more extreme
version talk to me again about about the feedback because I love the way that you framed this
not all feedback is necessarily going to be valuable to an athlete or a responder hundred
percent I'm going to create more hate mail there's a lot of hate mail going to come my
way for sure here I think that I say this often if I had I'm going to be I'm going
to try to be polite every time I open pick your favorite social media media for LinkedIn
whatever it is if I had a nickel for every time I see a talking head that has no business
talking about the discipline they're speaking of again I'm going to always defer to the
experts right as I've said that repeatedly through this podcast but nowadays you just
need a thirty dollar microphone and an internet connection and you can call yourself an expert
in anything like literally without there's there's no filter there's no oversight there's
no anything so I would ask the listener we talk about this in the book I think it's a
healthy way to approach this or who's on your board of directors pick three to five people
and ideally no offense it probably shouldn't be a spouse although that's you know maybe
the next rung down but literally people who don't have an emotional vested interest to
tell you the right things or tell you the stuff you want to hear the people are I think
mentors are good maybe coaches maybe co-workers from a different department who can speak
your language who understand the stressors and the the architecture of what's going on
day to day and I think getting we you know Alan and I in the book we talk about is the
feedback valid vetted and trusted meaning five by valid is does the person have a background
where when they give me feedback they can actually it makes sense they they can they
know they have a background that actually has validity it's vetted it's filter like
the I know this person has they they come from the right background they've walked the
walk etc and it's coming with the right intent so the trust I think I trust that they're
going to give me the hard stuff that I don't want to hear not just the yeah Eric you're
doing great we bring up a great example in the book and I'll I'll divorce myself of a
first responder example here was a professional athlete who is going through a pretty significant
slump and it was in Los Angeles and anyone who watches sports knows of this figure and
was going through a pretty substantial slump and went into a Starbucks and we talk about
this in the book the barista example and the barista noticed who he was noticed obviously
that he's in a slump because the media is talking about it and apparently this barista
had played this person's sport in high school so the barista made it a point to come around
the coffee counter and tell him exactly what he was doing wrong and how the footwork was
wrong in his opinion as a barista so it's funny you're smiling I'm kind of chuckling
but what isn't funny is then that player came to our facility and for the next week and
a half almost two weeks demanded from the coaches that he make a change to his footwork
because of the feedback he had received from a barista remember sometimes when we're in
a slump whether that's an emotional physical personal performance there's a natural bias
towards action I need to do something to get out of it as opposed to am I taking a stepwise
reasonable approach to making sure that the feedback I'm given with all due respect to
a barista that person's great at making coffee which I love but I'm not sure that's the most
valid vetted feedback avenue or stream that could have that player could have afforded
so I think it's a very visceral example of how important how important it is to make
sure we have that board of directors that we can check in and then most importantly
James that we only make one change at a time and then measure that because if I change
everything or I change five things and I start to perform to my liking and my peers or my
boss is liking then it's unclear as to which of those five led to the change so I think
there ought to be more of an empirical science based approach to okay James is going to give
me feedback because he walks the walk he's a firefighter I need some feedback and I'm
going to take what he tells me one thing I'm gonna make a change and see if there's performance
or emotional or psychological changes whatever it may be if I get into it and I'm gonna go
skiing next week for a week to our place in Montana if I get into a skiing accident God
forbid and I tear my ACL I'm not gonna go to a barista I'm just not I mean I'm gonna
go to a barista to get a coffee but I'm gonna go to someone who knows what they're doing
to repair my leg and give me feedback on what I did wrong and how to repair that so absolutely
it's funny just total tangent I just saw on social media a guy that was backwards skiing
so the chances of him skiing past this particular person were I mean one in god knows how many
but he discovered a snowboarder completely buried upside down just the edge of their
board sticking out and was luckily a well-prepared guy his fitness you could see I mean that
was a big peak key as well because I can't imagine being there finding the person they
die because you weren't fit enough which again you know I talk about that in uniform you
know lives depend on us but he happened to have the you know the shovel and everything
and end up getting this person out but my god I mean the talk about psychology what
that person must have been thinking buried in what must have been about four or five
feet of snow knowing down well that he's way off piece and the chances of that single ski
are not only passing him but seeing the tip of his snowboard I mean absolutely incredible
wow yeah crazy story yeah so all right well then let's get to the book itself so you mentioned
about you know your your neighbor the the sheriff's deputy being somewhat of an inspiration
you have this story career you've worked with some of the you know the most elite warfighters
on the planet you work with world champion sporting teams what made you write learned
excellence and then let's kind of unpack what people find between the covers yeah so for
me it came down to probably fatigue we talked about adrenal fatigue I had mental fatigue
of just hearing in every corner in every direction I was looking that I can never do it the narrative
of I can never do it he or she is doing because they were born that way and I'll be the first
to say there are some anatomical advantages to certain trait disciplines for sure like
you know I a giraffe for example can reach fruit higher on a tree than an elephant for
example so my point is though when you unpack and we did so in this book learned excellence
we interviewed 32 of the world's best performers in their craft or in their discipline ranging
from CIA Navy SEALs firefighters police Cirque du Soleil acrobats neurosurgeons congressmen
ballroom dancers big wave surfers attorneys neurosurgeon we just tried to get a broad
kind of brush approach of what I think most reasonable people would say yeah that person
is wow yeah I know who that is Carly Lloyd Nathan Chen I mean people are going to know
who these people are and then when you hear their stories it becomes clear as day I just
did this for 25,000 encounters right over 30 years but we use 32 as a prime example
that there's a framework in place that we can accelerate learning and accelerate a lot
of these disciplines I mean that book learned excellence it's mental disciplines for leading
and winning from the top you know world's top performers so it's what are they doing
or what do they do on a regular basis to navigate and to incrementally improve and navigate
adversity focus on their identity catalyze mindsets balance and recover so partnered
with a group a former Google executive 16 years at Google Alan Eagle who had written
two bestsellers and I like that business vertical a lot so obviously I have the military side
I have the first responder exposure I have the sport exposure I wanted to bring in business
and make it a consumable I guess the last thing I'll say about the book is I'm most
proud I think of it being practical actionable and consumable to anyone and that was the
goal like how do we take complex psychological theories complex research and mix in some
of that with really good stories from people and make it consumable where anyone can move
the needle of their own performance after reading it so that was the goal I want to
get to some of the takeaways and I mean I'm already intrigued I really am I mean all that
the way that you've described the people in the book is the way that I look at the guests
on this podcast I am a firefighter I have firefighters on here but I have boy soldiers
and Navy SEALs and neuroscientists and all the people because again that Venn diagram
you get that beautiful overlap but before we get to what you found amongst all these
high performers and obviously the tens of thousands that you've seen with your own eyes
what are some of the the fallacies or myths that maybe some of these talking heads are
out there you know pushing out into the world that actually don't align with your findings
in your book and your work so one of the fallacies that I halfway agree with is their their brains
and their approach and their mindset or their psychology is different it is I mean you're
like you can talk to neurophysiologists and you can you know take the brains of elite
SEALs elite firefighters I mean you can find studies up and down the internet that are
valid research studies that the brains are different the problem is is the brains developmentally
become different we had we haven't taken any people from from birth and followed them with
you know neurophysiological longitudinal blood work to see okay so I think that that's I'm
getting deep here but one of some of the noise I sometimes hear back to your comment is that
well they're just different they're different but they've become that way by learning and
by incremental failure and by failing forward and by getting and receiving feedback and
by using techniques to make sure that their human stress response doesn't become overloaded
like we've talked about where it's adrenal fatigue they are focusing on having fun and
not making it a chore they are focusing on connection they are focusing on balance so
there's a lot of again that might the chief noise I hear by far is you just have to appreciate
this beauty that's you know in this discipline as a once a generation beauty and it's no
it's noise anyone can do what any of these men and women and they'll tell you the same
thing you don't need to hear it from Eric Potter at right you can hear it from themselves
in the book they'll tell you to a person they've become this way over time so the profession
that I was a part of the way that you rise the the promotional ladder is a series of
exams and my observation and again not you know tarring everyone with the same brush
there are some phenomenal leaders whether they're wearing chief spugles or whether they're
still a firefighter but there's there's a promotion without any human development with
any real inherent leadership skills so you again between the the business world the sporting
world the military world what are you seeing as far as rank versus leadership
rank is easy leadership is hard there's them there's my bumper sticker statement I think
leadership is yeah leadership is not that there's a lot of things there that are learned
over time through proper mentoring etc delegation you know giving and receiving feedback I will
say you're asking a hard question but I'll give you a perhaps a deeper harder answer
especially with leaders now we talk about elite performers in general I've been able
I've been lucky enough to work with thousands over 30 years but the leaders among those
a little bit different and for me this isn't in the book and I wish it had been maybe it'll
be in a second book who knows but there really are I call them kind of a four horseman there
are four core characteristics that I notice not only in talking to these NBA coaches the
police chiefs that there are four core things that most of them are have doubled and tripled
down on one of them is emotional intelligence and by emotional intelligence we can get academic
here and geek out on what the definition is are you in touch with your own emotions can
you have the radar to understand the emotions of the people around you and can you balance
those etc etc I simplify this and I call it feel can you read a room and can you feel
the person in front of you can you feel the atmosphere can you bounce that off of your
own stuff and be emotionally intelligent to navigate whatever decisions need to be made
so feel okay our emotional intelligence is one the second one is one of my favorites
of the force called reflective thinking are the and I think I would invite your audience
to to really do a gut check here and ask yourself think of the best leaders that you've ever
had and I'd be willing to bet you and I'm not a better here but we willing to bet you
he or she is quite reflective and by reflective I mean think of a chess player by the time
a chess player is making a move he or she has thought of two or three counter moves
that can be made meaning they are very strategic and they don't have here it is again a bias
towards or a rush towards action they want to survey everything and then make the right
decision for the right reason before they execute a decision or an action so good leaders
I have found and I've seen this in the ones some of them we interview in the book as well
they're very reflective people with low reflective thinking may say or do something very fast
but by and large they say to themselves afterwards sheesh I wish I'd given that more thought
I didn't think about that angle so emotional intelligence reflective thinking the third
is empathy and now I'm going to get a little touchy feely right but I the ability the best
definition I can come up with here on the podcast is the ability to temporarily put
your own perspective aside to understand the perspective of other so I may not know who
James is but I'm going to take the time to put my own biases my own perspective about
firefighters in general and say okay I want to understand this guy's pain points and his
perspective through his lens once I do that then I can help I can come to the middle and
I can then bring in expertise that I may have or not but first I need to lead with empathy
I need to understand the perspective and pain points or perspective of other okay and then
fourth and last would be curiosity to me the best leaders I've ever both interviewed been
a part of or had myself in the military and even in sport are curious creatures there
are more of the what and how people than the what then then I'm sorry they're more of the
how and why people than the what people what is a dime a dozen I can find an answer to
what now on Google that's easy the how and the why things work I think truly flex subject
matter expertise good leaders are curious and they're going to stay on top of their
discipline because they're constantly wanting to know more about and get better why things
work how can we make them better not just what it is what it is so sorry I went off
on those but I those four are on the leadership perspective by the way all learned right no
one comes out of the womb knowing any of those four so now it's important because when I'm
when you're listing these out I'm thinking about the crisis that my profession is going
through at the moment as I said you know we're overworked underpaid you know we have a hiring
crisis that means that it's not me I'm not in the service anymore the men and women wearing
uniform right now being asked to do more with less because there aren't enough bodies and
you know this very kind of reactive way that we're doing it is resulting in diseases deaths
divorces etc.
Suicide and when you think about empathy what we see a lot of times whether it's the county
or city council member or the police chief that pushes papers behind the desk now and
I mean that simply is you know not working on a rig for 24 hours is there's a loss of
empathy and then when it comes to the curious you know the curiosity side it's easy just
to stay within the parameters of the fire service oh well I just you know spoke to this
chief from this fire department and this is how they do it so rather than going to the
Navy SEALs the SAS you know Google Virgin Atlantic you know how do you do it I know
the one thing that the fire service likes to throw around is that fire service is a
business and I always say okay well then if I disagree we're not here to make money we're
here to be there when people are having their worst day but if that is the case then why
are you working like an indian indonesian sweatshop rather than going to Google and
Virgin these proactive business models and asking them because you're going to find out
they've got a short work week they've you know exercise and nutrition is a priority
with their people and you're going to see the same things that you're still not doing
there so James I would meet them where they're at I wouldn't change their words and again
I'm not this isn't a criticism of you but look am I opposed to that do I believe that
my my cop friends and my firefighter friends are in a business of of course that's preposterous
to me but if the person believes that one of the best mentors I ever had told me you
have to meet the person where they're at in order to in in order to foster change so I
think that if they're going to use the business metaphor you said the exact right thing let's
call it a business then okay they're in a business how do we improve productivity well
I can show you studies until until we drown in them that focus on balance and recovery
increasing productivity so I I would just meet him where they're at saying okay if you're
going to call this a business let's make the business more efficient and more productive
by doing these things it sounds awful to call it that but at the end of the day okay and
you said the right thing with Google and all the the wellness programs I mean they've weaponized
wellness now and it is powerful it is it's moving it has moved the needle and continues
to move the needle so yeah well even some of the you know most proactive corporate companies
have switched to the four nine-hour days now and not us you know that not cut salary or
anything and they're finding that they're as if not more productive because these people
are getting an extra day and they're becoming more innovative how do I get the same amount
of work done in four days now because I mean we all know anyone who's done a job that they
didn't absolutely love you just kind of you know that inbox is never empty it's going
to be there the next day so how can you be more efficient so even if you use that corporate
example well again you know they are they're valuing rest recovery sleep efficiency so
you know but again it's that lack of curiosity you're calling yourself a business without
really doing the work to underline your your ethos yeah I was you know I'm having flashbacks
to be honest with you of you know being in the military and when when I was the the psychologist
I was the first like psychologist at Bud's and we had obviously it was post 9-11 so we
had to iterate and develop programs for resilience and and we we had the resources to do that
I you know on the flip side I go to my friends who are cops and firefighters and I'm again
I'm going to create more hate mail today but it's it's like I was appalled I honestly was
appalled with the lack of resourcing of this and I'm like my goodness this is the like
if we're going to resource anything like you're spending more on boots than you are on some
of the resiliency programs here I mean what what are we doing I mean feet are important
but actually the greatest resource is above the neck and between the ears let's be careful
here so yeah absolutely well I want to throw something in and then revisit the book and
then we've got some closing questions but this I think it's important that we do discuss
especially as the SEAL community has lost so many men to suicide I mean especially recently
it seems like you know over and over and over again I see more and more one of the other
things that became apparent to me over these these years and again I you know a white belt
constantly curious interviewer but I'm getting these amazing life stories and people on here
that have been right there two of you know one two of them actually completed their suicide
attempt they just survived Kevin Hines survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge Emma Benoit
survived shooting herself and over and over again of course there's the one element of
wanting the suffering to end but another piece that really not even surprised me I just didn't
think about that totally pushes against the kind of shame that's put on suicide was that
feeling of being a burden and when you look at the brain as being miswired so we can't
understand a brain in crisis when you're not in crisis you know it's trying to understand
what a femur fracture is like when your leg isn't broken but you now go back to how a
lot of us talked about suicide oh it's cowardly it's selfish how could you think of your kids
and then I hear these these you know courageous men and women come on the show and pour their
heart out and tell their story and at that moment they believe that they were a burden
to their children they were a burden to their wife their husband and so suicide was a selfless
act it was a courageous act in that mindset at that point which goes against our very
biology biology to to survive what is your perspective of that because I feel like are
you feeling like a burden should be front and center on the on the you know the posters
and the PSA's and all these because it just doesn't seem to be discussed and it totally
debunks then that selfish cowardly rhetoric that a lot of us were raised on so I'm a huge
fan I think that's that's perhaps the my favorite part of this podcast to be honest because
I actually think that this you probably saw me smile as you were talking about this this
is this is very relevant I think it's and is unfortunately it's not a narrative you
hear much about to be honest but I but I have to look back to my one of my mentors you have
to meet people where they're at and you have to listen especially to the survivors of this
and if that's the mindset they had who am I like I don't get paid enough to say oh I'm
sorry that's not what they mean no we I think that's that's fair the other piece here that
I was struck with and I can't speak because I'm not a firefighter I'm not a cop but I
was a naval officer for 20 years and I think that it's the most impactful valuable work
I will probably on my last breath I will look especially at the sealed community I was lucky
enough to be with them as their psychologist I'm I talk about this a little bit in the
book nothing is going to come close to that nothing that's just a given you just have
to kind of put that aside and be like okay that said one of the things that I saw that
was difficult for these men and by the way women in the military who transitioning as
well is just a lack of a true sense of community afterwards so while I think what you've just
talked about is probably a one as we need to hear from the survivors on them feeling
like they were a burden a two might be have we created a community that is completely
how do I relevant and more authentic to their experience as not only their role but what
they've experienced and I'm not sure I can't speak to fire I wish I could I wish I could
speak to police I can only guess but in the military this is where I think it's fallen
short I mean the military creates and again I loved the military for 20 years it was great
but it creates a culture of like you know you shop it on base at commissaries and you
create an acronyms that only military members understand and then at the end of that bullet
train whether it's four years five years or retired at 20 or 30 the bullet train stops
and people get out with an unbelievable role that they've been playing that by the way
no fans no no media no ESPN no blogs about it doing incredibly relevant and impactful
work the bullet train stops the doors open they walk out the bullet train doors shut
and it takes off again at mock speed and they're in a culture that yeah they're Americans or
they're Brits or they're Finns or whatever I don't care and I'm just not quite sure
because a lot of people my experience and again I've had a very good experience but
I can see where like my employers didn't really care didn't ask questions about the military
my neighbors really did care I mean that's and I'm sure that's the same for fire and
police and I do think that's I'm going off on this probably a little bit longer and I'm
sorry but I think it's a cultural misalignment afterwards the people that really don't fully
understand what I've experienced authentically yeah so a better sense of community I think
is the second answer to that burden issue as well to be honest yeah I couldn't agree
more I've had Sebastian Junger on several times and you know his book tribe for example
I think was such a powerful perspective on that and I think where we drop the ball so
poorly in the fire service specifically is we have done the worst job of branding like
people still in 2024 why is there a fire engine on my medical call or you know you guys just
sit around and you know work out and play cards and and it just drives me crazy I mean
how how have we got to this point I think the the whole you know the tongue-in-cheek
joke about every seal's written a book there's a lot of upsides to that you know you don't
need to know the operational secrets but to understand as you said what some you know
some of these incredible war fighters have done for this country is really important
what kills me is that we don't have that in the fire service and I'm writing a book now
that my pipe dream is to make into a TV show so maybe we can not only tell that but I want
to tell the multi-generational story woven into that as well but you know we so you have
these men and women that serve for 10 20 30 years every third day they left their family
I mean they literally if they got a 30-year career they've been away from their family
for 10 solid years by that point and then and then one day the bay door closes behind
them and that's it there's no VA you know there's no place that they can all meet like
you're done no no health insurance nothing you know you can have Cobra for a year and
then you know by Felicia so you've removed that community that purpose identity and you
then go back into a community that has no idea what you did because our profession is
so bad at letting them know what we do which also then in turn is the resistance for giving
them more rest and recovery well why do they need time off they don't do anything now so
this is what I see with ours and a lot of our men and women in in fire police you know
corrections dispatch they really really struggle after because as you said there isn't that
community there isn't even an understanding of what these men and women do when they leave
their families to protect complete strangers every third day for example totally agree
totally beautifully stated and couldn't agree more couldn't agree more well I want to just
revisit the book for a second so we talked about the kind of myths what are some of the
takeaways of course I don't expect you to to describe the whole book and people listening
can buy the book and learn from all these great high performers but what are some of
the the overlaps in the Venn diagrams that you did see with all these great people yeah
it's a great question so for us for Alan and I we put together a framework that really
focused on five main verticals there are five when you look at kind of the shared concentric
circle shared variance of concentric circles of all of these disciplines who are the best
in what they do it really came down to five the first is a more of a focus on identity
over reputation so the best performers in the world they're focusing a lot more on identity
markers and making decisions based on their identity and care really a lot less about
what people think they just accelerate that natural progression that most humans have
so the first is identity over reputation we unpack an entire chapter on that the second
is mindset not only do do we find the same thing that Carol Dweck found in her great
work of growth mindset yeah the best performers in the world do have a growth mindset but
they also have a challenge versus a threat mindset whereas they view setbacks and obstacles
as nothing more than a unique challenge that can be solved and thirdly around mindset is
that issue of having a different mindset for every role that they play so we unpack chapter
two on mindset and how you if you want to be the best in your craft you need to have
a different mindset for every role that you play the mindset that makes you an effective
firefighter is not going to be the same mindset that's going to make you an effective father
mother etc it's not going to be thirdly we have an entire chapter on process really through
great stories as well that focusing on processes or recipes to performance rather than outcomes
and really surrounding yourself with valid vetted feedback and those boards of directors
etc so chapter three is there that's the third differentiator the fourth was adversity tolerance
tactics when you look at the best men and women in their craft they're generally doing
the same 10 things to navigate through adversity or stress pre and post performance routines
breathing visualization positive self-talk thought management contingency planning etc
so adversity tolerance is the fourth and then the last is balance and recovery so these
five main pillars are truly the best differentiators between if you want to be the best in your
craft i don't care what it is really think about an operational way to practically and
actionably improve in those five areas so that's what the book is about beautiful now
where can people find the book amazon barnes and noble i just sent you again our publicist
i apologize i just sent you a galley you should have that galley in your inbox james but the
average or anyone can go now to amazon it's called learned excellence mental disciplines
for leading and winning from the world's top performers barnes and noble books a million
anywhere now online audible is great too pete simonelli i'm going to throw out a nice shoutout
to pete i in my opinion is the number one narrator in all of book he's a he's a voice
actor and he did he did the the narration for the book pete's and simonelli so yeah
excellent brilliant well i want to throw some quick closing questions at you if you've got
time yes sir all right the first one we talked about your book are there any other books
that you love to recommend it can be related to our conversation today or completely unrelated
i just finished about whatever a month ago peter atia's outlive it's on my shelf right
in front of me i'm a big fan of this book i think he's one of the world's best in what
he does he's a physician and really talks about in a very practical matter of fact way
it's it's it's full it's full of gems so i'm a big fan of of that book for sure on the
mindset side i have to throw out uh relentless i like the book relentless um and then i also
like the power of habit by charles doohigg those are ones that come to mind that i'm
a big big fan of brilliant what about movies and documentaries um yeah i'm gonna you're
gonna again you're gonna judge me i'm not a tv guy i don't i i'm a reader um i just
don't i very rarely watch anything and i'm sorry to hollywood i'm sorry to the producers
out there i just i'm the bad guy to ask so yeah no problem at all all right well the
next question is there a person that you recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak
to the first responders military and associated professions of the world uh yeah i think yeah
i'm gonna come up with i think david wortsell he's in the book um he's a he was a volunteer
firefighter he runs a great organization now out of narberth it's the last name is w u r
t z e l david wortsell i think he can he can probably walk the walk better than i can with
a lot of the obviously the fire and the police and he's he's got some fantastic stories and
he's very pro resilience and he he brings up he's just written a book i think on spirituality
and that spiritual domain as well but in a non-religious way and really finding meaning
and spiritual meaning to what you're doing beyond just kind of showing up day to day
and it's he's a powerful guy brilliant i recognize the name i'm sure i'll pass across i don't
think it's been for a while but i'll have to look him up so thank you all right well
then the last question before we make sure where people can find you what do you do to
decompress uh we split time in fact we leave on wednesday but we split time we have a home
here in san diego about eight months a year and we spend about four months a year at our
home in montana um so i'm a big outdoors guy uh i'm a big skier uh mountain biker hiker
fly fisher etc so we the great state of montana i just unplug get out in nature nature is my
direct answer to you and specifically montana is my outlet so fantastic well you mentioned
you're not big in the social media side where are the best places to find you and the book
online yeah it's uh online is going to be again amazon find me on linkedin um i'm a
big fan of linkedin i try to post things that i think are relevant whether the research
articles that i come across that i think can move the needle in performance i'll post those
or a podcast or something um so linkedin is something i do and i've been told i need to
buy my daughter that i need to get twitter or an x but i whatever i'm i'm slow to this
so i'm all we'll see you're not missing much i promise you
i have i love instagram and my my page is curated um you know we have a pretty pretty
big community but the moment you put something of value that's unique it's like crickets
you know but then you repost a kitten on a skateboard and the world loses their mind
so it's a tool as you said it is a tool but you know right sometimes it's uh i think there's
a lot of a lot of value put on social media there's this kind of facade that if you have
a large account that you just have to tell people that you bought this thing and they're
all going to buy that thing and yeah no this is this was my point earlier man there's a
lot of noise out there and very little signal right so i think that um you know keep staying
true to what you do man i think uh again i need to give you kudos thank you for a thank
you for having me on and b i think this is this is the important stuff again i i know
that a lot of the men and women who listen to this are doing this for a living but there's
very little that i'll absolutely drop what i'm doing for and it's going to be the people
who run towards the gunfire run towards danger uh run towards fire and i think that's a different
breed of human that i think we owe it as a nation we owe it a society to really think
differently on how we're bringing the best to bear to make sure that they can continue
to do the work that not many people want to do because it's hard work