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To learn more about Thorn, go to episode 323 of the Behind the Shield podcast with Joel

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Titoro and Wes Barnett.

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This episode is sponsored by a company I have used for well over a decade and that is 511.

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I wore their uniforms back in Anaheim, California and have used their products ever since.

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worked for.

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Outside of the fire service, I use their luggage for everything and I travel a lot and they

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are also now sponsoring the 7X team as we embark around the world on the Human Performance

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project.

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We have Murph coming up in May and again I bought their plate carrier.

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I ended up buying real ballistic plates rather than the fake weight plates and that has been

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my ride or die through Murph the last few years as well.

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One area I want to talk about that I haven't in previous sponsorship spots is their brick

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They were predominantly an online company up till more recently but now they are approaching

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My local store is here in Gainesville Florida and I've been multiple times and the discounts

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you see online are applied also in the stores.

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So as I mentioned 511 is offering you 15% off every purchase that you make but I do

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want to say more often than not they have an even deeper discount especially around

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holiday times.

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And if you want to hear more about 511, who they stand for and who works with them, listen

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to episode 580 of Behind the Shield podcast with 511 regional director Will Ayres.

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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast as always my name is James Gearing and this week

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it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show retired naval commander, former head

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psychologist for the Navy SEALs and co-author of Learned Excellence Dr. Eric Potterat.

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So as you can imagine there are very few people more apt than Dr. Potterat to talk about mental

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health and mental performance in the uniform professions.

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So we discuss a host of topics from the space program, working with the LA Dodgers, SEAR,

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the concept of learned excellence, stress inoculation, overcoming fear, his work with

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Dr. Kirk Parsley when it came to sleep deprivation in the SEAL teams and so much more.

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Now before we get to this incredible conversation as I say every week please just take a moment

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go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and

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leave a rating.

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Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast therefore making it easier for

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others to find and this is a free library of almost 900 episodes now.

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So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so

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I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.

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So with that being said I introduce to you Dr. Eric Potterat.

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Enjoy.

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Well Eric I want to start saying two things.

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Firstly thank you so much to Ted Brown one of my fellow 7xers when we went around the

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world about a year ago today and secondly I want to welcome you onto the Behind the

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Shield podcast.

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Thank you.

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Thank you for having me James.

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We're really honored and it's a privilege to be here looking forward to the conversation

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today.

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So how did Ted's and your path cross?

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So I started working, I started becoming deeply embedded in various business verticals trying

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to really teach performance optimization from the neck up and between the ears and evidence

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based practices all of that to various business verticals and insurance was one of them and

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locked and worked with them for about seven years or so and Ted and I have worked a lot

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together on both him and the organization.

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Fantastic.

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Well we're obviously going to focus more of the in uniform side.

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I mean I listened to one of your episodes with Ryan Hawke on his podcast and it was

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excellent it really was but it seems like that's another entire group of people that

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are going to find all the value in your latest book but the parallels in the life journey

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that you've been through I think is going to be invaluable especially for the people

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in uniform.

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So let's start the very beginning of your own life journey then.

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So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what

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your parents did, how many siblings.

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Yeah that's great.

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Thank you I was born in Redding California very top of the great state of California

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about 60, 70 miles from the Oregon border small town about four hours north of San Francisco

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so truly northern California.

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Born as an only child two parents obviously mom and dad.

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Dad was an immigrant from Switzerland I think immigrated when he was 12 in 1956.

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They then moved to first Atlantic City and then ultimately Santa Monica California where

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he met my mom they went to high school all of that good stuff and then they moved to

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Redding California was born and raised there very small town.

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I mean I grew up and it was about 20,000 people and then I think maybe 80 or 100,000 now went

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to you know completed high school then went to college at UC Davis down by Sacramento

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got a degree there in psychobiology.

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Took about boy oh boy almost two years off after I graduated first year kind of just

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hung out and wanted to with my college roommate went to Europe with a backpack and just tried

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to do that you know proverbial Odyssey and try to see a bunch of the things we had been

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studying and reading about.

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And then I started working in psychology at a bachelor's of science a BS in psychology

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started working in psychology with severely emotionally disturbed kids.

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It's not much you can do with a bachelor's degree but I felt like I wanted to make an

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impact and kids that were like in foster homes and whatnot did that for about a year and

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one of the clinical directors at that program in Sacramento had a PhD in psychology and

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took me aside and said hey have you have you thought about you know going further in your

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graduate studies and maybe applying to graduate school and said I had.

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So long story short kind of launched I don't know if you want me to keep talking about

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this but it launched you know towards towards a professional degree my PhD so.

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I want to go back just for a moment and obviously we'll move forward again.

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Obviously I love the immigrant stories obviously as you can tell I am an immigrant to the US

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and there's so many different kind of experiences some purely positive some quite negative.

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I would imagine someone coming from Switzerland if they found themselves amongst people that

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weren't aware of the differences in European countries very soon after World War Two could

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possibly have some negative experiences too.

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So what was your father's experiences of coming to the US.

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Yeah I have to I have to kind of pay homage and give kudos to his parents as well because

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that that I mean we've all experienced adversity and I'll never I don't get paid enough to

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judge anyone's adversity but I can't even imagine the risk of literally taking your

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family my dad has two brothers or had two brothers one has passed and literally when

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they made the decision to come to the United States in 1956 they actually left one of the

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sons behind you know they had a couple hundred dollars and a few chests full of all their

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belongings by the way one of those chests ended up being stolen you know gone when they

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arrived to Atlantic City so literally arrive with you know a little bit of money and one

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of the two chests of all of your life belongings and not knowing much English and to your point

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I mean you know the schooling system in the United States and it's my dad and his brothers

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eventually the other brother came over as well as well as my paternal grandparents literally

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you know came to the land of opportunity and and had to kind of from the bootstraps you

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know really earn everything and start over so that was a challenge for sure.

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Now what about you in the school age you ended up working from the psychology point of view

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with some of the most elite teams in the US what were you playing as far as being a young

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boy?

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So I was I was always into like you know soccer and first baseball and baseball kind of bored

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me and we'll get into that later and then got into soccer and then I really found my

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niche in tennis I really enjoyed highly competitive tennis from high school and beyond you know

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started avidly following people like Boris Becker and you know just really trying to

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I was you know this was back in the day obviously pre-internet and we had VCR so I would record

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literally every match of these gentlemen and put them on you know super slow motion speed

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so I could watch exact placements of feet and hands and nowadays technology is markedly

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different so yeah it was just I certainly enjoyed tennis a lot as an outlet as a young

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kid so.

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Now you touched on baseball this is going to be an interesting kind of perspective that

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you bring.

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When I first moved to the US it was almost like jarring hearing over and over again what

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I call the uncle Rico story so I would meet men around my age you know late 30s early

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sorry late 20s early 30s and decondition now and it was always the same it was like well

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I played in high school I played in college at this high high level until ACL MCL whatever

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the thing was and then it was a complete screech hole to their movement journey if you like.

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When I contrast that to Europe a lot of us we just don't play at that higher level in

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school or in college but there seems to be longevity in sport so you have you know pub

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leagues and local leagues and you'll see men in their 40s and 50s in the UK still playing

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football rugby all the things.

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What is your perspective on youth sports obviously I'm talking about the physical side but for

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more from the psychological side because what I see is the the lines between performance

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and wellness sometimes are blurred and sometimes the success of a sporting program comes at

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the detriment of some of these young athletes.

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Yeah so this a this is the first time I've been asked this question b it's arguably one

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of the best questions I've been asked and I'm passionate about this so I'm not a big

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social media guy unfortunately I guess but I do do LinkedIn and I posted maybe a year

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ago a while ago very seminal kind of synopsis and research from the Norwegians on precisely

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what you're saying and what you're what you're talking about are the difference between kind

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of being generalized or being specialized and in the US I'm going to pardon the pun

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I'm going to generalize for the US because there are certainly people who don't do this

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but for the most part within the US they we have focused for years it seems on a very

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specialization heavy focus whether it's middle school high school you know start really believing

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that your son or daughter is going to be the next thing since whatever and all the energy

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and all the passion the parental passion and energy I'm going to be polite on some of these

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soccer fields and and baseball fields is just frankly appalling at times but nonetheless

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I think philosophically back to your question the Europeans and particularly the reason

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the Norwegian study was so interesting to me was because Norway just cleans everyone's

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clock in in the you know in the Winter Olympics and when you look at per capita they really

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shouldn't be doing that so it really I think causes a lot of people a lot of the so-called

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experts to really look under the the hood and see why that is and in fact they really

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do emphasize not unlike what you just said James this generalized approach they want

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their their youth to really experience many many things as the brain is developing rather

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than emotionally and physically and identity wise get attached to one and that seems to

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be learning leaning towards a lot of burnout as well which I think you're alluding to so

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well we'll get into the the parallels later when it comes to in uniform but even in this

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there's a fallacy I think that you know if you want to squeeze out elite performance

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it's got to be at the detriment of wellness to a point but then conversely if you take

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Finland and their education system their days are shorter there's a lot more play I had

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a guy Pasi Sauberg on who's Finnish but he lives in Australia now and tours the world

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talking about their system and they look at the holistic child as a whole and they put

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more money into the schools that are struggling so it's kind of the opposite of what we do

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here yet when you look at the league tables as far as academics again as you said they

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clean everyone's clock educationally.

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Yeah fascinating to me it's not a surprise and I think look I can go down this rabbit

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hole I think it is somewhat sad and again I'll just make this my personal opinion but

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I think it's sad because I think the data is fairly clear I mean regardless of discipline

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and we'll get into this with respect to balance the more balanced people are the more balanced

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performers are and you can define performer as men and women in uniform men and women

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in a sport uniform business it doesn't matter the evidence is clear when you look at the

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meta-analyses it's clear as day I mean people who have balance are more innovative they

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live longer they live healthier lives ironically they're more productive in their craft which

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is interesting because you know the old wives tale is you can't be balanced and be good

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at what you do in fact that's that's not only wrong it's dead wrong so.

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Another interesting perspective that someone recently said to me and it was so spot on

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because I was seeing it in my son at the time was you already have these kids that maybe

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are driven down one lane of specialization but then they have this I must earn a scholarship

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thing and I watched my son do the same thing he ran track for the last two seasons he got

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down to basically a sub just just under a five minute mile so it was on track but I

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watched I watched him burn out and he wasn't even being pushed hard you know it was just

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the training that he was being expected to do but mentally he was ready to do something

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else and today he's actually trying out for the volleyball team and I think he was almost

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worried about how we would react and it's like Ty I want you to enjoy sport that's what

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it's supposed to be like but what are you seeing as far as that added layer of extrinsic

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negative stress that it's not even the sport it's this thing outside of the sport that

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these children are feeling like they have to achieve as well.

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I agree and most of that you know I'm going to create a lot of hate mail I'm sure in coaching

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staff or parents here and I don't mean to do that but I'm you know I'm just going to

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be honest I mean this is I when you look at statistically just you just take a look at

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like analytically the parents that usually have the most venom and most passion if they

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had spent half of that time really having their kids just have fun that's the f-word

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that everyone's forgetting here and we talk about this in the book not to mention the

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book but with Nathan Chen who is probably the the the greatest example of this you know

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for America he was you know the the the guaranteed gold medal in the you know 2018 Olympics and

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faltered and then really unpacked that himself and found that he wasn't having fun he was

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winning everything prior to that but was really focusing on the wrong thing so he and I engaged

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and we really got back to the basics for all of the listeners out there the parents and

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the coaches and support staff for you know in uniform as well like at the end of the

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day this is the most important thing is your son or child or are you having fun at what

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you're doing and I think that this push to come full circle to what you said about scholarships

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I mean my goodness the odds of your son or daughter becoming an Olympic gold medalist

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or a professional you know insert the blank footballer baseballer doesn't matter they're

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very slim I hope it happens but you're more likely to happen if the person is having fun

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and on an incremental trajectory of improvement rather than my gosh you have to get that scholarship

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you know it's crazy I mean literally crazy so

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Athletically I've heard over and over and over again it's amazing when you have you

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know almost 900 episodes the Venn diagram really overlaps and you see a lot of truth

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and these people are from all walks of life but the multi-sport athlete seems to be a

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lot more resilient physically what are you seeing as far as psychologically

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Same absolute same I think that the more varied experiences that you can give the human brain

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I mean we're talking about at some level not to be too geeky here but we're talking about

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stress inoculation right I mean we're talking about giving the the the neuroplastic brain

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that is developing continuing to develop but absolutely developing especially to the ages

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of like 18 to 24 I mean adolescent brains are very plastic I mean they are they are

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developing at an incredible rate and if the brain is firing the brain is wiring and therefore

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you want it to have as many different stages of exposure as possible so I'm a big fan philosophically

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and practically it's just exposing youth exposing young adults to just a variety of things music

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languages different sports just just for exposure sake as opposed to I need to become an expert

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in this craft that's where the narrative I think and we can get into all sorts of side

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tracks as to why that is with social media and you know various spokespeople in different

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platforms whether they're athletes musicians and the irony of all of this to be honest

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James is when you when you actually sit with these high performers literally most of them

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literally will will will will set a breadcrumb history that all you need to do is follow

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and they've been exposed to a lot of different things a lot of micro failures a lot of challenges

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where their their plastic brain was developing now a lot of them have great coaching staff

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great mentors great co-workers great teammates that help coalesce that and craft that and

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kind of chip that diamond along the way but anyhow long story short yes I think exposure

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to a variety of things is where people ought to be focusing let's take that tangent because

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almost every single person I've had on here when we've discussed the mental health of

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our youth social media comes up over and over and over again so I'd love you to unpack that

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a little bit more yeah I mean this is this is one of those sheesh it's a double-edged

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sword right I you know just a book released last week with a co-author and so I mean obviously

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social media helps helps catapult careers helps catapult exposure that's just the the

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nature you know we're all kind of plugged in as it were so I will say this for the developing

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brain I'm more concerned about identity early on and I think social media by definition

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is very reputationally based meaning I often say you know I can post a picture of anything

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a slice of pizza a sunset and I'm literally going to be judged by thumbs up or thumbs

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down how many likes or dislikes I have to that image that I'm posting now we can go

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past images as well we can have narrative right I can have an opinion that I post and

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I can be judged on that the immediacy of the feedback is profound so I am you know I don't

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want Facebook LinkedIn or whatever to start sending me hate mail I think if it's if it's

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weaponized and used carefully and properly it can be a powerful thing for just consuming

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knowledge right it shrinks the world so we can assuming the the information is valid

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and vetted and we can get into that later but I I'm I'm mostly agnostic with a leaning

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in towards we need to be very careful in the developing brain on how identity is tied to

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social media so well firstly I want to put this out so your book has learned excellence

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feel free anytime to insert anything from the book because I mean there's so much wisdom

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in there and I don't I wasn't able to get a copy in the end it never came through so

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I haven't had a chance to look at it yet but I'm looking forward to coming out actually

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it's just come out isn't it the ninth is that right yeah as I came out on the sixth I'm

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you know shame shame on our publicist we'll make sure you you get that for sure so no

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problem at all and this is what I love about podcasts so you can usually glean some of

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the the pillars at least with that being said though while we're on the subject and again

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especially from a psychological psychological lens it appears to me that there is far more

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narcissism in the world than a lot of us realize and I mean that empathetically because to

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me narcissism is an expression of a void an expression of maybe some mental ill health

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but when you look at men women children on a lot of these social media platforms it is

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a lot of selfies and look what I can do so what has been the reception of social media

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and has that come up because I don't think it's evident you know when you didn't have

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a platform that showed millions and millions of people you didn't really have a baseline

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on whether that was actually a pretty significant mental health issue and other people I look

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I think you hit the nail on the head I'm not sure I could I mean that's that's beautifully

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stated I think by definition a lot of social media is fueling kind of a me my eye culture

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within self as well as the ecosystem of around that person but it really is me my eye driven

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when you look at a lot of other organizations they're more we us hours driven whether it's

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the military I mean true quiet professionals doing the work that they do without fans without

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blogs without agents and the same can be said about you know first responders I know obviously

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the the media is sometimes there but generally speaking you know firefighters and policemen

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and women they don't have a fan base that is like literally following following them with webcams

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or whatnot so or jerseys sold or you know this stuff so I do think this me my eye culture

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that's being fed by by social media is definitely clearly affects one's developing self for

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sure absolutely well you mentioned the military as a perfect kind of segue then so you're

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in the psychology space walk me through how you entered the Navy yeah so I eventually

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had some options but I chose a first a PhD program that was both research and and kind

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of practically based you know clinician a traditional kind of research clinician program

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there are programs out there that it can help people earn PhDs to do world-class research

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but I really wanted to hang I wanted to have a fundamentally sound research background

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but focus also on on the clinical side meaning the human side as well so I ended up down

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here in San Diego got into a PhD program and within that PhD program it's great a fantastic

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program but at the end of all PhD programs not unlike medicine you have to do in medicine

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they call it a residency in psychology call it an internship so you have to do an internship

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that's outside of the institution so in order to kind of complete your PhD so one of my

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professors pulled me aside and I was applying to traditional APA American Psychological

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Association internships all over the country and one of my professors said have you thought

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about the military and I thought actually no I hadn't tell me more and he he actually

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was from he'd done a years prior a military internship so I ended up going to an open

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house long story short for both the Air Force and the Navy and frankly James I was and I

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hate to say it this way I was literally blown away and really surprised I did I probably

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went to the open houses more to appease the professor to say hey at least I checked it

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out I kicked the tires took a look at it but I was taken aback I was blown away at at how

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much they were training early early clinicians and and really their focus on a multimodal

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approach assessment selection inpatient outpatient health psychology operational psychology and

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then you throw in things like hey you can get backseat qualified in F-18 and go up in

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jets you can go on ships you can get catapulted off carriers so long story short I won't bore

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you with the details that really threw a wrench in the works to where I thought I was going

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to go which was more the traditional academic programs and my wife and I stayed up all night

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and we had options in our hands and we chose the Navy option and what that meant is a one

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year very robust comprehensive internship with a three-year obligated payback in uniform

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so completed that internship here in San Diego they send it to what was then called Officer

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and Doctor Nation School OIS to teach you how to be an officer very quickly along with

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other physicians lawyers nurses etc teaching you know military law how to march who to

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salute all of that stuff for six weeks and then bingo show up at the internship and then

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guess what there's that three-year obligated payback that payback was here in San Diego

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where I was a kind of very traditional Navy psychologist really neck-deep in clinical

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work helping people who didn't feel well feel better doing assessment selection you know

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fitness for duty evaluations critical incident debriefing some operational work as well and

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then my obligated service was about to end to answer your question I'll come full circle

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here and the Pentagon the in the Navy they call them the detailers as well they decide

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through big Navy okay this person's getting out their obligated service is done you can

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leave and they made an offer I said hey I know we know that you're about ready to finish

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your obligated service how would you like to go to southern Spain and be a department

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head at a hospital there and I'd said no I'm not a gamey guy just said hey no thank you

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we had a one and a half or a one-year-old daughter at the time my wife was working here

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in San Diego it just didn't make sense to up you know uproot and move to Europe and

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that night my wife and I after I said no thank you it was very polite my wife and I went

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to dinner together with our with our one-year-old and my wife made the comment you know what

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are we doing this is an opportunity to live in southern Spain this is phenomenal are we

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sure about this so we kind of kicked around over dinner and maybe a glass of wine maybe

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her taking a leave of absence from her then job and so long story short call back the

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detailer on Monday and said hey that job that you had available in southern Spain there's

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a chance we can pull this off but we need to come back to San Diego if that's the case

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after Spain is that possible so long story short they made it possible and it ended up

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going we ended up going to Spain at the Naval Hospital there for three and a half years

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which by the way ended up being the best three and a half years of our lives phenomenal time

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to have a preschool child immerse ourselves in the culture of Spain the language we lived

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out in town on purpose and and then to answer you very directly and then I'll shut up here

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for a moment 9-eleven happened during that time so about halfway through that tour 9-eleven

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happened and there was no way in hell I was going to resign my naval commission my naval

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officer commission in the midst of that so that's that was a game changer and then got

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me started kind of in the operational side more survival evasion resistance and escape

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seer school and then my last 10 years as the psychologist for the Navy SEALs so I ended

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up making a career out of it when I never thought I would so well let's talk about Spain

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for a second my mother and my brother both moved to the Algarve south of Portugal and

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I've been to Seville that's the only place I've been in Spain at the moment but it's

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beautiful so whereabouts did you find yourself yeah we were I was a department head at a

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naval hospital in Rota Spain which is about 45 minutes dead south of Sevilla Seville as

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you say and then it's across the bay from Cádiz C-A-D-I-Z there's a small there's a

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status of forces agreement allows the United States to have a presence there it's it's

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also a Spanish naval base as well it's one of the few places in the world for the US

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that is you know both has an airfield and a naval port so very strategically a relevant

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place obviously the mouth of the Mediterranean all of that as well so it was a southern Spain

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was lovely Andalusia was fantastic so and what about the 9-11 day for you I mean there's

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so many different stories so many different perspectives you're already in a military

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base you're not too far from the Middle East at that point what was your 9-11 experience

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and what did you kind of see obviously not specifically operationally but what was the

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overall culture shift after that attack yeah I mean I'm juxtaposing I mean literally for

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the audience I can't we had a young child at the time we had uprooted navigated some

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guilt about pulling your grandchild you know the grandchild to the parents on both sides

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of our family you know as far away as Spain but we were there lived literally on the beach

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in a I'm just kind of painting the picture I'm working in a naval hospital the philosophy

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at the time pre-9-11 was hey just get the work done and go travel we're all you know

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we all took this job overseas and the commanding officer of the hospital was phenomenal he's

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like hey just make sure the work is done and I think we had traveled to about 19 countries

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you know during our vacation time there and during the first one and a half years there

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I mean sunflowers I would ride my bike to work I'm just trying to answer the question

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like how to juxtapose this with the nightmarish scenario that then happens and then one afternoon

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I'm you know walking in the hospital I see everyone huddled around televisions on the

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quarterdeck near the main heart of the hospital and I paused and I looked and I saw the second

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you know another plane hit I'm like oh my god it was all in it was surreal it was slow

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motion and and you know after that initial shock at that point I think those of us in

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uniform knew it's like okay this is life here in southern Spain and life in the military

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life in the US in general is going to change markedly and I won't get into the details

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but for the coming days and weeks afterwards obviously because of the way Rota was positioned

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as the base I just described I mean it was clear we were ramping up for what was going

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to be an extended engagement for sure so finish my last year there and then transition to

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survival evasion resistance and escape seer school where you teach for those audience

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members that don't know this is where we teach high risk of capture US assets or US uniform

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members how to navigate survival evasion resistance and escape how to navigate captivity how to

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procure water how to do celestial navigation all of that so I was the head psychologist

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there for three years as we're training people how to go into harm's way and survive if bad

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things happen so I want to hit a few of the kind of topics that I've got down here and

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this is probably a good place to put them in so firstly the topic of stress inoculation

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I know that seer has a big stress element with it you know the food and water the sleep

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deprivation but this is a topic that's brought up sometimes in the fire service as well and

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there's obviously a spectrum of ways that people are interpreting it from setting up

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nightmarish scenarios and putting through people through hell and playing loud music

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and screaming sounds and all the other things all the way through to you know the converse

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the Disney version of what are some of the principles that you've used over these years

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to build stress inoculation that could maybe be applied by a fire police EMS etc.

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Yeah so stress inoculation I mean if for the audience if you just think about the inoculation

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is a good word right or think vaccinations and I'm not being political pro or con vaccine

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that's not what I'm trying to do here but back in the day when someone gets a vaccine

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let's call it a flu vaccine the idea is that you're getting a little bit of a bad thing

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in the hopes that your body when it's facing that real strain of flu or that real strain

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of whatever that it has it can it can marshal a response to that immune response etc. so

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the idea is to give a little bit of a bad thing in the hopes that when your body sees

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that it copes better so now that's physical if we think about mental and the stress inoculation

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the ideal behind the theoretical you know underpinnings are as if you can expose the

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human being to what they're likely to see in a small amount of maybe bad then they have

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a psychological response that copes better so the the most the high-end example of that

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would be survival evasion resistance would be boot camp would be Navy SEAL training obviously

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hell week these are really high-end things as well as obviously firefighter and and police

418
00:37:46,840 --> 00:37:52,680
academy work as well the idea is can you expose incrementally the human being to things that

419
00:37:52,680 --> 00:37:56,000
they're going to expose and then teach them or be exposed to and then teach them ways

420
00:37:56,000 --> 00:38:03,120
to navigate through that there are parallels in business in sport as well right there are

421
00:38:03,120 --> 00:38:08,680
a lot of great organizations out there liminal collective is one obviously that that you

422
00:38:08,680 --> 00:38:14,080
can get these groups of experts together and bring businessmen or women or bring firefighters

423
00:38:14,080 --> 00:38:19,240
or cops off duty through as well and they get exposed to these things so the whole idea

424
00:38:19,240 --> 00:38:23,640
but I mean it's it's not only theoretically sound it's practically sound where people

425
00:38:23,640 --> 00:38:28,700
make a mistake is it's not just putting people through hell in hopes that they are going

426
00:38:28,700 --> 00:38:32,800
to navigate on their own ideally you want to put people and expose people through things

427
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:38,640
that they're likely to see with then sprinkling in ways that they can navigate and and be

428
00:38:38,640 --> 00:38:43,600
successful in that but there needs to be forced attention there needs to be a little bit of

429
00:38:43,600 --> 00:38:51,800
wow this is real and this sucks right in order in order for it to work properly so once in

430
00:38:51,800 --> 00:38:59,000
a while someone suggests to me that we need to expose recruits to the horrors that we're

431
00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:04,320
going to see in some way shape or form whether it's a you know photo collage or I mean I

432
00:39:04,320 --> 00:39:10,400
don't know what the other ideas are is there any value to that kind of exposure when it

433
00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:16,720
comes to some of these professions boy that's a great question I would have to defer to

434
00:39:16,720 --> 00:39:21,960
I mean I my mind goes to some bad places there to be honest where you know you could end

435
00:39:21,960 --> 00:39:26,560
up doing more harm than good it the key word that I think people forget is incremental

436
00:39:26,560 --> 00:39:30,920
as well if you if you do too much too soon you're going to scare the hell out of people

437
00:39:30,920 --> 00:39:37,680
or really expose their brain to too much that said the professions you're talking about

438
00:39:37,680 --> 00:39:43,840
you know obviously firefighting obviously police obviously military these men and women

439
00:39:43,840 --> 00:39:49,840
are very different than most because they're running towards danger right whereas most

440
00:39:49,840 --> 00:39:57,200
most of humanity says oh god I'm out of here so it's there's not like a it's not Disneyland

441
00:39:57,200 --> 00:40:02,400
right I mean they're seeing the under underbelly of society they're seeing death destruction

442
00:40:02,400 --> 00:40:09,640
all of these things so it's it's if it's not going to be exposed with photos like you're

443
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:16,600
saying it ought to be exposed with mentors that can help guide and be honest about these

444
00:40:16,600 --> 00:40:24,480
professions early on and what that means and how to more importantly and that's I think

445
00:40:24,480 --> 00:40:30,120
where backgrounds like mine come in place you know how do we how do we take evidence

446
00:40:30,120 --> 00:40:37,720
based research based tools and techniques that we know can improve performance in high

447
00:40:37,720 --> 00:40:44,160
impact high leverage high stress environments if we can if we can teach people these tools

448
00:40:44,160 --> 00:40:50,880
early then they at least have the tools to navigate through some of this or all of it

449
00:40:50,880 --> 00:40:56,040
versus hey you're on your own let Darwin take his toll I mean come on that that's crazy

450
00:40:56,040 --> 00:41:02,800
absolutely well that that's a good segue to something I wanted to ask you through pure

451
00:41:02,800 --> 00:41:08,360
blind luck of starting a podcast seven years ago especially when I interviewed Jake Clark

452
00:41:08,360 --> 00:41:15,840
who's the man behind Sabre Warrior I was enlightened to the fact that a lot of us that wear a uniform

453
00:41:15,840 --> 00:41:23,520
had a pretty significant traumatic early life now what I've come to learn seven years later

454
00:41:23,520 --> 00:41:28,200
is that that can be a beautiful thing this is this is my perspective I urge you to correct

455
00:41:28,200 --> 00:41:34,880
me if I'm wrong on this but it seems to me that a lot of us become good soldiers firefighters

456
00:41:34,880 --> 00:41:41,400
etc because of the trauma on our past however the the element that seems to either set us

457
00:41:41,400 --> 00:41:47,680
up for success or maybe potential you know trauma later is whether that childhood trauma

458
00:41:47,680 --> 00:41:54,560
has been processed prior to putting on the uniform so what is your perspective of the

459
00:41:54,560 --> 00:42:00,280
the amount of childhood trauma that you are seeing if any in the men and women that you've

460
00:42:00,280 --> 00:42:06,800
you know had the opportunity to work with and then talk to me about you know if unaddressed

461
00:42:06,800 --> 00:42:10,560
what are the consequences and if it addressed you know can that become a strength can that

462
00:42:10,560 --> 00:42:16,800
become resilience then so I'm going to answer this in a in a multi-pronged multifaceted

463
00:42:16,800 --> 00:42:22,240
way and I'm I hope I hope I don't sound like too much of a nerd or a geek here but first

464
00:42:22,240 --> 00:42:26,800
off let me just say I'm going to answer this carefully because I want to be clear as day

465
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:35,480
for me I in my answer I'm not I do I do not want to suggest that one has to come from

466
00:42:35,480 --> 00:42:42,760
a heinous background in order to be a high performer in fire in police in the in the

467
00:42:42,760 --> 00:42:50,160
military however let's talk about my 10 years with the SEALs okay as their psychologist

468
00:42:50,160 --> 00:42:57,720
right I was active duty I'm not a SEAL obviously no way in hell I could ever be that good but

469
00:42:57,720 --> 00:43:04,600
if Bud's if the hardest level of training is the first adversity that that SEAL candidate

470
00:43:04,600 --> 00:43:11,200
has ever seen I'm not going to say it's impossible but it's extremely improbable and that's what

471
00:43:11,200 --> 00:43:17,380
the data was suggesting I mean it was it was very very clear now where I need to be careful

472
00:43:17,380 --> 00:43:23,040
and I mean no disrespect I when you say trauma that's that's where you lose me a little bit

473
00:43:23,040 --> 00:43:30,960
instead I'm gonna say just hard things I think that when you and you know we have five four

474
00:43:30,960 --> 00:43:35,260
family members who were cops on my wife's side on my side I have my dearest friends

475
00:43:35,260 --> 00:43:41,440
are firefighters and we can get into that we we talked about a few in the book as well

476
00:43:41,440 --> 00:43:48,480
I think that their trajectory their lens their identity their development their adolescence

477
00:43:48,480 --> 00:43:55,280
they've just been exposed to a lot of either macro or micro failures and have learned ways

478
00:43:55,280 --> 00:44:03,960
to navigate those now the underpinning the the under or I guess overarching question

479
00:44:03,960 --> 00:44:08,120
that you're asking really gets me excited because there's a lot of work on kind of post

480
00:44:08,120 --> 00:44:12,960
traumatic growth even though I'm moving away from the word trauma but I you know I had

481
00:44:12,960 --> 00:44:18,680
a mentor once that said there are really three types of people you know we can boil down

482
00:44:18,680 --> 00:44:23,360
psychology into three types of people in the world there are those who are victims there

483
00:44:23,360 --> 00:44:30,000
are those who are survivors and those who are thrivers so whatever that difficulty is

484
00:44:30,000 --> 00:44:33,920
and notice I'm not using the word trauma because for a lot of people it might be like I

485
00:44:33,920 --> 00:44:38,900
missed a penalty kick as a nine-year-old when everyone was watching me we could have won

486
00:44:38,900 --> 00:44:43,720
a championship for nine-year-olds and that can be traumatic for the individual and I'm

487
00:44:43,720 --> 00:44:49,920
holding up hand quote you know finger quotes here or it can just be adversity now is that

488
00:44:49,920 --> 00:44:55,120
person gonna say I'm a victim it was the ball's fault it was the winds fault it was the referee's

489
00:44:55,120 --> 00:45:00,880
fault or they're gonna say hey I survived something pretty bad in my mind and I'm gonna

490
00:45:00,880 --> 00:45:07,320
manifest that I'm gonna make sure that I am okay with that or ideally how is a person

491
00:45:07,320 --> 00:45:12,360
gonna thrive through that adversity so when you're someone like me who's a clinical performance

492
00:45:12,360 --> 00:45:17,480
psychologist I want to move people away from the victim mentality to either the survivor

493
00:45:17,480 --> 00:45:25,120
or or thriver and I know I'm going way deep into your question here my answer is yes I

494
00:45:25,120 --> 00:45:29,640
do believe you're asking me as a person and me as a professional what I've seen through

495
00:45:29,640 --> 00:45:35,560
30 years roughly 25,000 touch points with some of the best performers on earth some

496
00:45:35,560 --> 00:45:38,920
of which are in first responding community some of which are obviously in the military

497
00:45:38,920 --> 00:45:47,280
I think that those individuals did not show up hence the book and I hate to bring in the

498
00:45:47,280 --> 00:45:52,280
book but I firmly believe we chose the title on purpose learned excellence these people have

499
00:45:52,280 --> 00:46:00,280
become really good at what they do through a life of navigating adversities micro and

500
00:46:00,280 --> 00:46:05,920
macro adversities whether those are on in this in the classroom whether than the boardroom

501
00:46:05,920 --> 00:46:11,440
whether you know on on the battlefield so let me pause there no well firstly I mean

502
00:46:11,440 --> 00:46:15,840
that's that's a beautiful answer and I agree with you I mean the problem is we get stuck

503
00:46:15,840 --> 00:46:21,440
in labels sometimes and I I think what's missing from certainly in the first responder community

504
00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:26,480
and I'll be interested to see if it's the military as well but we kind of got hung up

505
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:33,200
on okay we smashed the stigma like okay well great now you accept that it's the thing what's

506
00:46:33,200 --> 00:46:40,320
next and I think what's missing is the hope that is from post-traumatic growth and with

507
00:46:40,320 --> 00:46:43,720
a lot of the people have come on the show a lot of them have had this amazing growth

508
00:46:43,720 --> 00:46:48,280
you know after whenever it was and some of them you know had horrendous things happen

509
00:46:48,280 --> 00:46:52,400
I mean parents murdered and you know growing up around addiction and sexual abuse and all

510
00:46:52,400 --> 00:46:58,360
these other things so pretty significant difficulties to have to overcome but then they found ayahuasca

511
00:46:58,360 --> 00:47:03,240
or horse you know equine therapy or whatever their kind of perfect storm of beautiful healing

512
00:47:03,240 --> 00:47:09,200
modalities was and now they're a better person I think this is such an important conversation

513
00:47:09,200 --> 00:47:15,120
because I've talked about this several times on the show I never really struggled deeply

514
00:47:15,120 --> 00:47:18,800
like some of my brothers and sisters in uniform have I've never had a gun in my mouth I've

515
00:47:18,800 --> 00:47:24,080
never been dragged into the world of addiction and I'm just a normal human being there's

516
00:47:24,080 --> 00:47:29,580
nothing special about me at all but I grew up on a farm in England I grew up around horses

517
00:47:29,580 --> 00:47:33,680
my dad was a healer he's a veterinary surgeon we had people from all walks of life come

518
00:47:33,680 --> 00:47:37,480
through the farm you know so I had daylight I had nature I had all the things that we

519
00:47:37,480 --> 00:47:43,680
identify now so by chance and I was one of five kids so what by chance I was given this

520
00:47:43,680 --> 00:47:49,360
accidental environment to continuously process the fact that I almost died in a house fire

521
00:47:49,360 --> 00:47:54,320
when I was four and my parents had a horrible divorce and there's another near-death moment

522
00:47:54,320 --> 00:47:59,760
so there were things there were definitely things but it was like equally and opposite

523
00:47:59,760 --> 00:48:05,240
there was these healing elements so it allowed me to function as a firefighter have my highs

524
00:48:05,240 --> 00:48:11,800
have my absolute lows my divorce you know for example but never go down to that deep

525
00:48:11,800 --> 00:48:18,800
pit that all of our men and women find ourselves and I think that when you reframe this as

526
00:48:18,800 --> 00:48:24,840
the other side of this PTSD, PTS whatever you want to call it the other side of you

527
00:48:24,840 --> 00:48:29,120
know this struggle that you're going through is not just oh you'll be all right but you

528
00:48:29,120 --> 00:48:34,520
are going to be a stronger more resilient version of yourself to me that's the next

529
00:48:34,520 --> 00:48:36,560
step in the mental health conversation.

530
00:48:36,560 --> 00:48:42,280
I totally agree I mean we could maybe we're going to go there anyhow but I mean I for

531
00:48:42,280 --> 00:48:46,840
the past probably 12 years even during some of my active duty time I've been out of the

532
00:48:46,840 --> 00:48:55,720
Navy I retired in 2016 and you can see in the book as well we interview the former police

533
00:48:55,720 --> 00:49:01,680
captain for I'm sorry the former police chief for Reno there's a firefighter from Philly

534
00:49:01,680 --> 00:49:06,840
in there as well and I've spoken to a lot of these departments and agencies over the

535
00:49:06,840 --> 00:49:12,200
years and PTSD always comes up and my response is the same not to sound like a bumper sticker

536
00:49:12,200 --> 00:49:20,720
or cliche but I mean I think the PTSD symptoms are normal reactions to abnormal events I

537
00:49:20,720 --> 00:49:28,880
want to say that again these symptoms are normal reactions to abnormal events the old

538
00:49:28,880 --> 00:49:34,440
the old pieces of industry whether it's fire police military there was a stigma right and

539
00:49:34,440 --> 00:49:39,400
I think that is slowly moving in absolutely the right direction we can talk about all

540
00:49:39,400 --> 00:49:43,160
the things that have been done to help with that but at the end of the day I think what

541
00:49:43,160 --> 00:49:48,120
you're alluding to James is you know you bring up your form example that's a great example

542
00:49:48,120 --> 00:49:53,600
of those quote-unquote muscles for outlets whether it's light whether it's equine whether

543
00:49:53,600 --> 00:50:02,320
it's just exercise whether it's sleep those muscles were were reinforced almost unintentionally

544
00:50:02,320 --> 00:50:08,240
right I mean that you just had that equal I call it that ecosystem so I think what ideally

545
00:50:08,240 --> 00:50:13,000
what you want people to understand is we can I call this evidence-based we can look at

546
00:50:13,000 --> 00:50:18,480
evidence-based things and sprinkle that into the infrastructure of fire academies police

547
00:50:18,480 --> 00:50:24,520
academies military boot camps all of that and continue with continuing education just

548
00:50:24,520 --> 00:50:28,440
like we do with strength and conditioning just like we do with nutrition just like we

549
00:50:28,440 --> 00:50:35,920
do with you know whatever so I'm excited because I look does PTSD exist of course I'm a clinician

550
00:50:35,920 --> 00:50:42,640
I don't want to lose my license but there's a lot of this boogeyman narrative out there

551
00:50:42,640 --> 00:50:47,320
that it's like no we can deal with it and there's a reason it happened I mean we were

552
00:50:47,320 --> 00:50:50,960
I think we're starting to understand a heck of a lot more about it now than we have say

553
00:50:50,960 --> 00:50:58,160
for example 10 years ago but it's not a showstopper it's it can be an absolute I think way to

554
00:50:58,160 --> 00:51:07,040
vector and thrive as a result so I want to put an idea to you that kind of hit me I don't

555
00:51:07,040 --> 00:51:12,560
know it's probably been a couple years now but because I had a kind of gypsy experience

556
00:51:12,560 --> 00:51:17,080
as a firefighter start in the Miami area went to California for a few years worked for Anaheim

557
00:51:17,080 --> 00:51:22,640
and then spent the last 10 in the Orlando area for two other departments I had to go

558
00:51:22,640 --> 00:51:27,480
through all those new hire processes and three of the four I had to do a polygraph and I

559
00:51:27,480 --> 00:51:30,880
said this I had to lie through a polygraph because I learned very early on that if I

560
00:51:30,880 --> 00:51:35,000
told the truth about things that I'd done that I was immediately dismissed from the

561
00:51:35,000 --> 00:51:39,560
process so this facade of wanting choir boys to be soldiers and firefighters is another

562
00:51:39,560 --> 00:51:46,000
whole separate conversation but the other thing was the psychological test was the MMPI

563
00:51:46,000 --> 00:51:50,400
for the Minnesota multi-phasic personality interview have I got that right?

564
00:51:50,400 --> 00:51:51,400
Inventory, yeah.

565
00:51:51,400 --> 00:51:56,280
Inventory, thank you and it's a standalone test so that's the only one that you do you

566
00:51:56,280 --> 00:51:59,560
know thousands of questions you know do you like flowers do you like badgers do you like

567
00:51:59,560 --> 00:52:05,040
touching kids do you like going on holiday and you're like what and as I talk to people

568
00:52:05,040 --> 00:52:09,880
in your space now I'm discovering I mean I know for a fact that the polygraph is bullshit

569
00:52:09,880 --> 00:52:13,200
because I lied my way through three of them and then you you know it's smoke and mirrors

570
00:52:13,200 --> 00:52:17,060
getting you to admit to something and that's not me bragging it's just it was the only

571
00:52:17,060 --> 00:52:22,320
way I was going to put a uniform on is to be dishonest in a profession I was staunchly

572
00:52:22,320 --> 00:52:29,000
honest the rest of my life but the MMPI you learn doesn't have any value to truly discern

573
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:35,480
if someone is going to be a good first responder on its own so with that knowledge these departments

574
00:52:35,480 --> 00:52:40,280
are spending arguably thousands on those two combined and then they obviously time with

575
00:52:40,280 --> 00:52:46,120
the psychologist based on those results what is your perception of if they took that money

576
00:52:46,120 --> 00:52:51,160
knowing that many of these people have these unaddressed traumas difficulties that they're

577
00:52:51,160 --> 00:52:57,360
bringing into the profession that you instead use that for just making up a number five

578
00:52:57,360 --> 00:53:02,920
or six counseling sessions through their first year so they have an opportunity to start

579
00:53:02,920 --> 00:53:07,040
discussing some of the things that maybe were bothering them before they've normalized the

580
00:53:07,040 --> 00:53:11,480
mental health conversation and you've removed to the barrier to entry because now they have

581
00:53:11,480 --> 00:53:17,320
a go-to counselor from day one I think it's a reasonable idea I mean I you know we assessment

582
00:53:17,320 --> 00:53:22,440
and selection the ANS piece that you're talking about I mean MMPI is is merely one of you

583
00:53:22,440 --> 00:53:28,200
know dozens of tools out there that are that are valid they're reliable but it depends

584
00:53:28,200 --> 00:53:34,080
on how it's it's like I'm trying to equate this as kind of a different a different analogy

585
00:53:34,080 --> 00:53:38,960
like a tool like can I use a hammer to break a window can I use a hammer to break rocks

586
00:53:38,960 --> 00:53:45,320
can I use a hammer to hammer a nail I mean tools a tool right so there's a time and place

587
00:53:45,320 --> 00:53:52,280
for assessments I don't I'm not opposed to what you're saying at all I'm gonna go down

588
00:53:52,280 --> 00:53:56,720
a different rabbit hole assessments are generally used for one of two reasons either to rule

589
00:53:56,720 --> 00:54:04,040
someone out or rule someone in now it depends and I would be a fool to say that the fire

590
00:54:04,040 --> 00:54:09,280
agencies and the police agencies I don't know until I sit down with that person who is that

591
00:54:09,280 --> 00:54:16,040
gatekeeper and how they're interpreting that but I like the idea a lot of of resourcing

592
00:54:16,040 --> 00:54:20,680
from the neck up in between the ears some of the evidence-based things that become culturally

593
00:54:20,680 --> 00:54:27,260
part of a program I'm a obviously a big fan of that so I think there's a time and place

594
00:54:27,260 --> 00:54:32,800
for assessment I'm not opposed to that I'm a big fan of assessments in general but there's

595
00:54:32,800 --> 00:54:39,400
a caveat it depends what answer or what question you're trying to have answered so yeah so

596
00:54:39,400 --> 00:54:44,320
the way I would look at it was your selection process would be the background check the

597
00:54:44,320 --> 00:54:48,240
written test the physical test that we all go through so now you know am I fit enough

598
00:54:48,240 --> 00:54:54,040
am I smart enough and am I you know good enough of a person I haven't been doing some of the

599
00:54:54,040 --> 00:55:00,700
really horrendous stuff that allows me then to be a good firefighter and the MMPI seems

600
00:55:00,700 --> 00:55:05,920
like it's a kind of box checking thing so god forbid James goes crazy like well we tested

601
00:55:05,920 --> 00:55:09,840
him it's not our problem is kind of how I'm receiving it from both sides from the people

602
00:55:09,840 --> 00:55:16,040
in uniform and the people that have been part of the psychological side that being said

603
00:55:16,040 --> 00:55:20,360
what would be how would you advise the first responder professionals if up to this point

604
00:55:20,360 --> 00:55:26,420
they've just been doing the MMPI is there a better gamut of tests that actually would

605
00:55:26,420 --> 00:55:30,960
allow them to predict if someone was going to be a good first responder or not so it

606
00:55:30,960 --> 00:55:37,080
depends how do I say this it depends the question that's being asked you just you I think you

607
00:55:37,080 --> 00:55:41,120
asked it at the end if someone's going to be a good first responder or not generally

608
00:55:41,120 --> 00:55:47,160
speaking I'm gonna generalize here okay I'm gonna I'm gonna caveat with a huge red line

609
00:55:47,160 --> 00:55:54,240
I'm generalizing but generally speaking assessments are really good at they're better at predicting

610
00:55:54,240 --> 00:55:59,400
failure than they are success let's just leave it at that I mean they can identify people

611
00:55:59,400 --> 00:56:04,980
who have a low likelihood we found this with with the Navy SEALs as well the first job

612
00:56:04,980 --> 00:56:10,960
I had during my 10 years with them was three years at Bud's where SEALs are made or you

613
00:56:10,960 --> 00:56:16,360
know that that threshold of having to go through hell a week etc. and we found that we developed

614
00:56:16,360 --> 00:56:22,900
a computerized special operations resiliency test and what that assessment was really good

615
00:56:22,900 --> 00:56:29,880
at doing was predicting with incredibly good accuracy who was going to have a difficult

616
00:56:29,880 --> 00:56:37,040
time making it through when you married those resiliency traits on top of performance traits

617
00:56:37,040 --> 00:56:42,460
so a combination of the two so in other words people who are likely not going to have a

618
00:56:42,460 --> 00:56:47,440
return on the investment of training as it were I know that sounds awful but that's the

619
00:56:47,440 --> 00:56:53,400
way to look at that what you're saying I think is is there a way to look at traits one of

620
00:56:53,400 --> 00:56:59,360
the words that I don't like James is I don't like the term weakness I much prefer the term

621
00:56:59,360 --> 00:57:04,800
area for growth if we're gonna give an assessment let's identify some personality strengths

622
00:57:04,800 --> 00:57:10,920
that this person has and moreover let's identify some areas for growth and then ultimately

623
00:57:10,920 --> 00:57:17,040
how do we strengthen those muscles to make them a better whatever baseball football firefighter

624
00:57:17,040 --> 00:57:25,360
business man or woman surgeon I don't care so instead I'm a bigger fan of not using assessments

625
00:57:25,360 --> 00:57:32,960
to rule people out but instead as a snapshot to hey this is your nutritional profile right

626
00:57:32,960 --> 00:57:37,760
if we take a blood work and we say hey James you need more vitamin b12 you need to eat

627
00:57:37,760 --> 00:57:43,000
more celery you need blah blah blah that doesn't mean you're weak it just means this is a path

628
00:57:43,000 --> 00:57:49,680
for you to perform better this is a model that seems to work beautifully in sport and

629
00:57:49,680 --> 00:57:54,320
I'm not trying to make that transition but when I left when I retired from the military

630
00:57:54,320 --> 00:57:59,040
obviously I took a job in the front office of the Dodgers and we were going to move over

631
00:57:59,040 --> 00:58:05,320
the assessment selection and more importantly the development and enhancement programs that

632
00:58:05,320 --> 00:58:12,400
we perfected in the military to now how do we identify and build a better baseball player

633
00:58:12,400 --> 00:58:16,720
so if you're thinking about this and again a long-winded answer your question if you're

634
00:58:16,720 --> 00:58:21,400
thinking about this for the fire and police communities let's identify a better way to

635
00:58:21,400 --> 00:58:29,200
build not identify weakness and say no you can't but instead let's identify a profiling

636
00:58:29,200 --> 00:58:33,040
system and maybe that's the wrong word that's you know going to get me cancelled if I say

637
00:58:33,040 --> 00:58:40,440
profile but a profiling system on how do we identify the areas where James can grow and

638
00:58:40,440 --> 00:58:50,360
then give him an evidence-based framework readings podcasts a framework of power points

639
00:58:50,360 --> 00:58:54,560
and whatnot it doesn't matter I'm adding we can get into the details I'm agnostic to what

640
00:58:54,560 --> 00:59:00,900
those look like but how are you going to strengthen those resiliency muscles because I think we

641
00:59:00,900 --> 00:59:06,480
kind of know that firefighters and police officers are going they're going to see some

642
00:59:06,480 --> 00:59:12,320
pretty hard things and we need to strengthen those muscles so see I love that and I agree

643
00:59:12,320 --> 00:59:17,560
with that completely because when I I just was part of a study in November and it was

644
00:59:17,560 --> 00:59:21,440
um IHMC I don't know if you ever came across them but they work with the SEALS and NASA

645
00:59:21,440 --> 00:59:27,280
and DARPA and all the all the agencies and high performers um and that was kind of put

646
00:59:27,280 --> 00:59:32,380
up how because we there was a local businessman that put money up because we lost several

647
00:59:32,380 --> 00:59:38,400
first responders in my county where I live to suicide and the conversation got to well

648
00:59:38,400 --> 00:59:42,280
how can we weed out the people that are going to kill themselves basically is what the conversation

649
00:59:42,280 --> 00:59:49,360
was and I'm thinking while I'm you know biting my tongue um or how do we help those people

650
00:59:49,360 --> 00:59:54,440
grow how do we you know help them as we talked about the post-traumatic growth because I

651
00:59:54,440 --> 01:00:01,600
would argue that storied childhood is an absolute superpower for a first responder for a soldier

652
01:00:01,600 --> 01:00:06,520
and again like you said it doesn't have to be but if you have it the empathy the resilience

653
01:00:06,520 --> 01:00:11,640
that you develop overcoming things can become an incredible strength if you are given the

654
01:00:11,640 --> 01:00:17,720
tools to actually grow from it so this is precisely I mean I'm smiling this is precisely

655
01:00:17,720 --> 01:00:22,200
and I hate to and I'm going to say this this is precisely so keep in mind I did 20 years

656
01:00:22,200 --> 01:00:29,000
in the military thousands of elite performers my last four years three years there I started

657
01:00:29,000 --> 01:00:34,840
really working closely and dearly with both fire and police agencies and we can get into

658
01:00:34,840 --> 01:00:39,040
the details as to who and when and why some of that is in the book probably because one

659
01:00:39,040 --> 01:00:43,760
of my dearest friends in the world was a sheriff's deputy and I'll come back to your thing but

660
01:00:43,760 --> 01:00:47,880
I want to say this and one of the things I noticed as we raised our kids together literally

661
01:00:47,880 --> 01:00:54,080
lives right down the street from us as we raised our kids together I was active duty

662
01:00:54,080 --> 01:01:00,120
in the military and seeing you know our men and by the way and women who were doing incredibly

663
01:01:00,120 --> 01:01:06,280
heroic and difficult things during deployments etc and seeing the toll that was taking but

664
01:01:06,280 --> 01:01:10,080
then they would come back and we would we would have programs in play and for the most

665
01:01:10,080 --> 01:01:16,640
part and again for the most part I believed in the programs that we had created for naval

666
01:01:16,640 --> 01:01:21,080
special warfare in the SEAL community and all of the support staff etc but then I would

667
01:01:21,080 --> 01:01:27,520
juxtapose that with being on a tee ball or soccer field with one of my dear friends who

668
01:01:27,520 --> 01:01:31,640
again we raised our kids together who happens to be a sheriff's deputy or happened to be

669
01:01:31,640 --> 01:01:37,120
he's retired now and I was blown away James I was literally this is how naive I was even

670
01:01:37,120 --> 01:01:43,060
though I was working in police agencies and then I was blown away at how he was always

671
01:01:43,060 --> 01:01:49,040
deployed and here are my quotes my finger quotes unlike the SEALs and again they do

672
01:01:49,040 --> 01:01:55,900
incredible work and the most impactful valuable work I think that the world will ever know

673
01:01:55,900 --> 01:02:02,520
or maybe not know short of that though when they come back they can decompress for a while

674
01:02:02,520 --> 01:02:07,400
and get on training cycles for the next 18 months before they deploy for another six

675
01:02:07,400 --> 01:02:13,600
and it dawned on me that these policemen and women these firefighters they're they're deployed

676
01:02:13,600 --> 01:02:18,160
always like that and we don't even need to get into the human stress response and the

677
01:02:18,160 --> 01:02:24,460
hypothalamic pituitary adrenal cortex and adrenal burnout but I was I was appalled and

678
01:02:24,460 --> 01:02:33,940
floored at that so now how do we come full circle so I spent again 30 years of my career

679
01:02:33,940 --> 01:02:40,240
roughly 25,000 touch points with all of these men and women and for me before I call it

680
01:02:40,240 --> 01:02:44,680
quits and I retire and I'm done and I just want to sail somewhere and sit on a beach

681
01:02:44,680 --> 01:02:50,240
with my lovely wife this was the genesis behind the book and the reason I'm bringing this

682
01:02:50,240 --> 01:02:57,240
up isn't to talk about the book it was I wanted a reference to what I believe a framework

683
01:02:57,240 --> 01:03:01,600
that could be applied to anyone in high stress high performance situations and it really

684
01:03:01,600 --> 01:03:07,980
focuses on identity focuses on mindset really impacts adversity tolerance tactics balance

685
01:03:07,980 --> 01:03:13,900
recovery to really strengthen these muscles that we're talking about hey if you are going

686
01:03:13,900 --> 01:03:19,300
to be a high end performer run away from the narrative of he or she was born that way it's

687
01:03:19,300 --> 01:03:25,320
complete nonsense it is how and what they've learned along the way that make them good

688
01:03:25,320 --> 01:03:32,380
at what they do but the where the vacuum was is there's very little that I saw that I was

689
01:03:32,380 --> 01:03:39,040
satisfied with like hey this is a good not a be-all end-all but a very good reference

690
01:03:39,040 --> 01:03:44,140
to how we can strengthen some of these above the neck in between the ears muscles starting

691
01:03:44,140 --> 01:03:50,840
with identity reputation mindset all of that so sorry no don't say sorry that was beautiful

692
01:03:50,840 --> 01:03:56,060
and this is the thing I mean I've had so many people from the special operation operations

693
01:03:56,060 --> 01:04:00,600
community talk about how much they admire the first responders now firstly a lot of

694
01:04:00,600 --> 01:04:05,720
us forget that they're our heroes yet when they're deployed who's protecting their families

695
01:04:05,720 --> 01:04:11,220
we are the ones but secondly they've made that observation over and over and over again

696
01:04:11,220 --> 01:04:16,560
when I go back to the UK Australia America wherever they're from there's no reminders

697
01:04:16,560 --> 01:04:20,820
of what we did really you know it's a completely different topography a completely different

698
01:04:20,820 --> 01:04:27,020
community that we're in but most first responders especially the volunteer firefighters they

699
01:04:27,020 --> 01:04:31,320
live and work they run on their friends you know when it's 9-1-1 you know it could be

700
01:04:31,320 --> 01:04:35,440
that their local farm burning you know whatever it is and for a lot of us if I drive through

701
01:04:35,440 --> 01:04:40,200
Anaheim if I drive through Orlando certain corners I still see the faces of the people

702
01:04:40,200 --> 01:04:46,380
you know and they don't have that so another area I also want to put in that I don't think

703
01:04:46,380 --> 01:04:51,000
the average person understands is the immense sleep deprivation that our first responders

704
01:04:51,000 --> 01:04:57,520
encounter as well so I'm gonna gonna open another entire rabbit hole now I had Dr. Kurt

705
01:04:57,520 --> 01:05:01,820
Parsley I don't know if you you cross paths he's a very dear friend we worked together

706
01:05:01,820 --> 01:05:07,040
for three years actually four years with the seals and very I mean I took we talk probably

707
01:05:07,040 --> 01:05:11,880
once every week I mean he's amazing yeah I literally credit him with the inception of

708
01:05:11,880 --> 01:05:16,480
this podcast because I heard him on barbell shrugged years ago and I was just driving

709
01:05:16,480 --> 01:05:21,800
to work you know sleep deprived as always just why are we not talking about this how

710
01:05:21,800 --> 01:05:26,680
how can I have been an athlete I'm an ex-phys major how do I not know about sleep deprivation

711
01:05:26,680 --> 01:05:31,000
this is this is crazy so Kurt was I think episode six of this podcast and he's been

712
01:05:31,000 --> 01:05:37,120
on three three other times since but when I started listening to the impact of sleep

713
01:05:37,120 --> 01:05:44,480
deprivation acutely on performance and then chronically on disease it was everything that

714
01:05:44,480 --> 01:05:48,440
we experienced and a lot of what we call the line of duty deaths they're actually in fires

715
01:05:48,440 --> 01:05:53,480
in traffic accidents I'm starting to question how many of those were sleep deprivation and

716
01:05:53,480 --> 01:05:58,040
then the cancers the suicides the addictions I mean all the things globally in the human

717
01:05:58,040 --> 01:06:03,920
body you start realizing that sleep deprivation is a huge element too so massive subject but

718
01:06:03,920 --> 01:06:09,480
I'd love to open the door of you know performance and then obviously the parallel conversation

719
01:06:09,480 --> 01:06:14,080
of actual health so first off I'm always going to defer I mean Kirk is literally a world

720
01:06:14,080 --> 01:06:19,380
expert there are some incredible I mean Peter Peter Attia as well I mean some of these men

721
01:06:19,380 --> 01:06:24,940
and women out there are way more to cutting edge than I am but I'm an all-in believer

722
01:06:24,940 --> 01:06:30,240
I'll push the all believe I believe button all day long on on the power of sleep you

723
01:06:30,240 --> 01:06:36,520
know the World Health Organization years ago called shift work a carcinogen and that's

724
01:06:36,520 --> 01:06:42,120
a fancy word for a cancer causer so I mean when you talk in it and now I'm dumb but I'm

725
01:06:42,120 --> 01:06:49,040
not stupid I often say that like shift or we we can't just eliminate shift work right

726
01:06:49,040 --> 01:06:54,160
but we can really think about how we're titrating that and how we're shifting the shift work

727
01:06:54,160 --> 01:07:00,320
etc etc shifting the shifts of the shift workers etc so it all starts and ends with sleep I

728
01:07:00,320 --> 01:07:06,440
think it's the one someone asked me a year ago on on a different interview like what's

729
01:07:06,440 --> 01:07:12,680
the most important thing I think sleep is the most important rejuvenative phase and

730
01:07:12,680 --> 01:07:18,000
thing that the human being experiences and when we start to mess with that man oh man

731
01:07:18,000 --> 01:07:22,200
and then you start to talk about things like alcohol caffeine and how they have they chip

732
01:07:22,200 --> 01:07:27,120
away at normal sleep cycles as well so it's a again it's I hate to use this word again

733
01:07:27,120 --> 01:07:35,080
but it's a multifaceted issue I think that most and watch this we want to see me get

734
01:07:35,080 --> 01:07:42,560
cancelled in hate mail most things can be I think solved pretty well if the human being

735
01:07:42,560 --> 01:07:51,760
eats well hydrates has social connections exercises and gets sleep we are built in such

736
01:07:51,760 --> 01:07:58,880
a way that we can recover from a lot of things if we just focus on those five and sleep is

737
01:07:58,880 --> 01:08:05,080
that fifth one yeah so I mean we could talk about sleep literally all day long that's

738
01:08:05,080 --> 01:08:10,960
it's so important and it is built into I mean we we built in very specific programs that

739
01:08:10,960 --> 01:08:15,880
I'm sure Kirk talked about within the seals when I was their psychologist Kirk and I work

740
01:08:15,880 --> 01:08:20,160
hand in hand he was the physician I was a psychologist and we were building those programs

741
01:08:20,160 --> 01:08:25,840
for how seals were redeploying and circadian rhythms and shifting circadian rhythms and

742
01:08:25,840 --> 01:08:29,960
then when I transitioned to professional sport again I want to talk about first responders

743
01:08:29,960 --> 01:08:34,480
today because that's your audience but most of the athletes that we watch on television

744
01:08:34,480 --> 01:08:40,920
a lot of those athletes play mostly in the evenings or at night right and then they finish

745
01:08:40,920 --> 01:08:45,000
their game their adrenaline is high they eat they work out they go back to their family

746
01:08:45,000 --> 01:08:49,920
so their circadian rhythms are messed up as well not to mention they then travel all over

747
01:08:49,920 --> 01:08:55,240
the United States to play in the stadiums or fields of their choice different time zones

748
01:08:55,240 --> 01:09:03,560
different circadian shifts etc so yeah it's a it's a big big issue for sure so what I

749
01:09:03,560 --> 01:09:08,240
think the difference is between a lot of the the special operations groups are spoken to

750
01:09:08,240 --> 01:09:15,080
and police fire is they have Kirk Parsley's so for example Kirk talks about doing the

751
01:09:15,080 --> 01:09:19,800
blood work you know and seeing you know these these uber tactical athletes with blood work

752
01:09:19,800 --> 01:09:23,440
of an 80 year old woman and he's scratching his head and then a year later he figures

753
01:09:23,440 --> 01:09:29,680
out the the ambient epidemic is happening in his men in that particular example and

754
01:09:29,680 --> 01:09:35,000
then as you said switching lifestyle elements and training times and those kind of things

755
01:09:35,000 --> 01:09:39,480
and that alone getting them off ambient and now that blood work returns to how it should

756
01:09:39,480 --> 01:09:47,440
be the American fire service of a hundred years ago did sit around fire stations smoking

757
01:09:47,440 --> 01:09:54,640
cigars playing cards and waiting for a fire the American fire service of 2024 most urban

758
01:09:54,640 --> 01:09:59,800
and suburban departments are running pretty much 24 hours straight now there might be

759
01:09:59,800 --> 01:10:03,840
periods of short sleep obviously very poor quality sleep because you're waiting to have

760
01:10:03,840 --> 01:10:08,520
the shit scared out of you by the next alarm but they are working when you average it out

761
01:10:08,520 --> 01:10:15,840
24 hour shift with a 48 hour period and then 24 hours for 10 20 30 years of their life

762
01:10:15,840 --> 01:10:20,400
what's happening now on top of the massive hiring crisis because I think people are realizing

763
01:10:20,400 --> 01:10:24,680
how detrimental it is in this internet age as you said when we were young you couldn't

764
01:10:24,680 --> 01:10:31,040
google what are the health effects to a firefighter and now you can but they are just absolutely

765
01:10:31,040 --> 01:10:36,120
bleeding money on overtime filling these holes you know workman's comp claims medical retirements

766
01:10:36,120 --> 01:10:41,640
line of duty deaths lawsuits from mistakes we make because we're so tired and so it's

767
01:10:41,640 --> 01:10:46,880
a complete knee-jerk reactive element and what I'm trying to get you know our profession

768
01:10:46,880 --> 01:10:52,040
to understand is that if you put more rest and recovery between shifts so an extra 24

769
01:10:52,040 --> 01:10:57,520
hour period which should bring it to a 42 hour work week which everyone else works anyway

770
01:10:57,520 --> 01:11:03,400
we would then I think hugely impact the mental health crisis the obesity the you know the

771
01:11:03,400 --> 01:11:08,680
testosterone issues all the things that we're seeing because it mirrors what Kirk was seeing

772
01:11:08,680 --> 01:11:15,480
you know with his own eyes with you you know whatever it was 17 years ago yeah so and

773
01:11:15,480 --> 01:11:21,760
again I'm gonna always I'll always pay homage and defer to those experts in you know psychophysiology

774
01:11:21,760 --> 01:11:26,440
etc but if we just talk about the human stress response for a minute I'm gonna bring it back

775
01:11:26,440 --> 01:11:30,160
to what you just said and I wish I had a chart where your audience could see as well but

776
01:11:30,160 --> 01:11:36,200
we'll hopefully all verbally explain this the human stress response the hypothalamic

777
01:11:36,200 --> 01:11:43,920
pituitary adrenal cortex the we call that the HPA axis okay so the HPA axis when a stressor

778
01:11:43,920 --> 01:11:49,920
happens whether it's a fire alarm whether it's a grizzly bear whether it's a strike

779
01:11:49,920 --> 01:11:56,760
out whether it's a screaming person road rage whatever that is the dominoes start to fall

780
01:11:56,760 --> 01:12:02,200
and certain things happen so you interpret that and then all of a sudden cortisol adrenaline

781
01:12:02,200 --> 01:12:08,080
glucocorticoids get pumped into the bloodstream then a cascade of things happen there's a

782
01:12:08,080 --> 01:12:14,360
physiological response to stress which is vasoconstriction increased heart rate blood

783
01:12:14,360 --> 01:12:18,520
migration away from the extremities towards the center of the body to protect the human

784
01:12:18,520 --> 01:12:23,800
organs digestion starts to slow down because the body basically does a hierarchical okay

785
01:12:23,800 --> 01:12:27,080
I don't need to digest that hamburger right now I need to get out of the way the grizzly

786
01:12:27,080 --> 01:12:34,560
bear or the fire whatever it may be gunfight whatever it may be the cognitive effects are

787
01:12:34,560 --> 01:12:39,720
also equally as powerful right that affects the executive functions of the brain so those

788
01:12:39,720 --> 01:12:45,000
are those higher end functions that allow us to think abstractly problem-solve if then

789
01:12:45,000 --> 01:12:51,000
thinking think critically so those go pardon pardon you know to hell in a handbasket pardon

790
01:12:51,000 --> 01:12:56,640
my French so when we think about that human stress response of an influx of adrenaline

791
01:12:56,640 --> 01:13:02,160
and cortisol into the blood and and my fingers kind of moving up this chart imagine a chart

792
01:13:02,160 --> 01:13:08,520
where all of a sudden you have this huge pop up of these chemicals that we know affect

793
01:13:08,520 --> 01:13:16,680
physiology and we know affect psychology and cognitive functions if we take the human being

794
01:13:16,680 --> 01:13:24,160
out of the stressor we again have adapted over time through nutrition through hydration

795
01:13:24,160 --> 01:13:30,440
through connection through exercise and here we go again sleep to start to metabolize that

796
01:13:30,440 --> 01:13:36,560
stress response so that peak that immediate influx starts to be metabolized in the human

797
01:13:36,560 --> 01:13:42,320
being and they come back down to whatever their baseline normal functioning was here's

798
01:13:42,320 --> 01:13:47,080
the problem and this ties beautifully into what you just said and it's what we saw in

799
01:13:47,080 --> 01:13:51,920
naval special warfare with our operators as well and Kirk I'm sure probably spoken of

800
01:13:51,920 --> 01:13:57,960
this already when we have that influx of a our guys who are deployed they go out and

801
01:13:57,960 --> 01:14:04,160
they do incredible missions literally every night so you have this pop of cortisol pop

802
01:14:04,160 --> 01:14:09,520
of adrenaline which we know affects physiology and psychology and then it starts to metabolize

803
01:14:09,520 --> 01:14:13,680
as they come back and they try to sleep during the day because they're working at night okay

804
01:14:13,680 --> 01:14:18,760
we haven't even talked about the circadian shift and then before it formally metabolizes

805
01:14:18,760 --> 01:14:23,440
and they get back down to a baseline level boom it pops up again because they're redeployed

806
01:14:23,440 --> 01:14:28,720
with another stressor now let's make it in your world firefighting or police officers

807
01:14:28,720 --> 01:14:34,920
police men and women you have a fire you see horrible things death destruction and then

808
01:14:34,920 --> 01:14:39,720
you get back and it's metabolizing if you do those five things I talked about I'm not

809
01:14:39,720 --> 01:14:45,000
simplifying it but I'm trying to like those five core elements if we focus on those we

810
01:14:45,000 --> 01:14:52,400
can recover from most things beautifully okay boom cortisol spike boom boom so what we start

811
01:14:52,400 --> 01:14:57,720
to see is the baseline or what we the experts will call adrenal burnout and I started to

812
01:14:57,720 --> 01:15:03,320
see what we called I think someone just wrote a book on an operator syndrome or what I like

813
01:15:03,320 --> 01:15:09,360
to call in the police work and the police agencies I work with blue drift we start to

814
01:15:09,360 --> 01:15:16,720
see incrementally things like a cumulative subtle change in personality right because

815
01:15:16,720 --> 01:15:21,720
they get irritable and they're not getting the proper sleep emotionally numb cynicism

816
01:15:21,720 --> 01:15:31,320
sarcasm dark humor pessimism just in the psychology part because they haven't been allowed time

817
01:15:31,320 --> 01:15:37,040
they haven't been afforded time to let the body repair and let the mind repair itself

818
01:15:37,040 --> 01:15:41,880
and I know that sounds simplistic but it's really powerful it makes sense right back

819
01:15:41,880 --> 01:15:48,280
to cavemen and women right if you see a t-rex or you see a grizzly bear and you and you're

820
01:15:48,280 --> 01:15:54,240
lucky enough to survive that heinous trauma back to the very first part of this podcast

821
01:15:54,240 --> 01:15:58,040
then you go back to the cave and you rest you recover you tell stories about that you

822
01:15:58,040 --> 01:16:04,280
unpack that you get it off your chest while you survived there's a community you can educate

823
01:16:04,280 --> 01:16:09,960
others about what to do if we ever see that t-rex again but if every time you go out to

824
01:16:09,960 --> 01:16:15,400
forge for food you see a t-rex and you're not afforded the ability to recover you're

825
01:16:15,400 --> 01:16:22,240
going to see a markedly different caveman or cavewoman so anyhow yeah no that's that's

826
01:16:22,240 --> 01:16:27,600
absolutely beautiful and I'm actually you said adrenal burnout I want to put something

827
01:16:27,600 --> 01:16:33,720
to you and it's funny because I think I told Ted because we were on 7x I've skydived twice

828
01:16:33,720 --> 01:16:38,960
in my life absolutely terrified before the first time I will put my hand on my heart

829
01:16:38,960 --> 01:16:43,040
I went to McDonald's and went into the bathroom and God help the people that clean that bathroom

830
01:16:43,040 --> 01:16:48,560
after but I was really scared and then ended up flinging myself while being attached to

831
01:16:48,560 --> 01:16:53,880
a dude he flung us out of the airplane in New Zealand and by the time I landed I was

832
01:16:53,880 --> 01:16:58,520
ready to become an instructor it was so much fun so it was that fear of the unknown but

833
01:16:58,520 --> 01:17:05,420
I remember the immense fear the immense adrenal response I had that time now fast forward

834
01:17:05,420 --> 01:17:13,600
literally about 20 years later now we're in Cairo and they told us so we're going to get

835
01:17:13,600 --> 01:17:19,600
a free free skydive the difference was when we jumped out the plane the plane was doing

836
01:17:19,600 --> 01:17:24,760
a hundred and whatever miles an hour so it wasn't a drop it was a glide well this time

837
01:17:24,760 --> 01:17:28,920
they're like oh by the way you're jumping out of a Russian helicopter so I'm like well

838
01:17:28,920 --> 01:17:34,240
this is going to be really interesting because I feel like my adrenal glands are just spent

839
01:17:34,240 --> 01:17:38,480
now you know of course physiologically there's still an element but I really feel like they're

840
01:17:38,480 --> 01:17:43,880
diminished what a great way to test it I know how scared I was the first time I did a skydive

841
01:17:43,880 --> 01:17:48,920
now we're going to plummet from this helicopter and to add it's funny to add it insult the

842
01:17:48,920 --> 01:17:53,440
injury my instructor forgot my glasses so I had to raw dog it all the way down as well

843
01:17:53,440 --> 01:17:59,480
but the moment we dropped and I'm expecting this big adrenal spike there was nothing I

844
01:17:59,480 --> 01:18:05,400
mean the same as we're sitting here now it was bizarre so I've had people poo poo kind

845
01:18:05,400 --> 01:18:11,440
of adrenal fatigue adrenal burnout to me what I experienced there's no real other explanation

846
01:18:11,440 --> 01:18:16,000
I lived in a high stress level for 14 years in uniform and you know and obviously the

847
01:18:16,000 --> 01:18:21,880
shift work as well but what are you seeing as far as it is it is it actual you know almost

848
01:18:21,880 --> 01:18:27,040
like a exogenous trt element whereas a diminished physiological response or what are the kind

849
01:18:27,040 --> 01:18:33,360
of underlying elements to a dream or now to the you know the phd physiologist or you know

850
01:18:33,360 --> 01:18:37,340
you know some of the some of the physicians as well look the data is clear like as an

851
01:18:37,340 --> 01:18:42,580
interpreter of data as a as a guy who can read research I mean anyone who's poo pooing

852
01:18:42,580 --> 01:18:49,800
the the the the fact that adrenal burnout doesn't exist I mean these might be a hop

853
01:18:49,800 --> 01:18:53,920
skip and a jump away from flat earthers as well I mean you're not going to convince I

854
01:18:53,920 --> 01:18:59,580
mean I'll just leave it at that so I will say we can make this tactically relevant if

855
01:18:59,580 --> 01:19:04,240
we talk about firefighters and police and military or athletes or businessmen and women

856
01:19:04,240 --> 01:19:10,280
and the reason this becomes tactically relevant is look at it this way one of the physiological

857
01:19:10,280 --> 01:19:16,040
effects of a stress response so whether it's road rage whether it's a spousal argument

858
01:19:16,040 --> 01:19:20,800
whether it's striking out with bases loaded I don't care what the how you define stress

859
01:19:20,800 --> 01:19:27,400
but when stress happens okay we know the physica I go back to this the physiological response

860
01:19:27,400 --> 01:19:34,200
vasoconstriction increased heart rate rapid shallow breath but here's a tactically relevant

861
01:19:34,200 --> 01:19:41,560
thing that if I'm a leader in fire and I'm a leader in police and I'm a leader in military

862
01:19:41,560 --> 01:19:49,120
this one I go oh okay now I can make this relevant to my operators the people who are

863
01:19:49,120 --> 01:19:53,120
fighting fires for a living and one of the things that happens during the human stress

864
01:19:53,120 --> 01:20:00,720
response is called blood migration so because vasoconstriction happens the veins are constricting

865
01:20:00,720 --> 01:20:06,640
it's forcing blood towards the core of the body from the periphery so blood is moving

866
01:20:06,640 --> 01:20:14,000
from my hands and arms and my legs to the core towards the core element of the body

867
01:20:14,000 --> 01:20:18,040
the reason it's doing that is it's protecting it's protective right it's it's basically

868
01:20:18,040 --> 01:20:23,320
saying okay back to the grizzly bear I can lose an arm or a leg but I'm going to keep

869
01:20:23,320 --> 01:20:29,920
the vital organs supplied with blood so that we keep the organism alive why am I talking

870
01:20:29,920 --> 01:20:35,720
about this because tactically speaking if we go back to the seals or people that shoot

871
01:20:35,720 --> 01:20:42,880
for a living right I need them to have fine motor control they need to learn ways to control

872
01:20:42,880 --> 01:20:47,680
the human stress response because blood needs to be in their weapons which are their hands

873
01:20:47,680 --> 01:20:53,000
and their fingers to pull the trigger and in their executive frontal lobe of their brain

874
01:20:53,000 --> 01:20:59,520
to make critical decisions shoot no shoot now we make this about fire police it doesn't

875
01:20:59,520 --> 01:21:05,360
take you long to figure out that as a firefighter I need the firefighter I assume I'm not I

876
01:21:05,360 --> 01:21:11,160
don't want to offend because I'm not a firefighter but I assume I need he or she to have absolute

877
01:21:11,160 --> 01:21:16,960
vascularization in the hands and legs and arms as well as the brain so to me pardon

878
01:21:16,960 --> 01:21:23,080
the pun if you're not teaching techniques and you don't believe in techniques that are

879
01:21:23,080 --> 01:21:29,560
evidence-based to teach your firefighters to perform then literally you're robbing of

880
01:21:29,560 --> 01:21:34,040
a tactic you're robbing them of a tactical advantage to not only control the longevity

881
01:21:34,040 --> 01:21:38,220
of their health but actually to put out the fires I mean that's let's just make this

882
01:21:38,220 --> 01:21:43,560
simple I need the blood in the hands arms and legs and brains of the people that do

883
01:21:43,560 --> 01:21:52,620
this work for a living so yeah and so the adrenal fatigue basically comes from us constantly

884
01:21:52,620 --> 01:21:59,280
sub well should I say subconsciously dampening our stress response so we're able to function

885
01:21:59,280 --> 01:22:07,120
at a higher level and or I agree yes and or the the the adrenal cortex can only pump out

886
01:22:07,120 --> 01:22:12,200
so much because it's not being allowed the time afforded I shouldn't say a lot it's not

887
01:22:12,200 --> 01:22:19,640
being afforded the time to recover with those big five proper nutrition hydration connection

888
01:22:19,640 --> 01:22:30,220
exercise and most importantly sleep the body will heal with proper sleep most things beautiful

889
01:22:30,220 --> 01:22:34,760
all right with another area we talked about you know the the mental health conversations

890
01:22:34,760 --> 01:22:42,660
and stigma one kind of aha moment I had a few years ago was if you have a little resistance

891
01:22:42,660 --> 01:22:48,720
you can come from a different approach and still basically affect the same outcome and

892
01:22:48,720 --> 01:22:55,920
the person who spawned that for me Logan Gelbrick who is was a major league baseball player

893
01:22:55,920 --> 01:23:00,760
and he was talking about one of his you know flow state moments and he underlined to have

894
01:23:00,760 --> 01:23:03,840
to get in the flow state and again please this was years ago I'm probably butchering

895
01:23:03,840 --> 01:23:07,880
this but he was saying you had to have you know the practice that the tens of thousands

896
01:23:07,880 --> 01:23:13,640
of reps you had to have stress but you had to have a clear mind and it really resonated

897
01:23:13,640 --> 01:23:18,360
with me because say you've got the person who pooh-poohs the mental health conversation

898
01:23:18,360 --> 01:23:22,600
well let's talk about the firefighter as far as performance or the paramedic or the seal

899
01:23:22,600 --> 01:23:27,840
all right well you don't believe PTSD or you know stress or as you said overcoming difficulties

900
01:23:27,840 --> 01:23:35,040
is a real thing but meditation you know whatever the therapies are are also going to allow

901
01:23:35,040 --> 01:23:39,440
you to perform at a higher level so talk to me about mindfulness and some of these other

902
01:23:39,440 --> 01:23:44,280
practices with the elite performance that you've worked with even if we're not talking

903
01:23:44,280 --> 01:23:49,560
about overcoming you know challenges or a busy mind from a mental health perspective

904
01:23:49,560 --> 01:23:53,360
talk to me about the flow state or the pursuit of flow state and a high performer instead

905
01:23:53,360 --> 01:23:59,040
yeah so flow I'm just going to put it out there this is a controversial term I tend

906
01:23:59,040 --> 01:24:04,960
to be a little bit on the fence here research wise and from what I've seen I'm leaning towards

907
01:24:04,960 --> 01:24:09,960
flow let's put it that way but I still am on the fence Stephen Kotler talks about this

908
01:24:09,960 --> 01:24:17,760
other researchers talk about this as well I guess maybe it's a semantics issue here

909
01:24:17,760 --> 01:24:26,640
I am more comfortable with complete presence than I am this term flow because some of the

910
01:24:26,640 --> 01:24:33,480
flow stuff that I've seen is just it's a little bit spooky to be honest but I do like where

911
01:24:33,480 --> 01:24:37,800
I think mindfulness we did one controlled study in a peer-reviewed journal with mindfulness

912
01:24:37,800 --> 01:24:44,640
in Marines as well mindfulness it absolutely works I mean it's clear yoga works the reason

913
01:24:44,640 --> 01:24:50,200
a lot of these practices work is because it forces presence you know there's a lot of

914
01:24:50,200 --> 01:24:55,160
good meta-analyses and studies out there to suggest that most high performers are you

915
01:24:55,160 --> 01:25:00,040
know 60% of our thoughts are roughly in the future so we're very future-based and that's

916
01:25:00,040 --> 01:25:04,200
why we're successful to begin with right we have deadlines we have routines we're forward

917
01:25:04,200 --> 01:25:09,800
looking we can see danger before it affects us so I don't like to tell people to not think

918
01:25:09,800 --> 01:25:17,480
about the future but where focus or flow I think happens is becoming fully as fully present

919
01:25:17,480 --> 01:25:21,240
as you can in the moment or the experience that you're experiencing and I think that's

920
01:25:21,240 --> 01:25:27,760
why mindfulness is so powerful and so addicting to a lot of people as a technique that helps

921
01:25:27,760 --> 01:25:33,920
kind of catalyze the mindset of whatever they're doing in that moment so I'm a big fan in

922
01:25:33,920 --> 01:25:38,320
general yeah yeah that seems to be the way you sell it to to some of the other people

923
01:25:38,320 --> 01:25:42,360
it is just simply performance okay you know if if you want to be at the higher level like

924
01:25:42,360 --> 01:25:46,800
you said whether that's cold flow state or presence is exactly that like you know not

925
01:25:46,800 --> 01:25:51,320
being distracted by everything else when you're myopic on that thing that you've got to do

926
01:25:51,320 --> 01:25:55,760
that you need a calm mind and so if you have unaddressed trauma struggles whatever you

927
01:25:55,760 --> 01:26:00,080
know label you want to put on it that is going to be detrimental to your performance as a

928
01:26:00,080 --> 01:26:04,120
police officer maybe that's what makes you make the bad decision for the teenager reaching

929
01:26:04,120 --> 01:26:09,000
for his license and you think he's reaching for a gun so I think this is a really important

930
01:26:09,000 --> 01:26:12,760
conversation not only from the mental health perspective but the performance as well and

931
01:26:12,760 --> 01:26:17,480
again you add in sleep deprivation now you're kind of you know swimming upstream in the

932
01:26:17,480 --> 01:26:21,680
first place I agree we talk about this in the book we have a couple chapters but one

933
01:26:21,680 --> 01:26:28,760
in particular really dedicated to talking about how we how how we catalyze different

934
01:26:28,760 --> 01:26:33,880
mindsets for every role that we play and if you think about fire police I mean a lot of

935
01:26:33,880 --> 01:26:38,640
these men and women obviously are partners they're they have children their neighbors

936
01:26:38,640 --> 01:26:44,480
their church members as well so where I think the word I really like here is is if we can

937
01:26:44,480 --> 01:26:51,600
use pre and post performance routines to help kickstart and and catalyze a mindset that

938
01:26:51,600 --> 01:26:56,660
forces presence that's why routines exist that's why these pre performance routines

939
01:26:56,660 --> 01:27:01,040
if you're a baseball player you have a walk-up song am I saying that each firefighter or

940
01:27:01,040 --> 01:27:07,400
each police officer police men and women need a walk-up song not necessarily but they do

941
01:27:07,400 --> 01:27:14,020
they ought to I shouldn't say need they ought to think about a very structured pre performance

942
01:27:14,020 --> 01:27:19,240
routine for okay and we have a firefighter who talks about one of these in the book actually

943
01:27:19,240 --> 01:27:25,280
he's a he's a volunteer firefighter out just outside of Philly in a small town called Narborth

944
01:27:25,280 --> 01:27:31,040
on David Wurzel and a brilliant example of how these performance routines helped kind

945
01:27:31,040 --> 01:27:36,760
of kickstart and here it is force presence if you if you have a certain routine it's

946
01:27:36,760 --> 01:27:41,720
going to force you to be more present and I think it actually comes close to kickstarting

947
01:27:41,720 --> 01:27:47,440
what what you might or others might refer to as a flow state as well so have you ever

948
01:27:47,440 --> 01:27:54,440
come across the technology newcom I have not what is oh my goodness it's funny there's

949
01:27:54,440 --> 01:27:58,680
several things foundation training which we talked about before we hit record amazing

950
01:27:58,680 --> 01:28:02,600
for back health but newcom it was involved somewhere I don't know if it was dev group

951
01:28:02,600 --> 01:28:08,880
but it was that their technology was somewhere but they basically have neuroacoustic and

952
01:28:08,880 --> 01:28:13,800
it's not not the beats even it's the the foundation is almost 30 years ago there was an incredibly

953
01:28:13,800 --> 01:28:20,320
intelligent scientist who we had in the US who passed away just a few years ago but he

954
01:28:20,320 --> 01:28:26,000
identified the frequencies that the brain was at at certain stress levels and then I

955
01:28:26,000 --> 01:28:31,240
think that took him 15 plus years and then he figured out how to actually manipulate

956
01:28:31,240 --> 01:28:36,720
the brain through earphones to get you know to up regulate or down regulate and again

957
01:28:36,720 --> 01:28:40,600
you know there's there's so much out there and okay it's another snake oil thing I can

958
01:28:40,600 --> 01:28:47,880
tell you hands down I am I am hugely skeptical of many many things but it's not only helped

959
01:28:47,880 --> 01:28:52,520
me my wife uses it my son's use the sleep version every night my mom uses it and just

960
01:28:52,520 --> 01:28:56,960
said that her Portuguese housekeeper was literally doing it when I called her because she was

961
01:28:56,960 --> 01:29:03,640
having anxiety but the reason I bring this up it's so hard to punctuate just as you as

962
01:29:03,640 --> 01:29:08,480
you mentioned a police officer a paramedic a dispatcher a firefighter the end of their

963
01:29:08,480 --> 01:29:13,080
shift with high stress and God knows what we've seen and done to walking through the

964
01:29:13,080 --> 01:29:20,240
door as mom dad you know whatever relationship you have and the new calm has a 20 minute

965
01:29:20,240 --> 01:29:23,440
they call a power nap where you literally throw on a sleep mask you could be in your

966
01:29:23,440 --> 01:29:29,160
car in the bunk room of a fire station wherever take 20 minutes and it I mean it genuinely

967
01:29:29,160 --> 01:29:34,320
down regulates everything and I think it's such a beautiful way of punctuate in between

968
01:29:34,320 --> 01:29:39,480
work and then going home again I like it I just wrote down notes as you're talking I'll

969
01:29:39,480 --> 01:29:43,080
definitely look it up one of the things that we talk about in addition to I mean this is

970
01:29:43,080 --> 01:29:46,960
a perhaps you know I'll kick the tires and I'll look at it more one of the things we

971
01:29:46,960 --> 01:29:53,600
talk about a very simple hack if you will is to have the member really document the

972
01:29:53,600 --> 01:29:58,600
top four to six roles that they play so I'm gonna pretend you know I'm Eric the firefighter

973
01:29:58,600 --> 01:30:06,120
I'm Eric the husband I'm Eric the father and really identify keep it simple three words

974
01:30:06,120 --> 01:30:13,520
that you think you need to perform optimally in the mindset of that role so as a firefighter

975
01:30:13,520 --> 01:30:20,460
I need these I need to really focus on these three words for the optimal mindset for performance

976
01:30:20,460 --> 01:30:25,760
as a father these are the three words as a husband these are the three words and to really

977
01:30:25,760 --> 01:30:31,640
the hack it's really powerful as there's a chief marketing executive in the book that

978
01:30:31,640 --> 01:30:36,440
we interviewed that talks about how this changed her life and it's just a simple mantra as

979
01:30:36,440 --> 01:30:41,760
she was moving from her marketing job in New York literally at the end of the day to be

980
01:30:41,760 --> 01:30:47,520
a mom and to be a wife usually I mean simply using and repeating three words in her mind

981
01:30:47,520 --> 01:30:54,580
forced her to say okay now I'm gonna focus on the mindset I need to perform ideally performance

982
01:30:54,580 --> 01:30:59,720
wise as a mother and that helps so maybe that coupled with new com or whatever is a way

983
01:30:59,720 --> 01:31:04,520
to the whole point is there's how do we catalyze a mindset for the role that we're going to

984
01:31:04,520 --> 01:31:13,080
play now which by the way forces presence so when you were talking to Ryan on the podcast

985
01:31:13,080 --> 01:31:18,040
and you were obviously really diving deeply into the book what I loved was you touched

986
01:31:18,040 --> 01:31:23,600
on identity and you talked about amateur versus professional and it's something that I'm hoping

987
01:31:23,600 --> 01:31:28,080
he'll come on the show one day but Steven Pressfield wrote an amazing book called the

988
01:31:28,080 --> 01:31:35,180
war of art which I read before right in my latest book and it was so powerful because

989
01:31:35,180 --> 01:31:39,120
he and this is something I'm struggling with because I'm still an amateur writing because

990
01:31:39,120 --> 01:31:43,080
I haven't gone all in and I want to get to scheduling and time management with you in

991
01:31:43,080 --> 01:31:50,080
a minute as well but he described that an amateur identifies as that thing they're all

992
01:31:50,080 --> 01:31:56,680
in and a professional knows how to separate what we do and I just was such a great parallel

993
01:31:56,680 --> 01:32:02,320
to the firefighter who becomes only a firefighter and forgets that they are the husband the

994
01:32:02,320 --> 01:32:08,200
father etc so talk to me about your perspective of the amateur versus the professional and

995
01:32:08,200 --> 01:32:12,600
these identity roles that you just talked about sort of the quotes that I use in the

996
01:32:12,600 --> 01:32:18,520
book is amateurs focus on outcomes professionals focus on process or processes and I think

997
01:32:18,520 --> 01:32:23,780
that what you're alluding to in my career that probably that the saddest things I've

998
01:32:23,780 --> 01:32:29,520
seen to be honest not the most dire but just like emotionally makes me sad are these world

999
01:32:29,520 --> 01:32:36,600
class performers whether they're military fire police athletes who have spent most of

1000
01:32:36,600 --> 01:32:43,080
their identity focusing on what they do they've become what they do and they forget that who

1001
01:32:43,080 --> 01:32:48,320
they are is markedly different what they do is a piece of who they are but when that morphs

1002
01:32:48,320 --> 01:32:53,160
man oh man that's a tough one and we all see that those are the folks that retire and then

1003
01:32:53,160 --> 01:32:58,120
have a really difficult time whether they're athletes fire police again I don't a magnetic

1004
01:32:58,120 --> 01:33:04,160
as to the role so I one of the things you're bringing up I think is very relevant here

1005
01:33:04,160 --> 01:33:11,440
is you know how do we carefully monitor those different roles that we play and how are we

1006
01:33:11,440 --> 01:33:17,080
feeding and watering those and falling back on some of those to make sure that we have

1007
01:33:17,080 --> 01:33:23,720
we're built on more than just one pillar of what we do I think the amateur also rushes

1008
01:33:23,720 --> 01:33:31,240
to do a lot of things the professionals are very deliberate and it's ironic because you

1009
01:33:31,240 --> 01:33:38,200
and I began early on in this podcast talking about different modalities for sport and youth

1010
01:33:38,200 --> 01:33:42,560
compared you know Europeans compared to Americans and we talked about the difference between

1011
01:33:42,560 --> 01:33:48,800
specialized which it seems to be very American versus generalized which generally pun intended

1012
01:33:48,800 --> 01:33:55,240
seems to be more European per the Norwegian studies etc. I will say this that when we're

1013
01:33:55,240 --> 01:34:01,760
young we want extreme exposure to a lot of things young firefight young you know pre

1014
01:34:01,760 --> 01:34:09,240
firefighter pre police exposure exposure exposure but truly professionalizing is then being

1015
01:34:09,240 --> 01:34:17,240
very deliberate not necessarily think of an athlete I work with the number one female

1016
01:34:17,240 --> 01:34:22,920
surfer in the world currently and she's at a point now where she's not going to go out

1017
01:34:22,920 --> 01:34:27,520
and just ride waves for eight hours that doesn't make sense like when she was young and she's

1018
01:34:27,520 --> 01:34:32,040
five you want the brain which is a neuroplastic ride as much as you can try as different thing

1019
01:34:32,040 --> 01:34:37,480
go play tennis good whatever but now as a professional the professionals start to hone

1020
01:34:37,480 --> 01:34:42,440
and they're extremely deliberate on what they're doing every day and what it is they're focusing

1021
01:34:42,440 --> 01:34:48,760
on improving so I think that's an also an overriding statement to not only do the amateurs

1022
01:34:48,760 --> 01:34:54,540
focus on outcomes when they should be focusing on processes but the amateurs focus on just

1023
01:34:54,540 --> 01:35:01,040
a bias towards action in general which is wrong right there should be the focus on the

1024
01:35:01,040 --> 01:35:05,640
right action why am I doing what I'm doing today how am I trying to improve my craft

1025
01:35:05,640 --> 01:35:12,600
just ever so incrementally today in one area not 25 so another thing that you were talking

1026
01:35:12,600 --> 01:35:18,680
about which kind of ties into this was feedback and I think this is really pertinent circles

1027
01:35:18,680 --> 01:35:25,120
around our social media conversation earlier as I've matured I've realized that I'm only

1028
01:35:25,120 --> 01:35:30,640
interested in feedback from people that I respect and it can be I'm shit I'm fine as

1029
01:35:30,640 --> 01:35:34,520
long as it's from someone that is worthy hearing to it I was literally just talking to a friend

1030
01:35:34,520 --> 01:35:39,400
of mine who's Palestinian American one of the most beautiful human beings you will ever

1031
01:35:39,400 --> 01:35:45,560
meet I mean he's done so much relief work in Syria and all kinds of places and he was

1032
01:35:45,560 --> 01:35:50,440
as you can imagine there's a lot of negative stuff when images are posted from Gaza at

1033
01:35:50,440 --> 01:35:56,160
the moment where atrocities are it's not politics there are innocents on both sides of this

1034
01:35:56,160 --> 01:36:01,000
conflict being killed and that's an absolute truth and he was getting wound up by these

1035
01:36:01,000 --> 01:36:08,320
comments and I'm like you you've got to think about who who are you allowing in you know

1036
01:36:08,320 --> 01:36:12,800
do you value that that opinion in the first place but that's obviously a more extreme

1037
01:36:12,800 --> 01:36:18,520
version talk to me again about about the feedback because I love the way that you framed this

1038
01:36:18,520 --> 01:36:24,220
not all feedback is necessarily going to be valuable to an athlete or a responder hundred

1039
01:36:24,220 --> 01:36:29,520
percent I'm going to create more hate mail there's a lot of hate mail going to come my

1040
01:36:29,520 --> 01:36:38,080
way for sure here I think that I say this often if I had I'm going to be I'm going

1041
01:36:38,080 --> 01:36:44,320
to try to be polite every time I open pick your favorite social media media for LinkedIn

1042
01:36:44,320 --> 01:36:50,060
whatever it is if I had a nickel for every time I see a talking head that has no business

1043
01:36:50,060 --> 01:36:54,960
talking about the discipline they're speaking of again I'm going to always defer to the

1044
01:36:54,960 --> 01:36:59,440
experts right as I've said that repeatedly through this podcast but nowadays you just

1045
01:36:59,440 --> 01:37:04,000
need a thirty dollar microphone and an internet connection and you can call yourself an expert

1046
01:37:04,000 --> 01:37:09,540
in anything like literally without there's there's no filter there's no oversight there's

1047
01:37:09,540 --> 01:37:14,440
no anything so I would ask the listener we talk about this in the book I think it's a

1048
01:37:14,440 --> 01:37:20,520
healthy way to approach this or who's on your board of directors pick three to five people

1049
01:37:20,520 --> 01:37:25,920
and ideally no offense it probably shouldn't be a spouse although that's you know maybe

1050
01:37:25,920 --> 01:37:31,560
the next rung down but literally people who don't have an emotional vested interest to

1051
01:37:31,560 --> 01:37:35,720
tell you the right things or tell you the stuff you want to hear the people are I think

1052
01:37:35,720 --> 01:37:42,760
mentors are good maybe coaches maybe co-workers from a different department who can speak

1053
01:37:42,760 --> 01:37:47,520
your language who understand the stressors and the the architecture of what's going on

1054
01:37:47,520 --> 01:37:52,400
day to day and I think getting we you know Alan and I in the book we talk about is the

1055
01:37:52,400 --> 01:37:59,960
feedback valid vetted and trusted meaning five by valid is does the person have a background

1056
01:37:59,960 --> 01:38:04,040
where when they give me feedback they can actually it makes sense they they can they

1057
01:38:04,040 --> 01:38:09,960
know they have a background that actually has validity it's vetted it's filter like

1058
01:38:09,960 --> 01:38:14,440
the I know this person has they they come from the right background they've walked the

1059
01:38:14,440 --> 01:38:20,520
walk etc and it's coming with the right intent so the trust I think I trust that they're

1060
01:38:20,520 --> 01:38:24,460
going to give me the hard stuff that I don't want to hear not just the yeah Eric you're

1061
01:38:24,460 --> 01:38:31,120
doing great we bring up a great example in the book and I'll I'll divorce myself of a

1062
01:38:31,120 --> 01:38:35,540
first responder example here was a professional athlete who is going through a pretty significant

1063
01:38:35,540 --> 01:38:43,320
slump and it was in Los Angeles and anyone who watches sports knows of this figure and

1064
01:38:43,320 --> 01:38:47,240
was going through a pretty substantial slump and went into a Starbucks and we talk about

1065
01:38:47,240 --> 01:38:52,440
this in the book the barista example and the barista noticed who he was noticed obviously

1066
01:38:52,440 --> 01:38:57,000
that he's in a slump because the media is talking about it and apparently this barista

1067
01:38:57,000 --> 01:39:03,720
had played this person's sport in high school so the barista made it a point to come around

1068
01:39:03,720 --> 01:39:08,760
the coffee counter and tell him exactly what he was doing wrong and how the footwork was

1069
01:39:08,760 --> 01:39:14,560
wrong in his opinion as a barista so it's funny you're smiling I'm kind of chuckling

1070
01:39:14,560 --> 01:39:20,240
but what isn't funny is then that player came to our facility and for the next week and

1071
01:39:20,240 --> 01:39:27,100
a half almost two weeks demanded from the coaches that he make a change to his footwork

1072
01:39:27,100 --> 01:39:33,600
because of the feedback he had received from a barista remember sometimes when we're in

1073
01:39:33,600 --> 01:39:40,720
a slump whether that's an emotional physical personal performance there's a natural bias

1074
01:39:40,720 --> 01:39:46,840
towards action I need to do something to get out of it as opposed to am I taking a stepwise

1075
01:39:46,840 --> 01:39:51,820
reasonable approach to making sure that the feedback I'm given with all due respect to

1076
01:39:51,820 --> 01:39:58,520
a barista that person's great at making coffee which I love but I'm not sure that's the most

1077
01:39:58,520 --> 01:40:04,880
valid vetted feedback avenue or stream that could have that player could have afforded

1078
01:40:04,880 --> 01:40:10,360
so I think it's a very visceral example of how important how important it is to make

1079
01:40:10,360 --> 01:40:14,840
sure we have that board of directors that we can check in and then most importantly

1080
01:40:14,840 --> 01:40:21,180
James that we only make one change at a time and then measure that because if I change

1081
01:40:21,180 --> 01:40:26,160
everything or I change five things and I start to perform to my liking and my peers or my

1082
01:40:26,160 --> 01:40:32,520
boss is liking then it's unclear as to which of those five led to the change so I think

1083
01:40:32,520 --> 01:40:37,040
there ought to be more of an empirical science based approach to okay James is going to give

1084
01:40:37,040 --> 01:40:42,200
me feedback because he walks the walk he's a firefighter I need some feedback and I'm

1085
01:40:42,200 --> 01:40:46,520
going to take what he tells me one thing I'm gonna make a change and see if there's performance

1086
01:40:46,520 --> 01:40:52,320
or emotional or psychological changes whatever it may be if I get into it and I'm gonna go

1087
01:40:52,320 --> 01:40:56,240
skiing next week for a week to our place in Montana if I get into a skiing accident God

1088
01:40:56,240 --> 01:41:04,120
forbid and I tear my ACL I'm not gonna go to a barista I'm just not I mean I'm gonna

1089
01:41:04,120 --> 01:41:07,400
go to a barista to get a coffee but I'm gonna go to someone who knows what they're doing

1090
01:41:07,400 --> 01:41:13,920
to repair my leg and give me feedback on what I did wrong and how to repair that so absolutely

1091
01:41:13,920 --> 01:41:20,040
it's funny just total tangent I just saw on social media a guy that was backwards skiing

1092
01:41:20,040 --> 01:41:26,240
so the chances of him skiing past this particular person were I mean one in god knows how many

1093
01:41:26,240 --> 01:41:31,120
but he discovered a snowboarder completely buried upside down just the edge of their

1094
01:41:31,120 --> 01:41:36,960
board sticking out and was luckily a well-prepared guy his fitness you could see I mean that

1095
01:41:36,960 --> 01:41:40,700
was a big peak key as well because I can't imagine being there finding the person they

1096
01:41:40,700 --> 01:41:45,880
die because you weren't fit enough which again you know I talk about that in uniform you

1097
01:41:45,880 --> 01:41:50,080
know lives depend on us but he happened to have the you know the shovel and everything

1098
01:41:50,080 --> 01:41:55,120
and end up getting this person out but my god I mean the talk about psychology what

1099
01:41:55,120 --> 01:41:59,160
that person must have been thinking buried in what must have been about four or five

1100
01:41:59,160 --> 01:42:04,840
feet of snow knowing down well that he's way off piece and the chances of that single ski

1101
01:42:04,840 --> 01:42:10,640
are not only passing him but seeing the tip of his snowboard I mean absolutely incredible

1102
01:42:10,640 --> 01:42:17,480
wow yeah crazy story yeah so all right well then let's get to the book itself so you mentioned

1103
01:42:17,480 --> 01:42:22,800
about you know your your neighbor the the sheriff's deputy being somewhat of an inspiration

1104
01:42:22,800 --> 01:42:27,080
you have this story career you've worked with some of the you know the most elite warfighters

1105
01:42:27,080 --> 01:42:32,400
on the planet you work with world champion sporting teams what made you write learned

1106
01:42:32,400 --> 01:42:38,080
excellence and then let's kind of unpack what people find between the covers yeah so for

1107
01:42:38,080 --> 01:42:44,720
me it came down to probably fatigue we talked about adrenal fatigue I had mental fatigue

1108
01:42:44,720 --> 01:42:50,320
of just hearing in every corner in every direction I was looking that I can never do it the narrative

1109
01:42:50,320 --> 01:42:55,880
of I can never do it he or she is doing because they were born that way and I'll be the first

1110
01:42:55,880 --> 01:43:01,880
to say there are some anatomical advantages to certain trait disciplines for sure like

1111
01:43:01,880 --> 01:43:06,600
you know I a giraffe for example can reach fruit higher on a tree than an elephant for

1112
01:43:06,600 --> 01:43:12,040
example so my point is though when you unpack and we did so in this book learned excellence

1113
01:43:12,040 --> 01:43:18,800
we interviewed 32 of the world's best performers in their craft or in their discipline ranging

1114
01:43:18,800 --> 01:43:27,160
from CIA Navy SEALs firefighters police Cirque du Soleil acrobats neurosurgeons congressmen

1115
01:43:27,160 --> 01:43:34,560
ballroom dancers big wave surfers attorneys neurosurgeon we just tried to get a broad

1116
01:43:34,560 --> 01:43:38,560
kind of brush approach of what I think most reasonable people would say yeah that person

1117
01:43:38,560 --> 01:43:43,680
is wow yeah I know who that is Carly Lloyd Nathan Chen I mean people are going to know

1118
01:43:43,680 --> 01:43:49,880
who these people are and then when you hear their stories it becomes clear as day I just

1119
01:43:49,880 --> 01:43:56,240
did this for 25,000 encounters right over 30 years but we use 32 as a prime example

1120
01:43:56,240 --> 01:44:03,320
that there's a framework in place that we can accelerate learning and accelerate a lot

1121
01:44:03,320 --> 01:44:08,120
of these disciplines I mean that book learned excellence it's mental disciplines for leading

1122
01:44:08,120 --> 01:44:12,760
and winning from the top you know world's top performers so it's what are they doing

1123
01:44:12,760 --> 01:44:18,700
or what do they do on a regular basis to navigate and to incrementally improve and navigate

1124
01:44:18,700 --> 01:44:26,520
adversity focus on their identity catalyze mindsets balance and recover so partnered

1125
01:44:26,520 --> 01:44:30,780
with a group a former Google executive 16 years at Google Alan Eagle who had written

1126
01:44:30,780 --> 01:44:38,120
two bestsellers and I like that business vertical a lot so obviously I have the military side

1127
01:44:38,120 --> 01:44:43,120
I have the first responder exposure I have the sport exposure I wanted to bring in business

1128
01:44:43,120 --> 01:44:48,220
and make it a consumable I guess the last thing I'll say about the book is I'm most

1129
01:44:48,220 --> 01:44:54,280
proud I think of it being practical actionable and consumable to anyone and that was the

1130
01:44:54,280 --> 01:45:00,000
goal like how do we take complex psychological theories complex research and mix in some

1131
01:45:00,000 --> 01:45:06,920
of that with really good stories from people and make it consumable where anyone can move

1132
01:45:06,920 --> 01:45:11,960
the needle of their own performance after reading it so that was the goal I want to

1133
01:45:11,960 --> 01:45:16,400
get to some of the takeaways and I mean I'm already intrigued I really am I mean all that

1134
01:45:16,400 --> 01:45:20,040
the way that you've described the people in the book is the way that I look at the guests

1135
01:45:20,040 --> 01:45:24,780
on this podcast I am a firefighter I have firefighters on here but I have boy soldiers

1136
01:45:24,780 --> 01:45:29,560
and Navy SEALs and neuroscientists and all the people because again that Venn diagram

1137
01:45:29,560 --> 01:45:34,320
you get that beautiful overlap but before we get to what you found amongst all these

1138
01:45:34,320 --> 01:45:38,120
high performers and obviously the tens of thousands that you've seen with your own eyes

1139
01:45:38,120 --> 01:45:43,360
what are some of the the fallacies or myths that maybe some of these talking heads are

1140
01:45:43,360 --> 01:45:51,320
out there you know pushing out into the world that actually don't align with your findings

1141
01:45:51,320 --> 01:45:59,540
in your book and your work so one of the fallacies that I halfway agree with is their their brains

1142
01:45:59,540 --> 01:46:04,880
and their approach and their mindset or their psychology is different it is I mean you're

1143
01:46:04,880 --> 01:46:09,880
like you can talk to neurophysiologists and you can you know take the brains of elite

1144
01:46:09,880 --> 01:46:14,600
SEALs elite firefighters I mean you can find studies up and down the internet that are

1145
01:46:14,600 --> 01:46:21,000
valid research studies that the brains are different the problem is is the brains developmentally

1146
01:46:21,000 --> 01:46:28,640
become different we had we haven't taken any people from from birth and followed them with

1147
01:46:28,640 --> 01:46:35,080
you know neurophysiological longitudinal blood work to see okay so I think that that's I'm

1148
01:46:35,080 --> 01:46:40,720
getting deep here but one of some of the noise I sometimes hear back to your comment is that

1149
01:46:40,720 --> 01:46:46,360
well they're just different they're different but they've become that way by learning and

1150
01:46:46,360 --> 01:46:51,880
by incremental failure and by failing forward and by getting and receiving feedback and

1151
01:46:51,880 --> 01:46:58,040
by using techniques to make sure that their human stress response doesn't become overloaded

1152
01:46:58,040 --> 01:47:03,200
like we've talked about where it's adrenal fatigue they are focusing on having fun and

1153
01:47:03,200 --> 01:47:09,120
not making it a chore they are focusing on connection they are focusing on balance so

1154
01:47:09,120 --> 01:47:15,400
there's a lot of again that might the chief noise I hear by far is you just have to appreciate

1155
01:47:15,400 --> 01:47:21,360
this beauty that's you know in this discipline as a once a generation beauty and it's no

1156
01:47:21,360 --> 01:47:25,800
it's noise anyone can do what any of these men and women and they'll tell you the same

1157
01:47:25,800 --> 01:47:31,300
thing you don't need to hear it from Eric Potter at right you can hear it from themselves

1158
01:47:31,300 --> 01:47:38,680
in the book they'll tell you to a person they've become this way over time so the profession

1159
01:47:38,680 --> 01:47:45,360
that I was a part of the way that you rise the the promotional ladder is a series of

1160
01:47:45,360 --> 01:47:50,800
exams and my observation and again not you know tarring everyone with the same brush

1161
01:47:50,800 --> 01:47:54,840
there are some phenomenal leaders whether they're wearing chief spugles or whether they're

1162
01:47:54,840 --> 01:48:02,040
still a firefighter but there's there's a promotion without any human development with

1163
01:48:02,040 --> 01:48:09,320
any real inherent leadership skills so you again between the the business world the sporting

1164
01:48:09,320 --> 01:48:18,080
world the military world what are you seeing as far as rank versus leadership

1165
01:48:18,080 --> 01:48:24,720
rank is easy leadership is hard there's them there's my bumper sticker statement I think

1166
01:48:24,720 --> 01:48:30,920
leadership is yeah leadership is not that there's a lot of things there that are learned

1167
01:48:30,920 --> 01:48:37,480
over time through proper mentoring etc delegation you know giving and receiving feedback I will

1168
01:48:37,480 --> 01:48:43,600
say you're asking a hard question but I'll give you a perhaps a deeper harder answer

1169
01:48:43,600 --> 01:48:48,320
especially with leaders now we talk about elite performers in general I've been able

1170
01:48:48,320 --> 01:48:55,640
I've been lucky enough to work with thousands over 30 years but the leaders among those

1171
01:48:55,640 --> 01:49:00,560
a little bit different and for me this isn't in the book and I wish it had been maybe it'll

1172
01:49:00,560 --> 01:49:05,540
be in a second book who knows but there really are I call them kind of a four horseman there

1173
01:49:05,540 --> 01:49:13,520
are four core characteristics that I notice not only in talking to these NBA coaches the

1174
01:49:13,520 --> 01:49:20,160
police chiefs that there are four core things that most of them are have doubled and tripled

1175
01:49:20,160 --> 01:49:26,000
down on one of them is emotional intelligence and by emotional intelligence we can get academic

1176
01:49:26,000 --> 01:49:29,880
here and geek out on what the definition is are you in touch with your own emotions can

1177
01:49:29,880 --> 01:49:35,040
you have the radar to understand the emotions of the people around you and can you balance

1178
01:49:35,040 --> 01:49:42,460
those etc etc I simplify this and I call it feel can you read a room and can you feel

1179
01:49:42,460 --> 01:49:47,520
the person in front of you can you feel the atmosphere can you bounce that off of your

1180
01:49:47,520 --> 01:49:53,800
own stuff and be emotionally intelligent to navigate whatever decisions need to be made

1181
01:49:53,800 --> 01:49:59,920
so feel okay our emotional intelligence is one the second one is one of my favorites

1182
01:49:59,920 --> 01:50:04,980
of the force called reflective thinking are the and I think I would invite your audience

1183
01:50:04,980 --> 01:50:11,040
to to really do a gut check here and ask yourself think of the best leaders that you've ever

1184
01:50:11,040 --> 01:50:15,600
had and I'd be willing to bet you and I'm not a better here but we willing to bet you

1185
01:50:15,600 --> 01:50:21,360
he or she is quite reflective and by reflective I mean think of a chess player by the time

1186
01:50:21,360 --> 01:50:27,240
a chess player is making a move he or she has thought of two or three counter moves

1187
01:50:27,240 --> 01:50:33,240
that can be made meaning they are very strategic and they don't have here it is again a bias

1188
01:50:33,240 --> 01:50:39,240
towards or a rush towards action they want to survey everything and then make the right

1189
01:50:39,240 --> 01:50:46,720
decision for the right reason before they execute a decision or an action so good leaders

1190
01:50:46,720 --> 01:50:52,120
I have found and I've seen this in the ones some of them we interview in the book as well

1191
01:50:52,120 --> 01:51:00,080
they're very reflective people with low reflective thinking may say or do something very fast

1192
01:51:00,080 --> 01:51:05,040
but by and large they say to themselves afterwards sheesh I wish I'd given that more thought

1193
01:51:05,040 --> 01:51:09,720
I didn't think about that angle so emotional intelligence reflective thinking the third

1194
01:51:09,720 --> 01:51:14,840
is empathy and now I'm going to get a little touchy feely right but I the ability the best

1195
01:51:14,840 --> 01:51:20,240
definition I can come up with here on the podcast is the ability to temporarily put

1196
01:51:20,240 --> 01:51:27,880
your own perspective aside to understand the perspective of other so I may not know who

1197
01:51:27,880 --> 01:51:33,240
James is but I'm going to take the time to put my own biases my own perspective about

1198
01:51:33,240 --> 01:51:38,880
firefighters in general and say okay I want to understand this guy's pain points and his

1199
01:51:38,880 --> 01:51:45,200
perspective through his lens once I do that then I can help I can come to the middle and

1200
01:51:45,200 --> 01:51:51,520
I can then bring in expertise that I may have or not but first I need to lead with empathy

1201
01:51:51,520 --> 01:51:57,000
I need to understand the perspective and pain points or perspective of other okay and then

1202
01:51:57,000 --> 01:52:03,760
fourth and last would be curiosity to me the best leaders I've ever both interviewed been

1203
01:52:03,760 --> 01:52:09,160
a part of or had myself in the military and even in sport are curious creatures there

1204
01:52:09,160 --> 01:52:13,960
are more of the what and how people than the what then then I'm sorry they're more of the

1205
01:52:13,960 --> 01:52:19,680
how and why people than the what people what is a dime a dozen I can find an answer to

1206
01:52:19,680 --> 01:52:27,920
what now on Google that's easy the how and the why things work I think truly flex subject

1207
01:52:27,920 --> 01:52:32,280
matter expertise good leaders are curious and they're going to stay on top of their

1208
01:52:32,280 --> 01:52:38,280
discipline because they're constantly wanting to know more about and get better why things

1209
01:52:38,280 --> 01:52:43,840
work how can we make them better not just what it is what it is so sorry I went off

1210
01:52:43,840 --> 01:52:50,680
on those but I those four are on the leadership perspective by the way all learned right no

1211
01:52:50,680 --> 01:52:57,440
one comes out of the womb knowing any of those four so now it's important because when I'm

1212
01:52:57,440 --> 01:53:02,840
when you're listing these out I'm thinking about the crisis that my profession is going

1213
01:53:02,840 --> 01:53:08,320
through at the moment as I said you know we're overworked underpaid you know we have a hiring

1214
01:53:08,320 --> 01:53:12,280
crisis that means that it's not me I'm not in the service anymore the men and women wearing

1215
01:53:12,280 --> 01:53:16,920
uniform right now being asked to do more with less because there aren't enough bodies and

1216
01:53:16,920 --> 01:53:21,240
you know this very kind of reactive way that we're doing it is resulting in diseases deaths

1217
01:53:21,240 --> 01:53:22,760
divorces etc.

1218
01:53:22,760 --> 01:53:28,480
Suicide and when you think about empathy what we see a lot of times whether it's the county

1219
01:53:28,480 --> 01:53:33,440
or city council member or the police chief that pushes papers behind the desk now and

1220
01:53:33,440 --> 01:53:37,900
I mean that simply is you know not working on a rig for 24 hours is there's a loss of

1221
01:53:37,900 --> 01:53:43,760
empathy and then when it comes to the curious you know the curiosity side it's easy just

1222
01:53:43,760 --> 01:53:47,520
to stay within the parameters of the fire service oh well I just you know spoke to this

1223
01:53:47,520 --> 01:53:52,040
chief from this fire department and this is how they do it so rather than going to the

1224
01:53:52,040 --> 01:53:57,680
Navy SEALs the SAS you know Google Virgin Atlantic you know how do you do it I know

1225
01:53:57,680 --> 01:54:01,880
the one thing that the fire service likes to throw around is that fire service is a

1226
01:54:01,880 --> 01:54:07,240
business and I always say okay well then if I disagree we're not here to make money we're

1227
01:54:07,240 --> 01:54:11,600
here to be there when people are having their worst day but if that is the case then why

1228
01:54:11,600 --> 01:54:15,600
are you working like an indian indonesian sweatshop rather than going to Google and

1229
01:54:15,600 --> 01:54:20,400
Virgin these proactive business models and asking them because you're going to find out

1230
01:54:20,400 --> 01:54:24,320
they've got a short work week they've you know exercise and nutrition is a priority

1231
01:54:24,320 --> 01:54:27,400
with their people and you're going to see the same things that you're still not doing

1232
01:54:27,400 --> 01:54:31,920
there so James I would meet them where they're at I wouldn't change their words and again

1233
01:54:31,920 --> 01:54:36,840
I'm not this isn't a criticism of you but look am I opposed to that do I believe that

1234
01:54:36,840 --> 01:54:42,280
my my cop friends and my firefighter friends are in a business of of course that's preposterous

1235
01:54:42,280 --> 01:54:48,320
to me but if the person believes that one of the best mentors I ever had told me you

1236
01:54:48,320 --> 01:54:53,800
have to meet the person where they're at in order to in in order to foster change so I

1237
01:54:53,800 --> 01:54:58,680
think that if they're going to use the business metaphor you said the exact right thing let's

1238
01:54:58,680 --> 01:55:03,840
call it a business then okay they're in a business how do we improve productivity well

1239
01:55:03,840 --> 01:55:11,040
I can show you studies until until we drown in them that focus on balance and recovery

1240
01:55:11,040 --> 01:55:15,200
increasing productivity so I I would just meet him where they're at saying okay if you're

1241
01:55:15,200 --> 01:55:18,960
going to call this a business let's make the business more efficient and more productive

1242
01:55:18,960 --> 01:55:25,280
by doing these things it sounds awful to call it that but at the end of the day okay and

1243
01:55:25,280 --> 01:55:29,200
you said the right thing with Google and all the the wellness programs I mean they've weaponized

1244
01:55:29,200 --> 01:55:35,000
wellness now and it is powerful it is it's moving it has moved the needle and continues

1245
01:55:35,000 --> 01:55:41,480
to move the needle so yeah well even some of the you know most proactive corporate companies

1246
01:55:41,480 --> 01:55:47,980
have switched to the four nine-hour days now and not us you know that not cut salary or

1247
01:55:47,980 --> 01:55:52,080
anything and they're finding that they're as if not more productive because these people

1248
01:55:52,080 --> 01:55:56,000
are getting an extra day and they're becoming more innovative how do I get the same amount

1249
01:55:56,000 --> 01:56:01,000
of work done in four days now because I mean we all know anyone who's done a job that they

1250
01:56:01,000 --> 01:56:05,680
didn't absolutely love you just kind of you know that inbox is never empty it's going

1251
01:56:05,680 --> 01:56:10,680
to be there the next day so how can you be more efficient so even if you use that corporate

1252
01:56:10,680 --> 01:56:17,920
example well again you know they are they're valuing rest recovery sleep efficiency so

1253
01:56:17,920 --> 01:56:21,960
you know but again it's that lack of curiosity you're calling yourself a business without

1254
01:56:21,960 --> 01:56:30,280
really doing the work to underline your your ethos yeah I was you know I'm having flashbacks

1255
01:56:30,280 --> 01:56:35,600
to be honest with you of you know being in the military and when when I was the the psychologist

1256
01:56:35,600 --> 01:56:40,440
I was the first like psychologist at Bud's and we had obviously it was post 9-11 so we

1257
01:56:40,440 --> 01:56:50,000
had to iterate and develop programs for resilience and and we we had the resources to do that

1258
01:56:50,000 --> 01:56:56,160
I you know on the flip side I go to my friends who are cops and firefighters and I'm again

1259
01:56:56,160 --> 01:57:00,840
I'm going to create more hate mail today but it's it's like I was appalled I honestly was

1260
01:57:00,840 --> 01:57:06,040
appalled with the lack of resourcing of this and I'm like my goodness this is the like

1261
01:57:06,040 --> 01:57:10,720
if we're going to resource anything like you're spending more on boots than you are on some

1262
01:57:10,720 --> 01:57:15,440
of the resiliency programs here I mean what what are we doing I mean feet are important

1263
01:57:15,440 --> 01:57:19,240
but actually the greatest resource is above the neck and between the ears let's be careful

1264
01:57:19,240 --> 01:57:26,680
here so yeah absolutely well I want to throw something in and then revisit the book and

1265
01:57:26,680 --> 01:57:30,320
then we've got some closing questions but this I think it's important that we do discuss

1266
01:57:30,320 --> 01:57:35,280
especially as the SEAL community has lost so many men to suicide I mean especially recently

1267
01:57:35,280 --> 01:57:40,200
it seems like you know over and over and over again I see more and more one of the other

1268
01:57:40,200 --> 01:57:46,840
things that became apparent to me over these these years and again I you know a white belt

1269
01:57:46,840 --> 01:57:52,760
constantly curious interviewer but I'm getting these amazing life stories and people on here

1270
01:57:52,760 --> 01:57:57,560
that have been right there two of you know one two of them actually completed their suicide

1271
01:57:57,560 --> 01:58:02,520
attempt they just survived Kevin Hines survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge Emma Benoit

1272
01:58:02,520 --> 01:58:09,600
survived shooting herself and over and over again of course there's the one element of

1273
01:58:09,600 --> 01:58:15,560
wanting the suffering to end but another piece that really not even surprised me I just didn't

1274
01:58:15,560 --> 01:58:21,280
think about that totally pushes against the kind of shame that's put on suicide was that

1275
01:58:21,280 --> 01:58:29,280
feeling of being a burden and when you look at the brain as being miswired so we can't

1276
01:58:29,280 --> 01:58:34,080
understand a brain in crisis when you're not in crisis you know it's trying to understand

1277
01:58:34,080 --> 01:58:40,000
what a femur fracture is like when your leg isn't broken but you now go back to how a

1278
01:58:40,000 --> 01:58:45,480
lot of us talked about suicide oh it's cowardly it's selfish how could you think of your kids

1279
01:58:45,480 --> 01:58:50,200
and then I hear these these you know courageous men and women come on the show and pour their

1280
01:58:50,200 --> 01:58:56,160
heart out and tell their story and at that moment they believe that they were a burden

1281
01:58:56,160 --> 01:59:02,000
to their children they were a burden to their wife their husband and so suicide was a selfless

1282
01:59:02,000 --> 01:59:07,160
act it was a courageous act in that mindset at that point which goes against our very

1283
01:59:07,160 --> 01:59:14,240
biology biology to to survive what is your perspective of that because I feel like are

1284
01:59:14,240 --> 01:59:19,160
you feeling like a burden should be front and center on the on the you know the posters

1285
01:59:19,160 --> 01:59:23,400
and the PSA's and all these because it just doesn't seem to be discussed and it totally

1286
01:59:23,400 --> 01:59:29,920
debunks then that selfish cowardly rhetoric that a lot of us were raised on so I'm a huge

1287
01:59:29,920 --> 01:59:36,960
fan I think that's that's perhaps the my favorite part of this podcast to be honest because

1288
01:59:36,960 --> 01:59:40,520
I actually think that this you probably saw me smile as you were talking about this this

1289
01:59:40,520 --> 01:59:45,580
is this is very relevant I think it's and is unfortunately it's not a narrative you

1290
01:59:45,580 --> 01:59:51,240
hear much about to be honest but I but I have to look back to my one of my mentors you have

1291
01:59:51,240 --> 01:59:56,120
to meet people where they're at and you have to listen especially to the survivors of this

1292
01:59:56,120 --> 02:00:01,240
and if that's the mindset they had who am I like I don't get paid enough to say oh I'm

1293
02:00:01,240 --> 02:00:07,960
sorry that's not what they mean no we I think that's that's fair the other piece here that

1294
02:00:07,960 --> 02:00:14,640
I was struck with and I can't speak because I'm not a firefighter I'm not a cop but I

1295
02:00:14,640 --> 02:00:21,120
was a naval officer for 20 years and I think that it's the most impactful valuable work

1296
02:00:21,120 --> 02:00:26,240
I will probably on my last breath I will look especially at the sealed community I was lucky

1297
02:00:26,240 --> 02:00:30,880
enough to be with them as their psychologist I'm I talk about this a little bit in the

1298
02:00:30,880 --> 02:00:34,920
book nothing is going to come close to that nothing that's just a given you just have

1299
02:00:34,920 --> 02:00:40,680
to kind of put that aside and be like okay that said one of the things that I saw that

1300
02:00:40,680 --> 02:00:45,760
was difficult for these men and by the way women in the military who transitioning as

1301
02:00:45,760 --> 02:00:52,760
well is just a lack of a true sense of community afterwards so while I think what you've just

1302
02:00:52,760 --> 02:00:59,780
talked about is probably a one as we need to hear from the survivors on them feeling

1303
02:00:59,780 --> 02:01:15,040
like they were a burden a two might be have we created a community that is completely

1304
02:01:15,040 --> 02:01:22,240
how do I relevant and more authentic to their experience as not only their role but what

1305
02:01:22,240 --> 02:01:27,320
they've experienced and I'm not sure I can't speak to fire I wish I could I wish I could

1306
02:01:27,320 --> 02:01:32,880
speak to police I can only guess but in the military this is where I think it's fallen

1307
02:01:32,880 --> 02:01:39,440
short I mean the military creates and again I loved the military for 20 years it was great

1308
02:01:39,440 --> 02:01:45,360
but it creates a culture of like you know you shop it on base at commissaries and you

1309
02:01:45,360 --> 02:01:51,800
create an acronyms that only military members understand and then at the end of that bullet

1310
02:01:51,800 --> 02:01:58,320
train whether it's four years five years or retired at 20 or 30 the bullet train stops

1311
02:01:58,320 --> 02:02:03,920
and people get out with an unbelievable role that they've been playing that by the way

1312
02:02:03,920 --> 02:02:13,000
no fans no no media no ESPN no blogs about it doing incredibly relevant and impactful

1313
02:02:13,000 --> 02:02:19,800
work the bullet train stops the doors open they walk out the bullet train doors shut

1314
02:02:19,800 --> 02:02:26,720
and it takes off again at mock speed and they're in a culture that yeah they're Americans or

1315
02:02:26,720 --> 02:02:34,040
they're Brits or they're Finns or whatever I don't care and I'm just not quite sure

1316
02:02:34,040 --> 02:02:40,240
because a lot of people my experience and again I've had a very good experience but

1317
02:02:40,240 --> 02:02:45,600
I can see where like my employers didn't really care didn't ask questions about the military

1318
02:02:45,600 --> 02:02:50,960
my neighbors really did care I mean that's and I'm sure that's the same for fire and

1319
02:02:50,960 --> 02:02:54,560
police and I do think that's I'm going off on this probably a little bit longer and I'm

1320
02:02:54,560 --> 02:03:01,080
sorry but I think it's a cultural misalignment afterwards the people that really don't fully

1321
02:03:01,080 --> 02:03:08,760
understand what I've experienced authentically yeah so a better sense of community I think

1322
02:03:08,760 --> 02:03:14,720
is the second answer to that burden issue as well to be honest yeah I couldn't agree

1323
02:03:14,720 --> 02:03:18,760
more I've had Sebastian Junger on several times and you know his book tribe for example

1324
02:03:18,760 --> 02:03:24,480
I think was such a powerful perspective on that and I think where we drop the ball so

1325
02:03:24,480 --> 02:03:31,040
poorly in the fire service specifically is we have done the worst job of branding like

1326
02:03:31,040 --> 02:03:36,480
people still in 2024 why is there a fire engine on my medical call or you know you guys just

1327
02:03:36,480 --> 02:03:41,200
sit around and you know work out and play cards and and it just drives me crazy I mean

1328
02:03:41,200 --> 02:03:46,480
how how have we got to this point I think the the whole you know the tongue-in-cheek

1329
02:03:46,480 --> 02:03:50,960
joke about every seal's written a book there's a lot of upsides to that you know you don't

1330
02:03:50,960 --> 02:03:55,320
need to know the operational secrets but to understand as you said what some you know

1331
02:03:55,320 --> 02:04:01,000
some of these incredible war fighters have done for this country is really important

1332
02:04:01,000 --> 02:04:04,480
what kills me is that we don't have that in the fire service and I'm writing a book now

1333
02:04:04,480 --> 02:04:09,880
that my pipe dream is to make into a TV show so maybe we can not only tell that but I want

1334
02:04:09,880 --> 02:04:14,600
to tell the multi-generational story woven into that as well but you know we so you have

1335
02:04:14,600 --> 02:04:19,720
these men and women that serve for 10 20 30 years every third day they left their family

1336
02:04:19,720 --> 02:04:22,960
I mean they literally if they got a 30-year career they've been away from their family

1337
02:04:22,960 --> 02:04:28,640
for 10 solid years by that point and then and then one day the bay door closes behind

1338
02:04:28,640 --> 02:04:33,720
them and that's it there's no VA you know there's no place that they can all meet like

1339
02:04:33,720 --> 02:04:37,760
you're done no no health insurance nothing you know you can have Cobra for a year and

1340
02:04:37,760 --> 02:04:44,720
then you know by Felicia so you've removed that community that purpose identity and you

1341
02:04:44,720 --> 02:04:49,320
then go back into a community that has no idea what you did because our profession is

1342
02:04:49,320 --> 02:04:54,720
so bad at letting them know what we do which also then in turn is the resistance for giving

1343
02:04:54,720 --> 02:04:58,440
them more rest and recovery well why do they need time off they don't do anything now so

1344
02:04:58,440 --> 02:05:02,680
this is what I see with ours and a lot of our men and women in in fire police you know

1345
02:05:02,680 --> 02:05:08,280
corrections dispatch they really really struggle after because as you said there isn't that

1346
02:05:08,280 --> 02:05:12,680
community there isn't even an understanding of what these men and women do when they leave

1347
02:05:12,680 --> 02:05:17,200
their families to protect complete strangers every third day for example totally agree

1348
02:05:17,200 --> 02:05:22,840
totally beautifully stated and couldn't agree more couldn't agree more well I want to just

1349
02:05:22,840 --> 02:05:27,240
revisit the book for a second so we talked about the kind of myths what are some of the

1350
02:05:27,240 --> 02:05:31,120
takeaways of course I don't expect you to to describe the whole book and people listening

1351
02:05:31,120 --> 02:05:35,400
can buy the book and learn from all these great high performers but what are some of

1352
02:05:35,400 --> 02:05:39,840
the the overlaps in the Venn diagrams that you did see with all these great people yeah

1353
02:05:39,840 --> 02:05:44,520
it's a great question so for us for Alan and I we put together a framework that really

1354
02:05:44,520 --> 02:05:51,200
focused on five main verticals there are five when you look at kind of the shared concentric

1355
02:05:51,200 --> 02:05:56,160
circle shared variance of concentric circles of all of these disciplines who are the best

1356
02:05:56,160 --> 02:06:02,720
in what they do it really came down to five the first is a more of a focus on identity

1357
02:06:02,720 --> 02:06:08,600
over reputation so the best performers in the world they're focusing a lot more on identity

1358
02:06:08,600 --> 02:06:14,160
markers and making decisions based on their identity and care really a lot less about

1359
02:06:14,160 --> 02:06:18,080
what people think they just accelerate that natural progression that most humans have

1360
02:06:18,080 --> 02:06:23,560
so the first is identity over reputation we unpack an entire chapter on that the second

1361
02:06:23,560 --> 02:06:29,160
is mindset not only do do we find the same thing that Carol Dweck found in her great

1362
02:06:29,160 --> 02:06:33,040
work of growth mindset yeah the best performers in the world do have a growth mindset but

1363
02:06:33,040 --> 02:06:38,680
they also have a challenge versus a threat mindset whereas they view setbacks and obstacles

1364
02:06:38,680 --> 02:06:44,680
as nothing more than a unique challenge that can be solved and thirdly around mindset is

1365
02:06:44,680 --> 02:06:49,320
that issue of having a different mindset for every role that they play so we unpack chapter

1366
02:06:49,320 --> 02:06:54,920
two on mindset and how you if you want to be the best in your craft you need to have

1367
02:06:54,920 --> 02:06:58,800
a different mindset for every role that you play the mindset that makes you an effective

1368
02:06:58,800 --> 02:07:03,220
firefighter is not going to be the same mindset that's going to make you an effective father

1369
02:07:03,220 --> 02:07:12,100
mother etc it's not going to be thirdly we have an entire chapter on process really through

1370
02:07:12,100 --> 02:07:18,160
great stories as well that focusing on processes or recipes to performance rather than outcomes

1371
02:07:18,160 --> 02:07:22,920
and really surrounding yourself with valid vetted feedback and those boards of directors

1372
02:07:22,920 --> 02:07:28,340
etc so chapter three is there that's the third differentiator the fourth was adversity tolerance

1373
02:07:28,340 --> 02:07:33,840
tactics when you look at the best men and women in their craft they're generally doing

1374
02:07:33,840 --> 02:07:40,800
the same 10 things to navigate through adversity or stress pre and post performance routines

1375
02:07:40,800 --> 02:07:46,420
breathing visualization positive self-talk thought management contingency planning etc

1376
02:07:46,420 --> 02:07:52,880
so adversity tolerance is the fourth and then the last is balance and recovery so these

1377
02:07:52,880 --> 02:07:59,560
five main pillars are truly the best differentiators between if you want to be the best in your

1378
02:07:59,560 --> 02:08:06,080
craft i don't care what it is really think about an operational way to practically and

1379
02:08:06,080 --> 02:08:11,540
actionably improve in those five areas so that's what the book is about beautiful now

1380
02:08:11,540 --> 02:08:17,160
where can people find the book amazon barnes and noble i just sent you again our publicist

1381
02:08:17,160 --> 02:08:21,720
i apologize i just sent you a galley you should have that galley in your inbox james but the

1382
02:08:21,720 --> 02:08:27,280
average or anyone can go now to amazon it's called learned excellence mental disciplines

1383
02:08:27,280 --> 02:08:31,480
for leading and winning from the world's top performers barnes and noble books a million

1384
02:08:31,480 --> 02:08:38,760
anywhere now online audible is great too pete simonelli i'm going to throw out a nice shoutout

1385
02:08:38,760 --> 02:08:45,400
to pete i in my opinion is the number one narrator in all of book he's a he's a voice

1386
02:08:45,400 --> 02:08:51,440
actor and he did he did the the narration for the book pete's and simonelli so yeah

1387
02:08:51,440 --> 02:08:55,000
excellent brilliant well i want to throw some quick closing questions at you if you've got

1388
02:08:55,000 --> 02:08:59,840
time yes sir all right the first one we talked about your book are there any other books

1389
02:08:59,840 --> 02:09:05,760
that you love to recommend it can be related to our conversation today or completely unrelated

1390
02:09:05,760 --> 02:09:13,280
i just finished about whatever a month ago peter atia's outlive it's on my shelf right

1391
02:09:13,280 --> 02:09:19,480
in front of me i'm a big fan of this book i think he's one of the world's best in what

1392
02:09:19,480 --> 02:09:24,880
he does he's a physician and really talks about in a very practical matter of fact way

1393
02:09:24,880 --> 02:09:30,200
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

1394
02:09:30,200 --> 02:09:37,120
mindset side i have to throw out uh relentless i like the book relentless um and then i also

1395
02:09:37,120 --> 02:09:41,960
like the power of habit by charles doohigg those are ones that come to mind that i'm

1396
02:09:41,960 --> 02:09:51,880
a big big fan of brilliant what about movies and documentaries um yeah i'm gonna you're

1397
02:09:51,880 --> 02:09:57,920
gonna again you're gonna judge me i'm not a tv guy i don't i i'm a reader um i just

1398
02:09:57,920 --> 02:10:03,280
don't i very rarely watch anything and i'm sorry to hollywood i'm sorry to the producers

1399
02:10:03,280 --> 02:10:09,520
out there i just i'm the bad guy to ask so yeah no problem at all all right well the

1400
02:10:09,520 --> 02:10:14,760
next question is there a person that you recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak

1401
02:10:14,760 --> 02:10:24,360
to the first responders military and associated professions of the world uh yeah i think yeah

1402
02:10:24,360 --> 02:10:30,200
i'm gonna come up with i think david wortsell he's in the book um he's a he was a volunteer

1403
02:10:30,200 --> 02:10:37,240
firefighter he runs a great organization now out of narberth it's the last name is w u r

1404
02:10:37,240 --> 02:10:44,280
t z e l david wortsell i think he can he can probably walk the walk better than i can with

1405
02:10:44,280 --> 02:10:48,520
a lot of the obviously the fire and the police and he's he's got some fantastic stories and

1406
02:10:48,520 --> 02:10:55,840
he's very pro resilience and he he brings up he's just written a book i think on spirituality

1407
02:10:55,840 --> 02:11:01,200
and that spiritual domain as well but in a non-religious way and really finding meaning

1408
02:11:01,200 --> 02:11:05,480
and spiritual meaning to what you're doing beyond just kind of showing up day to day

1409
02:11:05,480 --> 02:11:11,920
and it's he's a powerful guy brilliant i recognize the name i'm sure i'll pass across i don't

1410
02:11:11,920 --> 02:11:15,640
think it's been for a while but i'll have to look him up so thank you all right well

1411
02:11:15,640 --> 02:11:20,280
then the last question before we make sure where people can find you what do you do to

1412
02:11:20,280 --> 02:11:26,200
decompress uh we split time in fact we leave on wednesday but we split time we have a home

1413
02:11:26,200 --> 02:11:29,560
here in san diego about eight months a year and we spend about four months a year at our

1414
02:11:29,560 --> 02:11:37,060
home in montana um so i'm a big outdoors guy uh i'm a big skier uh mountain biker hiker

1415
02:11:37,060 --> 02:11:43,000
fly fisher etc so we the great state of montana i just unplug get out in nature nature is my

1416
02:11:43,000 --> 02:11:49,560
direct answer to you and specifically montana is my outlet so fantastic well you mentioned

1417
02:11:49,560 --> 02:11:54,080
you're not big in the social media side where are the best places to find you and the book

1418
02:11:54,080 --> 02:12:01,320
online yeah it's uh online is going to be again amazon find me on linkedin um i'm a

1419
02:12:01,320 --> 02:12:05,360
big fan of linkedin i try to post things that i think are relevant whether the research

1420
02:12:05,360 --> 02:12:09,440
articles that i come across that i think can move the needle in performance i'll post those

1421
02:12:09,440 --> 02:12:15,480
or a podcast or something um so linkedin is something i do and i've been told i need to

1422
02:12:15,480 --> 02:12:20,240
buy my daughter that i need to get twitter or an x but i whatever i'm i'm slow to this

1423
02:12:20,240 --> 02:12:23,600
so i'm all we'll see you're not missing much i promise you

1424
02:12:23,600 --> 02:12:30,800
i have i love instagram and my my page is curated um you know we have a pretty pretty

1425
02:12:30,800 --> 02:12:37,000
big community but the moment you put something of value that's unique it's like crickets

1426
02:12:37,000 --> 02:12:41,000
you know but then you repost a kitten on a skateboard and the world loses their mind

1427
02:12:41,000 --> 02:12:48,400
so it's a tool as you said it is a tool but you know right sometimes it's uh i think there's

1428
02:12:48,400 --> 02:12:52,560
a lot of a lot of value put on social media there's this kind of facade that if you have

1429
02:12:52,560 --> 02:12:56,260
a large account that you just have to tell people that you bought this thing and they're

1430
02:12:56,260 --> 02:13:01,240
all going to buy that thing and yeah no this is this was my point earlier man there's a

1431
02:13:01,240 --> 02:13:06,920
lot of noise out there and very little signal right so i think that um you know keep staying

1432
02:13:06,920 --> 02:13:12,360
true to what you do man i think uh again i need to give you kudos thank you for a thank

1433
02:13:12,360 --> 02:13:17,640
you for having me on and b i think this is this is the important stuff again i i know

1434
02:13:17,640 --> 02:13:22,420
that a lot of the men and women who listen to this are doing this for a living but there's

1435
02:13:22,420 --> 02:13:27,480
very little that i'll absolutely drop what i'm doing for and it's going to be the people

1436
02:13:27,480 --> 02:13:33,320
who run towards the gunfire run towards danger uh run towards fire and i think that's a different

1437
02:13:33,320 --> 02:13:38,680
breed of human that i think we owe it as a nation we owe it a society to really think

1438
02:13:38,680 --> 02:13:42,760
differently on how we're bringing the best to bear to make sure that they can continue

1439
02:13:42,760 --> 02:14:04,120
to do the work that not many people want to do because it's hard work