Speaker 2: 0:09

Welcome back to Priority Traffic Podcast. I'm your host, chris, and I'd like to introduce a friend of mine who's going to discuss the high consequence work that firefighters do and other first responders find themselves in. Mental performance and well-being are coming to the forefront of our culture and we're really finding how important it is to be at the front of our well-being. I'd like to welcome my friend, pete Kadushin. Dr Pete Kadushin, actually Pete welcome to Priority Traffic Podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:43

Oh, Chris, thank you so much for making the invite and for bringing me in. I'm just, I'm really happy to be here.

Speaker 2: 0:49

I am honored to have you here. Your history and work in the mental performance world is thorough and I met you through O2X and I was very I don't know what the word is maybe not attracted, but like pulled into the work you were doing and in the message you were conveying many years ago and we've kind of stayed connected ever since. So thanks for coming on and sharing your expertise with us.

Speaker 1: 1:17

Yeah, it's a. It's a real privilege to be able to share with first responders and the folks that we get to mix with with.

Speaker 1: 1:24

O2X, with first responders and the folks that we get to mix with with O2X, because working with professional athletes is exciting and there's meaningful work to be done there, and it's a very different life or death situation when you're talking about the work that you all do, and so to be able to lend some of the tools and tactics that I've studied over the last 15 years to that group, that's just. It really moves the needle for me Awesome.

Speaker 2: 1:48

Well, we're going to move the needle a lot today. We're going to dig in and pick your brain Real quick. Dr Pete, you're a renowned expert in mental performance coaching. You have a rich background in helping individuals succeed in high pressure environments. Could you give us a little bit of an idea of where you're coming from, how you got there and what your medium looks like now? And then we'll dig into the fun stuff.

Speaker 1: 2:11

Awesome. Yeah, I'm trained in both counseling and also in performance psychology, and so, although I didn't get licensed as a counselor, a background in understanding well-being I think is really necessary if you're going to do the performance enhancement work really well. And so I was fortunate to go through a bunch of schooling and get a bunch of experiences while I was in school and then, right after that, spent it was about seven years teaching mostly, and so I was in a couple of university settings and it was like doing a postdoc. So all the things that I'd learned in school I now was teaching, and at the same time I was working with some athletes and performers, and so I had a really interesting laboratory where I was able to then be thinking deeply about these concepts and then teaching them and then, at the same time, getting to test out some new theories and some new skills, and then, at the same time, getting to test out some new theories and some new skills, bring those back into the classroom. And so I found that those seven years that I spent doing that were a really great incubator for a bunch of these different ideas that are now blossoming for me, and when I left university I then pivoted into doing full-time applied work, and it wasn't long after I started that work that I ended up getting pulled in to work with the Chicago Blackhawks.

Speaker 1: 3:30

So I spent three years embedded with the team, almost every practice, almost every game. So I got a lot of frequent flyer miles and learned how to pack and unpack my suitcase really effectively. But, again, an invaluable education in terms of what it looks like to have to be able to bring it consistently. And that's really, I think, one of the cruxes of peak performance is that you can't just do it today. Sustainable peak performance is really what we're driving towards, and so I learned a ton in that space and now I have the opportunity to continue to share some of those things, whether it's podcasts or elsewhere, and so it's been a wild journey and, yeah, just grateful that I've had the experiences I've had, because I think I have a unique take on performance and especially performance under pressure.

Speaker 2: 4:20

Absolutely. What would. I'm just diving right in. You had a couple things. Would you say that you learned while you were teaching? Like I know? So we learn and then we go teach and then and then we're, we're doing it. But would you say that you learned a lot while you were teaching? Like, did that?

Speaker 1: 4:39

I think I probably learned more in the years that I was teaching than I did when I was a student, and I needed that foundation. If the information wasn't in there to begin with, I wasn't able to come back around a second time to be able to knit it all together in a different way. But I really was able to make connections across different concepts right to see how motivation and confidence are deeply connected, or understand how managing our energy really influences our ability to pay attention, and all of these things had been taught separately, sort of by necessity. And then, when it's my turn to teach, all of a sudden I turn around and look at the whiteboard and go, oh my God, that's. I didn't think about it like that until all of a sudden. Now here we are, and so I couldn't have purposefully charted that course, and again, I'm really fortunate that it unfolded the way that it did.

Speaker 2: 5:33

I have a firm belief that we learn what we teach and, granted, we have to learn it prior to teaching it but when we, like you said, come back around to it that second time, it it seats itself a little deeper in us. We kind of expand our understanding of of what it is we're teaching. So, um, I think that's a pretty neat concept, but anyways, uh, in this episode I really wanted to dig into some topics that impact first responders, people in high consequence high pressure fields, fire First responders, people in high consequence high pressure fields, fire police, ems, military. If you guys are listening to it, thank you, but you know I really push this as a firefighter podcast, but I'm really trying to expand to make this available to everybody. Main topics I want to touch on today are stress management, resilience, mindfulness and goal setting as it pertains to well-being and achieving what we would call like peak performance.

Speaker 2: 6:33

Before we get into that. Do you mind helping us set the tone with a couple definitions?

Speaker 1: 6:40

Sure, yeah sure.

Speaker 2: 6:43

From your clinical position. I'd like to just define, you know, well-being and then peak performance.

Speaker 1: 6:53

Yeah, it's interesting I don't have a clinical perspective to draw from Right out of the jump. I really focused on the optimizing for performance side of things.

Speaker 2: 7:03

Cool, that's what I want to hear about.

Speaker 1: 7:04

But what's really interesting is that you can't get away from the well-being in the seat that I'm in, and so that's why I thought it was really important to have a foundation in counseling when I was getting trained, and the way that I see them connected is that almost always your well-being and your performance track together. So as we continue to build our foundation and the reservoir of well-being right, then we're drawing from that. When it's time to perform and we just have more energy, we have more degrees of freedom, right, we're not hung up quite as often, and when we get hung up, we have a bigger capacity then to get unhooked and get back to the present moment, and so they work together.

Speaker 1: 7:51

But I do think a lot about you know, the skills that I use aren't always very different from the skills that somebody in a clinical counseling setting might use, right, but they're aimed at something different.

Speaker 1: 7:59

So I'm optimizing for performance and I might still do breath work or mindfulness or help you shift your relationship to your mind so that you can perform better, and somebody on the well-being side could do the same thing. And so, to answer your question directly definitions and I think well-being can get measured in a lot of different ways, but for me I like to really ground it in the subjective, direct experience, right, right, to reaffirm that you are the expert in your experience and say, hey, how do you feel? And then, how do you know how you feel? And these are two interesting questions, right? So how do you feel?

Speaker 1: 8:37

you can do a scan of your body, right, you can do a scan of your mood, which kind of we often think exists between our ears, but your mood kind of permeates your entire body too, and check the weather between your ears it's cloudy thoughts, stormy thoughts, sunny thoughts, whatever you want to and building the conduit, the trust between going there and being able to recognize how you feel, and then going like yes, I believe that that is my direct experience, because a lot of us have spent so much time stuck in our heads that we, when we're asked how do you feel, you're kind of like shoot, I don't know how to answer that.

Speaker 1: 9:18

Or I just normally say fine, but I don't know exactly what fine means or feels like, and so well-being for me is being able to connect to that, and I think a lot about vitality.

Speaker 1: 9:30

So not that everything is going to feel positive, because that's just not real life, right, but that somebody who is well and has that strong foundation to draw from is able to feel and experience the highs and the lows and then kind of just continue moving with that, as opposed to grasping to stay at the highs or getting stuck down in the trough in the lows.

Speaker 1: 9:57

So that's my take on well-being. My take on peak performance is your capacity to and again, these start to mirror each other in that, for me, the folks who are able to consistently sustain peak performance are able to ride those highs and lows. They're able to keep their attention and intention front of mind during pressure pack situations Right, an intention front of mind during pressure pack situations right. So you keep your attention on the most important stuff, the stuff that's going to allow you to execute at a high level, and that really has to do with intention. I have to know what I'm trying to do and make happen in order to then direct my attention. And everything for me really feeds into those two right, so we can do a bunch of skill work on the front end to get you there.

Speaker 1: 10:48

We can get you back there in the midst of chaos, right, but I want to keep it as simple as possible under pressure and I want to train those responses under pressure so that then they're available when the pressure's on. And so that, I think, is the work of optimizing performance.

Speaker 2: 11:06

So you said a couple things during the wellbeing portion. I like how you contrasted or compared the space between our heads to weather, and I think that's a pretty easy way to understand that the weather changes. It's very formidable, it can be hectic, it can be beautiful, but it's never really going to be the same day to day to day and you kind of just have to move through it. Whether it's raining, you got to put on a raincoat, right. We can't let it shut us down in our tracks. So I thought that was a pretty interesting way to see that. So thank you for sharing that and I hope that resonates with people out there that it's just like the weather and I try not to judge the weather because it is what it is right.

Speaker 1: 11:52

Yeah, this is an important point, and it'll maybe foreshadow the conversation about mindfulness, but we don't get to control the weather and we have, on some level, some knowledge that it's wasted energy to look out the window and shout at a cloud and be like how dare you rain on me? And for me, it's really when I talk about shifting your relationship to your mind, this is really the posture that I think we have the opportunity to take, which is that the weather is going to come and go. I used to live in Colorado and the joke was always you don't like the weather, wait 30 minutes. Like the weather, wait 30 minutes. Right, everything about the weather is impermanent and it's going to continue to evolve, and so is the same is true for your mind. And so, rather than getting caught up in whatever thunderstorm I have in between my ears or really grasping on hey, this feels really good and sunny, and I'm only thinking positive thoughts we can move more skillfully with the changes instead of tying up our energy and our attention trying to fight what's our tears? Nice.

Speaker 2: 12:56

And then a question would be and actually I was just going to ask how do we not get stuck in that space, right, yeah?

Speaker 1: 13:12

We can foreshadow and get back to it.

Speaker 2: 13:13

Let's do it right now.

Speaker 1: 13:15

It's at front of mind, so let's do it.

Speaker 1: 13:18

I think it's a trap that gets pushed really frequently, this idea that we could never get stuck, and I hear people who are really experienced in coaching meditation and leading meditation still falling into the language sometimes of that sort of absolute all or nothing. And the truth is, our mind is a survival organ and it exists to keep us alive. And the way it does it is by generating tons of words and images. And those words and images are often threat biased right to keep us from a you know landing in some place where the proverbial saber-toothed tiger is. And then occasionally, they're really opportunity focused, which is like, hey, if there's something good for me to let me daydream about that or scheme about how I can make that happen. And these are the two forces, right the push towards, uh, or I guess the push away from something we don't like, and then the pull towards things that we do like, and we're going to constantly get caught in those so stormy weather. I don't really like it. And now, all of a sudden, I'm tangled up because I'm fighting the.

Speaker 1: 14:31

Thing that I don't like, or it's sunny weather, I want to hold on to it. Now, all of a sudden, I'm being attached, and so what it really is about from a mindfulness perspective is recognizing when we're hooked and then having the skill and the practice to come back to something. Because if I just say, hey, get present. Depending on how much you've practiced, you kind of have an idea where to go and the listeners right now, you can practice this right, get present, and you might look for something in your environment. So your five senses all exist only right, here and now. So it might be the sound of one of our voices and the sound arises, and then you can't hold on to it. It stays for a moment and then it dissolves and goes away.

Speaker 1: 15:23

You know your internal sensations, your feet pressed against the floor or your butt in your chair, and it could also be on your thoughts. Right, you could be present to the thinking as the thinking's unfolding. But we need to have practiced coming to the present moment, because if I just say, okay, well, I'm hooked, well, I don't know what to do or where to go, that's not a super effective strategy at then. And so that's where I think practicing mindfulness is really powerful Because each time you catch yourself being hooked and then unhook and come back to the present moment, that's one rep and, just like in the gym, the more reps you do as long as you get rest afterwards, the more reps you do, the stronger you get usually.

Speaker 1: 16:02

And so I think that's the pivot for me is that it's not about never getting hooked, it's about catching it sooner and coming back faster, and so that just goes with.

Speaker 2: 16:13

one of my life philosophies is getting reps. Whatever it is you're working at right, you need to get the first rep so you can get the second rep. You're not going to get your 10th rep until you get your first rep. And you say getting hooked, and what I hear when you say that is like I'm mad about something that happened earlier, I'm sad about something from three days ago, and like how we process that all matters. But being able to to get back and get unhooked, as you say, I think that's something that I absolutely could definitely practice with and I think, being in these high stress environments, it really calls for us in that moment and sometimes the stress pushes us there right. The call to do the job will unhook us momentarily. But do you see that being hooked kind of starts to integrate or contaminate the present moment, especially when we're in these high-stress professions?

Speaker 1: 17:13

Yeah, this is a really interesting interaction between stress and that conversation about stress management. We'll have, and then our capacity to be present. We'll have, and then our capacity to be present. And so, to answer the first part, I think it's really helpful to recognize that we're constantly being pulled out of the present moment. Right, we're thinking about the past and what happened whether it's a powerful emotion that's pulled us out or just some thinking about the thing that happened and processing it and we're constantly being pulled into the future to plan, to strategize, to worry and avoid whatever potholes and pitfalls we might think are in front of us. And so that hooking is just that. Right, we've lost our freedom to be in the present moment because something whether it's a body sensation, a feeling or a thought has gotten us pulled out. How does that interact with our stress systems? And then what does that mean for being under stress?

Speaker 1: 18:14

Well, it'd be helpful to talk a little bit about our stress systems, then, and so we've heard of, I imagine, the flight or fight system. So a sympathetic nervous system is responsible for gearing us up for action. When you feel antsy and you're kind of bouncing in your chair, it's because you've got a little extra sympathetic nervous system activation cooking in your body and it's energy that wants to flow and go someplace. And I've flipped it around because the study of the nervous system they've shown that you want to flight first and we always it used to get called fight or flight, but really most organisms under threat and it's really a threat response system most organisms are going to want to run first and so you run first. If you can't run or you get caught, you will opt to then fight. If you're evaluating the situation and say, okay, I can't fight this thing either because it doesn't exist. Right, it's some threat that I have in my mind or that person is stronger or more skilled than I am, we might turn that fight on ourselves.

Speaker 1: 19:26

This is where a lot of negative self-talk starts to really bubble up. A lot of tension starts to manifest in the body. If we get pushed past that and still can't escape the threat, we then hit freeze. And so this is like the circuit breaker where, under extreme pressure, if we don't have access to these go-to mobilized responses, now all of a sudden we hit the freeze button because from a survival standpoint, that's our next best choice, right, and in the moment it doesn thing about the way the brain works under stress is that we evolved with our brain stem first, and so that's our basic functions breathing, keeping the whole body sort of at a set point, right, basic survival.

Speaker 1: 20:21

Then you have that next layer up, which is sort of the feelings space, the limbic system, a lot of the fear stuff that's mixed in as well. And then the last layer is the last one to have evolved, which is our capacity for social connection and our capacity for complex thought. And so when people are then under stress to the point where they're really pushed into that flight or fight or freeze, we actually regress, we lose access to that top layer and then we lose access to the next layer. And so when you think about freeze, it's not that you're consciously deciding, hey, I better just totally lock down and get stuck right here. Right, there's a part of your brain that is older than any other part of your brain that's basically hit that circuit breaker and said, hey, man, to survive, this is the best choice. So what does that all mean?

Speaker 2: 21:11

No, I think that there's something when you first enter these high performance or high pressure, high consequence fields that, until you have a lot of experience, you tend to find yourself in, potentially in any one of these scenarios where your ability to respond is overwhelmed by the demand of that instance. And I know there's at least one time in my career that I was like uh, what do I do? Right, Like, and I think that's an. I think it's good to know that it's something that can happen to anybody and it's normal, Um, and there's really no shame in it happening. But obviously we'd still need to get back online, get moving through that event. But that's just a very I think it's an eyeopening experience, experience to know that it's something that can happen.

Speaker 1: 22:07

Yeah Well, and I think what you just pointed to is really important is we all have the same gear right.

Speaker 1: 22:13

We all have the same autonomic nervous system, and so recognizing when too much is too much isn't a comment on who you are as a human being or what you'll have the capacity for in the future. It just means that right now too much is too much, and I always like to connect it back to the physical stuff because it's easier to see. So let's say you've never trained back squats before. I would never then walk you over the rack, put 400 pounds on the squat bar and be like you're going to figure it out on the way down.

Speaker 1: 22:47

Don't worry about it, we're going to find where you're successful, we're going to push that a little bit, we're going to give you rest and that's the recipe for growth Now. But the same thing is true. So you know, you're saying when you first get into these high stress, high stakes environments, it's a lot easier to find that limit because you just don't have the experience right. You're brand new and you're walking up to the squat bar for the first time, so you don't even have technique, let alone the strength to do it.

Speaker 1: 23:15

One of the valuable things about training, and then training under stress, is that you start to expand that foundation, you start to build that strength and in context, which is really important, and what that means is, you know, I can train all the responses I want to have happen when it's time to respond to a fire. But if I'm not doing that under the nervous system conditions of stress, then when it's time for me to go do it and there's a real fire and there's real consequence, I won't have access to those skills. And so making sure that, as we step it up and we add proverbial weight to the bar, that some of that is making sure that the inside matches the conditions that it's going to match when it's time to actually go do the work, because only then are we going to actually have access to those high level skills and the decision making that we need to do under pressure.

Speaker 2: 24:09

Yeah, so it sounds like we need to be recreating that stress on the training ground as much as possible without overloading in the beginning, right, so that crawl.

Speaker 1: 24:26

That's it.

Speaker 2: 24:26

We need to crawl a lot and build that confidence.

Speaker 1: 24:31

And yeah, it's confidence, it's also just knowledge of the terrain, and by terrain I mean like my internal experience, right, and so I don't know what it's like to have that much weight on the bar until I've done it. And then the confidence comes from hey, I went down, I came back up, I was able to push that weight.

Speaker 1: 24:51

Okay, and the same thing is true, you know, if you think about you pull somebody off the street who doesn't do any physical activity and then you put them through like a tabata bike workout, as hard as you can go for 20 seconds, rest for 10, repeat eight times when you think about going as hard as you can, your heart is pounding, your legs are burning, your lungs are burning, your internal experience is profoundly unpleasant and it kind of feels like you're going to die Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 25:18

If you've done that before and you've stepped up to it, so now you think about an athlete or someone who has done a bunch of athletics or works out a lot, now you put them on the bike. It's still really unpleasant, but they have a map of the terrain. They know what it's going to feel like and they know well I'm not actually going to die.

Speaker 2: 25:36

It's just going to be really unpleasant. I like that.

Speaker 1: 25:39

And so You're thinking about that. Crawling to walking, to running is that the first time you find yourself in a chaotic fire environment, right where there's a lot going on? The stakes are real, you're making decisions and sometimes you have to make them very quickly with limited information. That is a map, the terrain that you've never explored, and so we can train you as best as we can to get there by adding some stress within the context of training, but you're going to be more aware and adept in that space the second time you do it and the tenth time you do it, and so I guess, how does that all come back then? To that intersection of attention and stress, which is where we started. Well, first we go back to what we've trained most, and one of the things that the mind likes to do under stress, when things are really unpleasant, is avoid what's stressful and unpleasant, and so you can recognize, if you walk through a gym and watch people exercising, most people are distracted while they're doing something that's challenging and hard and doesn't feel great.

Speaker 2: 26:49

Ah yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 26:50

And so the mind takes a vacation, the body kind of gets put through the ringer and we get better at when this is unpleasant and doesn't feel great going someplace else, and so I think that one we lose some of the degrees of freedom.

Speaker 1: 27:08

right, our mind wants to hunt the threat when we start to get really stressed out and so our control over our attentional system starts to get limited anyway.

Speaker 1: 27:18

But then you think about adding on this habit of, but my mind also wants to take a vacation when things are really challenging and stressful, and so so we need to really practice this mindfulness, and so you might start by training it away from challenge, right. Same thing we would do with just stress in general. Start where you're successful and build from there. Want to bring that mindfulness into all the training that you're doing so that when it's challenging, when it's complex and it's stressful, right, the patterned behavior is being present and knowing that you can be connected to these intense internal experiences or the high volume of thought, because that's where I think the best snap decisions are being made, that's where the best choices unfold and you're able to really be connected to the experience, because when you're at a fire, the environment and the task can change really rapidly. If I'm stuck kind of half daydreaming and a little bit ejected from the moment, I'm not able to be connected to those circumstances as they unfold in a way that allows me to really make the best decision in this moment.

Speaker 2: 28:25

Yeah, that's because the fire ground is a very dynamic, like I've said, high consequence, and then we even talk about time compressed, right. So now we keep adding these layers of things that are not helping us and they're calling for more attention and adding pressure and um or stress, right, what, where? Where do we find ourselves when we jump off the truck? Well, actually, let's just talk about the call comes in, right, our new folks. If you haven't been doing this for a few years, you, you get that excitement level right. Everything ramps up and then you're excited and and then you get off the truck and you left your glove on the truck, right, like, we start to make little mistakes that turn into big mistakes. Eventually, you know, within seconds or minutes, what can we do in those moments to start getting present, like, what is something that any firefighter can do in those moments?

Speaker 1: 29:25

to just come back, there's a couple answers, so I think the first is if you haven't trained the skill of noticing that you're hooked and this is especially true when heart rate is up, when the stress level when that flight fight system is cooking is, if we haven't trained to be able to notice that we have gone someplace else and that we're already at the fire in our heads thinking about what are we going to do and what decision are we going to make, because any of the information you have when you're on the truck is outdated by the time you get there. Right, the situation could have evolved phenomenally, and so any of the planning or worrying that you're doing on the truck Sorry, let me walk it back Some of the planning and worrying that you're doing on the truck is probably not helpful, and so noticing that you've gotten yanked out of the present moment is just a lot harder when your heart rate is up.

Speaker 1: 30:24

You've gotten yanked out of the present moment is just a lot harder when your heart rate is up, and so practicing the skill of noticing when your heart rate is up is really, really powerful, and there's a few different ways to do it right.

Speaker 1: 30:39

So, I think, purposefully exposing yourself to challenge, but finding that just right, because we've talked about how too much is too much. And coming back to that squat example for a second so you might have been able to push 400 pounds at some point, but if you stepped away and you haven't been training for a while, you can also then assume that you're just going to get under the squat rack and be able to do it again. And the same is true about our capacity with stress. If you've been away from high stress environments for a stretch right, you can't assume that you're just going to get thrown back in and it's going to be like riding a bike right, you're going to get back to that capacity level faster.

Speaker 1: 31:12

You know, powerlifters call this greasing the groove. Right, you step away, but your body just knows how to get back to that strength level faster. Same is true with our understanding, because you have a map of the territory now, right, but making the assumption that, hey, I'm just going to be able to operate under stress because I've always been able to do it right, you don't have the fitness level at that point you got to work back up to it, and so, whether it's in the gym doing something purposefully physically taxing and then being as present as possible, and then just being really curious about, oh there I go Distracted, I come right back.

Speaker 1: 31:46

Oh, there I go Distracted, come right back.

Speaker 1: 31:49

The other one that I really like, and I think it's particularly potent for me, is because I don't like cold water is either cold showers or like a cold bath or something like that and noticing how, under really acute distress right, your nervous system uh is not happy when you're exposed to really cold water like that, that, if you can notice that interaction between that happens, body tenses, sympathetic nervous system gets cranked up because it's responding to a threat. Right, it doesn't know that you climbed into the. It has some knowledge that you did it voluntarily and this actually matters a lot. I almost I almost ran down the uh a thought path before I.

Speaker 1: 32:34

I reeled it back in. So your body knows that you did it on purpose and that helps right. But there's also a part of your body that doesn't know that you didn't just fall overboard in some glacial ford up in Norway, and so it thinks on some level it's responding to that threat like you got to get out of here or if you stay here too long you might die. Going to that space on purpose and then training your ability to be present to and connected with the discomfort I think is really powerful. But I'll go back to what I said earlier, which is that we also need to train in context, because if you just get really good at being with your ice bath but you never bring that into the work that you're doing, as you're training within the context of firefighting, then the skill won't truly bleed over.

Speaker 1: 33:22

And so starting in some place where you have a little bit more control of the environment, like hit intervals on the bike and just noticing that when things get really intense our go-to move is usually just be like my mind's going someplace else and then eventually, as you've built that strength, bringing it into the work that you're doing, as you're training and going through the steps throughout, you know whatever it is you're working on and deliberately practicing right, and so it could just be the checklist that you move through mentally and being present to, with your heart rate up, going okay, do I got to make sure that I have my gloves when I get on the truck? I got to make sure I have the gloves when I get off the truck, and patterning that type of presence under stress makes you better at doing that under stress.

Speaker 2: 34:07

that would make a lot of sense and that sounds to me like stress inoculation, like building up some stress. Is that? Is that similar or not the same?

Speaker 1: 34:18

yeah, it's. Uh, I think the the language it. I get particular about it, right, the inoculation makes it sound like and this isn't a knock at you, right, but I think inoculation makes it sound like hey, it's not going to bother me anymore.

Speaker 2: 34:33

Right, you're kind of impervious to it.

Speaker 1: 34:36

And I get caught up in that, because the truth is, when you're under pressure and the stakes are high lives are at stake You're going to feel uncomfortable, right, like there isn't going to be a moment where you're actually comfortable being uncomfortable when you're pushed that far. And so what it's doing is it's allowing you to be uncomfortable and still be on task, right, to recognize that. And so you know again, it's semantic and that, yeah, it's building your capacity around stress, uh, but I don't think so much.

Speaker 2: 35:10

you're inoculated, so much, uh, as you are then just able to do your job and execute at a really high level, even though your heart's in your throat and your heart rate is up at 165 and you're not running right not even running yet, and so I think that's the, the big piece, that's I that I mean you pointed out something that I've noticed is this the the fire ground stress is not the same as a treadmill induced stress like a 165 on a sprint feels much, much more comfortable than a 165 on the fire ground like Like things change way differently when you're maybe it's a stress, fight or flight response than it is an exercise induced response. Can you talk into?

Speaker 1: 35:52

that Well, yeah, so what's really interesting is that some part of our body doesn't know the difference, but our mind does, and the way that those interact matters, right. When you're on the fire ground, you know that you're making important decisions and you're going to sometimes have to make them really quickly. You're going to have to respond to a lot of inbound information, you're going to have to communicate with everybody else effectively, and you're going to have to all do that under pressure, physically stressed, emotionally stressed. Physically stressed, emotionally stressed. When you're on a treadmill, you're like, all right, this will start, this will happen, and then it'll end, and so it's just a much less complex and volatile environment. And so the 165 is responding to the particular task at hand, which is keep your feet moving or else you fly off the back of the treadmill, right, but the mind knows that there's not as much going on, and so that 165 is going to feel different than all right.

Speaker 1: 36:49

Now I have to make a bunch of really challenging decisions. I need to relay that all effectively. I need to keep my ears open so that I can continue to get updated while I'm also then going through and visually having to update. You know, all of my senses have to be alive. I need to be able to pull all of this information in, blend it up really effectively and then do something about it, and so I think that you can train some of it by getting your heart rate up right.

Speaker 1: 37:17

So if you were in a training scenario and you needed to mirror some of that stress, you know, doing a bunch of burpees or doing a couple of wind sprints and then running through a training scenario would help get you closer to that Right, but it's never going to mirror the stakes entirely, and so trying to 100% bridge the gap, I think again is a mistake, because you're never going to get there. But we can create environments internally and externally that at least help us get closer to it, so that there's less of a jump from hey, I trained here to oh, this is what it's really like yeah, we can add gear, we can add tools, we can add time consequence, all that stuff cool that's right that.

Speaker 2: 38:01

Yeah, that sounds like a very in-depth training program and definitely something for the fire service training division to to look into, and I think this definitely we need more of that, especially the people coming into the fire service who are new, with not a lot of experience because, it's.

Speaker 2: 38:20

It's an interesting field where your very first day on a fire truck, you could be in the the call right, like you're being requested to perform. You have tasks to do and this is your literally your first time ever going out on a 911 call, right, so it's, there's a very steep or very short amount of time where we need you to be ready to go. That's right and that yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 1: 38:49

I was just going to come back around to then talk about the other arm of the stress system because I think, to close out this idea of you know, stress management or however we want to think about it the key is coming back to baseline after we've been stressed, and so we have that flight or fight system and then, on the other hand, we have they call it tend and befriend, or rest and digest, but it's essentially the break to then counteract the gas that is the flight or fight system.

Speaker 1: 39:22

And this is really important that we in general have balance and that we're not kind of riding hot throughout a day. And it's tough when you're on call and you don't really know when you're going to have to wake up from a dead sleep or put your food down right in the middle of dinner and then run out. I imagine over time there's a bit of getting used to it, but there's still never a. You don't get to fully rest in those moments. And so finding some again, balance is dynamic. It's going to look different when you're on call versus not, but finding some balance in those moments so that you're not running hot and burning extra energy, because if your battery is depleted because you've been cooking at 5% or 10% hotter for the last six hours, that's just less energy to direct your attention and get the job done when it's time to go get the job done.

Speaker 1: 40:13

But let's say after the call, you've been stressed, your system has done the thing, you've been mobilized, you had the energy from that flight or fight system to go take care of business, and sometimes that includes some really intense, challenging things to see to have to go take care of business, and sometimes that includes some really intense, challenging things to see to have to go through, to have to communicate. The key afterwards is finding a way back to baseline and so you can do an interval training with a heart rate monitor on and then look and see that heart rate curve. You know, when you have a pushed interval that's really intense. You see it spike and then you see it come down. And then you see it spike and then you see it come down. That's really the mirror of what we're looking for after a call, and one of the things that really shifted my understanding of stress was recognizing that of learning that the absence of a stressor isn't de-stressing. And so you leave the fire ground and that's not the thing, that's not the trigger that tells you hey, you're safe, you can come back to baseline.

Speaker 1: 41:17

I imagine you and many other folks who are listening have had the experience of that drift where your heart rate stays up, the body is still tense, the adrenaline is still coursing, and that might last for hours. You might wake up the next day with some of that still pumping through you and so triggering specific techniques and tools that are essentially just telling your body, sending signals that say, hey, you're safe now. Hey, you're safe now, because the more you do that, the more you're allowing that parasympathetic nervous system to come online and the faster and more effectively you can come back to baseline. And so there's a few specific things that are really potent and they work with the biology. So we're not talking about thinking your way into relaxing, because if anybody's ever told you to relax when you're really amped up, it's not a super effective way to do that.

Speaker 1: 42:12

Particularly doesn't work with your partner. If you have one at home, I don't recommend doing that unless you want to practice some of your flight or fight skills.

Speaker 1: 42:22

Right, so the first is breathing. So when we change our breathing cadence and our breathing mechanics, uh, it's one of the most powerful things, uh, when it comes to adjusting our autonomic nervous system, it's one of the few things that we actually have control of that will influence the autonomic nervous system. So we can talk later about specific breathing techniques or cadences, right, but, uh, a potent one, moving right. So, thinking about if you have the opportunity after a call, to just walk and move your body. There's something about rhythmic movement, so things like walking, running, biking and swimming, that you're using both sides of your body, you're generally moving through space, and so this is more effective if you're running outside or walking outside, because then your eyes have to actually scan the environment in a way that also starts to downregulate you, and so if you had the opportunity to take a walk afterwards and just go and move the body again, you don't have to think something specific in order for that to help. Then start to bring you back down. Uh, connecting with somebody else, how do you mean, right? So the parasympathetic nervous system and that top layer of our brain are part of the social engagement system, and so it's harder to connect with others when we're ramped up.

Speaker 1: 43:52

Everybody's had that experience where you're stressed, you're uh, crunched for time and you're not picking up on the tone or the, the meaning or the body language of somebody else in your space. This is evolutionarily hardwired. When you think you're being chased by a saber-toothed tiger, you don't need to pick up on the hey, make sure you grab those berries for dinner, and so we can recognize that it's harder to do it. But if we then take the time as soon as we're finished or when you get home afterwards, to slow it down and actually connect with the other person that's in that space, what that enables you to do is you're then telling your nervous system you're safe and that'll actually then feed backwards into the nervous system to start bringing you back down and ramping up that social engagement system, so helping you get back to baseline. And so it has to be a safe person in a safe environment, right? So? So if you're trying to do this and you're not in a safe space, your body is still going to know that you aren't safe, but you think about getting back to the firehouse and then just slowing down and actually having a conversation with someone where you're present and connected and you're looking at their facial expressions, right, and they're looking at yours. You don't necessarily have to do the deep staring into each other's eyes for 30 seconds, right, that's not what I'm saying but that opportunity to really ground yourself in the communication that's unfolding.

Speaker 1: 45:17

Again, this is also really potent when you get home, if you have a partner at home that you can connect with.

Speaker 1: 45:23

This works with animals.

Speaker 1: 45:24

So if you have a dog or a cat at home, right, just being present to and connected with that other creature helps bring us back down, and so we've got breathing, moving, connecting and then genuinely laughing is another really, really powerful one, and so you might pause for a moment when you get back to the firehouse, connect with that person or persons around you and then tell some jokes, watch something that's funny on YouTube or Instagram or whatever, and that all of these are little signals that keep pinging the nervous system to say, hey, you're safe now.

Speaker 1: 46:01

Hey, you're safe now. And the more we do that, the more than the body is able to relax, to let go of sort of the adrenaline rush that's pouring through your body, to swap out those chemicals for all the other chemicals that tell us that we can come back to baseline, and this, for me, is it does two things. The first is that it's good nervous system hygiene. And you think about brushing your teeth, uh, taking your shower and washing your body, right, if we're not doing this, switch it on, switch it off. With our nervous system, we start to accumulate the consequences of all that adrenaline, all that cortisol, uh, especially if we're pushing ourselves past flight or fight into freeze, that starts to get layered down into the body in ways that manifest as tight muscles, chronically tight jaws, necks, backs, um, and so this is like, uh, giving the nervous system sort of that flush that allows you to then get back to baseline and actually sometimes reset baseline back to where it could be uh, but it's also building the mobility of your nervous system.

Speaker 1: 47:07

It's designed to ramp up very quickly to respond to threat, but it's also designed to ramp back down really quickly, and so the more you train this, the more mobile you get. I think about same thing If you don't have the mobility to get down into a deep squat, you can put 400 pounds on the bar and you can be really strong, but you're still not going to be able to execute the movement. Same thing if our nervous system is tight in that it gets cranked up really well, but it doesn't come back down, well then we lose our capacity to then do it again tomorrow, and do it again the day after, and do it again two months from now, and then we start to see the consequences of uh, exhaustion and burnout. Neat that.

Speaker 2: 47:45

So that that leads to. It kind of affirms something that I've thought to be the case, where just breathe, move, connect, laugh, those are all. What if we start with our crew, let's say, we say all right, anytime we catch a call, that kind of gets people ramped up or just discuss it. Have a routine, a post-call routine, where we enact two or three or four or all of these skills. The more we do it consistently, even on the, let's say, the easier calls, does it allow us to get back to baseline quicker because it's part of a routine or does it only work because it's novel?

Speaker 1: 48:32

I think that it it works because the nervous system and the your biology is wired the way that it is, and so I don't think that it needs to be a brand new thing for it to be potent, and I think that doing it on the less intense calls is just as important as doing it when something is really gone way past what would usually be the threshold.

Speaker 1: 48:57

Right, you don't shower only on days where you get really sweaty Well, maybe some people do. I don't want to pass judgment, but generally shower well, at least once a day, uh. And so the idea is that, like, this is really about a maintenance and taking care of yourself because, let's say, you go, oh well, these calls were all, uh, pretty benign, not a big deal, and it's like four or five or six days in a row of uh ramping up a little but not ramping back down on purpose, and then all of a sudden, you have a big one right, Something that's really intense and unexpected.

Speaker 1: 49:28

Well, your nervous system is at a different point because you haven't been taking care of it for the last four or five days.

Speaker 2: 49:35

That would. That's okay. So, if you're, if you're listening out there, guys, this is some big stuff. If we can get that, that routine where we we take care of ourselves after the calls, I think we'll see a lot of, and maybe reduced, symptoms of, like you're saying, burnout. And that that leads me to coming into the conversation of resilience, right. So now, now we're starting to see resilient firefighters who are being proactive and taking care of their mind and their body and offloading that stress or coming back to baseline more often. What is, what is something we can do? Well, let's just, let's just move right into resilience. Like, what does resilience mean in a performance context and how is that something we can create within the fire service?

Speaker 1: 50:29

I think that resilience gets misunderstood in that it gets mapped as sort of like the I can handle it, and so if we could go back to the example we were just using, right. So we keep stacking more and more stress into the system and we believe that resilience is like well, I woke up this morning, I'm good, right. I went through my day, I didn't crack, right, nothing bad happened. I got this. I'm resilient. You know, yesterday sucked. I'm okay, right. But then again we'll keep coming back to the same worn out example now the guy on the squat bar or the human being.

Speaker 1: 51:05

And right now, all of a sudden, so you've got the squat bar. You went down, you went back up, but now we're going like all right, well, you did that, that's great, so now start walking around with it. And every once in a while, we're going to put some more weights on and you go all right, I'm handling it. Right, I'm handling it.

Speaker 1: 51:20

You're never putting the bar down, and we mistake that for resilience, when really that's just pushing through, it's disregarding your internal experience, it's really disconnecting and using the body as a tool in a way that like if you never took care of your tools, eventually they're going to break. And so for me, resilience is really about this, the hygiene that we talked about About. You know, you go and you experience the intensity of a call, and then you take care of yourself afterwards, and that enables you to bounce back and be at your baseline the day after and the day after that, be at your baseline the day after and the day after that. But I think there's something that is I like to pivot from resilience, because resilience, you know, you could use the image of a memory foam mattress you press into it and then it bounces back to its original shape.

Speaker 1: 52:16

But that, for me, is still also pretty limiting, right? There's a lot of conversation now about post-traumatic growth, right? This idea that we can go through really intense experiences that feel like too much in the moment, right, but that our nervous systems, our emotional systems, our mental systems could all then actually grow after that challenge, if we set the conditions right, is anti-fragility. So it's this idea that, uh, under stress, when then given a chance to then rest and recover, uh, we actually can get stronger. So not just bounce back to baseline but actually no more have greater capacity, right, and that's, I think, really what we're looking for.

Speaker 1: 53:00

And the beautiful thing is is nature does this already. So you lift weights, you stress the system a little bit past where it's supposed to be comfortable, you rest, you recover, you've set the conditions. Now you get stronger, you are anti-fragile when you do it and you respect the laws of nature, the way that those work. The same is true when we think about challenging the nervous system or challenging the mind by being in these really stressful, challenging, potentially too much or too soon kind of environments, and so for me it's really thinking about what are we doing in terms of internal context? And then, how are we setting the environment so that, after that happens, we're not even just satisfied with getting back to baseline although that's important and great but setting the conditions that we actually have the opportunity to grow and get better after that?

Speaker 2: 53:50

What are some of those conditions?

Speaker 1: 53:55

I think that, in addition to all that we've talked about from a nervous system standpoint, it's also then first having the belief that you can grow. So that's a really kind of like up up, up upstream belief. I either am who I am and I've got what I've got, or I'm constantly growing, evolving and changing and, depending on which choice you make, way upstream, you start identifying examples that confirm your beliefs. And so, if I can then approach the situation we actually talked about this a little bit a little while ago this idea that, let's say, I get pushed past my capacity and.

Speaker 1: 54:36

I freeze in a really challenging environment. Some people go shoot, I just don't have it, I am not capable and I might never be capable. And there's a huge consequence to that decision. And oftentimes we don't even make that decision consciously, we just go like, oh, that's who I am. It'd be like getting under a squat bar the first time and being like well, I can never squat. That's just not how it works. And so part of it is the belief and recognizing if you have some of that fixed mindset, noticing that as just a set of thoughts and that you don't have to do anything to that weather to then know that it can move on and that there's other ways of making meaning and there's other beliefs that we can have, and so I think it's that nervous system, uh, hygiene, it's a belief that we can have, and so I think it's that nervous system, hygiene, it's a belief that we can improve.

Speaker 1: 55:26

And then I think, for me, the next biggest piece is a really purposeful system of reflection, because then I'm starting to pull out the here's what worked, here's how I know I'm on the right track, right. And then here's one thing I can focus on, you know, when it's time to be deliberate about my training that's going to allow me to continue to grow as a human being or as a firefighter.

Speaker 2: 55:48

I like that a lot and that's something that, now that you mentioned it, I have a what I call a performance journal and I I record how my experience went like for big fires or big events, that we have what I did, what went well, what I can sustain and what I need to work on, and it's it's. We don't have a lot of big calls, but it's got a handful of really cool looking back lessons that I can see and, you're right, it does dictate our behavior in training in the forthcoming days. So those are three really potent ways to, to, to just plant that seed, that, hey, we can, we can grow here and I I don't know why, but it seems like growing is like man. I'm not interested in that. I'm, I'm fixed, I'm set, I'm good. Why do you think that is? Is it comfortable?

Speaker 1: 56:46

There are times yeah, there are times where and growing means leaving what works or what has worked behind, and I stole the image of a hermit crab from I think it was Josh Waitzkin, in an interview I listened to. He's an expert on becoming an expert and he said you know, at a certain point you outgrow if you're a hermit crab, you outgrow the shell you're in and you have two choices.

Speaker 1: 57:16

You can essentially, uh, stay comfortable until it's so uncomfortable that you either have to go or die, uh, or you can begin building that base of discomfort. Right, you can inoculate, for lack of a better term. You can get yourself into a space where you go. Hey, this is going to be really challenging because it's going to mean that the things that have worked, I have to acknowledge no longer serve me and I'm going to grow into something else, but that's unknown and unknown often maps is threatening I can.

Speaker 1: 57:47

I can relate to that so I think there's the draw towards comfort.

Speaker 1: 57:52

I think there's also a lot of societal noise, right.

Speaker 1: 57:56

You think about if you can grow as a human being and continue to evolve and improve and develop, then you maybe don't have to buy all the stuff that you see when you're scrolling through the internet, and so marketers have a very vested interest in making you feel like you are who you are.

Speaker 1: 58:14

But if you get this product, you'll be a little bit better, and so I think there's a lot of subtle signals coming at us hundreds of times a day that are telling us you got what you got and you need more. You're not good enough by this. That's interesting. So I think it's a combination of all of that that ends up putting us in a position where it can be challenging to see the growth and progress we've had. And I think, going back to your point of the performance journal, you can now look back at that journal and see what you were doing weeks, months ago and you have a record of your growth. It's like if anybody who's listening has kids and you do the old on-the-door pencil marks. We don't recognize our own growth because we're with ourselves every day.

Speaker 1: 58:59

It's kind of like how you don't recognize when your kid's getting bigger until you look at the last pencil mark and oh my God you shot up two inches, and so having a living record that you can then go back and look at is direct proof, in your own words, of here are all the things that I'm doing. Well, here's how I'm on the right track. Here's what I used to be training. But now that stuff that I'm doing well, oh man, all right, I'm in a bigger hermit crab shell. This is a really big deal. So that's.

Speaker 2: 59:29

I see, and just to add to your point, when I look back on my journals or whatever, it just looks like a pile of evidence of growth and things that I've overcome, or, you know, setbacks and failures. And that was my next question is we look back and we have all the things we've done well in our journal, but what about our failures? What are those, the setbacks and the failures that we kind of fell short or we didn't hit the mark? What do we do with those that we kind of fell short or we didn't hit the mark? What do we do with?

Speaker 1: 59:56

those. I think it's really important to celebrate our wins. I'll start there Because I think there's a really important biological piece here, because most of us have internalized a motivation system that says I should never be satisfied and that there's something a little bit wrong about celebrating the wins. You know, you think about the athlete who just won the world championship and when they're asked what's next, they're like already thinking about next season, like the confetti is still coming down and you're like you're holding the trophy and you're going like yeah, next season.

Speaker 1: 1:00:31

There's consequence to that, and the reason that I think it's important to pause and celebrate the wins is one, it feels good, and feeling good is not a bad thing, uh but two, what it does is it helps, uh, grab hold of our dopamine systems. Dopamine is the molecule of motivation, and we want to leverage our biology to help us stay motivated. And so when I'm able to celebrate wins and look at, I use the language of on the right track, really purposefully, because when you think about how we evolved, there might be times where we were tracking prey for six, eight, ten hours and we're not evolved to do something that's getting us no benefit, right, so we are not wired for that type of delayed gratification, or we wouldn't be unless we had this modification, which is that every time we get a little signal that we're on the right track, we get a hit of dopamine, and that dopamine then helps us stay that, keep that forward momentum, stay the course.

Speaker 1: 1:01:30

So every time I see a little footprint, every time I see like a scuff on a tree or a tuft of hair, my brain is telling me we're moving in the right direction, you can keep going.

Speaker 1: 1:01:40

And that bridges the gap from hey, I'm hungry to 10 hours later, hey, I've caught my food. When we live in an environment that we're now don't have to do that right, you're not hunting through the grocery store for your food, literally through the grocery store for your food, literally. But you now have to think about well, okay, if I can sit down and I have in my performance journal, not just what am I doing well, but how do I know I'm on the right track, and so adding a little extra detail, and sometimes they might be one in the same right, but making sure that you're hitting at least one or two bullet points to say here's how I know I'm on the right track. I think that really lends itself well to move into the next part, which is well, what am I going to do better tomorrow? And we were going to talk about.

Speaker 2: 1:02:23

Here we are.

Speaker 1: 1:02:24

Here we are Right. That, for me, this is really important is what's your very next step Right, very next step right. If my uh reflection or evaluation at the end of a day or after a call isn't giving me a clear next step, then I think I'm leaving some juice on the table. And the same thing is true for more generalized goal setting. If my goal setting doesn't come down to okay, what does that mean for when I wake up tomorrow? What am I going to do then? It's not concrete enough and instead it's now just kind of ambiguous. Uh, if I told you, hey, get to the moon, that's your goal, and you're like well, that's not very motivating because I don't know how.

Speaker 1: 1:03:02

What am I going to do tomorrow to help me get to the moon? Now I've actually disempowered myself. I feel less motivated because I'm like, well, it's a big goal and I might really, really want to go to the moon, right, but I don't have an avenue to move forward. And so, whether it's your reflections bleeding into and then setting yourself up for, goal setting the next day, or just doing more formalized goal setting.

Speaker 1: 1:03:25

You want your long-term horizon goals right, those destinations of I would like to get here. Right, I want to finish a master's degree in performance psychology. Great, if I know that's the goal. Now let's work backwards and say, okay, what does that mean for tomorrow? What do I need to do to take one step closer? And I think that that's a goal setting and reflection I think need to be married together because you know, at the end of the day you say, all right, well, I took that step. Was that actually a step in the right direction? Do I need more detail? Do I need to take a few more steps before I can truly evaluate if I'm moving in the right direction? And so it's that pause at the beginning of a day to say, okay, what am I trying to accomplish? What's my intention? And then the pause at the end of the day hey, am I getting closer? Am I on the right track? How do I know? And then, what can I do tomorrow? So you set yourself up before your head hits the pillow. You already have your marching orders for tomorrow. And then for me, the biggest piece is okay, how am I going to do it. What are the concrete behaviors now that I have my? What am I going to do better tomorrow? All right, what is that going to look like?

Speaker 1: 1:04:27

And sometimes people get really wishy-washy with like, well, I'm going to think differently, all right, thinking differently is great. To think differently, all right. Thinking differently is great. But it's pretty hard to put a finger on. And so is there a.

Speaker 1: 1:04:41

You know, if it's going to be that ephemeral, then is there a time and a place and a duration, right, let's make sure that it's on your calendar and you know that it's tethered to right after I finish brushing my teeth. Right, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to visualize this scenario and I'm going to really put myself in that position. I'm going to see myself succeed. Otherwise, we're just kind of leaving that up to well, at some point today I'm going to think differently. And so for me, how am I going to take? Steps is best done in a concrete. What's the behavior going to look like? And so, for me, that's how goal setting leads to reflection, leads to goal setting, leads to reflection. And then you look back over a month or a year and go, dear Lord, I'm a lot taller than I thought I was yeah that sounds like a really good plan.

Speaker 2: 1:05:25

So you mentioned brushing teeth and so keeping goal setting in mind and reflecting, it sounds like all of these are going to help with resilience and well-being and they all kind of start to holistically cycle around us and start spiraling us upward, um, but without stepping too far from that. How can brushing our teeth become a mindful action? And I I say this and I ask that to just give us an opportunity to show people how we can be mindful in a very simple manner that we can practice regularly. That will start to carry over into those high stress positions.

Speaker 1: 1:06:09

I love that you brought this to brushing teeth, because there's some really elegant habit science behind what you're sharing, which is if you're already doing something and hopefully again no judgment, but hopefully you're brushing your teeth at least twice a day, floss too.

Speaker 1: 1:06:29

You know it's going to happen, and then you can attach another habit to that action rather than going like all right, I have to create an entire new space in my calendar. Most of us are already overscheduled and a little overwhelmed. We've got a little bit of that flight fight already cooking, and so take that time. If you know you're already going to do it. You got your two minutes in the morning, your two minutes in the evening. Then you could practice being present in that moment and you'd then go okay, well, I know that's more likely to happen and to get down into the nuts and bolts of presence. Right, it's again, it's functional. This is really a strategic practice, because I want to be present when the pressure's on and things are really intense, and so I want to train that capacity first in low stakes environments and then build my capacity in more and more stressful environments.

Speaker 1: 1:07:22

Low stakes are brushing your teeth right, and you'll be amazed at the fact that when you're brushing your teeth, your mind's going to go just about everywhere other than brushing your teeth, and so it gives us a couple of important pieces.

Speaker 1: 1:07:38

The first is mindfulness, is two things we already talked about the going, the recognizing that you're gone and then coming back. The only other piece that I want to infuse in here is that, without some acceptance of what you find in the present moment and a capacity to not judge yourself for getting distracted, getting to the present moment, you might like get here, but then you're ejected immediately afterwards, and so let me unpack that just for a second.

Speaker 1: 1:08:09

You get to the present moment and you don't like what you found, right. So you don't like how your body feels, you don't like the thoughts that you notice. You don't like what you found right. So you don't like how your body feels, you don't like the thoughts that you notice, you don't like the environment you're in. You're sort of just whatever it is that just doesn't feel great. You're not accepting that it's present right now. You're gone, and this is the same thing that happens when you're in an ice bath and you go.

Speaker 1: 1:08:31

This is really uncomfortable. I wish this wasn't here. I'm now out of my body, out of my mind, right, so you can notice how acceptance again is tactical. It's not a matter of I love what's here or I'm going to allow what's here to stay here forever, right, so it's not complicit, it's not complacent. What it is is saying, if it's here, I need to see reality clearly in order to make the best decisions possible. Right, you can't show up at a fire, be present and go. Oh, I wish there wasn't a fire. You got to make the decisions and choices based on the information you have, and it's that capacity to accept what you found and really commit to that path of hey, whatever's here is allowed to be here, the positive, the negative, the neutral, and a great place to practice. That is something mundane like washing the dishes or brushing your teeth or folding laundry.

Speaker 1: 1:09:24

You can do it in the more traditional setting of sitting down and following your breath, and I think there's value to doing it both with internal sensations, like noticing your breathing from the inside out, and then also in action, right, so being the witness of watching the experience as you're brushing your teeth. But then what are we really bringing our attention to? I think this is an important point. We talked, we joked a little bit about well, what's? Where do we go in the present moment?

Speaker 1: 1:09:53

You have your five senses, and then you have your internal sensations and you have the thoughts that are evolving in the present moment. And so if I was going to practice brushing my teeth, mindfully, the probably clearest place that now is happening is the interaction between the toothbrush and my teeth, and so you would notice the texture, you might notice the taste of the toothpaste, you might notice the movements. And it's funny, you brush your teeth twice a day for your entire life, and it's so patterned and so habitual that you probably haven't thought very much about brushing your teeth from a very present standpoint. And so it might be mundane, it might be boring, right, but the idea is, if I can do it when it's boring, I'm getting better at doing it when things are exciting.

Speaker 1: 1:10:43

And then every time you wander away you just notice oh, I went. And that's very human of me. I don't have to beat myself up over getting distracted. Remember, my mind is a survival organ and it's trying to keep me safe, and so it's practicing, just bouncing all over the place while I'm brushing my teeth. But if you did that every day, you'd get stronger at being present and accepting and non-judgmental, and that would then bleed over into the work you're doing on the fire ground.

Speaker 2: 1:11:08

Absolutely. I'm glad you said that, because that's something that in in these previous podcasts and in just typical conversations, I've always called the our training. We train in the mundane right. We, we, we find these opportunities to train these high performance skills, if you will, and they don't have to be high performance skills, they can be wellness skills or or what have you.

Speaker 2: 1:11:32

But when we're not on the fire truck, when we're not under, when we're interacting with our partners, when we're brushing our teeth, when we're washing a dish, that's where we have that opportunity to really see how present we can be.

Speaker 2: 1:11:47

When it's super simple and mundane and it's just a task, that there's not a lot of stress, there's no pressure, there's no anything driving you into that. That performance curve where pressure meets skill, um, it's just just simple stuff. But I personally have taken a lot of benefit from that because it reminds me that, hey, I, the day-to-day stuff, that, the simple interactions with my wife I need to be present for because those are valuable. But getting off the fire truck, giving a size up and I haven't done a lot of them but practicing that or knowing that that's in my future, I know that at least I can stay present to it. I might not have all the answers, but at least I can see some cues and pick up on the clues and move into that with some action that'll be beneficial for that scene. So I think that's really important and I appreciate you going off track and and kind of digging into that, because that's something. Where do we practice mindfulness?

Speaker 1: 1:12:47

well, you practice it when you brush your teeth, and that I think it just go ahead well, and you know, I think the point too is that you're not trying to get better at sitting on a cushion or you're not trying to optimize toothbrushing, but it gives you lots of opportunities throughout the day to practice so that that skill is available when it matters most. And I think that that's really the push that I'm trying to make regularly and I think it feels more understood, which is that it's not a woo, woo, let's go hover on top of a mountain. Uh, in flowing robes kind of thing. This is about in the, in the nitty-gritty right, in the chaos of a fire, can you stay present? Well, if you haven't trained it, the answer is probably no.

Speaker 2: 1:13:44

And so again, it's a strategic and a tactical move to pay attention on purpose when you're brushing your teeth, so that you can do it when it really matters. You said it best you just have to do it when it matters. And if you can do it when it doesn't matter, there's a better chance of doing it when it does. And then that kind of leads me to right where we're starting to wrap this up. But continual growth and becoming a lifelong learner, like. What advice from a performance perspective, do you have for people who are maybe on the fence or starting to, and I like learning. I think continuing to learn and having that growth mindset are really important to flourishing in our own future. But what do you have for anybody who's looking to build that continual growth mindset, because I promote that a lot.

Speaker 1: 1:14:31

I think that, well then, research plays this out that we, as human beings, enjoy growing. It feels good to get better at stuff. Now again, it usually feels good to get. It feels better to get better at things that you really enjoy or care about. There's something that I couldn't care less about, like uh raking the leaves.

Speaker 1: 1:14:56

If I get better at raking the leaves out back, uh, that's not moving the needle as much as uh getting better at having conversations like this, but at a ground level it still feels good to get better at something, and so for me it's more of a I want to be curious about what's in the way, and it might be like, hey, if this is truly an avenue that doesn't offer a lot of value in terms of the way that you make meaning and how you think about yourself and what you enjoy, right, Maybe it's not worth the energy to say, okay, let me figure out a way to get better at it, right. But in general I think about all right. Well, if a fixed mindset is in the way, all right. If I don't truly believe I can get better, then trying to get better isn't very enjoyable, because it feels like a waste of time, Right you?

Speaker 1: 1:15:42

can't believe it is. And so uprooting some of that belief system and allowing yourself to, then and let me shift to the language, because uprooting sounds violent Like you got to get the shovel and dig out the root system, and the truth is, is what we pay attention to grows. And so if I start paying attention to a different set of beliefs, that whole structure is actually going to just dissolve away on its own. And as I'm reinforced for learning, I look back at my performance journal and I go, dang, I'm getting better at stuff that's meaningful. And then I notice what that feels like in my body. I go, all right, I'm on the right track. Here's what it feels like.

Speaker 1: 1:16:23

Now, all of a sudden, I'm leveraging my biology and my direct experience and I'm starting to notice then how those beliefs are shifting, and so I'm using my body to change my mind. But I think for me it really comes back to what can we get out of the way? Is it other people telling me that I can't get any better Right? Am I just working in a direction that's not actually that valuable? Do I believe that I can improve? And if I can start to move that out of the way, the image I always have. I used to screw around with my brother when he'd be out back with the hose trying to like set things up when we were younger, and I'd crimp the hose and he'd all of a sudden be like what happened? All the water. Well, for us, I think a lot of times our motivation, our energy, right, we are the that's, the water flowing through, but the hose is crimped and so it's less about doing something about. You know, let's do something different. It's just sort of letting go or clearing out what's in the way.

Speaker 2: 1:17:16

Uh, so the water can flow you might not need more pressure, you just gotta find that that kink that's right, and the truth is over time, uh the hose grows right.

Speaker 1: 1:17:26

so as you do more of this, as you start to find that you can grow and that you're enjoying the process of being challenged, resting and then seeing your capacity evolve right, that things just start to flow and the capacity to have more motivation and more connection to that experience evolves on its own, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 1:17:46

The grow, the action, the rest. It's a pretty common theme in this conversation Exertion and resting. The oscillation between the two is, I think, something that we and it's been pointed out several times in the conversation. But this I'm fine, I can keep going. I can keep going and I'm really hearing we really need to. If we're going to go 110 or 100% on the fire ground, we have to figure out how to go 100% into the rest, into that other side, that other modality of how do we get back to baseline, how do we get to baseline and then return to a stronger baseline?

Speaker 2: 1:18:26

Even so, we've really talked about quite a few things. We've talked about mindfulness, which is being present and thinking and being aware of what's happening in the moment without judging it. Um, we've. We've talked about acceptance, stress management. We have some goal setting techniques that we can use to move forward. So, um, besides that, is there anything else? Any last word, or what I call priority traffic? That you have, doctor, as a performance expert to anybody throughout their career first day or almost last day, that that you could leave us with?

Speaker 1: 1:19:11

Yeah, I think that we've covered a lot of ground and you talked about that virtuous cycle right, that these all are interconnected in a way that as you start to build momentum, they start to build you up, and I still also find that there are times where that can feel really overwhelming. You know, we've talked about a ton and it's like, well shoot, all that sounds great but what?

Speaker 1: 1:19:32

do, I do and I want to emphasize right. That very next step is that there's any entry point that feels most vital to whoever's listening. There's not a right or wrong choice and so being able to plug in where it feels really powerful so maybe for somebody listening it's taking a walk after a call, right? Or giving yourself permission to watch a couple of funny videos and truly laughing and getting back to that baseline by sending those signals to the body hey, I'm safe, hey, I'm safe.

Speaker 1: 1:20:04

It might be that mindfulness practice that we talked about with brushing teeth or dishes, and so trusting that if you apply your energy and attention in a spot that feels like the highest point of leverage, right, you can always move on to the next point and you'll have been better off for having practiced what you just trained. And so trying to bring down the simmer a little bit, because people can kind of come out of conversations like this like that's too much. I'll do it tomorrow and so start where you can be successful, right. And if that's just the bar and not any weight on the squat rack, great. If it's just air squats, great.

Speaker 1: 1:20:44

We're going to run this metaphor in the ground right, but it's true, right, there's principles of human nature and the way the world works and the way our biology works, and so start small, don't fight your physiology, and trust that you're going to continue to build that capacity and that foundation as you go. And so I think that for me, is the big one, and if we've got the time, I'd also like to circle around to hit the breath just for a moment.

Speaker 2: 1:21:10

I'll make time.

Speaker 1: 1:21:12

This was a great place for us to close, and now I'm going to blow it back out, but I did say I would talk about it and it's an important piece.

Speaker 1: 1:21:20

I think I rank practicing mindfulness first.

Speaker 1: 1:21:24

The second, for me, is having a really simple and effective reflection practice, because if it's not simple, you're not going to do it every day, and if it's not helping you recognize where you're on the right track, then again it's not helping you. And if it's not helping you recognize where you're on the right track, then again it's not helping you. The next is training your breathing cadence and mechanics so that you can effectively shift your state in the moment and then also after the moment. Right, so, before the call or when the bell rings, right, this idea that you can manage your breathing in a specific way, and then that's going to make you, it's going to give you more capacity in the moment and then afterwards you can breathe in a specific way. That's going to help you get down and back to baseline. So, rather than say, hey, here's the exact cadence that you need to use, instead I like to offer some guidelines. Right, here's the way that your breath meets your physiology. Now you get to go play around and figure out what works.

Speaker 1: 1:22:21

And so if you needed to hit the gas let's say you were really fatigued and you need to actually bring it up you need to hit that flight or fight system so that you have access to energy when it's time to execute. You would breathe with your mouth, you would breathe with your chest and you would have a longer, more intense inhale than exhale, and so these are hardwired. You breathe this way and your body is going to shift. Your heart rate's going to go up and you're going to feel the energy coursing through your body, because that's the way that the breathing is hardwired in.

Speaker 1: 1:22:55

If we were going to then flip it around and we wanted to hit the brake, you would breathe with your nose, you would breathe with your belly and you would breathe with a longer exhale than inhale. And so you can do that when your mind is racing a mile a minute or 100 miles a minute, and what you'll find is that it might not take you from an eight and a half out of 10 down to a one, but you don't want to be a one on your way to a call anyway. What you want is to take the edge off so that you can find a little bit more balance while also having access to that energy. And so for some folks I know I said nose, but for some folks it's nose in and then pursed lips with a long exhale to really help slow the exhale down. But the beautiful thing is you don't have to think a special way for this to work.

Speaker 1: 1:23:48

And then the last piece is when you're looking for balance. What you're looking for then is you'd still breathe with your nose, you'd still want to breathe down into your belly, right, but you'd want to balance inhale and exhale. And all the research that's been done on breathing and the nervous system shows that somewhere between like four and six breaths a minute is ideal. Most of the time we're up at like 16 to 20. So breathing slower but with a balanced cadence so anywhere from five in five out to six in six out is kind of right in the sweet spot of, and so training that as your baseline mouth closed, in through the nose, out through the nose, feeling it get down below your chest, uh, I think, and then finding that balance. You'll find that I feel access to energy without feeling a little crispy, right tension leaves the body, but I'm not so tired then or so relaxed that I can't stay focused, and so there's different use cases for each of these right after a call, extended exhale.

Speaker 1: 1:24:57

Before a call, maybe finding that balanced breathing five in, five out, six in, six out, hold for three, exhale for three, hold for three Again, that's a balance plus, it's slowing you down, so it's helping find that syncing of sync up between breathing and nervous system.

Speaker 1: 1:25:25

And so, again, the recommendation for me here is that your body whoever is listening to this right now, your body knows, and so rather than saying saying okay, well, uh, some dude I listened to on a podcast said five and five out, well, if seven and seven out feels better and it feels right, trust that right.

Speaker 1: 1:25:43

Uh, our bodies all kind of have slightly different set points for that coherence breathing right, but it is much slower than we're used to. And the same is true for down regulating after a call or taking the edge off when you're on your way. And so be curious, play around and then trust that you breathe a certain way for a minute, two minutes Sometimes for me it takes five minutes if I've not done a lot of my nervous system hygiene for the day or a couple days, but a certain way tells your body this is what we need to do and your nervous system response that's awesome and that's just another thing we can practice while we're doing the dishes or having those challenging conversations with our partners or our kids or however that looks right.

Speaker 2: 1:26:28

We can find ways to practice that calmly, maybe driving, but hopefully that'll carry over into those pressure situations.

Speaker 1: 1:26:38

Yeah, and one more tip. You can download for free a metronome app on your phone. Set it to 60 beats per minute and it'll click once per second and help you pace your breathing.

Speaker 1: 1:26:51

You can also. I downloaded one that works with my Apple Watch you can probably find them for any smartwatch and it vibrates because I set it to 60 beats per minute. Vibrates one second, and so I can be totally undercover when nobody knows I'm doing it and I'm sitting there in meetings or doing something that is important and I want to make sure that I'm available and focused for and I'm just getting that little signal that's telling me slow it down, find some balance. Uh, and it's a little bit of like the support and even having done this for years now, uh, there are still times where I'm like all right, I'm breathing in balance and I'm breathing slow enough. And then I actually turned the metronome on like Nope I was, I was a little fast and I was a little off, and so it's nice to come back to that and then kind of just reacquaint myself with the rhythm that feels right.

Speaker 2: 1:27:39

That's awesome. That's a great tip. The metronome tip I never thought of that. I've used it for rowing, but I've never used it to slow down for breathing. So thank you. Where can all the listeners get a hold of you? If anybody's looking for some more high-end peak performance coaching or just want some more content they can digest and kind of get more into this, where can they find you?

Speaker 1: 1:28:02

So I have a podcast called the Mental Training Lab, so we got episodes that come out every two weeks interviews with mental performance coaches, sport coaches, athletes, and so it's an opportunity for me to be in your seat and geek out and ask a lot of questions. Uh, you can also find me at drkcoachingcom, so DRK coaching uh, no spaces, no hyphens. Uh, I have a monthly newsletter that I send out that includes, uh, some teaching, a free resource, uh, and then sort of the roundup of free events I'm doing and podcasts that I've released, and so there's a ton of content on the website. But there's also that opportunity to join the community that we're building through the newsletter. It's all free, and so I would love for folks to either drop me a line through the website or join me on the rest of that journey. And, yeah, for me, the more robust the conversation, the better I'm able to serve all these different communities, and so I get really fired up about that.

Speaker 2: 1:29:03

Well, dr Pete, it's been a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. I can't say enough for how much you've enlightened me and you brought to, hopefully, the audience. So, on behalf of everybody listening, thank you so much for making time and coming on. It means the world to us. Everybody out there in priority traffic podcast land. Thank you so much for listening. It's a pleasure and a honor to be able to bring you this kind of content. Don't forget to follow along, like, subscribe, share, review all that stuff. If any of this is resonating with you, please dig deeper, look into yourself, see what connects, try and add a little bit at a time. All that to say, pete, thank you so much for your time. Everybody have a great day on. It was a pleasure that was.