The purpose of gratitude is to help that other part of this, which is literally our mindset. Right. Our cognitive distortions and. And trying to change those to feel better.
Yeah, And I agree with that. And I think, you know, I do want to hold space. When you are seeing humanity at its worst or responding to a horrible accident or just seeing those things, it is going to leave an impression on your mindset. And I think that's why that work to kind of skill build and, man, it might feel really hard is so important. And, you know, skill building isn't. Well, I did that once, and I didn't change anything, so I'm done with it. No, skill building is doing something over and over and over again to really build that skill. Welcome back to the podcast.
With a different voice this week at. Right, Ashlee.
Sorry, everyone. I don't know what's going on. So we're just.
It wasn't from screaming for the Bears, so we can, like, rule that out because, man, you've had some victories.
It didn't help. Well, we are on another victory. Well, now. Yeah, no, it's Monday still victory Monday. So that never does. That never helps. But, yeah, we're losing it. The voice is just not wanting to stay these days.
Welcome to the winter weather.
Yeah, but you're gonna make it. It's just us today. Our special guest is ourselves. So that's our special guest today. And in prep, I was like, oh, you know, what are we going to talk about? And then. Oh, duh. Next week is Thanksgiving. So I am.
Wait a minute. It's next week.
Oh, okay, everybody. I thought we had two weeks or something like that. That's wild.
Wait a minute. Yeah, because it's Monday.
Welcome to the show. Okay. Yes.
I'm sorry, I might need to do a quick. Can you tell your name, your date of birth? Like, can I do a real quick assessment? Like, are you.
So, like, I feel like I have to tell everyone that I've been gone. Like Earth. Like, yeah, just gone. So, like, I. I feel like I'm so behind in everything. I don't even know what's happening right now. But I did not think I was next week. So, like, gratitude.
I'm thankful you told me.
There you go. Well, and you traveled on a Monday and a conference on a weekend. It is kind of like, what's up, down? Like, it's hard to. I could understand that for sure.
Yeah. I will say Thanksgiving is My favorite holiday. I love Thanksgiving. It's not just because of the food. Like, I just think thankfulness, gratitude is just a really incredible thing and tool, especially when it comes to resiliency. So I wanted to talk about that. And then I think you had some other stuff like from your conference that you wanted to talk about. So I think that's just kind of it for us today that we were going to cover.
Yeah. And that's what I love, is that like when our worlds collide like this. So one of my very favorite speakers at this conference, this was all he talked about was gratitude and our perception. Even as law enforcement. Right. And first responders in general, our perception going into every day really controls a lot of the outcome to things. And yet a lot of us decide to have a negative perception on stuff and then wonder why life around us is negative.
Well, and that's one thing that I'm sure everybody's probably sick of me talking about my military resiliency training. But one thing is I think sometimes we're not even trying to have a negative mindset. It's just a negative bias. Like our brains are wired, you know, to look out for the saber tooth tiger, to not eat the poisonous berries. That's why all the news is bad news. That is kind of a natural like survival instinct wiring. And so it takes takes a step to do that, to have that more like gratitude positive mindset, if you will. And one thing that like again is from the MRT training is hunt the good stuff.
I feel like maybe I've talked about that on here before though.
We'll retalk about it because we've been on this for a while, so people need to hear it. Right.
Like, but hunt the good stuff is always like a great thing. And again, Thanksgiving is of that where you just name what you're thankful for and hunt the good stuff. You're just looking about what you enjoyed about your day. And the goal is to actually like sit. It's not just to like, well, I had a good cup of coffee, traffic wasn't bad. I got my work done, I got home. The goal is actually to kind of sit and write down. And you know, write down can be pen and paper.
It can be your notes app, you know, writing down three things that were positive or three things that you're grateful.
So taking the time to write it down and then with that looking at what about it made it good. Like it's always nice to start the day without a lot of traffic. Right. What I always Appreciate is that question of how did that happen? You know, did it happen because I got up 10 minutes earlier or maybe it happened because I was running a little bit late and some of the traffic had moved, you know, just whatever that is. And so it's that idea of kind of sitting deeper with these things. And I think it's the same with the gratitude, you know, when we are sitting with what we're thankful for. Not just, I'm thankful for my family, I'm thankful for my friends. It's what about them? You know, what about that is something that we're grateful for.
And if we're in gratitude, we are not in an anxious mind. So if we're thinking about what we have, because anxiety is about that space and time in the future and if we can be present with what we do have and obtain in this moment. So that's the kind of hunt, the good stuff, the resiliency and why I was like, oh, this is a perfect time to take it, to talk about this with the holiday.
And I love that and I love how you just like, actually worded all that. It's super insightful and a huge tool for our listeners. Right. And I think that I've just come off of four days of hearing first responders say it's hard for me to see the good in life when all I see is bad.
Or like when you don't think something is possible, but then you see it firsthand. And, and that notion of, like, we had this huge talk about gratitude and the positive mindset and honestly, like, motivation and this whole thing is, it's just like I'm, I'm trying, but I, I don't even realize at this point that I don't do that. Like, all I see is negative. And I try to go out with my family, but all I'm doing is scanning the whole time. What if somebody comes in here and does something? What if. Right. And so I think people forget, like, or they just don't know which I didn't know either. And I don't know.
I'm full of facts. People will fact check me one day and we're going to get yelled at. But. And I've probably said it, but I'll say it a million times over because it just stuck with me that hard is that 90% of our, like, happiness and things like that actually come from our thought process and 10% comes from what we do. And that's wild because we sit on this show too. Like, and as therapists were like, hey, like Self care. Self care. Like, do the things you love.
Don't have the use to this and that. And while that's true, don't get me wrong, none of that goes away. So hold up, everybody, like, what the heck? The purpose of gratitude is to help that other part of this, which is literally our mindset. Right. Our cognitive distortions and trying to change those to feel better.
Yeah, And I agree with that. And I think, you know, I do want to hold space. When you are seeing humanity at its worst or responding to a horrible accident or just seeing those things, it is going to leave an impression on your mindset. And I think that's why that work to kind of skill build and man, it might feel really hard is so important. And, you know, skill building isn't. Well, I did that once and I didn't change anything. So I'm done with it. No, skill building is doing something over and over and over again to really build that skill.
And then I think to that point too, then we get into the territory of like, man, I can't ever do this. Like, well, then maybe this experience that you had at work is too much. And, like, we do need to go talk to a professional and explore options to save. Like, maybe there was a traumatic event that's happening that's kind of creating some dysregulation that maybe, you know. Well, I. I sit and journal for an hour, and gratitude's not really going to touch that for sure.
Yeah, absolutely. I think about the guests we've had on. Right. And like, our last episode was so incredibly powerful.
I was so grateful for that. Oh, my gosh, the story. Oh, it's like to be vulnerable, to talk about that was so powerful. And yet when I sit back and reflect on that. Sure. We didn't sit there and say, hey, tell us what you're grateful for now. Right. Like, we didn't specifically ask that question, but I challenge our listeners to go back and listen to that episode or listen to a few of them and identify the positives out of these horrific stories, because they are there.
I don't want our first responders to walk around feeling like they're not doing those things. They are. We just have to have that intentionality behind it sometimes.
Well, and I think you speak to that vulnerability. I think it can be like a practice and vulnerability exercise to name what we have. You know, I've worked with people that would have some fear about naming what's good, because fear of if I name it some, maybe that would be taken from Me or I wouldn't get to have those experiences. And so I do think that it's an act in vulnerability, but in a healthy way too, you know, that's not something you have to share with anybody. Nobody has to ever know that. And then on the other side of that too, like, I feel like you are always doing a great job of banging the drum for leadership. It's also a great thing to, like, incorporate in, in terms of, like, encouraging people that you're leading to say, hey, this is a practice that can be sometimes kind of helpful, you know. Yeah, well, and I think you think about where you are when you start a shift and where you are when you end a shift.
I mean, even for your conference, you know where you are when you started your conference to being like, worn out and what day is it at the end of stuff, it can be really hard for us to be at that place. And so sometimes it's a nice way to kind of say, like, here's something I do have control over because I don't know what I'm going to be walking into when it comes to work.
I'm so excited that you just brought up leadership. My nerdy heart. And I won't, I won't. I will go down it a little bit and back off. I thought my brain went, ooh, let's talk a little bit about, like, positive psychology. All those things. And yet what it comes back to is trying to reel it in because everyone's going to be like, ashley, we did not ask for a six hour episode.
Your voice isn't gonna last long. Terrible.
And you just went on a rant for six hours. But when we were working on some advanced peer support in our department, positive psychology got brought up. And I was like, yes, this is so true. This is exciting. And we did have people of leadership in that room. And, you know, one of them was very open to be like, oh, man. Like, that's not my style. My style is not to be like, hey, you did a really good job on this.
My style is to be like, hey, we need to work on this. Right? And yet he was like, I don't purposely do that, but I think, you know, like, he's like, in my brain, I'm helping, like, I'm identifying areas. But I didn't stop to think that I should probably be pointing out the good too, that they're doing.
I don't want innocent, but, like, in a way, innocent of like, yeah, I would never want people to feel like I'm being negative. I Just thought I was doing the right thing by educating them when I saw something that can be approved upon, which is very true in a leadership role.
And yet the difference we can make in morale when we also balance that with identifying the good that's done too. And I think leadership plays a huge part in that. It starts from the top. If the top is doing that, the rest start to follow.
Right. Well, and again, I think that you're exactly right, that that's a very innocent thing. And I think that. I don't know. I grew up in a generation was a. You could do five things right, but you're going to be called out for the one thing you didn't do. Like, that's just. But I think that that leads him back to that kind of how human brains are wired.
