Speaker 1: Hey there, welcome to Healthy Ish. This is, of course
Speaker 1: your daily podcast Frobody and Soul. I am your host
Speaker 1: for LISTI Harley. Now, we all want to stay calm
Speaker 1: rather than feel overwhelmed in life's stressful situations, and my
Speaker 1: guest today is going to help you do just that.
Speaker 1: He is a paramedic and author of a new book
Speaker 1: called The Paramedic Mindset. His name is Lee Anderson, and
Speaker 1: today he joins us to share the tools he uses
Speaker 1: to stay calm under pressure in his extremely stressful job. Now,
Speaker 1: if you want more from Lee, I highly recommend you
Speaker 1: tune into Extra Healthy Ish, where he talks about how
Speaker 1: he copes with the trauma involved with his job, and
Speaker 1: he also shares more tools on how he thrives under pressure.
Speaker 1: He can search for Extra Healthy Ish wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts Lee, thank you for joining us on healthy
Speaker 1: Is today.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me, And well done.
Speaker 1: On your new book. How does it feel it's out
Speaker 1: there in the world now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's It feels like I thought I would be relieved, Like, wow,
Speaker 2: I can I don't have to stay up till midnight
Speaker 2: riot I think and deal with the stress of writing
Speaker 2: a book. Yeah, but I'm kind of a bit nervous now.
Speaker 2: I'm a bit apprehensive about how it's going to go.
Speaker 2: Like I've put myself in the public sphere, so that's
Speaker 2: new to me, so it makes me a bit nervous.
Speaker 2: But we'll see.
Speaker 1: I like that you said that it's stressed for writing
Speaker 1: a book, yet you've probably been in some of the
Speaker 1: most stressful situations that any human could possibly be in.
Speaker 1: Talk to us about this whole concept of the paramedic mindset.
Speaker 2: What is it? Yeah, So the paramedic mindset is basically
Speaker 2: I like to use the word poise, So it's about
Speaker 2: when we're faced with stress, how can we make really
Speaker 2: good decisions in that face of that stress, so we
Speaker 2: don't get that tunnel vision because we like the research
Speaker 2: shows the most thing that stress does to all of
Speaker 2: us is make us really poor decision makers. So it's
Speaker 2: about clearing your mind to make good decisions. And I
Speaker 2: just use the paramedic as the example on how to
Speaker 2: manipulate our biology to make good decisions and prepare for
Speaker 2: stress and then turning stress. Instead of looking at stress
Speaker 2: as stress, we can change it and look at it
Speaker 2: as arousal. So when you look at it as arousal.
Speaker 2: We start to relate that to performance, so you can
Speaker 2: see stress is a good thing. It's a thing that
Speaker 2: actually enhances our performance and makes our lives better. It
Speaker 2: just becomes when stress becomes overwhelming and there's a point
Speaker 2: where we drop off that cliff. So it's about trying
Speaker 2: to avoid that. So I use the paramedic mindset as
Speaker 2: usually this word poison. I define that as this self
Speaker 2: assurance and composure under pressure. So I always imagine it's
Speaker 2: like you're walking through a tornado. There's cows flying, cars flying,
Speaker 2: and you're just walking there composed, solid, shoulders back, and
Speaker 2: you're able to deal with that situation despite all that
Speaker 2: chaos around.
Speaker 1: That's a good summary. Well, I mean I think it's
Speaker 1: all good. And while being a paramedic've you spent years
Speaker 1: perfecting this or perhaps you know, trying to at least
Speaker 1: how can the everyday person adapt this mindset?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So, like I said before, I'm just using the
Speaker 2: paramedic as the example. So the science and the research
Speaker 2: that I include in the book is all about how
Speaker 2: humans react to stress. So every human if you go,
Speaker 2: like for me, going up and doing public speaking events,
Speaker 2: which I have to do now for the book, and
Speaker 2: I get very stressed for public speaking, So I use
Speaker 2: the exact same tools stuff that manipulate my stress to
Speaker 2: perform when I public speak, that I learned as a paramedic.
Speaker 2: It's just that paramedics are put under stress every day,
Speaker 2: and you know, the decision making in that moment is
Speaker 2: can be life threatening. Notes it's do or die. Sometimes
Speaker 2: it's not always, but it does happen.
Speaker 1: So can you give us some tools that can help
Speaker 1: us well stay calm under pressure and build our poise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I call them psychological skills. And probably the
Speaker 2: best one and easiest one to remember or for me anyway,
Speaker 2: is this acronym called beat the stressful. If you remember
Speaker 2: mister T from the A Team, I do imagine him
Speaker 2: and it. Yeah, so it's like beat the stressful. So
Speaker 2: B is for breathing. So there's a few breathing techniques.
Speaker 2: Andrew Human made the physiological size sighing, so that's two
Speaker 2: inhales and one exhale. He made that quite popular recently.
Speaker 2: There's also box breathing, which is where you breathe in
Speaker 2: like you inhale for four seconds, you hold your breath
Speaker 2: for four seconds. You exhale for four seconds and then
Speaker 2: hold your breath for another four seconds, so it's like
Speaker 2: a box YEP. And then TEA is for talk, so
Speaker 2: that's positive self talk, so you're just having little phrases
Speaker 2: in your mind to a positive self talk within your
Speaker 2: internal dialogue. And another way you can do that is
Speaker 2: to talk to yourself in refer to yourself in second person,
Speaker 2: so you say your name, so it's like Lee, I
Speaker 2: can do this, or Lee you can do this, Lee,
Speaker 2: you are good, You've done this before those little phrases.
Speaker 2: That's a bit of positive self talk. And then S
Speaker 2: is for C so visualization, so it's about closing your
Speaker 2: eyes and visualizing doing or performing the task before you
Speaker 2: do it m m and taking that pause to do that.
Speaker 2: And the other one is focus, so you use little
Speaker 2: focus words. I like to in Q words, So you
Speaker 2: come up with a word before you do something simply
Speaker 2: as like for a paramedic, it might be smooth, So
Speaker 2: before you perform a surgical intervention or something, you say smooth,
Speaker 2: or you say the word focus itself. So you come
Speaker 2: up with these little Q words, and there's single words
Speaker 2: that snap you out of that tunnel vision. So beat
Speaker 2: the stressful.
Speaker 1: I like that. I like that. So when you come
Speaker 1: upon a situation, you know, which could be life and death,
Speaker 1: is this what's going on your head? The self talk,
Speaker 1: the breathing. I mean when you're in the ambulance and
Speaker 1: you're on your way, I mean, how does that work
Speaker 1: in your mind?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, there's like a lot of preparation goes in
Speaker 2: before you put yourself in that situation. We call it
Speaker 2: stress and oculation. So it's training and education and that
Speaker 2: sort of thing about mastering your skills. But yeah, essentially,
Speaker 2: when you're in those pressure moments before you do something,
Speaker 2: I'll be like, as I'll walk into a scene, I'll
Speaker 2: be breathing before I perform a task. I'll say a
Speaker 2: single word or a cognitive pause is another one where
Speaker 2: you just physically step back and move your body. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and you look at the horizon and stand there for
Speaker 2: thirty seconds, remove yourself from the situation before you make
Speaker 2: a decision. Yeah, I'll actively do those things. And you
Speaker 2: can do those things without anyone noticing around you. And
Speaker 2: that's the beauty of these little tools and skills is
Speaker 2: that you can perform it next to someone and they
Speaker 2: don't even know you doing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you make it sound very simple and very easy
Speaker 1: to stay calm when under pressure. It was I found
Speaker 1: that you talk you write about in your book about
Speaker 1: an experiment that you conducted with your podcast, and the
Speaker 1: finding was around maintaining poise under pressure. It was more
Speaker 1: about individual's well being than their experience or preparedness when
Speaker 1: it came to a stressful situation. Can you tell us
Speaker 1: more about.
Speaker 2: This, Yeah, it was quite fascinating that people prioritize their
Speaker 2: own well being and they stated that that is a
Speaker 2: having a what we'd like to call flourishing. So flourishing
Speaker 2: in life is a key performance indicator of being able
Speaker 2: to deal with stressful situations when they come up. So
Speaker 2: if you walked in like it's you know, it sounds
Speaker 2: pretty if you put it this way, it's pretty simple.
Speaker 2: It's like if you're feeling depressed and anxious and then
Speaker 2: someone throws something at you, it makes you really stressful.
Speaker 2: You're not going to perform very well. Whether if you
Speaker 2: walk into it and you're feeling like you're functioning in life.
Speaker 2: You can deal with obstacles and hurdles that you come
Speaker 2: across to achieve that is, through achieving well being and
Speaker 2: probably the biggest thing that sets people up in that
Speaker 2: was that they do it in service of others. So
Speaker 2: it's helping others gives them that resilience in that well being,
Speaker 2: which I thought was really interesting that it's not about
Speaker 2: trying to do something for your individual it's about helping
Speaker 2: other people and that's what gives you resilience.
Speaker 1: Is that why you're a paramedic? What was your desire
Speaker 1: to become a paramedic?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well a part of it, for sure is
Speaker 2: that desire to help others. But it's also so I
Speaker 2: was injured and quite sick when I was around fifteen sixteen,
Speaker 2: and yeah, I had the ambulance come out to me,
Speaker 2: and I know, they were amazing, and I just looked
Speaker 2: up to them and thought, you know, what they did
Speaker 2: for me and how they treated me was incredible. And
Speaker 2: then at the time, it used to be like a
Speaker 2: diploma program where you had to apply and you had
Speaker 2: to have like a lot of life experience before they
Speaker 2: would accept you. Yeah, but then the tertiary and universities
Speaker 2: opened it up and started doing it as a program
Speaker 2: at university level. And as soon as I saw that,
Speaker 2: it just it was a calling. I'm enrolled in that
Speaker 2: course and.
Speaker 1: Oh you're an undervalued occupation. Lee, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us on Healthy.
Speaker 2: Is Not a problem. Thank you for having me well.
Speaker 1: If you do want more tales from the front line,
Speaker 1: make sure you grab Lee's new book. It is called
Speaker 1: The Paramedic Mindset it is. It's really good. Actually, it's
Speaker 1: got a lot of wisdom in there about how to
Speaker 1: well flourish under pressure. If you did enjoy this chat,
Speaker 1: jump on rate and review it, or of course you
Speaker 1: can subscribe to this podcast. Anything else, head to Body
Speaker 1: and Soul dot com dot you followus on socials, grab
Speaker 1: our print edition which is out in your local Sunday paper,
Speaker 1: and until tomorrow, stay healthy ish