077: How To Be Remarkable Under High Stress with Leigh Anderson

Speaker A: We all know that strong leadership is one of the keys to a remarkable business. But how do you consistently show up as an effective leader while balancing decisions and situations that can be highly stressful? How do you perform consistently under stressful conditions? Well, in this episode of the Remarkable Project, I speak with Lee Anderson, an accomplished paramedic with 15 years of operational experience, to uncover the secrets of thriving in high stress, unpredictable situations. Lee holds a Bachelor of Paramedic Science and a Graduate Certificate of Emergency Health. His career spans from the frontline of emergency response to lecturing and tutoring at the university level and serving as a peer reviewer of scientific journal articles outside the ambulance. The Lee's passion lies in improving the human experience of stress to set people up for flourishing in their personal and professional lives. In our conversation, we delve into what happens at a biological level during stressful situations and explore Lee's recommendations for ensuring we respond calmly and creatively. We discuss the concept of self leadership and the power of a, uh, pause in any situation, highlighting practical strategies to enhance our ability to lead effectively under pressure. So if you're eager to learn how to master stress and lead with resilience, sit back, relax, take a pause, and join me in this insightful conversation with Lee Anderson. Why do people love your business? What are the unforgettable moments you create for your audience? How do you build a business that people feel compelled to talk about? The Remarkable Project with Jay Tinkler. Lee, welcome to the Remarkable Project.

Speaker B: Thanks for having me, Jay. Looking forward to the conversation.

Speaker A: Listen, this has been a long time coming, this conversation and ah, not only with yourself, but just on our podcast itself. Um, we deal with a lot of conversation around cognitive bias and how we show up in business and uh, having the right mindset. But we don't deal a lot in the topic of stress and how to actually still be high performing under, uh, a level of high stress. And we are in the current time at the moment as small business owners and marketers, that there's a lot of uncertainty out in the market and you could be forgiven for feeling a fair bit of stress right now as small business owners. So I'm really looking forward to sort of diving in and sort of unpacking this balance between understanding your state of mind, understanding your stressful situation, but also being able to put the tools and the practices in place to really stay consistent and still, uh, high performing. Before we do though, let's dive into your history and a bit of sort of your background. Can you give us a bit of a history lesson On I guess what's come before and what's led up to you writing this book?

Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So I've been a paramedic for about 15 years now. I uh, started uh, pretty young when I was about 20. So it's really all over ever known in my adult life. And I particularly put myself in positions where I could see stress and see some pretty isolated traumatic events. I would chase it. You know, I worked in a lot of rural and remote areas where I was a single officer by myself with limited resources and backup. So I was exposed to this. You know, I, I used to get jealous sitting at hospital listening to the radio if I missed a, a traumatic event. But you know, I, I didn't get dispatched to because I was with another patient. Um, you know, I got major FOMO and for, you know, maybe there's something wrong with me, but I really like to chase that adrenaline and then I just had a passion for it about how to perform under these high stress environments. How do you make really good decisions in those environments when you're, you're on your own and there's no one, no other support. You got limited resources and you know the pressure's on. But when I started the journey of writing the book, there was like a particular incident that made me think, oh, uh, maybe this is needed in the world. And, and that was when I was um, backing up another crew who was at a car accident. There was a head on collision and one of the vehicles was towing a caravan. And if you ever come across a car accident with a caravan, they just explode. There's debris all over the road. It's like a, a bomb went off or something. It looks pretty bad. And particularly a head on car accident as well. It can be quite, you know, usually the windscreens are smashed and those sorts of things so they can look bad. But I turned up on scene to find the other crew that was there and they were very experienced paramedics. One of them been in the job for about 10 years. So you know, this wasn't their first car accident they've ever come across. And they just, I just remember them like charging towards me and they were red faced, sweaty and they just had that tunnel vision. They were hyperventilating and they looked panicked. They were making some strange decisions like grabbing bags, putting bags down, walking away, not doing anything with the bag. And I was like, uh, oh wow, this must be a big job. Like there must be a really sick person down in that car. So I was preparing myself for what I was about to witness as I walked down. And when I got to the car, there was no one inside the vehicle. And I thought, well, this is strange. And then I'm like, uh, oh, who's the patient? And the patient was standing next to me and I thought the patient was a bystander. You know, the bystanders come from everywhere when you're at a car accident. I just thought it was one of them. But he was like, no, it's me, I'm all good and there's nothing wrong with me. No pain looks fine. I'm like, oh, okay, it must be the other vehicle. So I went over to the other car and there was a person sitting in there. They were conscious, breathing, talking. They just had some bruises and scratches, some like seatbelt damage and when you. A bit of whiplash. So a bit of pain from that. But other than that they were fine as well. And I'm like, well, why are these people so panicked? And it was just their perception. So they perceived that this was going to be a really horrific incident. But in reality they were fine. There was nothing to do. It was just a bit of rest and reassurance, have a conversation and you know, basic first aid. Like you didn't really need a paramedic there. When we got back to station, we did a debrief. And through that debrief I said, oh, have you heard about these basic like breathing techniques and like taking a pause and stepping back from the scene to get your arousal lowered and get yourself under control, lower your heart rate so you can start making some good decisions and improve your situational awareness. And they'd never heard of it. And I thought, well, why do I know that? Why do I know about these things? And it was only because my own personal interest that I would study it, uh, read about it. And I just had this passion for it. And then I realized that when I was at university we didn't, weren't taught this stuff either. You know, we do a three year degree and then you come out and they don't actually teach you how to deal with stress. It's, it's a lived experience. It's just through mentorship, exposure on road. And I thought maybe I should write a book. Uh, well, initially it was going to be a pocketbook with just these little psychological skills on how to uh, stay calm under pressure. Because what we do know about pressure is like, it's a nemesis for decision, uh, making. So when you are, uh, faced with a lot of pressure, you make poor decisions. So that's the last Thing we want when you're in a high pressure situation or if you're a leader, is to make poor decisions. So it's about trying to control that arousal so you can clear your mind and make really good decisions. And in the medical world, when someone's life's on the line, you want someone to make a really good decision. Goes for business as well. Uh, so that's where the journey started about writing this book is trying to bridge that gap between theory and practice. So the book's really broken up into two components. I share one, which is like personal stories about cases I go to, incidents I experience. And the other one's like evidence based science research. And it's trying to put those two together with making the research practical and able to apply it in your, in your real life through lived experience. Because, um, you know, you can do the best research in the world, but if you can't apply it in your everyday life, then what's the point?

Speaker A: I'm interested if we just go back a step. You were talking about your attraction, I guess to high pressure situations. And I think if you're a small business owner out there, you kind of relate in some respects because you kind of step off the cliff a little bit when you become a, ah, owner of your own business and you are invariably ah, taking a risk and risking some stuff there. And it takes a level of creativity and a certain type of human, I guess, to actually take the journey of being a small business owner and that sort of chased for that level of stimulation or of being just on the edge of, of danger, I guess. Um, can you speak to that a little bit as to what you, your lived experience is there? And I think that it's quite obvious what the potential downsides of that are. But uh, what are the real positives of that as well, chasing that level of stimulation and maybe even speak to what, what's going on there for, for someone that's chasing that.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, uh, it's about having a desire to constantly challenge yourself and continually grow. Without challenge, there is no growth. And if you're not growing and staying in the same spot, you're essentially going backwards. So it's really about having this mindset of seeing things as a challenge rather than a threat. When you're threatened by something, that's when you become stagnant. You basically don't take action because of your fear of failure. You have this high uh, sense of if this is too risky for me, so I'll just do nothing. And people get into this attitude of, uh, I'll do nothing wrong by doing nothing. And it's like, that's not the way you want to do if you want to achieve anything. If you want to be successful, you actually have to take initiative and look at the information you have and the skills you have and the training and look at all that information and then make a calculated risk. It's not about being risk free. If your goal is to be risk free, then you'll achieve nothing because you'll do nothing. So it's about. It all starts really with training. I, uh, talk about stress inoculation, which is about training in a stressful environment, or education and study. If you don't know something, go learn it. So you can make these calculated risks based on evidence rather than making blinded risk decisions. So it's really about trying to master your skills before you are, uh, faced with the challenge. So there's the law about unconscious competence, the four levels of mastery. And mastery is of a skill is this unconscious competence, where when you go to do something, it requires little no thought. You can pretty much do it unconsciously. Take driving, for example. That's very high risk. When you're learning to drive, you don't know what you're doing. You're going on the road. People die every day driving vehicles. So you don't realize that as a learner, it's a really high risk task that you're undertaking to drive a vehicle. And when you drive, it's how hard is it? Like, because you got to singly focus on, oh, where's the indicator? Oh, I got a break now. And then you're looking at every single task of what you need to do. But I bet when you drive now, Jay, you don't think about, oh, where's the indicator? You just flick it on, or you just put pressure on the brake or, or you beep your horn or whatever you do. You look in the mirrors. You do that with pretty much unconscious thought. That's because you've practiced it so long, you've done it for a long time. You've mastered those skills. But at the time, when you're a learner, you haven't mastered those skills. So it requires a lot of thought, a lot of thinking. And that's where the risk comes in, because you haven't mastered those skills. So it's about mastering your, what you're good at, right? Your. You own a business, it might be baking, and you master the skill of the baker. So then you can just do it without thought and Then you can focus on other things and that no longer becomes a stress.

Speaker A: That's super interesting. And I can see also that the more heightened you become in those moments, and I'm probably coming a little bit down into uh, individual moments here a little bit. But that, that allows you to sort of force almost a flow state into some of those unconscious kind of competence pieces as well where you can call upon a bit more subconscious learning than being so front of mind all the time. Am I um, making sense there? Is that?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, agree. And the big thing too is to have self awareness of the way you're feeling in that moment. How's your body reacting to the position you're in? And you know the great thing about a really good clinician or uh, a paramedic would be that there's moments where you actually need tunnel vision. You need clear focus on a single task, like say you're putting a needle in someone. But you need the awareness to know that once that's done you need to step out and step back. And it's the people that aren't um, able to step back and realize once that task is done then they can see the bigger picture, but they just get tunnel vision and stuck on that one task and forget about what else is around them. So it's about having this self awareness of the way you're feeling. And because you know the way you feel and your emotions, your body will respond to it physiologically. So it will release hormones to make you react to make you even worse. And it's just this vicious cycle. Uh, I should say that in the book as well. I like to tell people that obviously I'm a paramedic and there's a lot of things your business owners wouldn't be exposed to. Some of the things that I've been exposed to. But we all have the same biology, we all have the same physiology, so we all respond to stress the exact same way. The fight or flight response is the same for you. When you basically if you have something that you care about, the outcome matters to you and time is limited, then you're going to be stressed, your body will respond to that the same way that my body responds when I'm in like a life threatening emergency. So the book is really for everyone. It's just using the paramedic as the example to show these things. Mhm.

Speaker A: Interesting. Okay, let's try and do this in a linear fashion. I want to talk about the moment that something stressful hits. So the trigger, I guess for want of a better Word. What's actually going on in the brain in that moment where maybe even using your example of that first crew showing up at that accident or what not, before we start getting into what we should be doing, can you speak to, uh, at all what that initial mindset is? That's the biology of what's going on there in our brains in that moment?

Speaker B: Yeah. Well, essentially the fight or flight response is activated through the sympathetic nervous system. So you have two nervous systems, one sympathetic, one parasympathetic. The parasympathetics, you rest and digest. That's just when you're chilling on the couch and eating dinner. And it's usually stimulated through the. There's a vagus nerve, which, which is one of the biggest nerves in your body. I'll mention that because we'll come back to it later. But the sympathetic is essentially. You can break it up into two and there's a, what's called the sympathetic adrenal medullary axis, uh, or the sam. And then there's another one which is called the, uh, hpa, which is the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis. And the sympathetic split into these two. And the same one is an instantaneous response. It's, it's a, uh, travels through your nervous system. That's the pathway it takes. And it basically goes from your, uh, amygdala to your hypothalamus. And then it sends a signal through messengers down your nervous system to release adrenaline and noradrenaline in your adrenals. That adrenaline noradrenaline obviously goes out and then you get the, the symptoms of that would be heightened heart rate. You start to get increased, uh, blood pressure. You feel on edge, you're ready to go, right? That's your fight. And then the HBA system travels through the bloodstream. So instead of sending signals through the nervous system, it sends it through the bloodstream and then it arrives into your adrenals, essentially gets to your adrenals and it releases cortisol. So that pathway is more your sustained response to stress, where you start to have prolonged effects. And the difference between the two is mainly, I like to introduce this seeing things as a challenge or a threat. And that's what you can go in between both, and you can actually have both at the same time. But it's around your perception of what you see as stressful. And when you see things as a challenge, you activate the SAM system more this instantaneous. It's acute stress. So we're built, completely designed humans to deal with acute stress, it's the chronic stuff that we're not very good at dealing with and really we shouldn't because we don't close this loop. And the SAM response is instantaneous. It release and then it resolves. And then you go back into that rest and digest phase. And in that phase, your blood vessels dilate and you actually increase the blood flow to your brain, whereas in the hpa, your blood vessels constrict and it decreases the blood flow to your brain when you have, uh, too much cortisol. And this is where, if you have chronic use of the HPA and the HPA is generally activated more when you see things as a threat. So if you're seeing things as a threat that you feel like you're actually in danger, then you're going to have more cortisol in your bloodstream. And then this is where, if that becomes chronic and we don't resolve it, that's where you can actually get cardiovascular disease and like heart attacks and those sorts of things from chronic use of stress because you're activating this, um, HBA system and your, your blood vessels are constricted, your, your heart's pumping hard for longer periods of time and it's not being resolved. So I like to look at it as about changing our perception of whether we see things as a challenge or a threat. And when you see things as a challenge, you feel like you have the resources to deal with it. Uh, you feel like you can overcome it, that it's an opportunity to learn, it's an opportunity to grow, you're grateful for it, you want to be there. And then if you see it as a threat, then you're more likely to take no action. You'll hide or run away. And in this stage, this is where the cycle becomes more chronic and you start to, this is the path that you'll go on. If you see things as threat and not take action is eventually it'll lead to burnout, depression, that sort of thing. So that's why it's so important that we see things as a challenge and use the arousal of this body systems to our advantage. I could probably talk a bit about, uh, why stress is a good thing as well. So we always see stress as bad. Like we don't want stress. Most people think that or want to achieve that. But I can tell you a story of a patient I went to that was, quite literally had no stress hormones in his body. He had a condition called Addison's disease or, uh, adrenal crisis. And this is where the adrenals don't produce enough cortisol and adrenaline and noradrenaline. So this condition, I found this patient, I turned up, he was 19 years old, really healthy person. He was unconscious on the set of stairs. I go there, he's got no radial pulse in his wrist. And then I check his neck for a carotid pulse and he had a really weak one. I did a blood pressure and it was like 50 on 30. This guy was like in a complete coma. Almost like knocking on death's door. And essentially his sugar levels were super low. He, um, had vomiting, diarrhea, uh, uh, he was very, very sick. And this is someone that quite literally had no stress hormones. So I like to tell that story because it's like, well, are those the symptoms you want if you're trying to achieve stress free? Do you want to have abdominal pain? Do you want to be in a coma? Do you want to have diarrhea and vomiting? So essentially we need stress to survive, but not only survive, but to thrive. And, and it's about using stress and arousal to our advantage because it helps us, it motivates us, it gets us up off the couch, it drives us to achieve goals. Without those hormones, the stress hormones, we actually wouldn't chase our goals and start a business and try and achieve something. And I like to, uh, instead of looking at it as stress, we can look at it as arousal. And when you change that, arousal is more about performance. So then we can look at how can we improve our performance through the arousal. Rather than saying, oh, I'm stressed because stress has a bad connotation to it, the word. And when you flip that to arousal, you start looking at as performance. And that's what athletes do, right? They say, well, they need some arousal before an event to perform. Basically the easiest way to look at it, if anyone wants to Google Yerkes and Dodson law, which is basically there's a bell curve. And uh, the bell curve at one end is like no stress at all and then the other end is high stress. And it basically says that the more arousal you have, the better your performance goes. But then that's to a point. And if you're over aroused and have too much stress, that's when you have the catastrophic breakdown of performance. This is where you become overwhelmed. So it's about not getting to the point where you've just fallen off the cliff. It's about using your mindset, changing your mindset, using some psychological skills to take advantage of that arousal to improve your performance.

Speaker A: Awesome. I'D love to maybe look through the lens here a little bit of, you know, some of the stresses that business owners and leaders, uh, are feeling in business. And I wonder even if we take something, you know, say we lose a really big client and that brings about some of the stresses of you know, maybe payroll or all the things that sort of are the ripple on effects of what that means and uh, what needs to be done to actually rectify that, whether that be, you know, filling that gap within our revenue, that kind of thing. Can we start to talk now Lee, about what your. Let's go right down into the detail here and say, okay, you've just gotten off a phone call from a really big client, they're 50 to 60% of your revenue and they've decided not to proceed.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Tell me, what are the actions that I should be taking to be able to stay in a high performing mindset, to be able to take the correct next steps to rectify the situation?

Speaker B: Mhm M. Well your first reaction is probably going to be like holy shit. And that's okay. It's not about uh, trying to be this stoic person, um, you're allowed to feel your emotions, but it's about not letting those emotions dictate your decision making. It's about what actions you take that counts. It's not what you're thinking at the time. So you know, uh, if you unfortunately had that phone call, the first thing I'll be doing is taking a pause because you don't want to be making those decisions when you're feeling the pressure, especially immediately. So trying to get yourself in the right frame of mind to decide what your next steps going to be. So that might just a pause, could be a minute. It could just be stepping outside, taking a few deep breaths and then coming back in and then reframing the situation, go, uh, okay, this has happened. And start to look at it as like what's the positives of it? Which is very hard. Right. It's like what opportunities will come from this. Because what you focus on is what you amplify. So that's a really good message. What you focus on is what you amplify. So if you're only focused on, on that phone call of a loss, you will amplify the loss. And that's really what the secret is. If you ever watch that, uh, the law of attraction is that basically whatever your focus is on is what you're going to amplify. And it's like when you want to buy a new car, it's like all of a sudden every single person owns that car. Uh, you see it everywhere, but it's like the week before no one had it. It's because it was outside your perception, outside your focus, and now it's becoming your focus. You see it everywhere. So usually in those heightened moments, your focus becomes on the negative. Because we have a negative bias. We're wired that way intentionally to survive so we don't do anything stupid. And like we need that negative bias to overcome that negative bias. They're saying you need at least three positive to one negative. So you got this huge negative. So you actually need to start changing your focus on what are the positives out of this. And you need to come up with at least three to have any chance of overcoming it. And then in the acute moment, to make better decisions going forward, you can start looking at uh, like psychological skills which we talk about, which is this is the acute. So it's just happened. You're feeling heightened, your heart rate's pumping, uh, you're red faced, you want to yell and scream. These are really like simple things you can use to try and bring that arousal down in that moment so you can clear your mind and make clearer decisions and understand that it's not the apocalypse. And that's basically some breathing techniques. There's box breathing, which is, you know, breathe in for four seconds, hold your breath for four seconds, breathe out for four seconds, and hold your breath for four seconds. And that's basically a box. So we call that box breathing new four or five seconds. That's been around forever. It came from the military like two decades ago. That's a really good way to slow your heart rate down and bring your focus back in to the what's around you rather than that narrow vision. The other one's sighing. So it's like two inhales to one exhale. That's been made popular with Andrew Huberman's podcast lately. He talks about that a lot. Cause it's really effective. These are things you can do in the moment after like immediately after that phone call, so you don't throw the phone through the window and try and make a really silly decision straight after it. Or you can do. I, uh, like to have focus words. So a single cue word that I'd say to myself, which might be like smooth or calm or something like that. So a single word and the other one's positive self talk. Trying to have these are pre rehearsed, like writing down a short phrase or sentence about something positive. Like I can Handle this. I've done it before. A good way to, to change that up is instead of saying I, uh, you say your name. And the reason for that is it's called temporal distancing. So it's kind of like giving advice to a friend rather than yourself. Is how many times have you given a friend advice and not taken it yourself? So it's about saying you'd be like, jay, you can do this, Jay, it's okay. There'll be another opportunity. I've been here before. Or Jay, you've been here before. Something like that. So that's positive self talk. This is stuff you can just use in the moment so you don't run off and make some rash decisions. So that's some really good stuff. Straight after that phone call. And then in the longer term, it's more about, uh, seeing suffering and adversity as a positive. So that's the mindset as a paramedic, you realize that you become a witness to suffering. It's something that you see every day. And it's a reality of life that we all get these phone calls. We'll all face these obstacles and hurdles and setbacks. It's probably the most common thing amongst all humans, is that we all suffer, we all feel pain. And someone that has cancer doesn't do chemotherapy because it's enjoyable. It's because their outcome, they want to. Chemotherapy essentially kills all the good cells, not just the bad ones, not just the cancerous ones. That's why people lose their hair, they get sick, they lose weight, because it's actually killing all the bad stuff as well. But people choose to do chemotherapy because the outcome's worth it, because staying alive is worth it. It's worth the suffering of chemotherapy, the drug of administering essentially poison into your body to stay alive. So then I would say, understand that the suffering is part of it. It is a reality, and you'll never be able to change it. The key is, is how you respond to it. So that's happened. Accept it, uh, as if you chose it, which is very hard. Accept it as if you was chosen. So then how you respond to that adversity, that suffering, is what really makes the difference between people who are successful and who aren't. You can decide to respond to it as a threat, or you can decide to respond to it as a challenge. And when you see it as a challenge, you'll start to make better decisions and you'll start to see the opportunities that you haven't seen before. There'll be some things that have Been outside of your awareness because you've been humming along, everything's going good, and then you get this phone call and you think it's the end of the world, but it's like you've actually been oblivious to some other opportunities that have been around but you haven't taken because you haven't been through this suffering. You needed the suffering to overcome it. So I was trying to see in the moment it's really, really hard to do. It's like, well, why, why do I have to go through this pain? But actually it's the pain that allows you to learn the lesson. Without that pain, you learn nothing.

Speaker A: Wow. Okay, let's, let's take a step further. Uh, yeah, uh, listen, my mind's boggling at that. Just as far as, uh, a lot of what you've said there, especially around you hear a lot of people talking about everything in life is a choice. And I really buck at that premise because I don't think that everything is a choice in life. But, uh, the way in which you phrased it there a minute ago where you said you've got to see it as a choice, you've got to see it as if you've chosen it, is a really great mind shift, I think in the right direction of being able to deal with it with a centered mind rather than an emotional one.

Speaker B: Because I guess, um, if you've had that phone call and the decision's been made, then it's outside your control, so you can no longer influence. If you can't influence that anymore, then why are you trying to. It's outside your control, your sphere of influence. So you can only control what you can and you gotta, gotta let go of everything else. Otherwise you'd just be beating yourself up against the wall and you, you'd just be getting, you just make your situation worse. And um, about choice, have you read, um, Viktor Frankl's Man Search for Me?

Speaker A: Yeah, I have. A long time ago. And I, I, it was the first thing that just jumped into my head when you were talking a second ago. And I thought, I've got to revisit that.

Speaker B: But yeah, because we, yeah, he, his explanation's really profound, I think. About choice.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. Okay, let's just dive into leadership a bit here, Lee. The ripple effects. And I see it, uh, time and time again within organizations where an emotional leader, someone that is feeling their own stuff and responding very quickly to uh, stressful situations with kind of knee jerk reactions and that kind of thing, end up sending this massive ripple through an organization culturally, retention goes down and everything starts to be a bit off the wall. And it's usually in business, it's usually to do with an unhealthy relationship with money and how they're feeling around money. But can you talk about if you sort of align that back to your experience as leaders of crews and et cetera, et cetera, what comes to mind around how you have to be as a leader and what uh, practices we can be putting in place to be better leaders in high stress situations.

Speaker B: Yeah. So, uh, I talk about being a good leader in a high stress situation is about having poise. So someone with poise is someone that is self assured and composed under immense pressure. They hold fast to their values. And despite all that pressure against them, they have the courage to make the right decision. Not the easy decision. They look in control. There might be complete chaos going around them, but they have this sense of control and composure and they have this ability to make the decisions that are based on their values. And I think that's what someone that has poise is. And that's what I talk about, that's the goal really of a good leader is to have this sense of poise in a time of crisis. Recently I've been reading a lot about leadership and I've come to the conclusion that a good leader is because I've been a father now I've got twins that are seven years old. And um, I came across this from uh, a basketball coach called John Wooten. He was a famous, uh, basketball coach in the U.S. he won 10 national college championships. And he, this just really resonated with me about leadership now. And he um, he basically said a good leader is a good parent. And then it makes you think about, well, what makes up a good parent. And now I had the, you know, the privilege of being a parent. It's actually about someone who's a good parent is courageous. They're selfless, they sacrifice themselves for others. They are, uh, dependable, they turn up on time, they're reliable, they put others first. But they also know when to be disciplined. They know when to identify when something's gone wrong. And you know, that's what a good parent is. And even if you haven't had a good parent yourself, it's like you can know that, well, that was what a bad parent looks like and what values did they have. So for me, uh, leadership now is all about, well, how can I apply being a good parent, those things that I do for my kids into my actual leadership on the ground. Because that's what it is, right? You know, you aren't always nice to your kids because you're trying to teach them something. So you become a teacher and then you don't let them off the hook. But you also have this level of forgiveness as well. It's like if someone makes a mistake, it's like you don't crucify them. If they take accountability and they learn from it, then you forgive them and move on. And that's the end of it. You're done. So I think those characteristics is what a good leader is. And poise in particular. When I talk about poise, it's about value. So it comes back to character. And I'll just tell a quick story. One of the hardest things I ever had to deal with as a paramedic wasn't a clinical case or a traumatic event that I saw it at all. It was actually I got a complaint against me. It was my first complaint. I've never had one since. I've never had one before. I'm not allowed to talk about it because it's confidential. Uh, but, um, it's just having this. Someone, uh, put a complaint against me. It just tore me apart. And it felt like it was like it was going against my. My values. I just felt let down, I felt betrayed. All these sorts of feelings when someone puts a complaint and an anonymous complaint against you. And that was the hardest time I went through. And it made me question a lot of things. And that was worse than seeing some of the traumatic stuff, going through the process of it. But then through that, I realized that there's a, you know, my reputation was damaged because here's the guy that wrote the paramedic mindset or has this concept, and if someone's put a complaint against him, it's like, oh, no, what's he going to do? Like, this is terrible for my reputation, and no one's going to think I'm credible anymore. You know, you have these real negative talk and rumination in your mind about it. But then I realized that there's a difference between reputation and character. And your reputation is what other people think of you, but your character is who you actually are. Uh, and your character is far more important. And your character is built on your values. So if you stay true to your values. I'm not saying reputation isn't important. It is, especially in business. Reputation gives you opportunities, it gets you employed, it creates partnerships. So having a good reputation in business is critical. And you want it, but you don't want to sacrifice your character for that reputation. They're both equally important, but your character's about who you actually are as a person. And that's who we admire as leaders are, uh, those people with strong characters who are courageous, they're selfless, and they. They make the right decision, not the easy one. You know, you can come across decisions. It's like you have something good and bad. Right. It's like, what decision are you going to make? Oh, you're going to make the good decision. That's easy. What a good leader does is come across a bad decision and a bad decision, knowing that when you take that bad decision, people are going to tell you you made a bad decision. And that's what a leader does. Is they willing to take that on and know that the decision they're going to make is going to upset people? It's probably going to be a bad decision, but it's the least of a bad decision.

Speaker A: Yeah. Amazing. I want to harp back and just put an underline, uh, under something you said earlier around poise. The limited experience I've had with paramedics in particular. Uh, I think in retrospect, I expected someone to come in with a lot of strength and kind of dominate a situation in an emergency and therefore, uh, almost take control, so to speak. And I've always marveled at how paramedics hold space for all the people that are present and de. Escalate the emotions in a situation. A good paramedic, and I'm sure you've come across good and bad in that arena. And I feel that there is a parallel there for being a safe harbor, no matter what.

Speaker B: Uh-huh.

Speaker A: It's being a safe harbor for everyone that's present that is a leadership quality that is so rare, but is a thing I see a lot in paramedics, and I often played through my head, uh, it's because you've seen so much that this is nothing in comparison. But, yeah, it's an interesting thing that it is always a little bit incongruent is my perception as to how that paramedic will take control of the situation and how different that is when they show up, as to how relaxed and, uh, how they're able to hold space for everyone present, which is interesting.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think a big part of that is about knowing what to prioritize, what's most important at the time. And I think that's, as a business person, that's what you need to do. You need to know what is the most important thing and prioritize and let go of the other stuff, knowing that you'll come back to it later, you haven't forgotten it, but it's about having the ability to make those tough decisions, knowing that, you know you're going to let some people down. But it's the right thing and you've prioritized the things in the right order. Uh, it's when you're trying to do everything at once and you're not prioritizing the right things. But a good leader knows how to prioritize what's most important, what's most valuable right now. Ah. You know, if someone, if I got a patient that's like, got a hemorrhage and they're bleeding out, and then I just focus on like their broken arm and get distracted by their broken arm and start treating the broken arm, they're going to bleed out and die, but they'll have a really nice brace on their broken arm. So a part of it is about prioritizing.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But to prioritize, you need to know. You need to know what's most important. Yep.

Speaker A: Yeah. Lee, we're going to start to wrap up. There's so much more that I could be talking to you about, especially around flow states and leadership and all that kind of thing. If people want to find you, be part of your community or just connect with you, where do they go?

Speaker B: Uh, the easiest is probably paramedicmindset.com or paramedic, um, Mindset on Instagram. Yeah, go there, reach out or. Yeah, you can purchase the book released a couple of weeks ago in any major retailer.

Speaker A: Amazing, amazing.

Speaker B: Um, except Booktopia.

Speaker A: Yeah. Right. Okay, cool. All right. This will be an interesting one. I'm really curious as to what your answer will be here today because of the fact that you have this unique lens that you look through around being able to deal with high stress situations. But having been a paramedic for so many years, having done the research that you've done, and also obviously written this new book, the Paramedic Mindset, how do you build a business that people feel compelled to talk about?

Speaker B: Yeah, I put a lot of thought into this and I think it comes back to there were probably two things. One's purpose. So why you're doing the business. Because like I said earlier, you know, you're going to face adversity, you're going to face suffering, but if that purpose, the goal that you're trying to achieve, isn't high enough, isn't worth it, isn't great enough, you're just going to Quit. And it's about doing it for others. So for me it's in service of other people. And there's a study that showed, looked at people from who went from languishing to flourishing in life. Languishing is about someone that's, they can still function, but they do it with no motivation, no drive. Someone who's flourishing in life is functioning really well. You know, they, they have social, psychological and emotional well being, they're healthy and they look to these people and they made them do like yoga, uh, meditation, exercise, all these things and tried to see what was the most important thing to go from languishing to flourishing in life. And it was in service of others, it was helping others. That was the number one thing that made people go from languishing to flourishing. So for me is about having a purpose that serves others. So that when you do face those hard times, you'll like, you're like, bring it on. I'll carry that up the hill, not a problem. Because the greater purpose is more important. And the other thing I'd say would be don't get uh, stuck in orthodoxies. Step outside of it and take uh, on the challenge. Challenge yourself and don't uh, feel like you have to fall into the orthodox, the normal, because you're. Every human is unique. We're all different. And there's so many things that you have that I don't. So take advantage of that and just take on the challenge.

Speaker A: Yeah, so much there to go back and uh, write some notes guys, but there's some stuff there around. The sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system was really key for me today. Really being able to sort of take on some of those habits. Knowing how often stress comes up in our daily lives as to taking those moments to pause, putting some of this box breathing and different techniques into your lives that allow you to show up with a mindset that is not only poised and ready to show up for others, but also high performing and uh, ability to make the right decision, I guess more consistently. Lee, thank you so much for your time today.

Speaker B: No worries. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker A: Until next time, everybody stay remarkable.

Speaker B: Sam.