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Excellent Executive Coaching: Growing Your Business and Enhancing Your Craft.
EEC 430: Train the Pause, with Michael Pellegrino
00:25:13
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- [00:05]
A
You don't have to react to everything life throws at you. There's always a space between what happens and how you respond in that space. That is your power. Michael Pellegrino is the founder of Resilient Minds on the Front Lines, a non profit organization dedicated to building resiliency and mental wellness across first responders, schools, corporate communities nationwide. He is going to talk to us about how you can train your paws before you react. So let's listen to Michael Pellegrino. Welcome to the excellent executive coaching podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Katrina Beruis. And today we have Michael Penn Pellegrino. Michael, welcome.
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B
Thank you so much for having me on, Dr. Katrina. And it's a pleasure and an honor.
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A
Well, Michael was 25 years in the law enforcement, that's, that's a long time. So tell us what led you from that experience in the front being a policeman, how did it motivate you to create resilient minds?
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B
Well, I've seen a lot of big T's and a lot of little T's which are big traumas and little traumas. And I seen a lot of friends and I seen a lot of colleagues suffering in silence. And really and truly that what really led us and you know, some very important people in my life that committed suicide and I did not know that they were suffering in silence the way that they were. And again, when I retired in 2019, I was brought on to be the chief resiliency officer for the county that I worked in. And after a very high profile suicide in our county, the attorney general then put out a directive that all law enforcement officers were going to go through a 16 hour resiliency course to give them the soft skills to be able to bounce back a lot quicker. And with that I was brought on. And then shortly thereafter after Covid, the world kind of shut down. And that led me to start my own company because I realized that not only in law enforcement, but in every profession, people are suffering in silence. And I call it lif. And it's life. Life's coming to a theater near you, if it's not at your doorstep already. And it's important to make sure that we have those things in control. And when we have those things in control, we're able to better manage. And when we're able to better manage, we're able to self improve. And that's the goal here, is to identify, manage and improve.
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A
So what are the kind of situations compel people to suicide themselves? I mean that's a big act of self destruction in the police enforcement, what does the kind of things that sort of traumatize them or what is it the stress? Tell us a little bit about the daily life of a police officer.
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B
Well, I can tell you Over a 30 year, 25, 30 year career, the average person may see 3 to 4 traumas in their lifetime. Whereas in the law enforcement into first responder world, we probably see anywhere from four to five, possibly six a month. So times that by 12 and then times that by the number of years that you work. So over that time period, whether it's 25, 30 years, whatever that is, you have all those traumas, all those things that you can't unsee. It's like you go to these scenes, you go and see horrific things. It's not like anybody calls you because they want to have lunch with you, they're calling you because their life has fallen apart and now you have to come and you have to kind of put it all back together. And maybe they don't like the outcome, maybe they don't like what's, what you had to say. And these are the things that, you know, that we need to really make sure that we hone in on and train the paws because these are the things that can save those careers, save those life relationships, can save those opportunities. And you know, again, it's those little traumas, it's those big traumas, it's being able to control them because our mind can unsee what we've already seen.
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A
And so I guess seeing those traumas begin to, you can't, is it, you can't make the difference between seeing it and being protective of your situation. You start on a down day, you think life is not worth it. Tell us more.
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B
Well, as a human, you go through life and when you have these four things going well in your life, you're probably going to be okay. If, you know, one being your health, one being your finances, one being your relationships, and one being, you know, obviously the opportunities that you don't see, that you can take opportunities to see. So when you have those three things, those four things going on in your life, you, you're probably going to be okay. But unfortunately, when people do go to work, when people have those bad days, you know, things happen. And in the police world, those professions, you know, first responder world, you know, you take them things and you carry those things. And I think of it as carrying bags in my life and when I keep on stuffing those bags and keep on stuffing those bags and keep on stuffing those bags eventually those bags are going to get so heavy that I'm just going to fall apart. So when we are able to put those bags down, and not that they're going to go anywhere, but we're able to manage them a little bit better. So I use a thought process of not only putting the bags down, but knowing that the bags are there and being able to roll those bags. So just giving people the tools to be able to have them coping mechanisms in place so that when they do hit that lif, when that event happens in their life, they have those skills prior to the event so that when they come out on the other side of the event, they're in the post traumatic growth side of things and not the stress side of things.
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A
Okay, so tell us how you help them with the bags that they're carrying.
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B
Well, obviously there's tools and that's what we facilitate in resilient minds. And that's what we talk about during our talks and everything like that. So we want to make sure that putting those bags down are most important. And the first thing to do in putting them back those bags down is make sure that we are catching ourselves. We have to first self identify. If we don't self identify first, then anything that we do after is not going to really make a difference. And then obviously we train the paws. That's the p, is the pause.
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A
But before we go to the paws.
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B
Sure.
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A
Self identify, comment a little bit more about that.
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B
So self identifying is you see that you're going down that downward spiral. You see one or two, three events that happen during the day. And now all of a sudden I use it as somebody carrying those bags. And then all of a sudden you're carrying those bags or you're driving down the street and somebody cuts you off and you go crazy. Now, it wasn't the person who cut you off that made you go crazy. It was or made you do things that you probably wouldn't normally have done. But it was all those cumulative things that got you to that point. Whatever those cumulative points were, whether you had an argument with your significant other or whether you had a bad day at work, or whether you just came from a call or something, got off a call that you know that really wasn't the way you wanted it to go. And these are all the things that accumulated during that day. And then all of a sudden one little minor inconvenience happens and we kind of blow. So being able to identify those things prior to the blow up is really what's important.
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A
I see that's well expressed. Okay, so you've identified that you're in a stressful moment. You've just had an argument with your partner. You're also in financial difficulty, you have health issues. And every opportunity to lose it is a way to let off steam. Okay, so first you identify that you're in that situation. What's the next process?
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B
The next process is hitting the pause button, and that's between stimulus and response. So we had the situation happen. Now, the situation is only 1% of the problem. What's the other 99% of the problem is how we're going to react to it. So our reaction is if we can hit that pause button before we react to it. It' almost like. I love using this example, Doc, because it's an example that it's like squeezing toothpaste out of a tube. You squeeze that toothpaste out of the tube, it's very hard to put that toothpaste back into the tube once it's squeezed out. That's just like our words. And our words have consequences sometimes. And we can apologize and we can say that we're sorry, but why would we want to get to that point if we can train the paws prior to saying whatever we're going to say so that we can not only save possibly our career relationships, opportunities, our work friends or whatever it may be, you can fill in the blank there before that situation blows up even further. And that's why it's so important to make sure that we train that pause. And I love what Dr. Viktor Frankl said in Man Search for Meaning. He said, between stimulus and response, there's that space. And in that space is our freedom to choose what we do. And knowing that what we want to make sure that we do prior to that is make sure that we don't go down that downward spiral. We don't say something that's going to hurt somebody else.
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A
So how do you help people train? Because it's so impulsive and it's a gut reaction, they'll say, but I can't help myself. So what you say in that situation?
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B
Oh, that's a great question. And I love that question because again, we have the power and we have the control. And I know sometimes I go to 0 to 60, and the person that needs to hear this the most sometimes is myself. But just being able, and I know when I can catch myself, I see myself going down that spiral, and that's when I want to interrupt that thought process. And I interrupt that thought process by one of two things. That work for me. And these are two great tools that I love, is being able to find something and I'm grateful for. Okay, before I get to that point that I want to say something. So gratitude is a big part of my life, being grateful for something. So I'm interrupting my downward spiral right now with a gratitude. Three things that I'm grateful for, or even one thing that I'm grateful for, or even a bird chirping or anything to interrupt that spiral. So that's where my gratitude, because joy and anger can't live in the same headspace. So I know if I can interrupt that just by that or one of the other tools that I love to use is taking a breath, taking a deep breath. There's so much science behind the deep breath. Because now what you're doing is you're in the emotional part of your brain. You're in that lizard puppy brain. And when that puppy brain gets excited, what does it do when the puppy gets excited? It pees all over itself. So being able to stop that, being able to take that breath and getting back into our prefrontal cortex, where all our logic and all our. All the power is in the choice right there. Because when we're in our prefrontal cortex, that's where we can make the best choices possible.
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A
Well said. So you say when you change your mind, you change your life. Can you comment on that and how it relates to what you just said?
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B
So it's probably the easiest thing that anybody can ever say, but it's the hardest thing to actually perform. So you can change anything in your life. You can change whatever it is. You can change the circumstances. And I like to say this, Doc, is everybody wants change, but nobody wants to change. So how do we get to that point where we can be that change agent? And that's just interrupting what we're talking about right now. And when you change your mind, you change your life. It's the easiest thing that I'm going to say today, but it's the hardest thing to do. And why is it so hard? Is because we live in our minds. The heaviest burdens that we carry are the thoughts in our minds. Because when you do that, you're constantly ruminating, you're constantly catastrophizing over whatever it is that's going on in your life, Whether it's, you know, the financial portion of your life or the relationships or it's a tough conversation that you have coming up. We always think to the worst because our minds like to go down the easy Path right to the negative. Why don't they go to the positive? A perfect example is you get called into the boss's office. The boss calls you in, and he says, you know what? I want to say that you are a. Your employee of the month. Now, for the last hour, where he or she was when we had that phone call or we got that email that said, hey, listen, can you stop by my office? We're thinking of all the negative things that we possibly could have done. And I think there was a statistic that I seen one time that our brains go right to the negative 83.2% of the time, because that's the easy path. So creating that new neural pathway in your brain to be able to say, okay, this is a negative. How do I turn it into a positive? And that's the reframing portion of what we're talking about now.
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A
Okay, so you identify the baggage that you are carrying. Then you pause and you interrupt your negative spiral, which you explained very well. And then the next stop is you reframe, I guess, mental cpr, which I love the term.
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B
Thank you so much, Doc. And, you know, I'm. I haven't told anybody yet. I'm telling you this right now. And I just landed my first TED Talk, so.
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A
Fantastic.
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B
Yeah. So mental cpr, the power of the pause is what that is. So reframing. Everybody has heard of the phrase it is what it is. We've all heard that. And I love asking this question. How many people have heard that phrase? And I see a lot of people raise their hands, and in raising their hands, then I see them say, okay, how many people believe it is what it is? And that's when you see everybody's like, yeah, no, you can't change it. And absolutely can. And this is the reframing portion of it. This is the perspective portion of it. From it is what it is to it is what I make it. I can make it garbage all day long, and I can make it negative all day long, but what is that going to do? It's going to put me down that downward spiral, probably even a little bit deeper and a little bit deeper. Because now I am just ruminating over it. I'm ruminating over all those bad thoughts now. Just saying, okay, I have to embrace this. I have to say, you know, it's not. It is what it is anymore. It is what I make it. I can make it this way, and I'm going to make it this way. Perfect example I love to use is we all hear a Meteorologist. And you hear the term used partly cloudy. And I think to myself, if it's partly cloudy, isn't it partly sunny?
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A
Yes, exactly.
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B
And to me, that drives me crazy when somebody says it's partly cloudy because that means, to me, it means that it's partly sunny as well too. So it's looking at either the clouds or it's either looking, looking at the sun. And whether you like clouds or you like sun, it doesn't matter. It's just putting it into perspective and saying, okay, is the class half empty or is it half full? I'm always going to look at as half full because as long as there's water in that cup, there's, there's something to drink in there. And that's where we have to learn how to really put things in perspective.
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A
So you have to learn to put things in perspective. How do you help people learn how to put things in perspective?
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B
Well, that's the great question. Because, you know, what we do is we talk about over nine, nine or ten tools to really put them back into that framework. And one of the things that I like to talk about is the Ebbinghaus effect. The things that we do over and over and over again. And that's creating that new neural pathway in your brain. What do we call something that, what we do over and over again and expect a different result, we call that insanity. So it's obviously changing what you're doing originally or what you do all the time to making a new neural pathway. Whether that's gratitude, whether that, you know, is a term that we use as A, B, C plus, D and E, or whether it's spirituality, putting what your center is, what's your purpose in your life, Having that deeper purpose, having that meaning. And Dr. Martin Seligman said it so great. A well adjusted, wellbeing person has to have five things. And he used the PERMA model to describe that. P for positive emotions. A person who has positive emotions and that really looks at, hey, I'm looking at the positive, no matter how hard it is. Engagement. What's our state of flow and relationships, having those relationships in our lives? Meaning what is our why? What is our purpose in our lives and accomplishments? So perma, P, E, R, M, A and accomplishments. And I like to say this too, Doc, we don't win and lose in life. And this is where it shows up on the scoreboard. We live and we learn. If we're not living and learning, we're not really living. And that's where I think a lot of the people could really just change that thought process right there in the perma model to really focus on a well adjusted, wellbeing person. And one of the things that really has helped me so personally in my life is my health portion of it, changing my physical health portion of it and getting to wellness doctors and understanding sleep and understanding how to be more resilient in making sure that my body is dropping that cortisol and I'm getting them dopamine highs and you know, changing the overall well being of my body. I'm doing a lot of peptides now, I'm doing a lot in my physical health, working out even more. You know, I'm down close to 70 some pounds. So being able to change all those things is one of those things that I needed to recognize for myself because if I'm not making myself happy, I'm not going to make anybody else happy. So it really starts from within and you can really dig deep down and do some self reflecting. And that's where a lot of HR departments now are bringing us in to help change the culture of what we're doing. And when we change the culture, we change one thing in an organization, in a, you know, a city or a town or whatever we're doing, or whatever we're talking to. We want to change the language. And when you change the language, people understand now that I don't have to be this way. This is just a label that I put on myself. I need to change that label. And as much as I can have all these soft skills and all these soft tools, I need to make sure that I'm living for myself. And we see it all the time. I see people that come in and they have their arms crossed and I love those people because after the first break, now the first person that gets vulnerable in the class or in the speaking event is me or our facilitators to understand it's okay not to be okay. When we say that, it's almost like it's given them grace to be not okay.
- [20:54]
A
Do they open up after that?
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B
Absolutely. Absolutely. In our three day classes when we do something, what we do is we first put the spotlight on our facilitators to get vulnerable and then we ask a couple quick questions and those questions really ignite a great conversation.
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A
So what are those questions?
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Those questions are, we want to know who they are. Okay, who they are. We don't want to know their title. We don't care about any of that stuff. We want to know who they are as a person. For example, the first thing that I'll ever say is I am a man of God first and foremost. And then everything after that just falls into place. Okay, so you know, who are you? What are you about? What's unique about you? What are your work stressors and what are your home stressors?
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A
Good.
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B
So those five questions right there really bring out the best in people. We have heard people say in our classes, I have never told anybody like this before. I've never said anything like this before. I've never even talked about it. But the first thing that you have to do is you have to set a safe space. And that's where trust comes in. That's where, you know, one of the things that we do when we start working with companies and organizations is we love to do surveys to find out what people's organizations and companies blind spots are. Finding out what, not only what their blind spots are, but what their pain points are and then building a program around that. We have heard so many times that it's trust, it's, it's middle management, it's upper management. You know, there's, and I'm going to use your word here, it's transformational leaders, but it's also brilliant jerks. So I love that analogy because again, how can they become transformational leaders? When you change the language within the culture, when you change the language within the company, when you change the language, you start to say, okay, you want to change a board meeting, you know, a tough board meeting, before that board meeting even starts, I want you to pass out some post it notes and have people write down three gratitudes.
- [23:12]
A
Great.
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B
And it changes the brain. So now instead of going down that negative. And I love to watch people as they do it because this physiology of their body is that you'll see a little smile come across their face or you'll see them start, you know, moving their legs a little bit quicker. I love watching how the body reacts because now what you did was you interrupt their OODA loop. You're interrupted that thought process because now they thought it was going to be negative and now you're going down a positive.
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A
That's great. Unfortunately, we're coming to the end of our podcast. I want to ask you, how can people get a hold of you?
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B
I don't know if you can put it on there, but I'll give my email address. I would love to be able to chat with anybody they can look up our company resilientminds Us. It's resilientminds Us. And my personal email is M Pellegrino P E L L E G R I N O @resilientminds us.
- [24:17]
A
Great. Thank you so much Mike, for your sharing your knowledge and your experience. And most helpful. So thank you.
- [24:25]
B
And I hope somebody, one person gets a hold of this and really it changes their lives because that's truly what it's all about.
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A
Wonderful. And I'm sure it will.
- [24:34]
B
Yes, that's my hope. That's our hope. And and our family at Resilient Minds is is most important because it's not about me. It's about we. Thank you for listening to the Excellent Executive Coaching Podcast. You can subscribe to all Future podcasts@excellent executive coaching.com join us each Wednesday to learn more about the latest trends in leadership techniques and bring your coaching to the next level. To learn more about Dr. Burris CEO mastermind, use the contact form@excellentexecutivecoaching.com.