I can remember my attention to detail failure all too well. It was very early on in my paramedic career. We were dispatched to a house fire. We pulled up to the scene of the fire and parked almost directly behind the fire truck. We got out of the ambulance and pulled out the stretcher, placed the oxygen bag and jump kit on it, and positioned ourselves kind of off to the side. We needed to be as close as we could be in case one of the firefighters got injured. What we didn't expect was one of the neighbors to come and tap us on the shoulder and tell us that her husband was having chest pain and wanted to go to the hospital. We loaded him onto the stretcher and put him in the back of the ambulance. Guess what we couldn't do? If you guessed drive away, you would be correct. We were now trapped by the fire hose that was all over the street in every direction and the other police and emergency vehicles that were also parked. We were trapped and had to make the embarrassing radio call to the 911 dispatcher and have them send another ambulance because we had trapped ourselves in and couldn't go anywhere. When we originally pulled up on scene, we should have paid attention to the small details like where we were parking and that fact that in a few minutes, there would be hundreds of feet of fire hose in every direction. But we didn't, and in the end, the failure to pay attention to the small things cost us big time when it really mattered. Luckily for us, the other ambulance crew was right around the corner and with the help of a few police officers, we were able to lift the stretcher over the fire hose and wheel him to the other ambulance. Attention to detail on the small things will help you for the big things.
Challenge 4 (Nutrition or Meal Planning)
I can't even believe I am going to write anything about this topic, but I do have a story I would love to share with all of you. I, like many of you, have yo-yo'd up and down with weight from my mid-twenties until today. The times I have been focused on fitness and nutrition were honestly the times I felt my best mentally and my best physically. I have struggled with keeping on track with this for the last decade. It is my kryptonite. I think I don't have time to work out or eat healthy, but I do. I just don't want to, because fast food tastes so much better than a bag of broccoli, and meal prepping cuts into closing my nap rings. This is the one area of my life I need to put more focus on because quite honestly, I am tired of hiding in my clothing. For any of you who know me and want to know why I wear a hoodie when it's eighty degrees out, well, there you go.
So here's my point with this one. I used to be a gym fanatic. I would wake up at 4:30 every morning, go to LA Fitness and work out for two hours, then go to work. On my lunch break, I would head up to my boxing gym and get my boxing workout in and then go back to work. In the evening, I would either jog or go to my Jiu-Jitsu class. I was in the best shape of my life until one day while I was getting ready for work, I bent over to put my boots on and I heard, pop, pop, pop, and all of a sudden, I was flat on my back screaming in pain. The ER doctor told me I had herniated three discs in my lower back and that eventually I would need surgery. Being a medic, (and medics are the worst patients), I didn't like that, and I just succumbed to the idea that I would just deal with the pain the three or four times a year I would throw my back out. This certainly put an end to my boxing and my MMA training, and I just stopped caring about working out. I ate worse than I ever had and before I knew it, I hated the person in the mirror (challenge 1). We all know what we have to do. There are too many apps that make this easy for us. For me, it was an app called MyFitnessPal. One year not too long ago, on New Year’s Day, I woke up and made the commitment to start logging everything I ate and whatever walks I would try to take. I kept my calorie intake below or close to my goal and before I knew it, forty pounds flew off my body faster than I could say, "I'll take a number one with large fries." Less than six months later, after re-discovering the real taste of pasta again, the weight was coming back on and I could not get back on track.
Fast forward to 2016 when I was creating our Tactical EMS team. I needed to get back into shape quickly. As the leader of the team, I had to be the example of fitness because I had to take the same physical fitness test as everyone else who was trying out for the team. I started walking every morning, during lunch breaks, and after work for hours, and I mean for hours, on end. For three straight months, I easily walked over a thousand miles on the streets of White Oak, often coming home with a limp. Very quickly, that limp turned into excruciating pain and I could no longer put weight on that leg. Fast forward to the MRI and they showed me that in my right knee, more than half the cartilage was missing and I had a deep bone bruise. Injured by walking? You have got to be kidding me! The truth is, I knew I was overdoing it, but I loved exercising and never imagined you could injure yourself from walking. Leave it to me to expose that nasty truth. I did manage to complete my physical fitness test. I just hid the pain and discomfort from everyone. Our Tactical EMS team is now fully operational, and we have done several missions with our local police department and a handful with our county SWAT team.
So here I am today, attempting to claim that fitness and meal planning is important for leadership. It is – I know it is – and I can openly admit to all of you that if I had to do a self-leadership evaluation of myself, this would be the area that I would score myself the lowest in. Leadership isn't about being perfect; it's about being real. I have work to do, but I might not be that much more different from many of you reading this. We can do it; we know what we have to do. It's just about finding the motivation to do so. Yes, we all have the time to commit to this. Remember, the excuses begin and end with us.
Challenge 5 (Rehearsing)
Everything we do in life requires some element of practice or getting ready. Undoubtedly, you will at some point in your life or career have to give some kind of pitch, presentation, or speech. Let's not stop at those. Let's also include conducting an interview or being the interview candidate yourself or even having difficult conversations with people. Whatever the moment is, you need to rehearse and rehearse often.
I can remember a few decades ago living in Ft. Lauderdale, broke, with no real idea what I wanted to do anymore with my life or who I really was. I answered a wanted ad in the back of the Sun Sentinel that said, "CASH PAID DAILY, NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY." I called the number and was told to meet them on the corner of Oakland Park Boulevard and US 1 for the job. Totally sounds legit and professional, right? I drove my 1979 Chevy Impala land yacht hunk of crap to the general location, parked, and walked over to the intersection. I kid you not – two minutes later, this white stretch cargo van screeched to a halt in front of me, the side doors slid open, and out jumped four guys asking if my name was Paul. I was thinking, Well, here is where my life ends. But out of desperation, I told them, "Yes, I am Paul." They told me to jump in and we drove away to a gigantic parking lot where there were four or five U-Haul type vans sitting in the parking lot and even more guys standing beside them. They slid up the back door of the U-Haul and there were hundreds upon hundreds of cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other. They pulled out a case and handed it to me. It was heavy and smelled kind of familiar in some ways. The one guy opened the lid of the box that I was holding, and inside there were twenty-four smaller, tall, upright boxes. He pulled one out, opened the lid, and sprayed me with it. Again, my mind went right to, I am getting maced in a parking lot. But all of a sudden, I recognized the smell. It was the male cologne Obsession, but it wasn't in the right box that I knew it to be in. Welcome to the world of boot-leg perfume and cologne sales.
I was instructed to walk around the streets and just start spraying people and asking them to buy a bottle for twenty-five dollars cash. They assured me that I was perfect for the job and I would have so much fun meeting people and learning the town. I didn't care about any of that; what mattered to me was the five bucks per bottle they told me I would get when I came back. After the parking lot pep talk, I was on my way, hitting the streets of Ft. Lauderdale. Of course it was summer, and of course it was in the mid to high eighties with high humidity, and of course the usual daily South Florida rain storm hit, but I was determined to sell. I was hungry