Resilience Development in Action

E.209 Goats, Firefighters, and Philosophy: Becky Schmooke's Unconventional Path

• Steve Bisson, Becky Schmooke • Season 12 • Episode 209

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Strength isn't the absence of weakness—it's how we transform our challenges into growth. In this riveting conversation with leadership coach and author Becky Schmooke, we explore stoic philosophy as a misunderstood yet powerful tool for navigating life's inevitable obstacles.

Becky shares her personal journey of using stoicism to overcome a twenty-year battle with bulimia, developing the STOA framework (Success, Targets, Obstacles/Opportunities, Action steps) that now helps everyone from executives to NFL players and first responders navigate high-pressure situations. Far from the emotionless stereotype, stoicism emerges as a practice of emotional awareness without emotional control.

"Leadership is a lifestyle, not a job title," Becky emphasizes, challenging conventional hierarchies with her SAFE framework that builds genuine capability rather than superficial "show muscles." Her approach transforms organizations from having "a team and a leader" to fostering "a team of leaders"—a critical distinction for environments where split-second decisions matter.

The Japanese art of kintsugi—repairing broken pottery with gold—becomes a powerful metaphor for resilience throughout our discussion. When we acknowledge our breaks rather than hiding them, we become stronger precisely where we were once vulnerable. This principle applies powerfully to trauma recovery, offering a path beyond mere survival to genuine transformation.

Whether you're leading a team, recovering from trauma, or simply trying to navigate life's complexities with more grace, Becky's practical frameworks provide immediate, actionable insights. Her husband, a fire captain, uses these same principles during emergency calls, demonstrating their real-world effectiveness under pressure.

Ready to choose the handle that holds? Join us for this enlightening conversation about stoicism, leadership, and the art of transforming obstacles into opportunities for growth. Find Becky's book "Choose the Handle that Holds" here and connect with her mindfulness retreats at www.beckyschmooke.com.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Resilience Development in Action, where strength meets strategy and courage to help you move forward. Each week, your host, steve Bisson, a therapist with over two decades of experience in the first responder community, brings you powerful conversations about resilience, growth and healing through trauma and grief. Through authentic interviews, expert discussions and real-world experiences, we dive deep into the heart of human resilience. We explore crucial topics like trauma recovery, grief processing, stress management and emotional well-being. This is Resilience Development in Action with Steve Bisson.

Speaker 2:

Hi and welcome to episode 209. If you haven't listened to episode 208, please go and listen. Bruce Wasser was a great guest, talked about Father's Day, talked about Vietnam, doc being a conscientious objector and his memoir. So please go and listen to that. But for episode 209, we're going to be with Becky Schmookie. Becky is someone that has reached out to me and she's a leadership coach, author and keynote speaker. She also wrote a book called Choose the Handle that Holds a guide to living, leading and owning the moments that matter. She talks about stoic philosophy, she talks about how her personal story empowered her and she does something called Becky's Mindful Kitchen, where farm life needs leadership training through retreats, camps and hands-on learning. She has worked with different people, from executives to NFL players, and she does enjoy wrangling her baby goats, and she reminds us that leadership is not something you do, it's something that you are. And here's the interview.

Speaker 2:

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Speaker 2:

If you do listen to this and you want to use freeai, put in the code Steve15 in the promo code area Steve50, and you will get $50 off in addition to everything we just talked about. Get freed from writing your notes, get freed from even writing your transcripts. Use that to your advantage. Freeai, a great service. Go to getfreeai and you will get one of the best services that will save you time and money, and I highly encourage you to do so. Well, hi everyone and welcome to episode 209. I'm so happy to have someone who, unfortunately, already insulted me. She called me sir, I'm Steve, so it's already starting bad. But all joking aside, wait, hold on.

Speaker 3:

That is Okay, go ahead, introduce me, and then we're going to circle back to that one.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I'll tell you right now for me, sir is my dad. I don't. I don't do like for me to connect with people I would. I don't like using ma'am sir if I call you sir or ma'am, and I worked in a jail. So when I worked in the jail and they called you sir and I asked one of the guys, they said why you call me sir? He's like well, I can't call you asshole, can I? And I'm like good point. So that's why whenever I hear sir, I don't hear sir, um you hear asshole yeah, okay, that's what I hear um, so that's why, but becky snow.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to resilience development in action I thank you for having me.

Speaker 3:

You know what's great steve is a podcast I did a couple months ago. We talked about this exact concept, about the fact because I do call people, sir, and that's really an important part of how I communicate. I love doing it and so I will do my best not to, and I will sub an asshole instead, if that's better.

Speaker 2:

If you can call me asshole, I appreciate that actually.

Speaker 3:

I can do that, but yeah, no, thank you for having me. And that's actually a great, great story and a good reminder that everyone does have their own reaction to things and we don't know it. And so it might be very weird if someone, like you know, does kind of bristles at the sir when you think you're being kind of polite and they don't enjoy that. So that's a good reminder.

Speaker 2:

But when you have a big country kind of polite and they don't enjoy that, so that's. But when we have a big country like the U S, you know, I think that you know, coming to Northeast around here, calling people sir is not actually really well seen. You go in the, you know, in the South and the Midwest, sir is a common theme and it's okay and there's nothing wrong with that, it's respectful, and so I think that for me it's just how I grew up being a Montrealer where I call them. When I was in elementary school, I call my teachers by their first name. How insulting is that, wow. Yeah, that's how we grew up. It was normal.

Speaker 3:

But that's something I think it is smart to always keep in the back of your mind, like when you travel, like understand the customs. I know my husband's a firefighter and he's talked about. He knows certain areas of the city. You know if you have populations from, you know there's sometimes like a different ethnicity and knowing what is the cultural norm is really helpful in connecting and not accidentally doing something that's going to create that disconnect that's going to ultimately make your job harder.

Speaker 2:

I think that sometimes it is all cultural, sometimes it's also generational and sometimes it's, like even to me, sexist or based on gender. It's not ladylike or some bullshit like that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and I enjoy challenging those assumptions and those cultural norms at times, and I have the ability to do so. That's one thing I've discovered is, if you go into something with a good intention and it isn't to disturb people, it isn't to be an asshole, then it is usually better received.

Speaker 2:

So not trying to be a disruptor, just kind of just being me, being a founder of the Stoic Edge Consulting. There's a lot of stoicism in what you're saying, so I really appreciate it. But now I don't want to jump into stoicism quite yet, but I'd like to jump into hey, who's Becky Smoke? I don't know who she is. They don't know who you are. Tell us about you.

Speaker 3:

Well with you. Tell us about you. Well, I am, so I do. I'm the founder of Stoic Edge Consulting, and that part. That business focuses on leadership consulting, coaching, speaking, writing, all those fun things and, from again, the perspective of stoicism, which we will not get into just yet, and really it's, though, about redefining what it means to lead. I do think we have leadership wrong and we've been taught it the wrong way and we continue to talk about it in a way that leaves out some really important things. So that's what I do with that business. And then I also am founder of a business called Becky's Mindful Kitchen, and that is a fun one.

Speaker 3:

I have an on-site location where I host summer camps for kids. You can kind of ground in leadership, but we use a lot of cooking, so I do a lot of leadership retreats here too, and I'm in iOS, so smack dab in the middle we have goats and chickens and timber and archery range, so I teach archery as a. We teach leadership and stuff and kind of bushcraft survival stuff. I have kids out here during fire camp chopping their own wood and starting fires with knives and ferro rods. It's a lot of fun.

Speaker 1:

Lost stress on that day.

Speaker 3:

I could not do that business without his help, for sure.

Speaker 2:

And then you didn't even talk about your book Choose the Handle that Holds A Guide to Living Leading Owning Moments that Matter, which is guide to living leading owning moments that matter, which is also your book, if I read that correctly.

Speaker 3:

That is yep, that just came out this spring, and so that is, that's a book that it's okay. Here's been my issue, Steve, and I wanna know if you have this too. There's so many great books that I would read and I just I love everything inside of it, and then I'd end it and I'd be like okay, like, but how? Like, how do I take this stuff and put it into action? And so for my book, I wanted to not lose track of the importance of the action steps, and that's why, like, I literally have a chapter that's titled but how, how? At the end of each section of it, with these actionable like, right now, you don't have to wait till the end. Here's how you can implement things, Because I think we do a lot of talking and we don't do enough action, and I understand the irony that I'm going to be talking for the next half hour but.

Speaker 2:

No, but I think it's also like you know. You thought you know like it may be a good place to go. Start Like. I want to note two things.

Speaker 2:

Stoicism is something that me and I have a business partner in another venture that we talk about constantly. It's part of our work. Actually we don't have a book, but we definitely put it in place in our work. We work mostly with first responders there. Place in our work. We work mostly with first responders there, and what I absolutely adore is you practice what you preach, and what I mean by that is we're not talking about your past, we're not talking about where you're heading. You told me exactly what's going on right now and that's part of the stoicism practice. It's not about not having emotions but staying in the moment, and I think that that's part of what I think is misunderstood by stoicism. And I think that that's part of what I think is misunderstood by stoicism and again, not picking on anyone, but the red step child of philosophy. And yet it's so important and I love stoicism I mean, can you help me like kind of demystify that concept because people don't get it? I think people don't get it personally absolutely it's very misunderstood.

Speaker 3:

I feel bad for I equivocate it to like um, any person named karen these days, like it's really like unfairly, like judged um just because of their name. So and this happens because there's the little s stoic and then the big s stoic. So there is the word stoic and we think of, you know the no emotion stiff upper lip, you know, queen of england type of a stoic, and we think of the no emotions, stiff upper lip, queen of England type of stoic. And then the philosophy, though that's that big as stoic and it's very different the way I describe it is for me. I have emotions, but my emotions don't have me Not being controlled by your emotions and truly understanding what's in your control and what isn't, and then being able to take any obstacle that comes your way, everything that comes your way, and turning it to your benefit and not from, like this toxic positivity approach of, like you know, find the silver lining, the good in everything, kind of cringe approach to it.

Speaker 3:

But really, looking at, okay, this is what I've got, how can I use this? How can I use this to make me better, me stronger, those around me better? And that's where, again, leadership comes in. But really I think we spend most of our energy on the things that we can't control and not enough on the things we can.

Speaker 2:

I agree, and I'm not going to name the book, but I'm listening to a book that I actually like and there a lot of it is like he talks about stoic approaches. He doesn't say stoic, but it's definitely where he's going. But he doesn't tell anyone how to apply it, he just talks about it, and one of the things that people like what's the easiest way to approach stoicism. So one of the things you got to learn to do is observe. You're not judging it, you're not trying to make sense of it. You're observing what's happening. And well, that's easy. I'm like no, it's not, because you're thinking about how it made you feel and you're no longer observing as soon as you think about how it felt.

Speaker 2:

Observing is looking for things as facts, not as what you felt like. So calling me an asshole is just calling me an asshole. She called me an asshole. That's affecting me. Why is it affecting me? Why did she come Now? Stoicism is to explore those things and not to react to it, but rather observe it. I don't know if that's a good way to conceptualize for people.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, it's curiosity right.

Speaker 3:

Like it sparks that curiosity, that idea and I apologize, I jumped in, interrupted you a bit there, but you know that I know that idea of you know the things that disturb us and it's a paraphrase of one of the stoke quotes is things that disturb us, you know, are not the things themselves but our judgment of them. And so if you can like understand, like, oh, like, I just got really triggered, like what happened there, you know emotions are not bad, but you know there's no and there's no such. I don't think anger is bad necessarily where it turns. You know, quote unquote bad is when we allow it to dictate what we do, when we allow it when we scoot over and, like you, drive no, that's when things can get in trouble. But being able to use anger as a you know, an entry point to a deeper understanding of yourself, yeah, that's awesome. You know an entry point to a deeper understanding of yourself, yeah, that's awesome. And there's a concept I created called a word check and it's in my book and, to briefly describe it, it hits exactly what you're saying.

Speaker 3:

Like so often, we spell check right, we check the spelling, but we don't always check the words and I kind of started recognizing.

Speaker 3:

Like, oh my gosh, we too often are reading between the lines and we're really bad at it and we're responding to the stories, not what's actually being said, you know. So we tell ourselves and then we also speak in judgment terms instead of facts and it's not helpful to tell somebody they're being lazy. That's a judgment, because what I think is lazy might be very different than what you think is lazy, right, and it doesn't help them. So it's like, okay, well, what are they doing? Like what's actually happening that you're calling lazy? And then same with you know, if someone says, you know, like did you unload the dishwasher? All you have to do is say yes or no, but rarely doing just anything with the dishwasher. Keep it at yes or no, right, like we hear the story. We also need to think that there's judgment and we respond to that and we waste so much time and so many conflicts happen because of that situation and not taking the time to slow down and check the story. You know, check your words or check.

Speaker 2:

I love that and I think that you know. There's another one that I want to bring up a little later on, which is Stoa, that you also bring up in your book. Can't wait to be able to fully read. Again, being truthful with my audience, haven't read it yet, just being truthful, but I'm already, like Becky, a lot and a lot of the practice, like you know. I'll show you how, when you're a bullshit artist, you're not able to practice what you say. Factually. We were running late this morning I'm just being factual about it but there was no judgment, there was no anger, there was no frustration. We're gonna start late in this story. Nothing I can do about it, nothing becky can do about it. That's it and learning communicate.

Speaker 3:

Sorry to interrupt and lose my voice at the same time, but, like in those moments, right yeah, to just be able to just communicate to you. Hey, I'm going to be a little bit late, and that was in my control, I could do that. And what you do with that not in my control, you know. And it's just, I think sometimes we make things bigger than they have to be. And so, being like, okay, you're a human being, you're going to understand this and that's what I tell people, I'm like, okay, you really just tell me Like I can, but we don't, we undervalue the little things.

Speaker 2:

That can make a big difference.

Speaker 2:

Communicating the fact you know like, and again, truthful. I know you listen, but a lot of people who may mean you to this. I'm just telling you, like it is, type of guy Like Becky went out of her way to find my cell phone number to text me and say, look, I'm running a little late. She didn't have access to that. She had to look it up and find a way that that was under her control to do so. She didn't go. Oh my God, nothing I can do. I under her control to do so. She didn't go. Oh my God, nothing I can do. I'm not trying anything, I'm just backing up. She also made the effort and if she wouldn't have found it, shit happens.

Speaker 2:

But ultimately, I think that's something like we even had. You know, getting this set up. There was a couple of things we needed to do. I wasn't upset. I'm like, hey, how are you? This is what I need. And you went. Oh sure, I didn't know it wasn't done. And the story I wasn't upset, she wasn't upset, it was what it was. When you practice stoicism properly, that doesn't mean you're not emotional. That doesn't mean you have emotions. It's just like you can deal with your shit a lot better in my opinion.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you don't waste time. I'm going to have no voice. This is great, because I have multiple interviews today. I can't wait.

Speaker 2:

It's going to be a good one. I get the first one.

Speaker 3:

It's downhill from here, but no, it does fall into this idea of again, over and over, what's in our control and if you focus on that, it does make things easier. But I'm going to be honest, it also makes things a lot harder and that's why when stoicism so the first chapter of stoicism in the book is, you know, titled like. I hated stoicism, and I did when it was first introduced to me. I hated it. My husband's the one who first introduced it and I was not Wait.

Speaker 2:

A firefighter in stoicism.

Speaker 3:

Mm-hmm, yeah, no, he introduced me to stoicism, philosophy I want to meet him now that was he one of his majors. Oh, I think, oh, I think it's. No, it was not.

Speaker 2:

I think that I think that the first responder world would benefit a hundred percent of stoicism, because they try to control things you can't control when they're outside of their work environment and I'm like, no, you can't fucking do that at home. But anyway, sorry, I interrupted.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, no, we talk about all the time. So he loves Stoicism and he introduced me to Buddhism. He's fantastic.

Speaker 2:

If he ever wants to come on to the podcast with you or just him, just let him know.

Speaker 3:

I don't know, I'm so fascinated already.

Speaker 3:

It's really, it has been really fun. And so already it's really, it has been really fun. And so writing this entire book you know we talked about it was, you know he had a hand in every bit, like I'd bounce ideas off him. He, you know like it's really fun to be able to have that collaboration and but again, like looking, so he introduced it to me and I hated it.

Speaker 3:

I was terrified of it because it does ask you and you know, not forces, but you're going to have to look in the mirror, and at the time I was not willing to do that, and so the way I handled that fear was to be an absolute butthead about it all and I just, like, did everything I could for a long time to tear apart the philosophy, which in hindsight, I'm very grateful for, because when you try to take something apart and disprove something as not being useful, you end up really discovering what it is.

Speaker 3:

And that way, and so I, you know I was a complete asshole. And then now I've written a book about it and I speak about it and I teach it, and he has not once, he has never, ever, like come back around and said like I told you so or called me out on the fact that I hated it initially, and for me it was because I wasn't willing to, I wasn't ready to do what I was asking, because I was still deeply embattled with my eating disorder, with bulimia, and I was like, oh boy, nope, not today, not today. And it took another couple of years, but I got there.

Speaker 2:

Well, a couple of things I want to mention, since you've been introduced to Buddhism. But we, resist, persists, and I think that that's a good stoic and a Buddhist thought process. So if you're really obsessing about proving someone wrong, then what are you resisting?

Speaker 3:

Oh yeah, and you're going to keep it going.

Speaker 2:

number one, Number two I'm happy that it helped you with your eating disorder. You want to talk a little bit about it here and how it helped you, Because I would love to hear the story.

Speaker 3:

So this will bring us to that framework of STOA. So that's how.

Speaker 3:

I created that when, about five years ago, covid hits and my husband, so he's on two different fire departments. He's on shift about 100 hours a week, so he's full-time fire captain in one city and then he's three-quarters time assistant fire chief in another and he's helped like take that department from volunteer to now a hybrid department. So he spends a lot of time at a firehouse and so COVID hits and we have a daughter who has an undiagnosed lung condition. There's a lot of uncertainty. In the beginning we did not know much and what we did know was we did not want her getting sick and I'm a type one diabetic and again we didn't know how that would work. So you know face nails and uncertainty.

Speaker 3:

I realized I got to be as healthy as possible and I know, and I knew that being bulimic was not helping me at all in that goal of staying as healthy as possible. I was like crap, now's the time. And so I was like I got to do it and in the beginning of that recovery and this is 20 years I struggled with bulimia and 20 years of trying to recover but never getting there it was just white knuckling. And you can only white knuckle something so long, right, like, eventually, like you know and I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu I got decent grips, but even my grips, you know your grips are going to fail on you at some point. And so this concept, this framework of STOA, was created throughout that first couple of months of that recovery of me realizing I got to create a process and what it stands for. So it's an acronym, because if you're in a leadership field, you have to have acronyms.

Speaker 2:

If you work in coaching or in mental health, you got to have acronyms. If you work in coaching or in mental health, you got to have acronyms, you got to do it.

Speaker 3:

And so S is for success, T is for targets, the O is a double duty one, so it's obstacles and opportunities. So identify an obstacle and then the opportunity that that presents. And then the last one is action steps. And I think, Steve, when it comes to strategic planning and goal setting, we often fall short. When it comes to the action steps, we're really good at setting all the targets, but actually the nitty gritty details of who's going to do something, when are you going to do it? You know it's like if you want to get up in the morning, you know, and a target is setting your alarm, the action step is actually setting it. You know that follow through matters.

Speaker 3:

So I started playing around with that and that's how I developed this process and realizing that success. If I put success as never, like purging, binging and purging again, that was the wrong outcome to put, because you have to identify the outcome that matters, and so that's something that's in your control and you can put things that aren't as well. But if I just had never binging and purging again, I know that I would be engaging in a process that ultimately would be destructive. But if I redefine success as being healthy. It opens it up and there's no longer that pressure. And to be clear, in case it's confusing, if I put never binge and purging as success, that means that if I were to slip up and binge and purge, that means I failed. And once we fail like that, it's really easy to kind of spiral and then it takes the pressure off. So yeah, so it just. You know. I also know that I would have then found another bad habit to substitute. So that's what happens a lot of times with addictions. We swap one for the other, you know, and I didn't want to do that. So that's how that created.

Speaker 3:

And now that process works as a debrief. So it's a never ending cycle and once you go through it, then afterwards you look at the end of the day I'd go back through. Did I achieve success? Did I hit my targets? What obstacles did I come up with? You know, and it just and my husband uses it, and a lot of people do now as a journal prompt. So he does that for journaling in the morning, kind of that kind of idea of that five-minute journal, and at the end of the day he goes back through it and it's a process I use in almost all my workshops because I don't think we debrief enough. I don't think we debrief enough, I don't think we go deep enough and I don't think we do the planning correctly. And so, like I do it, when I go to Costco, you know I go. It can expand, it can contract, it's really neat.

Speaker 2:

And to end on this is, you know, my husband, because I know a lot of your listeners are first responders. We're not ending by any stretch. This is good, okay.

Speaker 3:

Well, I'm ending. I don't know what you're going to do with your day, but I'm done All my time. But no, he uses it when they're heading on a call, so he'll take. So that's. The great thing about Stoa is that I can spend eight hours with a group going through a strategic planning using Stoa, or you can use it in a high stress situation in the two to three minutes it takes you to get to a call, and that's what my husband does with his crew, and so you know they're in the fire truck and he'll take them through a Stoa. And he has said you know it's been incredible because you're just you get to where you're going and you get going right, you save the precious minutes, but you also just are more successful at what you're doing. And then he uses the same framework for all the after action. You know reports and debriefs too. I mean that is longer on that end. So it has a lot of applications which I like.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think that that's what I would love is like what you just said. There's so many good things that you said. Being able to achieve and get to those goals is very important, but if you make it unrealistic, it won't happen. When I talk about addiction whether it's food, whether it's alcohol, whether it's whatever I always tell people don't make full abstinence for the next 20 years your goal, because you are absolutely going to fail. I know of like a handful of people that do it all the time and that's great, that's good for them, but the rest of them they face adversities. So you need to learn. I didn't use the words observe, like you do, but what happened? And when I talk about lapse versus relapse, I tell people that we all lapse. We all have a moment. That's life.

Speaker 2:

But if you make it a relapse and a failure in who you are, then you're fucking yourself over and I think that that's what you're saying and I love that mentality because I think that that brings us to a lot of negative thoughts of ourself and the people who are like full abstinence of anything or I've got to succeed by never doing that again or always doing that. They go back with a revenge on doing the stuff they didn't, they said they wouldn't do or they would do.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, oh, yeah, and I include, you know quote from this guy in my book Dan Tallman's his name and he's an addiction recovery counselor. He was a former alcohol and so he's you know cause he shares that same perspective as I do of we need to change how we identify the outcome of these things. And you know the book okay, it's another acronym, but my leadership framework is safe because I do think, ultimately, leaders is our job to make people around us feel safe. And I think that we that's kind of put us like oh, kind of like a weak, soft thing, the word safe, but it's like no, it's like that's kind of like a weak, soft thing, the word safe, but it's like no, it's like that's one of the most badass things possible to keep people around you safe.

Speaker 3:

And the E? So the E is for endurance, to value the process over outcome, and it's not because I'm anti-outcome, I just feel, again, we get the outcome wrong. We have to figure out what is the outcome that matters. And it's, if we put for me, when I went to the hospital for anorexia back in like 2000, the outcome that they set for me there was a weight, you know, they wanted to get me to a certain weight. And so because of that and I include in there and I was like like sociopath level with my diaries back then, like I recorded conversations, like I wrote cause I again we didn't have phones, we didn't have computers, I mean like so all I had was my diaries. I wrote everything down for the six weeks I was there and including everything I ate, and they were like it was like I was a goose and they were just trying to fat me off. So it was a good like because, like I was, they just were putting weight on and I left the hospital and they still wasn't too late and so my meal plan had me eating like eight to 11 desserts a day and that's not healthy and it was just packing weight on. So I didn't learn how to have a healthy relationship with food.

Speaker 3:

And you know the whole approach to it. You know it was in pursuit of the wrong outcome and so therefore, the process was not good and then we got to kind of take a moment. What is the outcome that matters? So when something bad happens or maybe your listeners have children, or maybe your listeners have children my teenage daughter screwed up and she came to me and she was honest about it and I had that moment where I decided, okay, what's the outcome that matters? Is it to give her a punishment? Is it to come down hard on her, or is it to make sure she's becoming a know? She's becoming a teenager, older, you know, shit is going to continue to happen. The outcome of the matter is that she comes to me when she makes a mistake, right, and how I responded in that moment, right, there was going to be very impactful whether or not she comes back to me, and that's what we got to slow down and figure out what's the outcome that matters.

Speaker 2:

And listening to all this, there's a few things that I want to observe is that once you take shame out of the equation, whether self-imposed or imposed by others things change. And when you talk about those moments, I have two teenage daughters, so, believe me, I relate, and the one thing that my daughters tell me is that you never shame us, you let us be, and, yeah, there's times I want to cringe, and they know that, but no shame. And what you just described is exactly right. It's like life's not made of like these long speeches or these great podcasts or a great book or whatever. It's made by moments and if you can grab that moment. And that's safe.

Speaker 2:

I don't know what the other letters stand for is so essential because there's safety in our conversation. We barely know each other and we were joking within seconds and then, oh, this is safe, we can have a nice conversation. We underestimate safety. They think safety is like oh, my door's locked. No, that's not safety. That's sometimes a prison you create. Sorry, marcus Aurelius, just kicked in, but at the end of the day, it's learning to be safe with your emotions, safe with another person and be their safe person. And to me, that's where we absolutely forget leadership, people in power they all feel like frauds, in my experience anyway, like how did I get here? What the hell am I doing? Yeah, it's because they don't feel safe of expressing what they may be struggling with, because they have to be in leadership. No, no, just tell the truth, it's okay. There's nothing wrong with that absolutely well.

Speaker 3:

And so, um, because I know everyone's like what does safe stand for? They're, like you know, on the edge of their seats right now. So, just to go through it, save. The S is the strength to act and stand with integrity, a is agility, to adapt to the needs of the moment, f is flexibility, to reach for curiosity and adversity, and E is the endurance of process over outcome. It's all kind of sports related, not only because I just love sports and working with athletes, but when I first created it I make the comparison to people go to the gym to get those show muscles right. They might look like they're strong, but there's really no functional strength and I think that happens a lot in leadership.

Speaker 3:

It's really easy to memorize the right soundbites, right To say the right things, but there's no real functional strength of leadership there and you need to have that. It's so important. And that's where, like redefining leadership has. You know that's a soapbox I'll gladly like hop onto any day because it's right now tied to a job title, and what I say all the time is like leadership is a lifestyle, not a job title. What I say all the time is leadership is a lifestyle, not a job title and we have to really focus on recognizing a team of leaders. Is what you want? You don't want a team and a leader, right? A team that has a leader, no, no, no. If you have a team of leaders, oh well, then you can cook To try to not use all the words and brain rot. I learned from my teenager. But like, yeah, you get cooking real, real quick when you have a team of leaders.

Speaker 3:

Something else you said that sparked something that I wanted to make sure I touched on was actually you didn't say this, but I thought of it while you're talking. Let me just clarify that. It sparked the thought, which is because you were saying how will we respond to this? And the title of my book is Choose the Handle that Holds, and unless, if you're a stoicism nerd, you won't probably know what that means, and it comes from a quote in stoicism, which is that every situation in life has two handles one by which it can be carried and one by which it cannot. Every moment it does matter and it presents those handles. Which one are you going to grab?

Speaker 3:

The tricky thing is is, a lot of times, the one that will break is the one that's a lot easier to grab right. That's the one responding, you know, with anger. For me, like bulimia, my eating disorder, that was a handle that presented itself. It was the illusion of the one that would hold, but it wasn't. And grabbing the handle that holds, that's choosing integrity. When faced with shame, rationalization that's the one that breaks. And rationalization masks shame. Integrity erases it. And so often, when we grab that wrong handle because you're talking about shame, things do break. And what do we do? We sweep things under the rug. Right, we don't want to put back the pieces the right way, we duct tape it together. But what we have to remember is like, okay, I fucked up and I grabbed the wrong handle. Things broke. Guess what? You get another chance at grabbing the right handle. So what are you going to do now? And that's where that idea of kanzuki comes into play which, yeah, tell me about.

Speaker 2:

Like I love kanzuki. I I think that that's a very important part of life, because I think that it you know, I I think that pre-interview we were talking about how it relates to trauma, but please explain to people what that means and we can get.

Speaker 3:

We can grow from there yeah, so it is a japanese um art.

Speaker 3:

It's a way of repairing, uh, ceramics.

Speaker 3:

And so, instead of trying to make it look like you know, let's say, a vase was never broken, concealing the cracks, they, they seal it with gold, and so you can see exactly where that ceramic, that vase, that pot, whatever where it broke, and the idea of creating beauty from our imperfections. And what's really cool, I mean like this metaphor, it's pretty spot on which is that if you were to drop that vase again that's been repaired with Kintsuki, first of all, that vase again that's been repaired with kintsuki, first of all, congrats your klutz. Second is that vase will not break in those same places, so it truly is stronger for having been broken, and there's a lot of beauty in that right there. But here's the really important thing when it comes to trauma, when it comes to leadership, everything in life is you have to have all the pieces, and too often shame keeps us from bringing forth all those pieces. And so, as a leader, it's your job to create an environment, create a culture where those around you feel safe enough to bring you all of those pieces.

Speaker 3:

You know, say like this is it? Because only then can you put them back together. And that's where, like that Stoa debrief part is important, Because you need to understand where all the pieces are, what all broke. Because if you don't, if you don't get to, you know, if you don't get to the core issue of that failure, all those pieces, you're going to face it again and again. It's going to keep breaking. It's going to look a little different, but it's going to keep breaking. And so you have to value taking the time to put things back together. The correct way, not just the easiest way, not just a good enough like this will hold for a bit until I'm out of here way but really, really invest in doing it right.

Speaker 2:

And I liken it to when you talk about trauma and strength and everything else. Stop thinking that trauma is something you got to hide. You had a hard moment. X, y, z, reason, whatever it is, celebrate it. I mean you can't put glue of gold on yourself but say it is what it is. Celebrate it. I mean you can't put glue of gold on yourself but say it is what it is. And the other thing I didn't get to say earlier that I want to mention for sure is one of my good friends mentions that you don't need stars and stripes to be a leader in the police force and in every paramilitary personnel that you can think of. That goes 100% true. You don't need stars and stripes to be a leader, and that's something I want to mention here.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and my husband. He's on the peer support team too, there in his departments and making sure I mean he's told me plenty of times of the way he holds conversations is different than others probably do and really leading that vulnerability he will. You know, he talks about going to therapy, like we. I talk about it all the time. I think everyone should be in therapy. It's like it's having, like having a paid friend. It's amazing, like they have one job and that's to be there for you, like that. Why would you not want that? Uh, that's uh I, I love it.

Speaker 3:

But you know, I think with trauma, where does stoicism bring? Its value? Is it really can help hold you accountable, to looking at it and getting comfy with it in a new way and also understanding what is yours to carry and what isn't. You know it's, it's people I mean I, my husband, what he sees that on a daily basis, like if that happened, one of those calls happened to me I would be talking about it all the time like I'd be the craziest thing in my life. Right, and to him it's just like another tuesday and he's very deliberate in making sure he does everything he can to not make it just be another Tuesday to give space for what it actually is and understanding what he has to dig into and getting curious and, when he feels those triggers, not just shoving them down but leaning into that discomfort.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think that, to quote something else, being comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Speaker 3:

That's why there's a whole chapter in my book on that.

Speaker 2:

I didn't know that, but I figured you'd have something on that, because I do.

Speaker 3:

It is, it's, it's, it's good, it's good to practice and it's really it's good.

Speaker 3:

It's good to practice and it's really it's fun. The the thing that I would I would hate to not mention this, and I know we're at time, so I'll be very quick about it is there's this Latin phrase that I teach in all my talks and I gotta tell you, steve, nothing gets an audience more excited than being like guess what guys, we're going to talk about Latin stoicism and death, because I cover all three in every talk I give. But one thing I know my husband uses with helping, you know, getting through the trauma and stuff, is that idea of so it's a Latin phrase memento mori, which means like remember, you too shall die, memento mori and keeping that. You know, that's what one of the beautiful things of everyone who's a first responder is. They don't escape that perspective, they see it, and that gives you the opportunity to just gosh live life instead of just pass time. I don't think life is too short. I think we make it short because we don't live it, we're just passing time. You can live a lot of life in a single day.

Speaker 3:

And the other thing is amor fati. Are you familiar with that phrase? Okay, it's not technically stoic, but it embraces it in stoicism. I know Well. I just think some people will get angry if.

Speaker 3:

I don't acknowledge it. Okay. So Morphati is Latin for love of fate, and what it means is like don't just accept your fate, embrace it, love it. Don't just take the hits, but get stronger for them. Resilience is talked about a lot. I think resilience falls short, because what a Morphati does? It allows you to go beyond resilient, and what beyond resilient means is moving forward. You're not just bouncing back.

Speaker 3:

So, whatever comes your way, be like fuck, this is it, what am I going to do with it? How am I going to turn it to my benefit? Because you can't change it for the most part. You can't control your fate, you can't control the weather. I've tried um and um, the. There is just one word, though I sometimes add after it, because sometimes life gets really freaking hard yes and so sometimes, because it's literally a phrase, I think out loud, or I say I think out loud, I think in my head, or say out loud so the word I add after more fatty steve is motherfucker, because there are times when beyond, say, like a more fatty motherfucker, it gives you permission to move beyond the like I'd rathers, beyond the lamenting, beyond the complaining and bitching about shit, and move right into action, and that's what we need to to do more of. I think we spent a lot of time just just whining and not enough time doing like living freaking life Well.

Speaker 2:

I agree, I think that you're nicer than I am because I tell people no one makes it out alive. Might as well enjoy it while you're here. Number two originally someone made my podcast Resilience in Action and I said that's not enough Resilience development in it. Now that makes sense because we always have to develop more and more resilience. You never quite get there, and so that resonated with me with so much, but, as you said, time is of essence. I'd like to hear how people can reach you and get your book and the other thing too. And before we leave, I'm going to be again very truthful with you. How about we do this again in the fall?

Speaker 3:

Sounds good, I'll bring my husband along. He's a good egg, he's a good one.

Speaker 2:

I actually like him too. Don't tell him I have a crush on him, yet it's going to make it awkward. But no, please tell people how to reach you and yes, please come back in the fall. I'd love to do that yep, uh, so they can.

Speaker 3:

So you can go to beckysmokecom and guess what? You don't have to spell it, the weird way that my last name is spelled. You can just type smoke, like common spelling smoke, and redirect you because my name is pronounced smoke does not look like it. Um, so beckysmokecom, yeah, yeah, I know I but it.

Speaker 2:

You know like. Uh, be like Becky. Smokecom, and I'll put all that in the show notes too is going to be a direct link, so people won't click on it.

Speaker 3:

And I post every day almost on social media Facebook, linkedin, instagram.

Speaker 2:

Oh, you're on all those things, all those things.

Speaker 3:

Just type in my name that one name, that one you're gonna have to spell correctly. So you're gonna have to figure out that one.

Speaker 2:

it looks like schmoochie s-c-h-m-o-o-k-e and that's how I pronounced it, but I also asked if I got it right but we have.

Speaker 3:

I'll post videos of our baby goats um as well. So it's leadership, mindfulness, stoicism, stuff, and then also fun videos of goats and chickens and hopefully a little bit of mindful, mindful kitchen.

Speaker 2:

Yes, there is um, there is a little bit of that mindful kitchen?

Speaker 3:

Yes, there is. There is a little bit of a. You'll see some delicious pictures of things.

Speaker 2:

Well, Becky, let's, let's find a date for sometime in the fall. I love talking to you and I appreciate your time.

Speaker 3:

Thank you very much. Steve Did not say, sir, I want to say one.

Speaker 2:

So you didn't tell me asshole once. That's good, thank you.

Speaker 3:

Thank you.

Speaker 1:

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People on this episode

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Steve Bisson

Host
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Becky Schmooke

Guest