Episode 106
5 Lessons Firefighting Taught Me About Life
Firefighting teaches you what pressure reveals.
In this solo episode of The Lonely Chapter, I reflect on 5 lessons firefighting taught me about life - and how those lessons connect to confidence, pressure, identity, mental health, emotional intelligence, and the conversations I’ve had on the podcast.
Working in the fire service puts you around people on some of the hardest days of their lives. Over time, it teaches you things about human behaviour that are easy to miss in everyday life: how people respond under pressure, how confidence is built, how identity can both protect and trap us, and why people remember how you made them feel more than what you said.
In this episode, I explore:
→ Why confidence comes from competence, not motivation
→ Why most people are carrying more than you realise
→ How identity can help you - and trap you
→ Why presence matters more than perfection
→ Why people remember how you made them feel under pressure
I also connect these lessons to previous conversations on The Lonely Chapter, including episodes with Sean Conway, Brandon Day, James Elliott, Mark Robinson and Dakota Meyer.
This is a reflective episode about firefighting, life lessons, resilience, personal growth, confidence, identity, pressure, mental health, emotional wellbeing, and what it means to show up for people when life feels difficult.
If you’re doing okay on the surface, but quietly trying to make sense of life, I hope this episode helps you feel a little less alone.
Transcript
Something that I've never really directly addressed on this podcast is the fact that I work in the fire service.
Speaker A:And there's a reason for that.
Speaker A:I tend to try and keep them two separate, but I've realized over time that a lot of the lessons that I've learned about people from the fire service and how people work under pressure and in harsh environments carry over into a lot of the conversations that I've had on this podcast.
Speaker A:So people I've spoken to and telling me about their stories, there's a lot of crossover.
Speaker A:So today I want to do something slightly different.
Speaker A:I'm going to look into five of these behaviors and explain what I've seen from my own personal experience in the fire service and also how I've related that to episodes and conversations that I've had on this podcast.
Speaker A:Without further ado, let's get into the episode.
Speaker A:Lesson number one is confidence comes from competence, not motivation.
Speaker A:So motivation is this thing that people think of.
Speaker A:They need.
Speaker A:They need that motivation to get started and to become confident.
Speaker A:And motivation is a fleeting thing.
Speaker A:It is useful at the start when you need to get the ball rolling, but it's not reliable.
Speaker A:It goes, it comes, it disappears just as quickly as it appeared.
Speaker A:So in terms of competence, how do we get competence without motivation?
Speaker A:So it's about repeat exposure, and it's about repeatedly doing the things.
Speaker A:And I've spoken before about, well, when I've been asked about how I've sort of managed calmness under pressure in the job is it's to do with training.
Speaker A:If you've trained and practice the things that you are now putting into place.
Speaker A:Now, caveat.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:There's always going to be things that you can't account for and that are going to be new to you.
Speaker A:But if you've done enough training, you understand how your team works, you train with them, you train as a unit, and you start to be confident in the things that you're doing.
Speaker A:And it's that.
Speaker A:It's that repeat exposure and obviously operational incidents, as you start going out to those at the start of your career, you're building up this reservoir of experiences that you can look back on.
Speaker A:And it's that repetition that's so important.
Speaker A:And again, I've spoken before about how you can look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that you are all these things and that you're great and that you can do this thing, but ultimately the thing you need is evidence.
Speaker A:I've always explained this as if you think of a piece of paper.
Speaker A:So every Sort of difficult thing you do.
Speaker A:Everything you overcome in life is a piece of paper.
Speaker A:Individually, it's not a lot.
Speaker A:It's a very, very thin measurement.
Speaker A:But if you start to stack them up, you make this stack of paper and the stack can get massive.
Speaker A:And that's just made up of these tiny things.
Speaker A:And it's just building that stack of evidence that you're.
Speaker A:You can do the thing.
Speaker A:And that's something that crosses over into life.
Speaker A:And this is just in general life now.
Speaker A:So in my conversation with Sean Conway, he spoke about the idea of how he reframes failure.
Speaker A:And the word that he uses instead of saying fail is hiccup.
Speaker A:So if he's not succeeded in what he was doing, he says he's had a hiccup because it's a lot easier mentally to get over that and to move forward and to go again.
Speaker A:And he.
Speaker A:One of his records was the most iron distance triathlons in consecutive days, and he did 105 of those in 105 days, which is just insane to think about.
Speaker A:But the first time, the first attempt, he didn't do it.
Speaker A:He had a hiccup.
Speaker A:He fell off his bike and got injured and couldn't carry on.
Speaker A:So it shows that not everyone is perfect.
Speaker A:Whilst we see that record on the wall and we look at that and go, wow, that's amazing, we don't necessarily look behind the curtain and see those repeated exposures that that person has got to get there.
Speaker A:And it's the same in the job.
Speaker A:So repeated exposures builds competence and in turn builds confidence.
Speaker A:Lesson number two is that most people are carrying more than you realize.
Speaker A:So again, thinking of firefighting now, I'm talking both about firefighters and the general public.
Speaker A:If we look first at firefighters, these people are coming into work to potentially put their life on the line to save someone, to rescue someone, and they're going through their own stuff.
Speaker A:Firefighters are human.
Speaker A:So it's really important to understand where everyone is and to acknowledge where people are and check in on them.
Speaker A:Like checking in on people, it doesn't take a lot of time.
Speaker A:But just asking that question, how are you can open up so many conversations.
Speaker A:And I said about also other people.
Speaker A:So going into the people we deal with on a general basis, so the general public, you don't know what that person's going through in their life.
Speaker A:You don't know the whole story.
Speaker A:All you're getting is that little window into their life in that very moment during that incident.
Speaker A:So it's a very difficult thing to turn up.
Speaker A:And fully know everything about this person.
Speaker A:It's important that you're not assuming anything and that you're not shaping your image of this person based on an assumption that you've made.
Speaker A:And when I take it out of firefighting and I look at the link to the show, I mean, this is the premise of the Lonely Chapter show.
Speaker A:This is what who this podcast is for.
Speaker A:It's for the person that is doing okay on the surface.
Speaker A:They've done everything they were told to do in life.
Speaker A:They've chased the promotion, the jobs, the relationship, the money that they were told to by society, and yet they still don't feel sure of life.
Speaker A:They're still working things out and trying to understand things.
Speaker A:So these are the conversations I'm having.
Speaker A:And on my most recent conversation with Brandon, Brandon Day, he achieved so much at such an early age.
Speaker A:When he was in high school, he achieved highly in American football.
Speaker A:He captained his team to national championships, won the championships, and got on this cover of Sports Illustrated.
Speaker A:But he was suffering below because of the amount of pressure that he put himself under and the amount of expectation that not only him, but also others put on him.
Speaker A:So it's really easy to say, but it's very difficult to see below the surface because people become so good at covering up what they're going through.
Speaker A:So, yeah, lesson number two, just checking in on people and making sure they are not carrying something that you're not realizing.
Speaker A:Lesson number three is about identity.
Speaker A:And it's identity can save you, but it can also trap you.
Speaker A:So I've spoken before a lot on identity.
Speaker A:Again, it's a topic that comes up again and again on this show, and for good reason.
Speaker A:It's something that people wrestle with so often.
Speaker A:I think having identity gives people pride.
Speaker A:It gives them structure, it gives them belonging, and it's really important to have that.
Speaker A:But it's also very important to not make something that you do, your identity.
Speaker A:And what I mean by that, and I'll use firefighting as an example, as I have before.
Speaker A:If you make firefighting, you and everything that you do and you serve for 20, 30 years, it's a long career.
Speaker A:When it comes to the end of that, it's very difficult to let it go.
Speaker A:And you see it a lot in people that retire and then struggle because they've gone through their life calling themselves a firefighter and that sort of being their identity, as opposed to something else where it's something more manageable and, sorry, malleable.
Speaker A:And what I mean by that is I spoke to James Elliot on the podcast a while back, and he was talking to me about how we label our identity.
Speaker A:So we often use nouns, things that can trap us.
Speaker A:So firefighter, athlete, even parent.
Speaker A:And it's difficult to say, but those things can be taken away from us, whether that's our own choice or not.
Speaker A:So it's a difficult thing to label yourself with a noun.
Speaker A:And what we should be doing instead is using adjectives and verbs.
Speaker A:Things that can be molded as you move through.
Speaker A:So helping, learning, serving, listening.
Speaker A:These are things that you can identify with and make part of your identity, but can move through it.
Speaker A:So for me, the one that comes up there is service.
Speaker A:And when, I think many years ago, when I was a personal trainer, it starts there.
Speaker A:I was serving people in a gym.
Speaker A:I was serving the person that comes to the gym is unsure of what to do and wants to learn how to be fitter and get better.
Speaker A:And then I moved into the fire service, and that's serving people on the worst day of their life, as I've already said, and rescuing people and like, the very extremes of service.
Speaker A:And then this podcast is also a service.
Speaker A:It's a service to you, the listener, a way for you to join me on this journey and learn about life and try and figure this thing out together.
Speaker A:Because ultimately, that's what we're doing.
Speaker A:And a conversation that really, like, resonated this for me was a conversation I had with Mark Robinson on the podcast.
Speaker A:So Mark is a football coach, professional football Coach.
Speaker A:He's managed AFC Wimbledon and also managed the Chelsea Under 21s.
Speaker A:And he brought up the fact that we very often.
Speaker A:Well, we always use the term retirement in football.
Speaker A:And these footballers are 30 to 40 years old, probably, and we're telling them they're retired.
Speaker A:We're putting this label on them.
Speaker A:They're a retired footballer.
Speaker A:It's like there's a finality to that.
Speaker A:It's like, you're done, but there's so many other options.
Speaker A:And he was saying, like, obviously you can go into, like, punditry, managing, coaching, podcasting.
Speaker A:A lot of footballers do now.
Speaker A:So it's.
Speaker A:There's so many options.
Speaker A:And to say the word retire to someone that young, I think, again, that really harms their identity.
Speaker A:So it's learning to reshape how we talk about identity.
Speaker A:Lesson number four is people don't need perfection from you.
Speaker A:They just need presence.
Speaker A:There's no such thing as perfection.
Speaker A:It's a myth.
Speaker A:No one handles every situation perfectly.
Speaker A:And when you're working under extreme conditions, firefighting is Very difficult to do.
Speaker A:So at an incident, you just need to be there, you need to be useful, you need to be honest, you need to be calm.
Speaker A:It's about how you're making that person feel.
Speaker A:It's not necessarily about getting it absolutely perfect, but doing the best job you can do in that moment.
Speaker A:You.
Speaker A:It's really important to not over promise things.
Speaker A:It's not.
Speaker A:You can't fix things that are unfixable.
Speaker A:So it's really important that you're honest with people and you're just present in that moment.
Speaker A:You're offering reassurance, but not the perfect words or the perfect fix or anything like that.
Speaker A:And I think it's really important because imperfection is what makes us human.
Speaker A:If we were all perfect, it would be boring, wouldn't it?
Speaker A:There'd be no mistakes.
Speaker A:It'd just be robots moving about their day, just doing whatever.
Speaker A:But the imperfection of humanity is what makes us human.
Speaker A:And I think the real connection comes from like accepting that and just remembering that we don't have to hold ourselves to these extreme standards all the time.
Speaker A:There's gonna be times where we can't make it.
Speaker A:Life happens and that's okay.
Speaker A:And when I spoke to Dakota Meyer, who is a US Marine veteran who got the medal of Honor for his actions in Afghanistan, he spoke about this and he said, we hold people to standards that we don't hold ourselves to.
Speaker A:We need to remember that people are human.
Speaker A:And it's that reminder of, okay, what standards are we holding ourselves to?
Speaker A:Are they realistic and are we like, right in doing so?
Speaker A:Okay, fine.
Speaker A:But if we start holding other people to standards that we're not even holding ourselves to, how unfair is that?
Speaker A:And it's only going to end in your disappointment, your disappointment of other people because you expected them to be perfect.
Speaker A:You expected them to be some superhuman person that never makes mistakes.
Speaker A:And it's just not true.
Speaker A:So just remembering that being present, being calm, being honest is all you can do is way more important than trying to find perfection.
Speaker A:Because plot twist, you will never find it.
Speaker A:Lesson number five is people remember how you made them feel under pressure.
Speaker A:So in the fire service, people aren't going to remember every single action you make, every single decision or instruction, but they are going to remember how you made them feel, how calm you were and how calm that made them feel, how clear you are and how in control you were of things, the emotional state that you're in.
Speaker A:And again, reflecting back on the one that people are carrying stuff, you could be in a really bad emotional state internally.
Speaker A:But the external emotional state, the emotional state that you send out affects the people around you.
Speaker A:That is what people see and that is what people react to.
Speaker A:So the, the way that you speak to people and the words that you say do matter.
Speaker A:It's not saying that they don't, but it's the way that you make them feel around those words.
Speaker A:So it's the feeling that you give them.
Speaker A:And when we think of the podcast, we think of these, like, putting out weekly episodes.
Speaker A:I'm.
Speaker A:I'm thinking of both my podcast and podcasts I listen to and conversations that I have.
Speaker A:And we hear these conversations week in, week out.
Speaker A:We're listening to these things, we're learning things, we're hearing different points of view.
Speaker A:It's really interesting.
Speaker A:And when you think back, very few bits of information are actually retained.
Speaker A:You actually haven't remembered loads of the things that you sort of thought you might.
Speaker A:And okay, there's an aspect of that is that too much information coming into your brain.
Speaker A:But I think also it's more about how you were feeling in that moment.
Speaker A:So you might have listened to an episode of a podcast and just been so involved with it.
Speaker A:So, like, just in the moment, loved it.
Speaker A:And it might be one of your favorite podcast episodes.
Speaker A:But.
Speaker A:But if you asked.
Speaker A:If I asked you to sort of point out a few bits of information from that episode, you might not really have any answer because it's not necessarily about what was in the app episode.
Speaker A:It was about how it made you feel in the moment and how it drew you in.
Speaker A:And there's that line from Dr. Maya Angelou that says, people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Speaker A:And with that belter of a quote, that is the end of the five lessons.
Speaker A:I hope you enjoyed it.
Speaker A:And I know it's slightly different, me bringing in my outside role.
Speaker A:I haven't really done that before.
Speaker A:So let me know what you thought of that.
Speaker A:If you did enjoy this episode, please do share it with someone who you think would find some value from it or enjoy it, or someone who would just feel good about it.
Speaker A:To touch on point number five, if you haven't already, then please do follow or subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching.
Speaker A:It really helps the show grow and get shown to more people.
Speaker A:And if you've done that already and you're bored of me asking you to do it, then please do leave a rating for the show.
Speaker A:If you've done all those things, then you are one of my favorite people.
Speaker A:And all I will say to you is thank you for listening.
Speaker A:Stay curious, and I will see you in the next one.
