Having an Operational Mindset

Scott DeLuzio:    00:03    Thanks for tuning in to the Drive On Podcast where we talk about issues affecting veterans after they get out of the military. Before we get started, I'd like to ask a favor if you haven't done so already, please rate and review the show on Apple podcasts. If you've already done that. Thank you. These ratings help the show get discovered so we can reach a wider audience. And while you're there, click the subscribe button so that you get notified of new episodes as soon as they come out. If you don't use Apple podcasts, you can visit DriveOnPodcasts.com/subscribe to find other ways of subscribing, including our email list. I'm your host, Scott DeLuzio, and now let's get on with the show.

Scott DeLuzio:    00:44    Hi everyone.  Today, my guest is Jeff Banman. He's the host of the Mindset radio podcast and the founder of the Operational Mindset Foundation. Jeff is a former soldier and firefighter. His mission these days seems to be very similar to mine with this podcast. So, I wanted to be sure I got him on the show to share his story. I first heard about Jeff and some of the things that he does through a former guest on this show, Dr. Sherry Walling, who was on not too long ago back in Episode 32. She talked about meditation at the shooting range in her podcast, which I'll link to in the show notes. When I heard about this, I thought Jeff, who conducted this meditation at a shooting range, would be a perfect guest for this show. Since the listeners of the show are largely current and former military service members, we're all pretty familiar with firearms and if there's a way to work that in with mental health that's just a win-win in my book. So anyway, Jeff, welcome to the show. I don't want to dive into everything you do without giving you the chance to jump in. So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Jeff Banman:    01:49    I really appreciate you having me on today. Sherry is such a phenomenal human being. She's definitely been a great supporter of mine. I'm glad she introduced us. It was very neat to have her out on range and we got to talk about what that meditation shoot is and why it is the way it is. It's a pretty neat day out there. My simple background is that I grew up as a fireman, started before I graduated high school. I volunteered, got hired right out of high school, spent a couple of years, got a little bored, decided that I needed new adventure, joined the army and spent the first halfway 3^rd Range Battalion in the second half with a Reconstituted out of Fort Bragg, Kosovo in 1999.

Jeff Banman:    02:39    Part of the first guys on the ground there during the Serb invasion, got out, went back to the fire service, was actually on duty the night of September 10th, having coffee with the guys the morning of September 11th, and then spent the next four days in response to the Pentagon in the DC area. And then after that, got recruited by the intelligence community and spent a decade bebopping around the world and doing some really fun stuff. And then, like you said, today, really the focus is on the Foundation with a mission to ultimately to end what I call clean up, the post stuff. A lot of great organizations doing a lot of great stuff and absolutely critical, absolutely necessary. But I believe we're locked into a new world, where the game's changed and we're now in this perpetual global conflict. And so, I don't see an end to this at some point in time. And the Foundation is really designed to get in early to create early conversations now provide some early lessons and some tools up front. Even if the guys don't totally hear them right away, they're still there. And they still live? And really want to minimize the impact of the lives that we choose to live. That's what the mission is now. So, I really appreciate you having me on.

Scott DeLuzio:    03:56    Yeah, absolutely. So, let's take a step back a little bit here and talk about the journey that you took to get to where you are now, running the Operational Mindset Foundation and the podcast. Obviously, you were a soldier, the firefighter, but did you just wake up one day and decide that this is something that you're going to start doing. Was it a gradual process to figure out what you're up to or was there some trigger that sparked your interest in this line of work? What did that look like?

Jeff Banman:    04:26    Well, it's been a gnarly five, six years. I closed out my time with the agency about 2014, give or take, officially done. I was running a company, doing a lot of the human performance work and human behavior stuff that I did in my last couple of years at the agency doing really well. I decided to exit out of that and then I wandered the earth for a couple of years. I was really trying to figure out who I was. And then actually some of the group where I met Sherry and got involved in some stuff and this has been a personal journey, a professional journey. This wasn't an overnight thing. I've resisted the idea of a nonprofit for a long time and actually to be honest with you, I went away from the community for several years.

Jeff Banman:    05:23   I was kind of tired. I was a little frustrated by it. I was a little annoyed by the community and I didn't really like what I saw going on.  I ejected myself from the community for a little while and I introduced myself one day and a guy I really respected business guy, very sharp, a gray beard. He pulled me aside after we did our thing and he looked at me and he said, Jeff, and he's Australian, so he's got the accent to back the statement. I'm not going to attempt to

Jeff Banman:    05:58    mimic it. But he said, Jeff, never again minimize your background. And that really sat with me.  I think that was like a shot to me that I'd kind of gone away. I'd try to be somebody else. I really tried to shut down who I'd been for basically my entire life. Then I was challenged to look at what was important to me. I was challenged to look at what do I want to leave behind, what really matters. And I got invited, through some other sources, back into the community.  We were talking about the operational mindset course I wrote years ago looking at mental performance and I started to peek in and see that we just hadn't made the progress we should've made. And so, that's where it all started to fall into place for me.

Jeff Banman:    06:58    And you know, I believe firmly through the work that I've done, the interpersonal journey in the self-work that I've done, you can be the baddest mother out there, right? You can go out and execute and perform your mission or your job to the extreme when necessary and you can come home and be normal and actually embrace this whole other side of your life. And so that knowledge, that awareness, that insight really is what drives behind the Operation Mindset Foundation because it is about putting guys in the condition where they can operate at their very best and then come home and men and women both right across the board, I say guys as a term of endearment. It's sure speaking to everybody but it's like that's what it's about. That's the essence of it.

Scott DeLuzio:    07:59    That's a great backstory to your journey and figuring out how you came along and came up with this Foundation and everything. I think a lot of what you do and what I'm trying to do with this podcast are very much in line. Ultimately, I want to help the service members, the veterans who might feel like there isn't any hope for them. But more importantly, I want to try to reach these people before they get to that point. And obviously, once someone's at that point, it's good to get them the information and the strategies or resources that they need to get themselves out of that; which we do with the podcast. But ideally reaching them beforehand is even better. And that seems like exactly what you said, what you're doing with the Foundation. You're going out to these first responders, the police, the fire, EMS, before there's a tragic situation that they don't know how to handle

Jeff Banman:    09:01    Or just even mid-career.  Just the constant persistent stressors. I mean, I think we get labeled very quickly as having PTSD or having this or having that. And we've had big conversations about it. And I think there are other subtle factors that impact us. To get labeled a certain way and those are factors we can really manage and mitigate, chronic stress exposure, really the long-term wear out. I mean, we've been at war now for 20 years and as of this recording, it ain't going to stop anytime soon, obviously. That chronic exposure, that chronic state of always being turned on, always being available, always being ready and it comes in the fire service and it comes if you're a military guy, if you're a police officer, if you're a firefighter or if you're in the services realm, you chose a 24/7 gig and we don't get trained how to turn it on or off. We don't get trained how to turn the volume knob up or down. I think those are the underlying issues that wear us out over time, rather than the incident or the thing or whatever it was. I mean there's still impact but I also believe that impact and PTSD come from a lack of awareness to yourself and what the situation you may find yourself in. It's a lack of mental and emotional preparedness for the events that may occur given the job you've chosen to take on.

Scott DeLuzio:    10:51    Yeah, exactly. And I know for myself after getting out of the army, I felt exactly what you're describing that “still being always on with a head on a swivel” but you're walking through the grocery store and you don't really need to constantly be hyper vigilant. You're not walking down the streets of Bagdad or whatever. It is hard to turn off. And I think that that's probably a common thing amongst the military and first responders that they are constantly aware of this type of stuff. Being hypervigilant and it is a hard thing to turn off. So, it's a great thing that you are doing to teach people how to turn that off to come home and be with their families.

Scott DeLuzio:    11:48    Talk to their wives and husbands and their kids and everyone else without being this super intense, police officer or firefighter or whatever the case may be. So, it's really great that that's the direction that you are taking in trying to help people in that regard. We talked a little bit, the other day, before we started recording and you told me that there were four parts to the Operational Mindset Foundation, four different categories. Could you walk us through some of what it is that the Foundation is all about?

Jeff Banman:    12:29    Yeah, so first off, clearly it is Mindset Radio, the podcast, which is out on all the platforms. And I think it's a neat opportunity because we get guests both from the community and then way outside the community. You know, like Sherry Walling was on, Corporal Kiernan, I just had Jordan Harbinger on at the end of the year. Our world may not be normally exposed to try to bring us some new people to the table there. Some new conversations and get really at it. And then I bring great people from the community and to validate those, right? To actually take a look at the conversation that we've been having and then it works in the world or not. I'm a big believer that you have to be able to balance that because not everything that comes out of academia or comes out of the psychology world or comes out of those places is valid in the field.

Jeff Banman:    13:26    Part of that is that process. And then there's some teach backs and we take time on some stuff. So, Mindset radio, the podcast is really a first layer out to our community. The second layer is the training programs that we offer to departments and to the military. We're able to go in, provide the Operation Mindset programs, which really do balance resiliency with a higher level of operations and looks at performance factors. And so, there's a variety of coursework there that we're able to get out now through some privately funded partnerships and get out and deliver that. Then, one of the critical parts we're going to be looking at later this year is the train the trainer program that is the fourth element.

Jeff Banman:    14:17    Then, the other big pieces are the experiences that we create. So, the meditation shoot are our opportunities that we try our best to align really great people from the community. Like a Sherry Walling or a high performing entrepreneur or some of the people that are out there with people from the services, because then it becomes this shared experience in the shared knowledge. It begins to unify some things for people rather than just being isolated in just the one shared experience. I'm a cop, I'm a firefighter, I'm a service member or whatever it might be. Gets them outside of their comfort zone, but then also really deals with feelings of safety and breathwork and anchoring yourself in the present. And it's a pretty gnarly event. You generally don't walk away not having had a fairly significant experience out there. So, that's the Foundation. That's how we work and that helps us raise money and continue to do what we love to do.

Scott DeLuzio:    15:28    That's great. I'm really glad that this is something that you're doing. I think it's something that's definitely a missing piece in the whole equation. I don't know if you know many other organizations that are handling these types of aspects of mental health before they're needed; giving people the tools to work their way through this stuff before they are exposed to the years of patrolling and years of rescuing people out of burning buildings and combat and everything else. A lot of it is reactive, that I've seen anyways, going on.

Jeff Banman:    16:16    Or teach by PowerPoint.  We're going to talk about resiliency today. I've got to go take my quarterly resiliency class and sit in and click through slides and which I'm not really going to get anything out of because the person talking has no idea what my life is like. And so, I think that's a big difference for us too.

Scott DeLuzio:    16:36    Absolutely. We've all sat through the death by PowerPoint trainings and gotten nothing out of it, but they check the box and they say, well, we've done this. Now your resilient. You have the skills you need and go on and do whatever it is that you do. That just doesn't work as a proactive type of measure. One of the cool things that really got my interest that you started talking about a little bit is the meditation shoot. The reason why that was the thing that piqued my interest when I heard Sherry talking about it on her podcast is because a lot of the people who listen to this show are either current or former military, very familiar with firearms.

Scott DeLuzio:    17:45    So, to some people there's that fear of firearms, they're big scary things. They make loud noises; they could potentially be dangerous if not handled properly. And so, people could be afraid of them if they haven't been trained on how to handle them. But that's not really the case with people in the military because they've had the experience with firearms. So, I feel like that kind of eliminates the barrier to entry to get military members in doing these types of shoots, even veterans. I'm interested in how that works in broader terms not just, we go to the range and we shoot and have a great time. But what is it that makes this unique and what makes the shooting aspect either therapeutic or what helps people by doing this kind of meditation?

Jeff Banman:    18:54    I think we've had people that have never touched a gun before in their life. We've had people that are terrified of guns and we've had all the way up to special operations, snipers out of the range. We've run the gamut of people. And it's always interesting because fundamentally the time on the range in this context has absolutely nothing to do with shooting. When we go shoot, if we got to the range, it's like, okay, how am I going to do? And I'm always trying to hit where I want to hit. And if we're on the long-gun range or if we're on the pistol range, it doesn't really matter. The people that come with a background in shooting are always very interesting because they suddenly discover that, wait a minute, I'm not on the range today.

Jeff Banman:    19:48    I didn't go shooting. I’m meditating. That's actually the purpose of the day. Things start coming up. So, here's the Foundation for it. Meditation as a practice can be one of the most valuable things you can learn to do, in my opinion. And the style that we teach is very much more an eyes-open presence in practice. So, really at the end of the day, it's nothing more than getting off the thought trains that are coming in and just coming back to where you are right now. And when you combine it with the breath work, biologically, what happens is it triggers a vagal nerve up through the heart, actually relaxes the fascia around the heart and starts to send signals to the brain that you're safe. And then you're anchoring that in the present moment. You've got beautiful blue skies, you've got Hawks flying by, you're in this great setting, you'll hear somebody else fire off a couple rounds and you'll be like, okay, somebody's shooting and you get into this state where you are extremely calm and extremely present and your body is relaxed because it is finally feeling safe.

Jeff Banman:    21:07    And then you come over to the gun and the gun is going to present whatever the gun needs to present to you. And so, if you're too hard on the trigger, if you're not paying attention to the simple resistance of the trigger and meeting the resistance where it is and pushing and driving through that shot, then you're going to miss. If your shoulder isn’t into it or if you're moving or you're not settled or you're not following the process, then you're going to miss. So, there's all these things that come up and then what you actually get an opportunity to understand is the complexities of time. And that even shooting a gun, you will actually almost always get to a state where you feel trigger, release, hammer forward, hit the primer. Ignite the powder, explosion happens. In the end, the round actually leaves the barrel.

Jeff Banman:    22:03    You'll actually begin to experience that in an elongated state. And it's very cool because so often in life, we just jam everything together. It's press, trigger, bang. That's it, right? Then we deal with perspective and perception and then conditions and really being present to what's taking place. And very few have walked away dry eyed by the end of the day. It's not because you're crying at something. The balance of it triggers a release in the system where you finally feel safe and the body's just releasing built up anxiety, built up stress, built up things. And you may laugh hysterically. All the way into tears. You may just dump and cry and that's okay. That's all part of it but you walk away with a sense of time that you've probably never had before and then a sense of presence that you've never had before.

Scott DeLuzio:    23:09    I was not expecting that that would be the outcome from this and that's, pretty amazing, it's as powerful as it is. So, how are people then taking away from that and applying it to their daily life, whether it's their home life or their work life, whether, whatever it is that their job is. Because obviously, we don't all have shooting ranges in our backyards to go and just meditate every day. How are they able to go through that kind of practice, come away with whatever it is that they come away with and then apply that to their daily lives.

Jeff Banman:    23:59    I think that's the interesting thing because you know, the meditation practice can be done anywhere, anytime. And we give you the tools to do it in a designated time in action. I mean, it's what you see is the distinct styles we teach. It's an always available thing, right? And fundamentally, no matter what we do, nine times out of 10, we are very rarely present to the conditions as they exist right now. We have a lot of expectations we put in place. We do a lot of, what I call future casting. A lot of look forward. A lot of do we need to do that? What about this? Or we exist heavily rooted in the past, right? Pain in the past on things. I often say, fear can't occupy this space right now, like fear is nothing more than a projection into the future.

Jeff Banman:    25:00    Biologically fear and excitement experiences the exact same way. Body doesn't know the difference between roller coaster or cliff. So, I can be excited in the present moment, while I can be in a scientifically a state of arousal in the present moment. But that is not fear for it only comes in when I start to project into the future. And that becomes doubt and worry. And so, they practice in bed, a level of confidence enabling you to anchor yourself now, see what's taking place and then choose your course of action based on the conditions as they exist. And so, the meditation practice you take with you, the meditation practice you integrate into your daily life. And that may be one minute, that may be two minutes, it may be five minutes. It doesn't have to be an hour.

Jeff Banman:    25:53    It doesn't have to be all day. You don't have to buy the cushions, you don't have to do all these things, you can do it sitting in a chair in the morning, you do it while you drink your cup of coffee, you can do it wherever you need to do it. But really, the takeaway is the ability to anchor yourself. Because we're rarely here. And that may be interactions with our spouses or our children. If we're frustrated, it's probably because we're anxious about something or we're dealing with something that happened. And so, when you hit a target at a thousand yards and you hear it ping and you hear the sound travel back to you after a few seconds and you begin to experience real satisfaction because you're present, the result you just produced.

Jeff Banman:    26:47    And in our world, we're great at beating ourselves up. We're great at not good enough. We're great at, I can do better. We're great at all these things. And rarely do we allow ourselves to have a victory that we produced. The confidence that I didn't pull the trigger for you. You did. I didn't read the conditions, you did. You know, the only reason why that round hit that target at that distance is because you were here and followed the process and made it happen. And so, there's that success that comes too with it.

Scott DeLuzio:    27:25    That's a good way to tie it together too, with that visual or audio, no impact of the round hitting the target and it's saying that that trigger that says, yeah, I'm doing this right. I'm doing something right here. And so that probably helps to boost the confidence a little bit too. In terms of letting them know that this is working. This is something that I'm present, I'm in this moment. I just did this because I followed all of these steps and I did the thing the right way. So, that's pretty good too. The other thing I wanted to dive into a little bit is the resiliency training and we touched on that a little bit earlier and said, you can't just do the death by PowerPoint and do that type of stuff. What is the resiliency training look like? Not giving away your secrets or anything, but what does that look like in terms of what are people going to walk away with to be more resilient? So, when something happens or when the 10 years or 20 years of service are catching up to them, what are they able to take away from that?

Jeff Banman:    28:55    I think the core is backed for me around resiliency, which is kind of this big word and has been created as this act, that you'd do something. And in my world, I think that's absolutely not the case. And so, in the programs that we teach, we do balance, we balance this operational capacity with the rest of our life. And so, you see through the programming that it all aligns. It can't be all the way up great over here and not care for this other piece of me. And so really there's two factors we hammer down on consistently and then demonstrate and then train and then show how they come about. The two factors are, one, understanding transitions and how transitions work. So, we all have natural and normal transition points throughout the course of our lives.

Jeff Banman:    29:59    It's going to work or coming home, maybe that's taking a lunch break or maybe that's moving from one spot to the other, whatever it may be. Transitions are great entry points for the action and the action is recovery. So, some of the things we talk about are states of being like, what state am I in? Rather than what I'm necessarily doing. Where am I physically, mentally, emotionally in this moment. And the core aspect that we teach there is how to be recoverable. So, we break down what that looks like, what being recoverable looks like. Because if I can be recoverable, IED goes off. Bang, I'm still going. Holy shit. We got hit by an IED, which means I have a course of action I now need to take.

Jeff Banman:    30:51    If I don't recover from that moment, if I can't breathe, settle and get really present to what's taking place and recognize that now the IED is over, that's in the past, that's done. Went bang, we're on our side, rounds are flying. Whatever's happening is happening. I need to get present fast and I can't be stuck in the, Oh shit. The IED just happened. I now have a course of action. I need to take care for the people that are wounded and engage the enemy that maybe ambushing us, whatever's happening. I need to move forward in action. I can only make that transition if I can recover from what just happened and get present to the conditions as they exist to see the actions I need to take. You know, it's the same thing walking in the house, are you walking in the house at the end of your shift or the end of your time and you know, kids are flying at you, wife's/husband’s yelling at you and it's like you either go bull in China shop right into it and you add to the chaos and the problem or you settle yourself instantly, breathe, look, see what's taking place and then choose your action based on things as they actually exist, not as you think they exist or as they should exist.

Jeff Banman:    32:12    So, that's really it. That's a snapshot of where we get to but at its core that is a mental and emotional process that the more you repeat, the easier it becomes. The body's familiar to that. And, you know, it's a re-anchoring process that occurs constantly and comes anywhere from 0.0 seconds to maybe I need a couple of days. When I worked for the agency, I always had about three or four days of transition when I came back into the country and I had to be in the DC area to do my out briefs but I would treat myself to a nicer hotel room. I would have a nice dinner. I would take care of myself before I went all the way home to be with my family because I needed decompression time. And you know, as service people, we don't take care of ourselves.

Scott DeLuzio:    33:22    There's no merit that we just don't, we don't. I was actually talking to somebody a couple of weeks ago whose son, unfortunately, was a soldier and he lost his battle with his mental health struggles and he just never really transitioned. I don't think, after coming back home and one of the things that the person I was talking to is the mother of the soldier and she said, one of the things that would be great for soldiers coming back from deployment is if they just went back to work like the next day after getting home and did a nine to five kind of thing and light duty, we're not going crazy but we're not going out to the field training.

Scott DeLuzio:    34:19    We're doing the admin stuff that needs to be done and we're doing all that kind of stuff. But we're also checking up on each other and we're making sure that we are okay before fully getting back home and walking back through that door and going back to being with the family. Obviously, everyone wants to, they've been away from their family for a long time but you don't want to be the person who walks back in and is a completely different person than you were six, nine, 12 months ago, when you left. So, taking a few days like you said, and just decompressing and transitioning back into civilian world, even though you may still be in the military is crucial, I think, to get yourself your mindset back to be able to handle the day-to-day life.

Jeff Banman:    35:16    I think there's a place where we'd often listen depending on where you come from and what unit you serve in and the context why you joined the military. It's much easier to operate in the world, much easier to be at war than it is at home. That's just for sure. People don't like hearing that. I hope there's a lot of people nodding their heads right now. Spouses and families, they don't like hearing that. There is this freedom that comes with operating in the world with doing your job, with being the best you can be with being with your people. And when you come home, you're not there anymore. And everything at home feels like a nuisance, if you will.

Jeff Banman:    36:18    Well, almost an annoyance. And then we make ourselves feel guilty or annoyed because we've been away and the entire time we were away, all we really wanted was to be home and we are home and all we really want is to be back and so those are the fractures. That if we don't address them, if we don't have the conversation, we don't validate it. I mean, nine times out of 10, a lot of what we do in our speaking is we just validate the shit going on in your head. You know what I mean? Like just, yeah, dude, I would rather be at war then at home a lot of times. It's okay to feel that way. When we start making ourselves wrong for feeling that way, when we let shame creep in, when we let doubt creep in, when we let those things creep in and we don't just accept who we are and we don't communicate it that way, does that mean I'm getting on a plane tomorrow? No, but just being able to speak it out loud and say, it's a lot easier there than it is here.

Jeff Banman:    37:24    Being able to say that and having the freedom to say that and speak to what's real for us, is so important. And I don't think we get to do that. We just don't get to do that. We have to be all right, we're home now, dad's home and now give mom a break and take care of the kids. And you know, I just spent three days on the side of a mountain in Afghanistan getting bombarded and now I've got three screaming kids running at me and what am I going to do? And man, I just want to go back, you know?

Scott DeLuzio:    37:56    I'm one of the people, I'm sitting here nodding my head the way you were saying and I think I'm in that camp because I've seen a lot of people who have expressed that very same  sentiment where they just feel like it would be easier to be over there. It does make sense. There are very clear rules of engagement. There are very clear expectations for your job. When something pops up that's unexpected, chances are you know how to handle it because just probably shoot at it and until the problem goes away, right? And you come back home and every day is unexpected. Stuff happens, you know? It could be little things too. It could be the kid spilled something in the living room or whatever and it's just, okay, now what do I do and how do I handle this and how do I deal with the kid who's jumping on my back while I also have to be helping out around the house and doing all these other things and it's a lot of unknowns. You wake up every morning not really knowing what's going to happen.

Jeff Banman:    39:13    And then you have to couple that with the biology. So, you are locked into a biological state of readiness of shoot stuff, command and control and make things happen. You are biologically there. That's not a mental process. That is an internal biological process that this is where the chronic exposure comes in. You are set in a distinct brainwave pattern for an extended period of time that just doesn't turn off. You don't flip a switch and have that turnoff. And so, recognizing that it’s okay because the reason why you feel like you want to be back is because your body is still in that state and it's looking for an environment to match. I feel like I'm on and ready and looking to move and head on a swivel and this environment doesn't require that right now.

Jeff Banman:    40:18    So, let me go be where that is required. What we have to do, and this is part of the resiliency and the recoverability and these things that we talk about, what we have to learn how to do is recognize, I need to give my body a chance to actually rewire itself. I need to give my body an opportunity, my biological system, my central nervous system and opportunity to calm down because it's still running. I may logically know I'm home and everything's okay and I may want to be home and be with my family or be with my friends or be “normal.”  But my internal system is so spinning and so dysregulated and so wired for this other world that I can't align those two and then I don't belong. And then it's better to not be here and then it's better to be somewhere else. And then if I can't be somewhere else, where do I go? And then I'm feeling everybody around me and then ultimately, I just don't need to be here anymore.

Scott DeLuzio:    41:28    Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of people might, like you alluded to earlier, just feel guilty that that's how they feel and you can't change how you feel about something necessarily and you just need to, like you said, accept it and work through that situation. So, I talked to another guy on the podcast who I served with and so it sounds like pretty similar to what you're talking about. And he found the outdoors where he would go and that became his gym, his church, his therapy sessions and everything. He would get outdoors, he'd go for a hike, on a bike ride or whatever it was that he was doing. And that allowed him to transition from whatever that situation was that he was in to the next situation and it allowed him to turn that off. And I think that's something that a lot of people coming back, especially coming back from a deployment where you're on every single day, 24/7 but even police, fire, EMS that are on all the time too.

Scott DeLuzio:    42:51    Where they don't really realize that there is that transition and it's okay to go through that.

Jeff Banman:    42:58    Yeah. You have to give grace to your system to catch up. I mean, it takes a lot going through the train and going through developing yourself to be an operator at any level. Requires biological impact, requires traumatizing the system. It'd be really good. Just point blank. That's all it is. And that trauma then develops a heightened sense of awareness and capability and all the great things that make you great in that context. FYI, doesn't do shit for you at home, you know what I mean unless there is somebody breaking into your house. So, this is where the conflict comes into place and this is where the gap is because you can't talk your way out of this. You can't talk your way out of a biological state. It's not going to happen that way. And some people will, he may even argue with me some of that, but I don't think so. I think we've had enough discussions there. Therapy's great.  There is a reason for it.  And there is a reason it works, but ultimately you have to give yourself the grace to say, wow, it's almost like another person inside you and you have to let them spool down.

Jeff Banman:    44:19    And so that's why the range is great. That's why some of the things that we teach in the programming that we do, I believe are great because they're all tools that helps you regulate that central nervous system. Now enable you to actually give some attention to what's taking place, not make it wrong, just is what it is. And then reregulate yourself back to where you are now. Then you can operate. When you have to go back, it's not like if I give this up, it's gone. I promise you. I promise you you're not going to. You may choose to do something different once you understand how to regulate. And that's okay because that's a personal choice. I promise you, as a human being, you can unregulate yourself and go right back to doing your job. And right back to being bad-ass mofo or whatever it is you do. That's not a problem. It's not like you have a choice, one or the other. And I think we feel sometimes like it's either this or that and it's not that way. It's not that way.

Scott DeLuzio:    45:26    Yeah, absolutely. So, Jeff, this has been a really great conversation. I wish we had hours to continue the conversation because there's a lot of good stuff here but we are coming up on time here; so, could you tell us where people can find you and find out more about the Operational Mindset Foundation and everything else?

Jeff Banman:    45:50    Pretty easy. You can go to opmindset.org. The information on the Foundation is up there and available. You can also go to mindsetradio.com. That's clearly the website for the podcast. The podcast is out and available on all the major platforms. It's Mindset Radio, so you can just search through there at the website and link through to subscribe. Those are the two main sources. Facebook, I believe we’re at Mindset Radio Podcast on Facebook where you can just search through Mindset Radio, the Operation Mindset Foundation on Facebook and then Instagram or just Mindset Radio, Twitter, we're Mindset Radio. I'll send you the links to it all.

Scott DeLuzio:    46:33    I'll have all the links to all of those in the show notes, too. So, if you're in the car right now, don't get into an accident trying to write this stuff down. The links will be there.

Jeff Banman:    46:43    And one of the things I like to always leave is to make sure people know that I am always pretty accessible. I get messages all the time. I do my best to reply as quickly as possible, but you know, if you give me a little grace, but I've had people reach out all the time, share what's going on. We can hop on the call.  My commitment is to be available. I want to just make sure your listeners know that.

Scott DeLuzio:    47:11   For the listeners who are listening to this and might be feeling like some of this stuff resonated with you and you might want Jeff and his organization to come and work with your department or your organization to help your people out, definitely reach out to Jeff. This stuff is no joke. I mean, it works and it's going to help your department. Ultimately, if that's something that you're looking into. So, definitely reach out and give Jeff a call or shoot him a message. I'm sure he would love to work with your organization. So, thank you, Jeff for being on the show. And, like I said, all these links will be in the show notes. So, you can reach out to Jeff there too. All right. Thank you.

Scott DeLuzio:    48:10    Thanks for listening to the Drive On Podcast. If you want to check out more episodes or learn more about the show, you can visit our website, DriveOnPodcast.com we're on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at DriveOnPodcast.