Donāt be seduced by the work enthusiasm itself
Be prepared for tragedy. That being to avoid your own.
At some point in your career you will be facing this and you need to be prepared. If you are not ready a true Hell will manifest in a personal catastrophe, so donāt let it bring you down and those around you.
Just like training for the mission, you need to train for tragedy and the hurts that lurk in our thoughts hidden secretly in our brain. We wrestle with the moral visuals of horrific events, these brittle fragments of the miracles or unspeakable experiences.
To be careful with leading a meaningful professional life and your range of work you must not be naĆÆve about the reality of the natural and human tragedy of work that is associated with your discipline.
You have to defend yourself with internal mechanisms of spiritual and emotional survival.
You will be exposed to tragedy, to a structural trauma, yours and theirs. Yours may not be physical.
You will witness things that bad people do. You may visit it within your own thoughts.
You cannot be naĆÆve about these truths.
You have to know what evil is, and the complexity of tragedy, loss, grief and disaster. This is not an unknown, it is a fact. You will be facing it, and visiting it in your dreams.
Face it, forage for the truth and the harm, know its shadow and yours. Otherwise you will not be prepared for the job, the reality of nature and the dark aspects of human behavior.
You will not be a good fit for the job, you may become a problem because you did not prepare. This is where people end up becoming victims of their work. This work can devour those not prepared, and it may nip at you from time to time.
The first discussion to have with yourself is can you handle this? Are you the right person for the endurance of this pathway? What is your counter measure to combat this inner war? You need to negotiate this now, not when you find yourself in an unexpected funk.
Water Rescue is not a happy plush toy. It is not being a hero; it is not the high we get off of helping others. Its grimy, drastic, deadly and dangerous. Itās more like wrestling with the precipice between life and death and you are an assessor. We arrive at those incidents with intention to intervene on a selection process of actions.
That does not make any of us a self-appointed God, a hero, or a savior. It is a choice that you made a bargain with. Its hard work, its effort, itās a dervish between right and wrong, accident and preparation, prey and predator.
For water safety measures, this can be a volunteer, or paid professional. Both require training for the calls.
Although, most of the worldās water rescues are conducted by the general population in the moment of, or during a catastrophic event, and they do pretty good.
They may not be exposed to repeated attempts of intercession. The numbers of instance may not correlate to long term exposure of trauma. You may want to bargain now how you take a break to recharge the spirit and the flesh.
Running on a high tempo of an adrenaline flush, also has a hormonal depletion.
You have to know about balances, checks and rebate checks. Because sometimes the coupon is not enough to redeem.
And you need to increase the flesh association with nutrition, that feeds the brain.
There is emotional stimulus you can explore outside of present experience, start practicing your critical thinking and observation.
Every tragic encounter you have to reset from the chaos witnessed. There is a cost for every action, and you exhaust bits and pieces, just like burning fuel. Make sure you don't run out of fuel stranded on a dead end street.
You have to add more tools from the past tragic experience so you can constantly move forward and away from inner chaos.
The Predator in Our Mind
It makes you a person who āattemptsā to intervene and place yourself, your equipment and possibly your team in peril. If you have not faced any of these, you need to do this, or you will be naĆÆve in the moment of tragedy. Then your naivete will cost you greatly.
You may have deep depression, or PTSD. The only way to grasp reality is to wrestle with its truths. If you are naĆÆve you will be your own victim of circumstance. If you are at that point not willing to take a look back at yourself, you will blame outwardly as a victim.
Life is not fair and we have a duty to be prepared for pathological victimization. People do not think through very well what reality is. The heartbreak, the suffering witnessed. These are characteristics of life that cannot be taken personally.
There are accidents, they have causes. Weather is its own pattern of life. Earth is alive below us and we live on a broken crust. The atmosphere is a bubble of pressures and astral influences. Humans are for the most part good and bad. The deciding difference is which side they make peace with and which side they ignore.
A good mentor who has walked ahead of you is a good anchor for support. You want to look towards the durable, strong, and enduring icons and legends. What is it about their personality? How further can your learning objectives go to support your own mental and spiritual safety? Do you have a relationship with a God of your choice that guides you away from ownership of not having any hope in life?
A lot of people want to be a āwater rescueā responder. Wanting something is not doing it. Doing it is tragic.
ā¢ Prepare for tragedy.
ā¢ Prepare for managing the grief of witness, your own, your team and survivors.
ā¢ Prepare by understanding the 5 levels of risk management and focus on the extreme.
Prepare by establishing a spiritual base you can rely upon when times are tough and you question the purpose and meaning of life. (The answer is being purposeful by having meaning and defining it).
ā¢ Prepare by understanding that humans are evil (Malevolent).
ā¢ Prepare by understanding of the measures of power influenced by weather, Earth and atmospheric events.
ā¢ Prepare by understanding your equipment and PPE, how to use it properly, inspect and when to retire.
Depression has facets some of it is an effect of emotional kill joy from bitter, jealous, petty colleagues.
The negative human interface can be a catalyst that pushes another problem forward. āPushing buttonsā is an effective measure to get to your vulnerable areas of your person and cause you to blow or go.
If you get down low spiritually and emotionally or even physically; you have to keep moving. If you find that you are down and you hold yourself down with reinforced negative thoughts, you will have a harder time getting back up.
Exercise, thinking, moving, activity and nutrition that builds you up with proper rest is key, but donāt shirk from life. Face it with courage. Be brave and remember who you are.
The time to prepare for tragedy is now, train your mind. Start by addressing the evil and disaster potential that has a pattern throughout all of Earth and human history. When you gather perspective, it is easier to face and restrict buying into any false fairy tales. The facts and nothing but the facts!
Tragedy is characteristic of life. History proves to us the evidence of its measure.
Life does go on, with or without us. When disruptive negative events happen, life keeps shifting to the next reference. A good reference is when you have a negative and bitter thought, immediately chase it with a corresponding positive one. Train your mind how you train your body. Strengthen your inner determination.
Make sure you have a plan, and not just for doing they job, getting a paycheck and planning a vacation.
This is a vital part of how we organize our spirit in the value structure of loss vs. gain. Our real mission is to come home safe; and to do that, we plan.
The highest value is to plan for our spirit as well, itās what drives us! And without that, we are just another statistic.
Faithfully yours,
Shawn
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Posted: August 5, 2020
Content Creator of Rescue Water Craft and Personal Water Craft boating international education standards: Shawn is the worldās foremost authority and leading subject matter expert. She cares most about her community and the culture surrounding the safety of event service providers and Rescue Water Craft operators, working hard and dedicated towards protecting their reputation, distributing safety information and continuing to train these amazing individuals to the highest standards of care.
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