Author: Dave Smith

Dave Smith “JD Buck Savage”

One of the most powerful indicators of your level of self esteem is what do you say when you talk to yourself? I know this sounds pretty simplistic but it is a very important monitor for those who work in high risk professions. Our critical split-second decision making is quite simply getting what you believe you deserve.

If you think you deserve to win you will — if you believe you are a loser, you are.

The most reliable indicator of what you think about yourself is what you say to yourself.

While many think this is touchy-feely stuff, it has become an integral part of the positive psychology movement that includes the science of peak performance… winning!

Wearing your badge and gun means it is essential for you to win — not just on the street but in every aspect of your life — and anything that gives us an edge, from new flashlights, to better firearms, to mental skills that enhance performance under stress are all items we should take advantage of without hesitation.

For the next few days, monitor what you say to yourself.

Do you say “I” or “you” when talking? Do you talk about limitations (“you can’t”) or abilities (“I do”)?

Is your inner voice a coach or critic? Do you find yourself saying a lot of “I shoulds” or “I would if’s” or “why didn’t you do’s?”

All this is important in starting to improve you life and performance. We have to understand exactly where we are before we can move forward — make that commitment to improve, to be happy and more resilient.

Next, make a list of three things you want to improve and ask yourself what you would have to do to be better? Say your list is lose weight, improve your firearms scores, and spend more time with your friends.

My first question to you would be how are you going to know when you have achieved any one of these? How much weight? How much better a shot? How much time and doing what with your friends?

Actually, your list tells me more about your self criticisms rather than what you really want! Too many people are carrying a lot of baggage in their heads that others have given them to carry around.

This comes from friends, mentors, parents, coaches, teachers, supervisors, managers and others who have influence over us and if we believe them we can find ourselves with limiting or destructive beliefs about ourselves.

Sometimes those who think they are helping us are actually hurting us. The first week of the academy we used to tell all the women cadets to buy a grip strength exerciser since the firearms coordinator felt that the reason that so many women failed or performed poorly at the range was because of grip strength.

In talking with one of my favorite professors of sports psychology about women and firearms, she admonished me that shooting should be a positive experience for the women because it’s a fine motor skill. Our academy at the time was turning it into a negative.

When she heard we asked the female recruits to buy an exerciser without ever testing their grip strength, she scolded me that I had just told every woman in the class I thought they were weak. The ones that trusted me the most would be the most injured. Imagine their self talk!

During the next recruit class we emphasized how fun firearms was and that everyone would do well, and suddenly we had the first perfect score ever shot by a woman and the females mean score was one point higher than the males.

The class itself shot the highest class score in our academy history.

If a cadet was shooting poorly, I am confident her self talk was, “I can do better, I can squeeze the trigger more smoothly,” and her performance followed her talk!

Practice Positive Self Talk
So here are some action steps after you have evaluated your self talk. First, actively practice positive self talk. Emphasize what you can do and improve what you think you need to improve by determining measurable goals. Nothing disables self esteem like unreachable goals or expectations.

Improve your shooting score ten points this month, lose ten pounds this month, get back into that sport or activity you did with your friends this season, and understand failing to do these may be indicative of bad techniques, lack of discipline, or outside circumstances, but scolding or denigrating yourself isn’t the answer, saying to yourself you’ve learned from that and now going forward I do this!

Next time we will explore structured self talk exercises and cards, but until then, keep it positive and believe you deserve to win!

About the Author:

As a police officer, Dave Smith has held positions in patrol, training, narcotics, SWAT, and management. Dave continues to develop new and innovative programs across the spectrum of police training needs designed to assist your agency and your personnel in meeting the challenges of policing in the new millennium. As a trainer, speaker, and consultant Dave brings with him unparalleled access to modern law enforcement trends.

Dave is now the owner of “The Winning Mind LLC,”  the Director of Video Training for PoliceOne Video and author of the new book “In My Sights.” His experiences as officer, trainer, manager, and police spouse lend a unique perspective to his signature class, “The Winning Mind.”  Visit Dave’s website at www.jdbucksavage.com.

Contact Dave Smith and Follow Dave on Twitter

Credits

Article originally posted on PoliceOne, republished with permission from Dave Smith & Associates.

Dave Smith “JD Buck Savage”

Who’s training you?

One of the big issues I have argued about over the years is what is — and what isn’t — training. I have had many “experts” say video training isn’t training, or a class on mindset isn’t training.

We don’t do any repetitions, we don’t practice, so it isn’t training, they argue.

These folks are confusing the verb “training” with the noun “training.”

Training (the noun) is defined as the long-term modification of behavior. If I have you do hundreds of repetitions and hours of training (the verb) in the academy we can say you have learned this skill or that tactic, but is it training in the long run?

If the first “high level operator” you work with says to you “standing to the side of a door when knocking isn’t macho” or “wearing a seatbelt isn’t tactical,” and it changes the way you stand at a door or drive a vehicle, all of the repetitions are for naught, and the fool has been the more effective trainer with a single sentence!

Observational Learning
It is easy to diagnose what this officer did wrong or that deputy should have done to survive but often what they did reflects the effects of the many things that change our behaviors, train us, or in some ways detrain us.

Routine is perhaps the deadliest of these “detrainers” in our lives.

Familiarity truly does breed contempt for the various risks and threats we face; and every time we get away with turning our gun side to a subject, or do poor or no searches on our arrestees, it is a powerful repetition that , if not corrected by some feedback such as a good fight for your life, will become a habit, which means the bad behaviors will be done by you every time!

Supervisors should always be seeing themselves as a powerful feedback mechanism to correct an officer’s behavior back to the appropriate level of performance. When I review a video of an officer injured or killed and I see one bad habit after the other I wonder why no one cared enough to challenge that behavior, that deadly habit. Remember, if you don’t challenge a destructive behavior you are an enabler.

Once an officer is detrained by routine, others will observe their new bad habits and learn from that. Observational learning is a powerful and insidious enemy of good tactics. Humans watch and learn and our brains don’t discern good from bad very often, they just learn and change.

I often watch a television show and laugh as the hero kicks her assailants butt with great sweeping slow punches while simultaneously drawing her firearm and shooting two additional ones without even raising her weapon to eye level. I wonder how many people thought you could make a bullet curve after watching the movie “Wanted?”

How many times have you seen an officer handcuffing a suspect in a lackadaisical manner with a technique we might best describe as “half-assed” and wonder how they learned it. That perception is key because it is the technique that they have been ultimately “trained” to do, it is what they do, and all the academy training, the in-service practice, all of it is moot!

The Informal Leader
The next deadly trainer in law enforcement is the informal leader who either is detrained, macho, or foolish. The wall has many names of officers who fell because with a simple sentence or mocking phrase, the informal leader is able destroy weeks or months of training.
I remember as a young officer being mocked for wearing body armor back in 1975 by a large strapping veteran who said it would make us reckless and he could deal with a .357 without one. He implied anyone who wore one was a wimp!

I just replied every time I put on my vest I was reminded someone, somewhere wants to test my vest and I would be ready.

I know many of you expect me to tell you he was shot a year later or some such thing but it seems luck sometimes favors the stupid and the fellow had a long career marked by foolish tactics and actions that endangered other officer, but his words never improved and I often wondered how many youngsters were detrained by his influence.

The challenge is to ask yourself who has truly trained you? Do you still do the good tactics you trained to do or did some other influence change your behavior, your tactics, your habits, for the worse?  If you replay your last traffic stop in your mind, do you see yourself doing anything foolish?

Not Today
Finally, I want to challenge all you supervisors to think about the various influences on your people and your role in being the antidote for the negative training that occurs. Sergeants are the natural extension of verb “training” throughout on officer’s career.

Feedback modifies behavior and the closer to the repetition, the more effective the feedback. If one of your deputies keeps turning his back on violators, challenge that behavior, go to BLUtube and review a video of an officer getting in a confrontation because of that behavior.

Correct it , challenge it, don’t enable it.

Remember, the negative trainers — such as routine or foolish peers — are relentless in their training and it can only be countered by good training and coaching. A good supervisor sees their role as coaching for excellence and survival.

We keep safe by maintaining our good tactics and skills and it seems so often the world conspires to erode them so we have to decide to actively resist. Risk is everywhere, so remember, on every traffic stop, on every building search, on every arrest, think, “Not Today!”

About the Author:

As a police officer, Dave Smith has held positions in patrol, training, narcotics, SWAT, and management. Dave continues to develop new and innovative programs across the spectrum of police training needs designed to assist your agency and your personnel in meeting the challenges of policing in the new millennium. As a trainer, speaker, and consultant Dave brings with him unparalleled access to modern law enforcement trends.

Dave is now the owner of “The Winning Mind LLC,”  the Director of Video Training for PoliceOne Video and author of the new book “In My Sights.” His experiences as officer, trainer, manager, and police spouse lend a unique perspective to his signature class, “The Winning Mind.”  Visit Dave’s website at www.jdbucksavage.com.

Contact Dave Smith and Follow Dave on Twitter

Credits

Article originally posted on PoliceOne, republished with permission from Dave Smith & Associates.