Ben Biddick – US Army Medic Turns Emergency Manager Get Up Nation

Ben Biddick – US Army Medic Turns Emergency Manager Get Up Nation - Ben Biddick is a busy dude. He's a former Army medic. Then he worked as an Emergency Manager. Today's he's a consultant (Ideal State Consulting), trainer, author, podcast producer oh, and a father and husband; like we said, hella hella busy. Ben's focus on the concept of Get UP and recovery after trauma. This vision is tied to Ben's co-authored, Get UP, a book with Adam Greenberg Who survived a severe meaning in a major league baseball game. 

Pete A Turner and Ben got into COVID response from their military backgrounds, plus their combined familiarity with emergency response in the government sector. 

Haiku
COVID creates chaos
Easy things in life turn hard
Slow down, stay steady

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Join us in supporting Save the Brave as we battle PTSD. www.savethebrave.org​

Executive Producer/Host/Intro: Pete A. Turner https://youtu.be/mYoUxRJzXcA
Producer: Damjan Gjorgjiev ​ ​​​

The Break It Down Show is your favorite best, new podcast, featuring 5 episodes a week with great interviews highlighting world-class guests from a wide array of topics. Get in contact with Pete at www.peteaturner.com www.breakitdownshow.com Interview, new podcast episode, experts, expertise. New Interview, 5 new shows a week. Great new podcast episodes.

Transcript

​Pete Turner  0:00  
Everybody Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of your break it down show bringing you today's show with my friend Ben bidding. Ben is a busy, busy busy guy. So Ben joined, joined the army after 911 and became a combat medic and saw action and check all the blocks there. Okay, then he got out and became a state level emergency manager. Okay, check all the blocks there. He also along the way, met and wrote a book with a guy named Adam Greenberg, who was hitting the back of the head but the pitch and Major League Baseball while at the plate and battled back through all of this adversity and trauma to get back onto the field with an incredible story.​​

​Pete Turner  0:00  
Everybody Pete a Turner, executive producer and host of your break it down show bringing you today's show with my friend Ben bidding. Ben is a busy, busy busy guy. So Ben joined, joined the army after 911 and became a combat medic and saw action and check all the blocks there. Okay, then he got out and became a state level emergency manager. Okay, check all the blocks there. He also along the way, met and wrote a book with a guy named Adam Greenberg, who was hitting the back of the head but the pitch and Major League Baseball while at the plate and battled back through all of this adversity and trauma to get back onto the field with an incredible story. So they wrote that book called Get up. But also he, he works at ideal state consulting as a certified mental health integrative medicine provider, but he's also also a podcast producer. So he does a lot of things. He's also a husband, also a father. So he is constantly active in terms of helping people out and getting through trauma. And that's the biggest thing. So as he and I talk, a lot of what we get into is the COVID response taking our unique military experience, like just the day to day living under the COVID sheltering in place order. It's like being deployed, you know, like, What day is it? Well, what we will serve today? Oh, lasagna, lasagna Thursday. We're not that kind of thing that must feel familiar to you guys. So being deployed, just the adversity that's always thrown at you as someone who's in a combat zone. We're in a conflict zone right now, for sure. I mean, all of this uncertainty causes us to act in different ways. So I think it's a great conversation as we get into what it takes to get through these kinds of trauma. Like Normally, the trauma would be oldest regular run of the mill trauma, which is impossible to get through. But now you add in this COVID thing, and maybe you stack COVID with your regular trauma. How do you get through that Ben is a fantastic resource for that. If you go over to the show notes, and as he does so many things, just keep clicking on the link fast, you will get a chance to buy the book. If you love baseball, the story of Adam Greenberg is fantastic. You're gonna love that. I guess the main thing I'm gonna say is go to the show notes and click there. Hey, and by the way, go into the show notes. And clicking helps out a lot. When you go to someone else's website. Google picks that up, and they see that our website is relevant to theirs. And we get recommended together and it helps out so where to support the show, always when you buy a book, make sure you rate and review that's a big thing. I'm working on doing more of that my own self. And so hopefully I will hold myself accountable to do that. A lot of things I'm still waiting on shirts and waiting on some artwork stuff that has to come back from the shirt provider. That should be back soon. And then I'm actually working on a all new together shirt. So that will be exciting when that comes out. Hey, save the brave save the brave.org you know what to do. Here comes Ben benek everybody, lions rock productions

Unknown Speaker  3:00  
This is James. This is Jordan. Dexter from the offspring naked nice Sebastian. Yo, this is Rick Murat

Unknown Speaker  3:06  
Stewart COPPA.

Unknown Speaker  3:06  
This is handy. Somebody there's a skunk Baxter. Gabby Reese is Rob bell. This is john Leon Guerrero.

Pete Turner  3:11  
Hey, and this is Pete a Turner.

Ben Biddick  3:16  
My name is Ben vinick. And you're listening to the break it down show.

Pete Turner  3:22  
Yeah, I've got been on, you know, sometimes we talk podcaster to podcast. And of course, that is true, in this case, Ben, but you're also a very current event relevant. Guest, you know, one, you're a combat medic from the army. you've deployed to Iraq, and you've seen what true crisis looks like. But you also are not only you know, in the medical field, but you also focus on resilience. So it seems like by accident, we have great timing.

Ben Biddick  3:51  
Yeah, I've been. I've worked in service oriented fields for a long time. So and focusing on emergency management. You know, you can kind of see as our societies continue to converge, and we get more and more connected with technology and and, you know, there's a lot of challenges that happen, the speed of our communication is changing with internet based technologies. And so when things go wrong, they can go severely wrong. We have a lot of things going on with our environment or natural disasters, etc. So yeah, so basically, largely what I like to focus on is the biggest gift I could think of to give others and to find meaningful service myself after military service and a variety of other things was to serve people in developing resilience, because that is one attribute that we all need more today than ever, in my opinion.

Pete Turner  4:40  
One of the things that the emergency management community does focus on is resilience. And they often talk in terms of stakeholders, oftentimes, I noticed that no one is holding the stakes for us, the regular citizens out there, right. So the stakeholders, you know, counting fire and university and all that kind of thing. But we often lose and the army does this too, we often lose sight of the critical stakeholders, the individual person in their house, like everything is geared top down. Why is that man?

Ben Biddick  5:11  
Yeah, that's, I think it's just people get overwhelmed. There's so much information and get focused on Well, we need to take some sort of action but largely, you know, one of the I think the biggest problems also as a culture as a large culture, where we do have a disconnect or where we have a blind spot is truly to look at what is the common person's experience and how valuable is each human life so means everybody so it doesn't just mean you know this category of people or this situation we need to we are we lose sight of that, that basic reality that each person, what is their experience, and that formulates powerful responses because we're looking at people and we're not separated by all these different levels of government or the Incident Command System etc, etc. We have to look at exactly what you're saying is what happens to the family that that is in there that they don't have enough food or they're sick. They're sitting in their car, you know, and they're it's a natural disaster outside, what is the operational reality on the ground? And how can we get to them? So getting up all the scenario driven stuff, and we have all these, these things that we can get overwhelmed by information, we can get overwhelmed. We can use technology, and be excited about using the latest app or the latest technology. But really, is it affecting the common person that's out there in it? I know if you we talked about the ground truth reality. Yeah, we talked and we talked about that, it that that hardcore egoless look at what's truly happening, because there you find your solutions. And if you don't, if you distract yourself by all the cool stuff in the EEOC, if you distract yourself with your own ego if you distract yourself I'm pretty bullish on you. Because they have an agenda. You distract yourself from the real impact which is saving people's lives is making things happen rapidly to improve crisis, helping people deal with the psychological stress crisis. One get a get because that's the opportunity that's a profound opportunity to to really communicate to people that you care about them. That is the ultimate that yes, the largest look at it, the macro look of look, we have an opportunity right now not to save live corporate people in crisis, but give them an idea that this world is not a horrific and terrible place that actually we have the power to, even in adversity, have tremendous resilience and actually thrive through it. That's one thing that I'm focusing on, I have a thrive through [email protected] where really focusing on if you're in crisis, if you're desperate, think about how powerful you are, how powerful the common man is sitting in his house, the common woman is sitting in his house with their kids. Don't wait for government to save your life

Pete Turner  8:07  
yet, you're right about the whole resilience and taking charge of that stuff, I still want to stay with the EEOC and the EM, folks, because there are some critical lessons here. Because for all of the look, I love the world, one of my best friends is a national level expert in emergency management, so I'm pretty well versed in it the default to fear I mean, just think about this, declaring a state of emergency sounds terrifying, right. And really what it is, is a procedural move to unlock assets that otherwise are held in reserve or powers that are checked because we don't need that that service all the time. You know, instead of saying we're going to readiness level two or response level two, or whatever it is, it's called hit the state of emergency. You're doing the same thing to like with like folks in Florida. When they shelter in place, if there's people or maybe in southern Louisiana, if there's people that are more prepared to shelter in place, I don't know who they are they you know, they know Are they are community resilient, and they don't need a lot of external help, because they know what it's like to have no power for two weeks. So I want to talk a little bit about that, like that fear base, because when I hear the who, and the NIH and the CDC talking, they talk always from a point of fear. And honestly, for me, makes me tamp down what they say, and they're overreacting. I understand why they do it. You know, it's a big problem, and they want to get ahead of these things. But the fear based messaging and the inability to connect with the ground truth, it's a real problem in that industry.

Ben Biddick  9:47  
Yeah, absolutely. That that's the fact of the matter that the last thing that you need is fear. I talked about this a little bit recently about, you know, real leadership in a time of crisis. It's A call acknowledgement that comes from understanding the ground truth, gathering solutions from the finest minds, the evidence based minds, the scientific minds, the subject matter experts gathering that and then deploying this can be an extremely satisfying line of work, because you are actually, like we said, not just saving a life but actually helping people thrive through adversity. So when times are good, their quality of life goes through the roof, because they're thinking of that adversity, they're thinking with confidence, they're thinking with recollection of the positive experience where they bonded with their neighbors that they never knew before. Versus, you know, and that they, they came to a point where they empowered each other together to overcome the obstacle. And then you have, you know, people, these high level organizations that you don't think about the crisis in regard to how it affects people, they make it from their expertise of weather, etc, etc. And then a bunch of lawyers come in and be like, Well, you know, try shooting on the wall, what do you do and if you don't get the announcement out, and if you don't do that, and people just are not comfortable with having their normalcy, their routine and their schedule, the things that they grow used to the things that they take for granted, they're not used to that getting shaken up. And when that happens, you have a choice of how to respond. You can either respond with, you know, the best of this is that's an opportunity. I'm excited, the world is changing, I'm alive during it, no matter what happens during this, this is an exciting time to be alive, I can do so much good. Or, you know, and and, and it's unprecedented experience to be involved in and how are we going to get through this, you could look at it with that mindset, or you can look at it like, you get caught in that anxiety and anxiety is largely looking at a future reality. Something that has not happened yet. That could happen that's frightening. That about 90% of the time our minds freak out and create something terrible that could happen. We spend all our time being spent scared of that, and we missed the present moment where that's not happening. And so so largely to be that present moment focused, largely to look at it with calm, serene leadership and a refusal to allow anxiety, fear to be poured out from our expressions, especially if you're in leadership, especially if you're a high level leader of an organization that people are depending on to give sound judgment, sound reports, sound data, you know, it's it's, it's absolutely imperative that people don't give in to fear.

Pete Turner  12:33  
Yeah. And this is really easy to say there's folks that actually, you know, have a higher level problem and others whether you're, you know, our more seasoned citizens staring at the barrel of COVID or you know, your your homeless status is a lot less than mine. You know, there's there's people that really need some direct influence and I wish we were able to better flex resources to those folks, you Like when the hurricane comes when the wildfire comes. And there's a there's a home that that cares for, you know, our season. I like these in season citizens. You know, that's terrifying stuff. And it's something we're like, Hey, I have capacity right now, I'm not a public resource, but let me go help, you know, just because sometimes you just need bodies on scene and you only need them for two hours. But if we can get these beds out of here and over to this thing, and in this truck of him, boom, you know, on to the next thing, but it's, we're not quite at that level. The other thing I wanted to comment on is this alert system that we have, yeah, it's getting better. Okay, let me save that. But like my phone, my numbers registered up in the northern part of California, like North like really Northern California. And so I get all of their alerts. And many times these alerts literally have nothing like what am I supposed to do with this alert, you know, and then when the fire comes, I don't I don't get a little alert for that area. Michael, how can it be that I got the old lady is last alert, you know? And so it numbs you to these things. I'm like, Oh, what is going on? Oh, this is a crisis. Everybody must know about it. My Pocket is vibrating. And I look and I'm like, What? You know, and then legitimately like, here comes the fire that's gonna kill hundreds of people and never got a peep. Talk about that a little bit, man.

Ben Biddick  14:22  
Yeah, so emotional intelligence and mental like awareness of mental health, like huge stigma about mental health, right? You know, that the big tough guys get a cowboy up and say I'm just gonna suck it up and deal with that. Post Traumatic Stress by drinking it away. And I'm tough enough to handle it all on all this stuff. You know, true strength comes from that resilient mindset where you do experience these adverse adversity, you experienced tragedy, you experience loss experience, you know, threats and significant stress. And to get through that there is nothing there is nothing strong about just bearing it down acting like it's not a problem because it's going to come out. It's going to come Mountain alcoholism, violence, stress, suicidality, all of these types of things, antisocial isolation, it's going to come out so true strength in dealing with mental challenges where we're overwhelmed or dealing with anxiety where we experience fear. You know, some of the most profound military leaders in Special Ops, Special Forces, Special Forces, Special Operations, people are very aware of the importance of emotional intelligence, with adversity. And so those who go into these austere environments, they are taught, you know, these important lessons about hold what you got, where are you at, evaluate, breathe, Think it through, allow your cognition to continue, even in a threatening environment. And there's a huge disconnect between our military personnel and our civilian populace today. So what I like to touch on is really that emotional intelligence piece as we're dealing with people who may not have like barely any exposure to adversity. The worst thing that happened in their life was they couldn't get an Amazon delivery within seven days or something. I mean, seriously, people are living in an era of convenience that's unprecedented and amazing. And they have amazing options for you know, when we're injured doctors and physicians can do when we have illness, we just prescribe something, etc. We're living in a highly convenience world. So when people are used to not used to dealing with much adversity at all, and then we're putting these informations out from these protective agencies, not being aware of the emotional intelligent way of communicating with people of guiding them through emergencies of guiding them through situations that can lead to them having a sense of crisis, like no lie, you know, somebody can have a huge crisis just by going to Walmart and saying, like, there's no toilet paper and there's no eggs like oh my god, what is happening then there, you know, explodes because something That's been there, their entire life is no longer there. And they've never thought about, holy, holy, you know what, how am I going to get these things if it gets difficult. And so for these things to be communicated, there has to be profound emotional intelligence, there has to be an awareness of mental how people experience mental illness, of how we can prevent people from escalating into crisis, by the way, we communicate the timeliness of how we communicate, and using these tremendous options that we have for communication based on internet technology to do the opposite of what you're talking about where it's done poorly, so that it actually increased the fear increases the anxiety, sends people into crisis, because their minds are, you know, totally tweaking. So there needs to be that in that emotion in that emergency management phase as we deal with Coronavirus, a pandemic and whatever comes next. There has to be emotional intelligence in our inner empathy based thinking in how we're communicating that way. alleviate a ton of misinformed misunderstandings and misconceptions in electric power people get out there and serve in their community in an effective way. We're actually excited about whatever challenge comes next, whether it's huge or small.

Pete Turner  18:19  
You make a great point about the context of adversity. You know, it's not that the person doesn't feel it, but they don't have any other context. They don't know what you know, I guess you would say true adversity is not that it's not real to them. And it's not significant, but our immediate convenience, like, What do you mean, I can't get tacos at two in the morning, you know, I always can do that. But then you go to a place like, Oh, I don't know, you know, Missoula rock and there's dead people in the street. The police can't even pick them up. You understand that? Hey, adversity comes in a lot of flavors, and ours is pretty ours is pretty sweet.

Ben Biddick  18:54  
Yeah, I mean, you do. It's a little sobering to look at our social media feeds now where people are talking about, you know, the thing They're doing on quarantine and, and how they're frustrated or what they're concerned about. And and then I think if you know someone from yeah from some other countries that don't have what we have, I mean, they would they would kill to have what we have during quarantine. So yeah, I think it's very interesting commentary and I just hope people can develop that resilience so that we can be more I guess effective resilient and culture that that can get through challenging times without

Pete Turner  19:35  
Yeah, I want to get into another aspect. But I also want to say this, get that response to adversity, that response to crisis that a lot of us learn, like hey, slow down, you know, this won't be over in three weeks. So let's not get into panic now. And almost like as your body ramps up and the fear around it ramps up, just go slower and just breathe through it. cognate through the The automated response because that's normal. And this is one of the things where, like military and law enforcement, you know, first responders were able to calm down on these moments that were calm, but calm compared to who's around us, because we've seen this, we understand it, it's not foreign to us. And so we run towards the danger run towards the help. I like joke all the time that you know, first responders are cute, but the first response is self response. And then it's the immediate response that's around them. And then maybe a minute, maybe 10 minutes later, a first responder gets their third you know, I mean, I, if I see someone in crisis in some way, even if they run out of gas in the intersection, in Orange County, that's dangerous. You got too many cars, you know, people are going to get in wrecks, so let's get this person to help they need and I've seen the fire truck come by, see that there's help there and then they take off because there's been response so we can all respond to some way. The other thing I wanted to talk about a little bit is is when we Stand, you know, that calming thing you know, here's what we did last night. And this is this is a no shit story. I was curious how the Mexican grocery store literally across the street major street but across the street from our home store, how they are responding to all of this, you know. And so we got two groceries that we could get. And we did find at our grocery store, we were short, a couple of things, but whatever it we were totally fine. And so we went across the street, and that place was stocked fresh vegetables, a mountain of toilet paper, tons of milk, you know, and it's in part because for whatever reason in that community, whether it's a lack of funds, whether it's something else, you know, there wasn't a run on everything. Now, they were short, a few things, but less than 10% of that store was out of stuff. They had everything. And it was hilarious because literally across the street, you could walk across the street and get what you needed in the store. If you just slow down and didn't just panic and all we did was we went to the Mexican store instead of the regular store.

Ben Biddick  22:05  
Yeah, it's, it's, it's definitely something where, you know, it develop resilience that comes from facing adversity and oftentimes how, how we respond to adversity poorly so we can get, we can, you know, some of the questions that are frequently asked as people who are trying to develop resilience is, you know, when something difficult happens to you, does your family like run the other way? Because they know like, you're not going to be like, in a good state for a while because something was not going how you wanted it, or art or when in a crisis, are people drawn to you for that for that reassurance or that calm presence for for that, and that's so important, especially for children during this crisis is they you know, children react to their parents, and they see their parents in a different way. They see things they're so new to this world that Worry, we who are older are used to seeing people we've seen them for, you know, 40 5060 years we're used to that we take them for granted the little but the little gestures, the little looks on our faces the tone of voice. These children are new to this world. So they're still taking everything in and they have this like hyper awareness of pays attention more, all the things, not just language, but we see their parents nervous or frightened or upset, they read those emotions and then they make their formulation because and they make their their thoughts and they let their emotions respond to that because these are their guiding people. These are the adults in their lives that bring them food that put them to bed at night that that care for them and when they're hurt, they go to dinner, or, you know, their pain is eased so children respond to this. It is it's a it's like a virus it's if you're if you're experiencing fear unless you slow down because everyone will experience Fear it's not that you don't. It's just that you've experienced that fear or your sense of helplessness or you hear the media events that's articulated in a way where the whole world's gonna we're all gonna die. And you have a choice, especially young people who may not understand that the internet story or article by the news media is maybe more about them making money off people's fear than it is about actually giving you a fact about the real reality. And so children can't understand that or navigate that or people who don't have an awareness of that those realities and so they can get channeled right into that fear and then that can, you know, that leads to exponential problems. Whereas if, if multiple people see a few pieces of toilet paper that are not there, and believe that they'll be able to find a way to go to the bathroom safely or with hygiene, regardless of whether they get toilet paper at Walmart or not. If they have the confidence And the resilience to say, Well I have options and solve this problem, that fear doesn't even exist there then that it leads to the thriving versus the you know, that fear that starts to spread through people and then all sorts of awful things begin to happen based on that fear based on that sense of helplessness you know, shootings people Corinthians recording items and, you know, taking people's things and looting etc, etc. It's all about fear and it's all about how we respond to it once we experience it.

Pete Turner  25:32  
You talked about emotional intelligence and when we typically respond to this, I always bring up the cultural intelligence the CQ, right there's EQ and there CQ and, and if I was to unfairly define this for the audience, CQ is about groups, clusters of emotional intelligence. So it's not just you know, your neighbor from another country. It can be a different group of people, you know, the parents whose kids are all in swim versus the parents whose kids are all in baseball. And when you understand how culture works and how it flows, you understand that it's supposed to be this supposed to be what I call Miss comfort. It's not It's not that it's uncomfortable. You just don't understand the rules to this. literally think of an intersection that has, you know, four cars that has different rules than the ones you're accustomed to, like, go to Egypt. Yeah, they have lights, and all that stuff, but they don't adhere to the laws like we do. So it's terrifying to go through these intersections until you realize that, hey, these folks do it this way. They get through the intersection. It works here, I need to figure out how to calm myself and go through these things. I think emergency managers are pretty bad at this overall they don't they don't think about CQ. And so they can't accurately put themselves in the mind of the person and help them to calm that down and slow down and deal with the cultural intelligence with the problems that are in front of them not being unfair. I'm not saying all emergency managers, all state level, county level all Saying that just saying as organization as profession, so CQ would really help these guys out in trying to assuage fears create calm, yeah, these are the things like, Oh, and by the way, provision and coordinate I mean, the amount of work that you all do to move the National Guard to bring in private resources that are that are, you know, promised but never they're like, you have to actually go put these resources together, you know, activate the plan, and then your phone doesn't stop ringing and, and I hear the thing too, is as much as I'm saying, Be calm, and that's let's slow down a little bit. You go look at Gavin Newsome. That dude has been up for days. His eyes are bright red, His voice is hoarse, even the ladies signing, like she's got a bandaid on our thumb because she's signed so much, you know. So these folks are working hard. And I don't want to make light of that. But that that cultural piece, Ben. It's such a big part of what we do and we never talked about it. We always talk about each Don't get into the group style. What do you think?

Ben Biddick  28:03  
Yeah, I love that. I love that you brought that up because, yeah, and that's, and that's the thing. We're talking about a resilience piece. You know, when we talk about crisis, a lot of times crisis is born out of isolation, right? So, so we don't, it's much different if we're sitting in our room alone, and we don't have family or we're isolated in some way from healthy influences, right. So if we don't have a connection to another person or another group, we're much more vulnerable to getting in our own head and then cycling off a fear based media or whatever it is into these negative states that just lead to crisis. But if we have a group of people who, you know if you and that's that's one of the beauties of the social media that we're talking about social distancing, but we're we have we, as far as I know, most of us still have internet based technology, we're able to reach out and we're able to reach out to cultures that you're Talking about who may be a little more seasoned who may have seen this before, who may have a lot of good insight into these problems that can communicate much more clearly about these issues. And and then we can create a culture we can be proactive about connecting ourselves with a positive resilient culture that instead of getting in our own mind through isolation, we're connecting with people who are confident, calm, and based on evidence and and based on no facts. And and we can get into a place where we are much more resilient where the thing that used to freak us out, actually has taught us something and then we can five years later, we look back. A lot of the talk about post traumatic growth is when these troubling things happen. How did it make me better? How did it connect me more? What did it What did it make me reach out for that I had not done before that and and so, you know, during these adverse times, connecting ourselves with these healthy cultures, with cultures that understood Stand you know mental health to understand these feelings and these emotions that everyone experiences that's normal, healthy that just happened to navigate those with others that's a profound way to prevent suicide to prevent mass chaos to prevent really, you know, mental illness from becoming chronic. Okay, yeah, I'm totally in agreement with you that that that cultural intelligence is vital.

Pete Turner  30:26  
So one of the things about cultural intelligence EQ, the CM the EM world is getting folks to actually respond to right so how do you get the body the civilian populace to respond in a way that makes sense? And again, if you panic them if a stampede and how many times it's a trope in the movies, we can't be honest, the population will go crazy. Well, here we are proving the thing going a little bit crazy. And again, not that COVID isn't a significant thing. But there is a legitimate chance, Ben, that less people In the United States, we'll die from COVID then choke each year because it's 5000 people that choke to death, and most of them are more seasoned citizens. So, you know, we've got to take prudent measures, but also understand that, you know, we have to do a better job of being calm. Also, we have to understand that our emergency response folks are really trying to they're playing in the blindness or I'm going to be fair to you guys. Like it's hard. If you don't get in front of these things. There's real problems that can happen if it gets out of control. The other problem is, there's a cost to that and the next time we scream fire, hey, this is Pete a Turner from lions rock productions. We create podcasts around here and if you your brand or your company want to figure out how to do a podcast, just talk to me. I'll give you the advice on the right gear, the best plan to show you how to take a podcast that makes sense for you. That's sustainable. That's scalable and fun. Hit me up at Pete at breakdown, show calm. Let me help. I want to hear about it. Yeah, the problem is there's a cost to that and the next time we speak Fire. I want to be like, you know, is it a fire though? Is it

Ben Biddick  32:04  
right? Right? Yeah. Yeah, I think I really want to touch on Yeah. What you said what you had said there is it really brings up the reality as you talked about, you know when these things happen and and how do we respond to these things. One thing that I was thinking about was Sebastian younger document. He talked about how in the tribe about how when these large scale disasters happen, actually be a level of mental illness or people with chronic suicidality, who are dealing with chronic severe suicidal thoughts throughout their life, their actual symptoms seem to lift in a disaster because why? Because they found purpose, they found connection. They're connected with other people who are responding to something that is very serious and they find a meaningful purpose in their life. Oftentimes, disasters do that now. Then after Now then later on, there is an increase in in, you know, crisis responses people deal with the mental health challenges of the trauma. But you know that that comes later as people experience it, but when it's first happening such as in World War Two, the government thought Oh no, the people are going to totally fold and as the the German bombs and air raids hit England, you know, they thought that people are just going to collapse and that is not what they found that people banded together. There wasn't you know, massive looting, there was an etiquette there was manners, a new culture that developed of respect for one another. And they actually just banded together and it was a it was a shock. So, during those times, you know, we talked about tribe if we talk about mental health and, and awareness is the disease at the time of the disaster is a massive opportunity to create a positive net Work of people who can do great things and, and for anybody to be holed up in their house. When a need is is put out there, it's very profound to see the leaders to say, Hey, we need sandbags developed here. And people that used to talk smack are not like they're, you know, in town are suddenly doing this together and building bridges with each other. Seriously, those are some of the stories that our media needs to be covering, to give people hope and help them understand how they can respond in a way where we're effective in what we do. And so that our leaders have people on the ground that are not receiving like fear based messages of we need this and everything's out of control. Yours can hear from a sound local source to say, Hey, this is what we need. We're good in these ways. We could use this at this time, or it's really ramping up and we foresee we foresee the river you know, overcoming this bridge in the next five to six days. We'll need something But that colon head and an ELC. That's that's gold. You know, it's that fear and terror that just blocks a response. So yeah, so

Pete Turner  35:10  
when, when Ben saying EEOC, what he is saying and in regular people speak is the Emergency Operations Center. There's a bunch of acronyms in the EM world Emergency Management world. So, so don't be thrown off by that. And it turns out these folks really do powwow and you would be amazed at the collaborative nature of these organizations as much as I'm critical of them. They, you know, state of the art responses is something that a community like LA County, Orange County, are you kidding me? You know, like, if you're some little small, you know, super rural county, it's tough because your jobs include emergency management, you know, manager, water treatment plant manager, you know, whatever, like you can have literally seven jobs because there are only so many emergencies, but when that emergency happens, all the other hats come off. And you're the guy that has state level access national level access to resources in your time of need. So you think about these very, very remote counties. They have people there that are doing their damnedest while they do seven other jobs, to be ready and God bless them because that is not an easy job. I mean, been fighting for resources, like these guys are literally fighting for radios, not even like really high end stuff, because radios are a huge fight. Exactly.

Ben Biddick  36:30  
Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, I mean within and I was talking to the guy who works on massive acts of violence responses to schools, etc, that have active shooter incidences and stuff like that. And we're just talking about how you know from the Columbine forward and the different ways that we've been responding and how how, you know, the tactics change and and it evolves into these these points. processes we get better at responding over time. And so to be really proactive about what are the threats that we have part of part of this is preparation right to, to, to know what your resources are in all of these spaces, the, you know, a local guy who works at the, you know, who like you're saying works the water, he works at the water treatment plan, his cousin is part of the construction company that handles a number of the resources in the area connected. So so it's all of these organizations that are frequently realizing we need to band together we need to articulate who we are our purpose, we need to formulate responses. And that makes everybody better. So if the much as much planning beforehand to prepare for situations, like for instance, with COVID, I'd be the closest thing that we've had is a flu pandemic. That's similar, what lessons did we learn to that during that time, and we need to have people who are learning right now today about COVID. What lessons are we learning now and it's also very interesting to see As AI develops, you know, and as all this data is generated, how AI will help reduce the information overload that people are experiencing. And AI basically, you know, is very terrifying in some degrees. But at the same time, you also see profound power that can can really create from all of this data that we're generating every day into efficient responses based on accident, you know, 1020 years ago. So yeah, there's a ton of developments as we face these things together. You're on you get in the way, but that rational, calm mind that remained on that remains in the cognitive, not the reactive, explosive emotional state. As we do that, then, not only do we handle the present moment and the tactical situation well, but we can strategically plan even during the crisis, to be ready for the next one or to be ready for what comes tomorrow.

Pete Turner  39:00  
Hey, I want to transition into some of the other stuff. We'll get to the podcast. We'll save the good stuff for last, though. You've also written a book. And it turns out not about emergency management, not about being a medic in the military. It's about a baseball player.

Ben Biddick  39:17  
Yeah, yeah. Here's a copy of it. It's called Get up the art of perseverance. with Adam Greenberg had the honor of writing it with him, that's him at a pivotal moment in his life. As we talk about resilience, as part of part of why I focus on this is, you know, some of what I do is I help create media content that helps people develop resilience, and part of that is hearing from people who have been through awful situations. So that we can get past this kind of way of living where we just kind of run from frightening stuff or run from pain. And we just kind of run after pleasure and just kind of like live in this balanced world where we're just trying to like, stay safe, and not Not really get into too much that's painful, but like have enough pleasure to keep us happy throughout the day. And then we get into when we view the world like that, or when we take when we follow a path of living like that. It's a very unstable, we're living there has to be some bravery involved that says, There is adversity in life and I can face that comfortably and confidently and when it does hurt, I do have the strength and the ability to get through that and or a network that can support me as I do that. But largely what I do is I'm trying to tell stories of resilient people. It's Adam is certainly he has a very unique story. He was a baseball player from Guilford, Connecticut, he was a gifted athlete. He was just relentless in his work ethic when it came to athletics and baseball. He was he thrived in soccer, he thrived to basketball. But baseball was something that he chose to really pursue. After having all these colleges come and try to recruit me decided on baseball. And he just invested his life. And every day he would do 300 swings a day he needed to get his bat speed up. He'd go play a baseball game with his high school team. He'd come home and continue to practice his dad would be like, why is he not? You know, taking a break? Why is he not having a snack and whatever, he'd be out swinging the bat. And so he was just a relentless in his work ethic. And he got picked up by coach Fox at North Carolina Chapel Hill. He played for that organization and thrive there, went through this season. his rookie year at first he didn't get hit for a number of months and then and then he stuck with it and and refuse to give up at that point. And there's a month a series of pivotal moments during his career where he said, You know, I could I could cash it in, I could, I could just be done with it. Like I've done some significant I've gotten farther than most people. But he kept going because he wanted that dream of being a pro ballplayer in the big leagues. flashforward he gets called up to with his with his buddy gets called up that rarely ever happens to have two friends get called up on the same day. They call them up Chicago Cubs dusty Baker is the manager loves this kid dusty Baker talked about how when he was playing ball that Nolan Ryan was pitching and he was throwing at 100 miles an hour and he was wild. So when the manager looked down the down the dugout look for somebody in a pinch hit everybody very busy. Oh, they were like going to the bathroom.

Like, I don't know, I don't want to go out there hundred miles an hour. He's vile. But, but dusty always wanted that opportunity. Just the baker said I you know, I wanted to be the guy. I'll pitch it I'll go I don't care. You know, and I think a lot of our soldiers and things like that and and he was I believe he served in the Marine Corps reserves at one point if I'm correct in my history, but anyway, He saw an ad of that same kind of look like I want to I'm in I'll go I'm not scared. I'm ready to play. So he calls down in the dugout needs a pinch hitter calls out him up. Adam is has his bat ready. He's been waiting. And Adams getting his first official plate of parents and Major League Baseball. His dream has come true, right? He spent years and years and years invested, you know, hours every day of his life to get to this moment going out late. That steps in the batter's box takes in the whole scene, you know, the pinnacle of his career. He's on TV, a major league baseball game the first time and the first pitch comes his way and tie and he turns from it actually the ball hits him under the helmet right on his head. This is before concussion protocols. So he goes down. Little Does anybody know that it's affected his eyes. I mean, it's 92 mile an hour back of my head That's been effect laborat systems within the inner ear and visual systems where eyeballs to see a certain way. So that led to a series of tremendous adversity for him as you have that short window of time to produce and if you don't, you're gone. He persevered through seven years in the minor to get back dealing with doctors and coaches and all sorts of adversity and then made it back in a Miami Marlins uniform for one at bat. Just a legendary, really unique story and then under to help share his insights into resilience after he experienced that talk to some major legends of baseball. It was such an honor to help him share his story. He's a phenomenal human being. So anybody that wants to like that to inspire their, their, their young people, the people in their lives that need a story of positivity, or how they pick up a copy

Pete Turner  45:00  
That's, that's great. I love it. It's a little bit ironic too, because right around the time that he played there was another cubs player named Ben Christiansen that had been the other direction where he had this wasn't when he was a cub players when he was in college, but he had been a batter in the on deck circle on purpose. And and that guy's story of perseverance. Anthony Molina was blinded, you know, like you said, you know, it affects the eyes. And it's incredible to see you this guy. Gosh, it's been over 20 years now, since that happened. And you know, the weight that someone like Ben carries because of his foolish act, but also, you know, the life defining moment. And here's what I know from interviewing a lot of these kind of folks is that they're almost thankful because they become this adversity forces them to become a better person than they might have otherwise become. I've heard this story a number of times. lanie Manny Hankins is one of them. He got it. He was in the service. He was blinded outside of the service. And he's like this wonderful, magical human being now, in part because he had to go through this experience.

Ben Biddick  46:08  
That's right. And so that's why I love sharing these experiences because we talked about mental health and we talked about young people experiencing adversity or we talked about veteran soldiers, Marines, airmen, people going through these tremendous challenges where it's stressful or it's traumatic. You know, we so celebrate our athletes, this is like the culmination of, you know, nominal heights of accomplishments to be in that arena itself has to be profound and as, as military personnel go and go into this high, this, this arena of service, which is extremely unparalleled, where they're able to do amazing things on behalf of others, and to be respected for that. And then all of a sudden to have something happen. The IED goes off the the beating happens or the needle blows out, all of a sudden you're at this height of experience, and suddenly you're completely your world is completely different. And so in that moment, you know, there in that series of times, that transition can be very bumpy can be very dark and difficult. But you're absolutely right. People who persevere through that and and get the help that they need, or orient themselves to that post traumatic growth, or at least that gratitude processing of figuring it out. They often get to the point where they say that was one of the best things that ever happened, because Adam will tell you, let's say best case scenario, he's an all star baseball player. That's great. That's great. He entertains an entire world with with baseball play, does it at high level achieves his potential, but would he have been able to help a family? Were there, I believe is a tool Your old child who also in literally got hit with a pitch in his head. And they find their son in the closet contemplating suicide. Because his, he can't hear he can't play in the band anymore because the sound is so loud. It's affecting his brain in a way where it's overwhelming. He doesn't know if he'll, you know, be able to be the same person that he was. And he's contemplating ending his own life, right because of an injury and he's having he and his family are having trouble processing that how is that good? Like, Does God hate you know, like, What is? What is it? And then they and then the dad reaches out to Adam to say, could you just send a signed baseball card and Adam is like, Hello. I am not going to just send you a baseball card. I'm going to meet you. I'm going to come to your I'm going to come to I'm going to meet your son. I'm going to help him get through this and then they play catch you know on a major league, professional minor league diamond and spend time together and are lifelong friends. So Adam then looks at that and says, well, what's better, right? All Star career, or the ability to take to help this family keep their son alive as he deals with the effects of traumatic brain injury, and you know, and post traumatic stress or whatever it is. And hands down, Adam will will tell the tell you obviously, the choice that he made is, is well, if this crap sandwich that happened to me, creates that, then that is a sacred and blessing thing that that I am honored to have experienced. And not only that, but it gets rewarded by an amazing story of the players of the Miami Marlins who welcome him into that team. So he gets his official at bat seven years after his injury happens. And they welcome him in they he's not a sideshow highlight he's not a distraction from all the from the other players. He is brought in welcomed, embraced, and an entire stadium of people cheering for Adam as he goes To the plate for his official at bat after the aftermath campaign to get him an at bat at Major League Baseball to the sound of Dream on playing by Aerosmith. stepping up to the plate after seven years of suffering that's that's that's what it's all about that his life at its finest and that's why people who are resilient, create Bendis outcomes and create a finer, finer world and tell these stories is reality.

Pete Turner  50:32  
I love it man. I love it. I love these kinds of stories where someone takes it you know, this challenge and it turns out and you don't know this going in, you don't know it going in. You know, there's plenty of stories where the person who's the the super practitioner has the adversity and crushes them, you know, so it's great to have these these stories. I wanted to a little bit talk about your podcast too, because you're doing similar work, but tell us about that. adaptation podcast. Yours truly has been on it. Thank you so much for that. But let's talk a little bit about what you're trying to do with it.

Ben Biddick  51:07  
Sure. So the Get up nation podcast is built. It's designed to serve individuals, organizations and societies to develop resilience and perseverance, obviously, generated out of you know, the book Get up. When it's creating a nation, it's creating a group, a global network of people who need to find like you were talking about that cultural, that cultural intelligence. So this is kind of creating a network of people who seek out a culture of being resilient of experiencing that, of when you know, they're, they're at their end of their rope, don't see a way out when they understand what's happening. You're totally overwhelmed by challenges adversity, significant stress threats or tragedy. Then they find a network they're positive people who are there to listen to are there to support and encourage or are there to share their journey of resilience. We've had a number of guests and business leaders today. People have survived military sexual trauma, sexual assault, cancer, you know childhood abuse, violence, combat post traumatic stress. It's basically across the board, whatever adversity that people experience, whether it's their business as they as they create a startup or whether it's a professional athletes whose career gets gets taken away in a second as their as they are injured. You know, there's just exploring adversity, what it is and how people who are resilient. Get through that as a light for others so that if they're experiencing it, they can take in some of this content from their hospital bed, as they recover and rehab or as they try to get mentally healthy after after dealing with some significant challenges, trying to prevent suicide, trying to empower people to have this kind of mindset that we're talking about, where they can get to the point where the difficult things that happen to them can be those defining moments that have channeled them into a life that they've never dreamed. Your experience could be that good. So that's what the podcast is about. having you on the show you're coming out here real quick

Pete Turner  53:08  
and just out here to try to be a positive force for people as they deal with adversity. I love it. I mean it's such a neat thing you've had some incredible guests the question everybody always asked me so I'm gonna throw it at you and you've been at this for a minute so you've got plenty of guests to pick from but who stands out like when you when you pull the the old one armed bandit and thinking thing the name pops up? What name pops up, man?

Ben Biddick  53:32  
I have a number as like a flurry of them. But But

Pete Turner  53:37  
I didn't come up the first one. What the fuck is going on here

Ben Biddick  53:45  
is one that was early on. And I was like, I didn't ever know what I'm doing. And I'm just trying to figure out all the technology and I'm just trying to you know, I'm just looking for these, these stories and so I see on there A social media feed. It was on Instagram. There's a young lady who clearly just delivered a child. And the child is on her. You know, the child is here. She's holding this newborn infant on her chest. And she's holding her fist up like I am wrong. Yeah. It was just a captivating photo, you know, like, What is this about? Like, what? You know what just happened here. And she had delivered this child. During during pregnancy, they had discovered that she had a tumor inside of her that was basically the size of the child. Wow. Yeah. And because of that, she couldn't receive a lot of the medicines and paint medicines, because it would affect the child. So she went through an ungodly amount of experiences where she just literally like refused. And just went through it to give her child life. So in that moment, And she recounts that in her voice trembles with with raw gratitude and emotion and she just shares that she when that child was born, and then she just held that child on her chest and she held her fist up like I am strong like it's just like this epic talk about resilience talk about love talking about selflessness. That that was that was early on and that's that's just a part that's not a celebrity. It's not a need. It's just a person who lives with great love and sacrifice. And that comes that's, that's comes first.

Pete Turner  55:45  
Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. I mean, and that's, you know, yeah, it's she's a hero, even if no one else knows it. You know, she's done it. She pushes through the pain sacrifices for for the kid and everything else. Yeah,

Ben Biddick  55:58  
it's such a great story. Think of that kid, when that kid grows up and realizes what she did to give her life. Just imagine what that kid's gonna do. You know, I know. Right?

Pete Turner  56:10  
unstoppable. Yeah. Because mom's gonna be like you could try again. You know, you could dig deeper. You exist. She comes from digging deep. How has the show changed your life? Like, what have you harvested from it? Because one of the things I say all the time is like, monetize my show. I'm already so enriched from it, like, you know what else? There are so many wonderful experiences. So how have you grown?

Ben Biddick  56:37  
Yeah, it's just tremendous. I've grown in my understanding of technology as I've been trying to effectively get this out to people in a way that because, you know, largely, it's just it's conversations with people. And so how can I How can I share that but especially when I'm rocked by the conversation where, where we have a conversation and I'm like, for the next two hours, I'm just like, reflecting on it. When we encounter people like this, we look at our own adversity and we look at, you know how good we have it, or we think of ways that we can react better during our adversity. Largely when I was I was young, I wanted to live a life where I impacted people positively. But my life that's largely based on relationships, that's the way I view it is, it's all about people. I'm not out to make, you know, a gazillion dollars. I would love to do that. If it would create create a trend, you know, it would create impact, like Bill Gates's type of impact, where he's trying to eradicate polio and where he's, you know, saving lives from people who are dying in third world countries just simply from diarrhea, like, you know, but the main goal, whether or not there's a lot of money involved or not, is to live life in a spectacular way. Where we are grateful for every moment where we connect with amazing people like you, I am so grateful for this moment to talk with you. You know, just having a network where this starts to expand and explore it. get to meet phenomenal people who, who deal with adversity and are empowered by it and grow from it. I that I just I grow from it every day. And I'm amazed by all the people that respond to it. I'm so grateful for the people that support it. It just made me live how I want to live, which is amazed and grateful for every moment I have.

Pete Turner  58:23  
I'm going to give you the chance to ask me a question what's what's something you want to find out about me?

Ben Biddick  58:27  
What do you   want to do? So that when you at the end of your life, look back? Are ultra proud of how you live?

Pete Turner  58:39  
while I'm doing it already, you know, I've got I've got so many things to be thankful for and lucky, you know, day to day, it's always hard. It's always a struggle. But when I look back, you know, I have tended towards kindness tended towards openness tended towards all of these good qualities and you know, my legacy is not up to me. You know, what I do is I I submit the work and then the legacy is is what it is. So, I'm not purposeful in that, like I want to be something other than just a good person who's tolerant, who's kind who can, you know, hear anybody I often have people on the show that I don't necessarily agree with, but my job is not to agree with them. My job is to illustrate them. And so if I continue to do that, I'll be proud of whatever whatever body of work it is because you know, I've made tons of mistakes, I accept that and I often say I made a really bad person, but I'm always striving to be a little better a little kinder, a little more tolerant and you know, a better illustrator of things and people awesome. Love it.

Hey, man, thanks for coming on the show. That's that's an easy hour right there and everybody's gonna love it because you're such a good dude and people are gonna go check it out. Everybody should go to get up nation go to get up nation podcast calm, and you can get a chance to go through the entire pallet of shows. Is there some really excellent, good well actually, I was looking To the KC Decker, because I'm always fascinated by Pro Bowl riders because those people are insane.

Ben Biddick  1:00:07  
Yeah. Oh, you, you there's no common there's more common so get ready.

Pete Turner  1:00:12  
Do you hear that excitement? That's what I'm talking about with podcast folks. Like we're so excited about what we're creating. We get to do that for a living. So, God bless, man, I think I appreciate you so much coming on. Thanks for staying healthy. Thanks for staying safe. Thanks for helping everybody out. I really appreciate

Ben Biddick  1:00:26  
it's been great, man. It's been great. Let's keep in touch.