Episode 26: Precipitation Relocation-Skin in the Game with AZ
Asking for help from others is admirable, but buying into first helping yourself is crucial for success.
Come along with AZ on a snow-removal journey where she draws parallels between precipitation relocation and putting skin in your self-improvement game.
So what, now what?
If you're going to ask someone for help, especially if you're not compensating them, make sure you're ready to follow through and take action.
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Annette: [00:00:00] Thank you for joining me on the Fire Rescue Wellness Podcast. I'm your host AZ. I find the research and resources and then provide the fire service with the so what now, what? To ensure the health and well-being of every member of our profession together. Let's thrive. Hey. Hey everyone. It's episode 26 of the Fire Rescue Wellness Podcast.
I am AZ. Thank you for joining me today. Call to action for you. Head over to my website, www.firerescuewellness.Org, and get signed up for my email list. I try to send out some good nuggets periodically, so get signed up for my email list. I will put a direct link to do that in the show notes. Thank you very much.
Alright. If you have flown. If you have ever taken a ride on an airplane, what do they tell you in the pre-flight instructions? [00:01:00] They say, please apply your own oxygen mask before attempting to help others. And that makes sense. We listen, or actually, let's be honest, we don't listen when they tell us that, but it makes sense to, in that situation, apply your oxygen mask before we help others.
So today I'm gonna take that advice and go in a little bit opposite direction and as usual, on the Friday short episodes. , you get an AZ story. So here it is. For most of my adult life, I have lived by myself, and so when lawns need to be mowed, when snow needs to be removed, when things need to be done inside or outside the house, most generally, I do it myself.
Not to say that I never have help, but I pretty much count [00:02:00] on if something needs to get done. I'm going to need to do it myself. And so, although I appreciate the power of a good excruciating Illinois snow removal project, I also don't want to be spending a lot of time outside doing precipitation location actually precipitation relocation.
And\ so maybe it was probably close to 18 years ago now, I bought a snow blower and not one of those little ridiculous ones that plugs into the wall, not a snow thrower, a big ass snow blower. Now again, I'm not lazy, but I just don't wanna spend all of that time moving the snow. Also, I try to be generous.
If [00:03:00] my neighbor across the street, if her husband's outta town, I'll go over and snow blow their driveway. I also try to do the sidewalk, not just in front of my house, but several houses in each direction, and when it really snows a lot, I take my snowblower over to the fire hydrant and do a nice path around the fire hydrant for my local firefighters.
So I would like to say that I am not selfish with my resources. I'm not unwilling to help other people. However, I had a neighbor for a while. He doesn't live here anymore, but I had a neighbor for a while who would stand on his driveway holding his shovel, watching me snow blow my own driveway and the sidewalks and whatever else I was gonna do for the day.
He would stand there and watch me, but he [00:04:00] would never stop removing. He would never. Excuse me. He would never start removing the snow from his own driveway. He was just waiting for me to get finished and then see the snow on his driveway and go take care of it for him. Now, let me tell you, not gonna do it! If you are unwilling to start moving your own snow, I am unwilling to take my time to help you.
Now, on the other hand, after he moved out, a young family moved in. I love them so much. They had the most adorable children. So cute. And let me tell you, Megan was out there with the three children in their snowsuits [00:05:00] and moving her own snow.. And so of course I stopped the snowblower. I told her to go back inside.
I told her I would take care of it, and I was happy to do so. So again, I'm not selfish, but if you are unwilling to help yourself, I am pretty unwilling to help you, even if you're paying me a lot of money. Even if you are my client, if you're unwilling to help yourself, I can't help you not for any amount of money.
So, , a lot of firefighters have come and gone in my department and when I first started, many of them [00:06:00] knew that I had previously worked at a gym, and so they asked me, can you write me a program? And I used to do it. I used to spend a lot of time and energy writing these programs for people. And they were super excited about it, but I'm gonna say a huge percentage of the time they never followed through and did the program.
And then a year or six months, or who knows, two years would go by and they would come and ask me again, can you write me a program wash, rinse, and repeat. And so at some point I realized I can't help these people, most of them. And not only am I not helping, I am wasting my [00:07:00] time. And so I came up with a process whereby I require people to put skin in the game.
I'm still willing to help, but I require you to put skin in the game first, and I don't make it super difficult. I just make it enough of a barrier to entry that it's easy to sort out the people that are going to do something with the program I gave them versus the people that are gonna look at it, say that's really cool and never look at it again. And so here's my process. If someone asks me for a program, heck, if someone asks me if I can work with them one-on-one and they are going to pay me, this is what I do. I say, I am [00:08:00] happy to do this for you, but first I need you to. walk every day, a minimum of 10 minutes, ideally around 30 minutes, most days of the week.
And I need you to record it on a piece of paper, on an app, whatever you wanna do. And at the end of the 30 days, I need you to turn it into me, and then we'll figure out what the next steps. because let's be honest, if someone can't walk a minimum of 10 minutes every day and be accountable for logging that every day, they're not gonna do anything with the best program in the world either.
And I do the same thing with people who ask me to help them figure [00:09:00] out their eating. I ask them to do a five day food log, not a recall log, not where I try to remember what I ate three days ago, cuz that's not happening. A five day log where they are recording in real time, either in an app, on a piece of paper, in the notes, in their phone, recording in real time what they're eating.
I'm not judging them on what they're eating. In fact, to be honest with you, I don't even really care about that information that I get back from them. Although it is helpful to see how their baseline eating is. But what I really wanna know is, are you dedicated enough to do this tiny task for five days in a row before I invest a lot of time and energy trying to educate you on how you should be eating. [00:10:00] So I ask for skin in the game, and by getting skin in the game, I am more easily able to sort out the people who I can really help. And so, from your perspective, think about this. If you are going to ask someone for help regardless of whether this is a transactional process or not, regardless of whether you're hiring a personal trainer or a coach, or whether you're asking a coworker for help. If you are going to ask someone else for help, you have to be able to help yourself first. Put some skin in the game. That's all I got for you today.
AZ is out.[00:11:00]
