Think Exhaustion Is The Secret To Falling Asleep? Think Again

In this episode, Andi dives into why someone so exhausted can't get into a restorative sleep and what you can do - even while working crazy shifts-- to get your sleep back on track.

What You'll Learn:

➡️Tired and wired,  can't fall asleep often waking a few hours later tossing and turning for a fitful sleep.

➡️Fall asleep fast and struggle to wake even after 10+ hours of sleep.

➡️Working 12, 24-hour shifts is enough to exhaust anyone.

➡️And a lot more! 

Favorite Quote

“There is nothing macho about going without sleep. Any 10 year old girl at a slumber party can do it. The macho thing is to manage your sleep. It is not acceptable to show up for work, sleep deprived.” Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

Are you ready to learn all the tools needed to live a 911 lifestyle that can help you stay strong throughout your entire career? Then Gain The 911 Lifestyle Tools Today! ➡️ https://bit.ly/3trdE3C

If you want to learn more about the 911 Elite Performance Program before joining, Book A Call with Andi here! ➡️https://calendly.com/911lifestyle/25min?month=2022-06

Or connect with Andi Online! 

Learn more works of Andi at www.911lifestyle.com

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I'm Andy Clark, mom and wife of an officer I've been reversing and preventing

burnout and first responders since 2018.

Welcome to the 911 Shift Ready podcast where we will dive into sleep, anger,

energy, hypervigilance, anxiety, and other burnout symptoms in order

to arm you with the knowledge, understanding, and tools beyond exercise

and nutrition to be 911 shift ready.

So you can thrive not only for the remainder of your career but

also at home in your family life.

And then bring those tools back to your service.

So the compound effect can take place and together we can decrease burnout

in the 911 lifestyle community.

Welcome to episode 11 of 911 Shift Ready podcast.

Now a lot of research has been coming out with sleep

deprivation and first responders.

And one thing that has been new for me in my findings is learning that

the number one reason that officers commit suicide, that they make

ethical mistakes and excessive force is because of sleep deprivation.

Now, I did know about the ethical mistakes and using excessive force.

There have been some phenomenal studies out there showing that.

Even the first couple of hours of a shift, the amount of mistakes and issues that

occur when an officer or a first responder is sleep deprived is astronomical versus

somebody who has had enough sleep.

The one that surprised me is learning about sleep deprivation.

And it's the number one reason officers commit suicide.

Now, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, he says that the easiest way, one

of his quotes is that, the easiest way for police officers to reduce

the chance of poor decision making is as simple as closing their eyes.

I beg to differ a little bit on this one because if you think that exhaustion

is the secret to falling asleep, I'd encourage you to think again.

I mean, I get it.

Working 12, 24 hour shifts, often there's OT, there's not enough time in between

shifts to even get eight hours to get what you need that it really makes sense.

That when you are working so much and you are so exhausted that as

soon as your head hits the pillow, you will fall asleep and you'll

fall asleep, fast into a deep sleep.

And your body will feel better when you wake up because you

went to sleep beyond exhausted.

But the thing is, is that your body has a different idea and you could

be landing in one of two camps.

So camp one that's where your brain is really struggling to stay awake.

While you're driving home, you may be grabbing a snack or eating

with your family and you're so exhausted that that task has you

wishing that you could be in bed.

You may be hanging out with your family and trying to stay awake

or even falling asleep, where your kids are like "Daddy or mommy.

Come on, wake up."

And you're just beyond exhausted, but then as soon as your head hits

the pillow for you to actually sleep your brain powers up.

Thoughts start flying around, thinking about, you know, getting the tires

changed or the oil checked in your car.

You might be thinking about if you forgot a detail on a report

post call on your last shift.

You might be replaying conversations that were frustrating you during the

day at work with the admin or with your spouse or something on a call.

Honestly, it can be absolutely random thoughts, things that are stressing

you out, bothering you, things that you don't wanna forget, but

it's like you laid in your bed and your battery instantly recharged.

So instead of laying down and falling asleep, you're tossing and turning.

You're tired and wired.

From what I can hear from some of you or what I hear from some of the responders

that I speak with, it can take one to two hours until you fall asleep.

Now 30 minutes is hard enough, but sixty, ninety, a hundred twenty

minutes that is torture when your brain will not shut off and fall asleep.

And then what happens as well for many is that you wake up a few hours later as

well and go through this process again.

Tossing and turning, your brain's powered up again.

And these revolving thoughts are back and they can last again another

hour, two hours until you fall asleep or give up on sleep altogether.

And this pattern can repeat for those of you that are in

camp one throughout the night.

Each and every night that or time that you are falling asleep.

And you're always waking though with a battery that is flashing.

That battery that needs to be charged.

You're feeling hungover, disoriented when you didn't even drink the night before.

So that's camp one.

You may also be in camp two where you fall asleep easily.

As soon as your head fits the pill, you fall asleep and you

can stay asleep for 12, 15 hours.

You may even miss your alarm.

Now this used to be my husband.

I remember my mom making comments about how much my husband

slept anytime he was around.

Either he'd be working or sleeping.

He'd nap in the afternoons.

He'd be the last person to wake.

Usually we'd all have already eaten breakfast and moving on with our day

before he would even come into the room when all of us had gone to bed

at the same time, the night before.

And I'd have to often wake him up on his days off so he could actually see his kids

and get some things done around the house.

And so for some of you, you might be thinking that this seems

like a dream to you to be able to sleep that amount of time.

But the one thing that both camps have in common one and two is that both of you

end up waking with that absolutely empty battery where it needs to be recharged.

Your cell phone will not function without being charged.

When it's absolutely dead, it powers itself off pretty much that's

how both of you are waking up and where sleep did not restore you.

And you end up requiring a pot of coffee, basically to start being

a human and to be able to even start waking up in the morning.

So one of the biggest misconceptions when it comes to sleep and first

responders is believing that working your long hours, being exhausted

will help you sleep better.

And the more tired you are, the easier it will be to fall asleep

and get into that restorative sleep.

But has there ever been a time where you were working, a shift that turned

into overtime and you were counting down on the time until you could be

in your bed sleeping only to find that the moment you did hit your

pillow and your body wouldn't sleep?

Or you did fall asleep, but you didn't wake up recovered?

Personally, I don't know of one responder who has not experienced this.

So clearly being exhausted is not the solution to getting a deep restorative

sleep where your body can heal, repair, and recharge, so you have the

energy and focus for your next shift.

So the suicide rates can decrease.

So that the struggles on shift you're able to make better

decisions on shift can improve.

Now, if we look at this from a different lens, it's almost like

putting your kids to bed when they're way past their bedtime.

You know, those over tired kids where they get that second wind, you

think, oh, this kid should be going to bed and you get busy doing stuff.

And then all of a sudden this kid is like running around wired and

you're trying to get them to bed.

You may have a bed routine, but you missed that window of opportunity.

So you might have your lights dark.

It might be quiet.

You may have given them a bath and calm music and you might have read to them.

Everything you did should be things that we say are what you

should do for that bed routine.

To prepare yourself for sleep.

But as soon as you walk out of the room, they're going to the bathroom,

they have to pee, they want water.

They're pretty much having a dance party.

And this is the same thing that happens to you when you are beyond

exhausted, where you miss that window of opportunity and you are trying to sleep.

You get that second wind and basically a dance party is starting up in your head.

The thing though, is that a child not getting sleep means that we

have a cranky kid the next day.

Maybe some tantrums, bad decisions and that may end up in a cutter scrape

or an exhausting day for the parents.

But it's an entirely different story for you as a responder.

This is actually a matter of life or death.

The daily Dayton news had a report on recapping a training that

Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman did.

And in that training, he cited a study by Force Science Institute that addressed

the impact on fatigue, on officer's performance in deadly forced situations.

The data found that many fatigue measures, so an officer being absolutely

exhausted, tired co-related strongly with officers impaired decision

making and slowed reaction times within deadly forced situations.

So the poor sleep quality, so not getting a good sleep that's

that tossing and turning or poor sleep quality, you're absolutely

waking up with that empty battery.

Greater total time awake.

So the longer it takes you to fall asleep, waking mid sleep and then

the more days that you did work nights, different swing shifts.

The accuracy of this officer's decision to shoot or don't shoot

slowed their reaction time.

So Colonel Dave Grossman was quoted as saying, "You see a video of a cop doing

something stupid and you say, ‘That’s just plain stupid,’” but I'll tell

you why, because he's sleep deprived.

Sleep deprived people do stupid things.

Now this was an example of police, but there are the same struggles

occurring in fire, occurring paramedic, dispatchers, corrections

when you all are sleep deprived.

When you are struggling to fall asleep, struggling to stay asleep.

When you are waking up feeling like your battery is empty and you

can't recharge and mistakes happen.

Mistakes that can cost you your career or worse they can cost you

your life or somebody else's life.

And so studies like this that Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman pointed out

there are lots of them available to you if you just go into PubMed.

PubMed is where I go to for all of my research studies.

PubMed is very reputable solid journal research studies.

And you search fire plus sleep deprivation or EMS sleep deprivation,

police sleep deprivation.

Lots of different studies will pop up each one looking at a different

effect of sleep deprivation.

So different health issues, diseases, decision making, judgment.

There was one that I saw on car accidents on and off duty or car accidents

driving home from shift or to shift.

Some of the studies are showing as well.

That it's actually the first couple of hours shift where a lot of the

mistakes and struggles happen.

And it was interesting you would think that when an officer had slept and

is on their way to work, even if it was just four hours, six hours, that

car accidents would be less than post shift, but car accidents were high.

So dive into some of those, if you really wanna start looking into this research on

sleep deprivation with first responders.

But before we dive into though, how to get a better sleep as a first responder

let's review first, what the actual definition is of sleep deprivation.

So the term sleep deprivation refers to getting less than the needed

amount of sleep which for adults ranges from seven to nine hours.

Okay?

So sleep deprivation in an adult is less than seven to nine hours

of sleep on a regular basis.

Chronic sleep deprivation is known also as insufficient sleep syndrome.

It is defined by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine when sleep

has less than seven to nine hours persisting for three months or longer.

So I often hear that four to six hours of sleep is a good sleep for many of you.

That is the most common thing I hear.

"Oh yeah.

I got six hours of sleep last night.

That is a great sleep.

Four hours is good.

Six is great."

So most of you aren't even getting that and that's including on your days off.

So this is when you have that time to be in bed.

You have the time to get those seven to nine hours of sleep.

Your body's only able to get four to six hours of sleep.

So if less than seven to nine hours of sleep for more than

three months is chronic sleep deprivation where do you fall?

No judgment here.

Absolutely.

This honestly, I see this all the time.

That four to six hours is the average.

So if you are know that you're not alone.

But also know that it doesn't have to be and that you are sleep deprived.

So how many hours do you get on average?

Are you able to get a good, solid sleep on your days off and wake up with energy?

That's the thing you may be able to sleep more on your days off.

But do you wake with energy?

If the answer is no.

As I said, this doesn't have to be, and there is a solution.

So let's dive into that now.

So there's two steps to this when we're talking about what needs to

happen in order to start improving that sleep quality and being able

to lay down, shut your eyes, fall asleep, stay asleep, weak with energy.

And that is for you as a first responder is first one is understanding how your

circadian rhythms work for a first responder 'cause it's, it's really

needs to be understood in order for you to start making changes necessary.

Because what you need to do will be different than that of a civilian.

The second thing is to learn how to support your circadian rhythms on any

shift schedule, days, nights, first, second, third shift, 24s, whatever you

are working is to really understand that.

So let's dive into step one is understanding and helping

your circadian rhythms.

So for most first responders that I speak with.

They believe that their body has the ability to adjust to

different schedules naturally.

Pretty much the same as what would happen with jet lag.

The thing is, is that there are differences between adapting to a

new location, a new time zone and and shift work, which are, and that's

what's causing your sleep struggles.

What I'll explain to you right now, so that you are as prepared as possible

for shift work and for your sleep.

Going back to that article in the Dayton News.

Lieutenant Dave Grossman was saying there has been a push recently

for police officers to work 12 hour shifts or rotate shifts among

the officers in the department.

These are mistakes.

He said that when departments use 12-hour shifts, there is a rise in

complaints, arise in internal affairs, investigations and traffic accidents.

At the end of a 12-hour shift, people are exhausted.

He said "Rotating shifts are taking years off of people's lives because of the

months it takes to adjust to the new work schedule and everybody eventually loses."

Now here's the harsh reality.

Yes.

12 hour shifts are tough.

24?

That's even a different ballgame.

Especially at a busy service, where you aren't getting any time

to close your eyes on that 24.

And the exhaustion is real.

I mean, you're human.

You are a human being that does need sleep.

The thing is, is that Grossman refers to it taking months to

adjust to a new work schedule.

And I'm not sure any of you actually have a routine work schedule on paper.

It may look like a regular schedule on paper.

You may have a block of days of block of nights.

You may have your 24s, your days off.

First, second, third, you may just work second shift.

You may only work third or only nights only days, but in reality, if you add

in double shifts that many of you had to cover, especially during COVID where

you're doing 48s, you're doing 24s.

If you did a 12, you're now doing a 24.

Any of these extra shifts you're adding in OT, you've got rotating shifts

where you do days, sometimes nights or a combo where two days, two nights.

For those of you that do a four on four off shift we've

got first, second and third.

It really depends on how your service runs their shifts.

And there are, it blows my mind how many different shifts there are

throughout north America, UK and Australia, which is where I work with.

And the thing is, is that none of them.

None of them are regular, right?

Like, so my husband technically works a Monday to Friday seven to three.

That's what it looks like on paper, but with being on OT, being called

out to work in the incident command center for missing persons or any

time that they need the incident command center, he may be called out.

Doesn't matter time of day.

There's often changes in his work schedule due to special events.

This year, late January to early March, he accrued 232 overtime hours.

That was actually in his first 29 days.

He calculated after working 29 days straight which he had this 160 regular

on top of that he did 232 overtime hours.

So that's like doing two more full-time shifts in there.

Your schedules really, they never look like they look on paper.

And so that's why as well as the wife of an officer, that all of us spouses, we

have a plan B in case you get called in.

In case you're end of shift, but you're on a call and you can't come home.

We always need to have that plan B.

And I don't think that you're going to argue with me that your shifts are long.

You work days and nights, even if you technically have a set shift

that you work on paper, your shifts are absolutely unpredictable, right?

So let's dive into how your unpredictable shift schedule is different than jet lag.

So our bodies, they are designed to know when the sun comes up and when the sun

comes up, our cortisol, which is our waking hormone, that energy, it gives us

the energy and it also is the hormone that gives us the ability to manage stress.

So when the sun comes up, that is when our body tries to make it the highest.

You should have the most amount in your body then.

And throughout the day, this cortisol slowly lowers and then

as the sun sets, your cortisol starts getting to the lowest.

But by the time the sun has set in its dark side, your sleep

hormones start kicking in.

So it's this rhythm, this 24 hour rhythm of sun rising, cortisol, that energy

ability to manage stresses its highest as you're going through the day that lowers.

Sunsets, gets dark out, cortisols at its lowest that energy's at its lowest

and your sleep hormones kick in.

And those kick in those are the highest at that time.

And then they start lowering through your sleep.

So cortisol can be its highest.

It's this rhythm, this 24 hour rhythm.

And then with jet lag, when you're traveling to a different time

zone, your body starts to adjust by following the sunrise and the sunset

in the new location that you're in.

So your body starts knowing when to have this cortisol highest and

when to have it at the lowest.

And you may already be able to see the difference between that and your very

unpredictable shift work schedule.

With shift work, you're sleeping all times day and night and it's not correlating

with the sun rising and the sun setting.

It's totally random times, days, and nights.

So your body keeps trying to shift and adjust based on the sun.

And then you keep trying to battle it with "Nope.

I just did a night shift.

Even though the sun's coming up, as I'm driving home from work,

I'm going to go to sleep now."

So over time your cortisol has no idea when to be at its peak when to

lower and it's all over the place.

It's messing up your sleep.

It's messing up your energy.

So when you're trying to sleep, what happens is cortisol loves to sit

in that frontal lobe of your brain.

That's where it likes to hang out when you're awake so that you

can think so that you can problem solve so that you can be ready for

any stressor that comes your way.

In your mind when it's sitting there, your mind's not shutting off.

So you start having these random thoughts, stressful thoughts, frustrations, every

thought under the sun, no pun intended stops you from being able to fall asleep.

So it's fascinating because I'm pretty sure your intention is to get your

body to naturally fall asleep and wake based up on your shift schedule.

But how can that work if your body is designed to sleep and wake with the sun?

So understanding how your cortisol is fighting your shift sleep schedule, trying

to work with the sunrise and setting the way your body was designed that's

the first step to you starting to be able to take back control of your sleep.

And if you keep relying on your body's natural ability to adapt your sleep to

your erratic schedule on its own, you will continue to struggle with falling

asleep, staying asleep or you may be able to sleep tons but regardless, you will

wake up with your cortisol so low that your energy will be tanked from the time

that you wake so that you have to push.

The moment your eyes open, you are pushing and your ability

to handle stressors in your day decreases more and more over time.

All right.

So we've covered that we have definitely covered you understanding

how your circadian rhythms are fighting one another with a shift

schedule for sleeping and waking.

And that leads us into step number two, learning how to support your

circadian rhythms on any shift schedule.

Now, many of you may have tried lots of the sleep aids out there.

Over the counter sleep aids, homeopathic remedies, prescriptions.

You may have also changed your diet and you've added in things that you've been

told that should prepare you for sleep.

Limiting screens, showering before bed, cool room, things that we said before

with when we were giving the example of the kids, where soft music, dimming

the lights, all of these things to prepare you for sleep this list goes on.

And when you've tried so many of these things and nothing seems to work.

At least with many of the responders that I work with, they end up resorting

to over the counter cold and flu remedies like NyQuil and then they

often mix that with a shot of alcohol.

And I don't blame you because quite often those will knock

you out and put you to sleep.

It's beyond frustrating when you're trying everything and nothing seems to work.

No matter what you've tried you still wake up exhausted and you

have to push through your day.

Even if you were able to fall asleep a bit faster or stay asleep a bit longer.

It's frustrating when you're still waking up exhausted.

So, as we talked about though in episode number three, the episode that's how

to stop snoring on any shift schedule.

Most of these remedies are sedatives.

So the sedative is where it actually knocks you out, but it doesn't give

that signal to your circadian rhythm allowing you to lower that cortisol,

increase your sleep hormone, allowing you to get into a deep restorative

sleep which ends up resulting in you having poor quality sleep.

A greater total awake time where you are waking mid sleep, not able to

fall asleep, and it decreases your ability to handle stress as well as

your accuracy, your decision making, slowing down your reaction times on

the job and increasing your short fuse.

And this result in mistakes, misjudgment, losing your cool on a call.

And if one five second video goes viral of you losing your cool, of you making

mistake your career could be over.

Or worse someone's life may not be saved.

So what do we do?

The first thing is to stop guessing and to start tracking your sleep so that you

know what is and isn't working for you.

We'll dive into how to do this today, but first let's talk

about why this is so important.

So one thing alone will not get your circadian rhythms back on

track and help you with your sleep.

You may be trying like all these sleep remedies, all of these tools.

One thing will not give you that end result of getting you to fall asleep

easily, stay asleep and wake with energy.

It's really an accumulation of tools that work together.

And as you know, from past episodes, we combined those tools into three phases.

I believe it's episode one we actually dive into these more in detail, but being

911 shift ready, we need to make sure that we have that phase which is where we

are working with your circadian rhythms, working on sleep, making sure that your

body know which end is up on shift work.

We also need to be strengthening your resting system.

And then we also need to work on what you're doing post shift to recover.

All of these need to be in place working around considering your shift work,

considering what happens on the job, considering these 12 hour, 24 hour shifts.

So we can be working on like the sleep module from our program in the 911 shift

ready section that teaches you all about the tools to fall asleep and stay asleep.

But if you aren't adding the tools to help you strengthen your resting

system, then your body can't shut down.

And when it's time to sleep, you aren't giving your circadian rhythms, the

right cues to get the cortisol working.

And if you're not doing the right things to recover post shift, then you will be

affecting as well your circadian rhythms.

So each lesson compounds on top of one another and strengthening your stress

system and training your circadian rhythms to understand when to downshift

and sleep and when to wake with energy and have a strong stress system is key.

And that's where tracking your sleep helps you know what tools are working.

What tools aren't so that you know, what path is best for you?

When you're looking at your stats, when you see that one of the tools that

you implemented gives you 10 minutes, more of deep sleep or the time that it

took for you to fall asleep was less than your average then that shows you

that what you are doing is working.

And that is one of the tools that is going to help get you to your end game.

And when it's taking you 30 to 45 minutes to fall asleep instead

of 60, 90, 120 I mean, 30 to 45 minutes is still a long time.

It's not your end goal but understanding and watching your stats as you're

tracking them, as you're tracking your sleep that "Hey, it's taking

me less time now than it was."

then that decreases the frustration.

And it helps to keep you motivated as you're seeing the

progress that you are making.

And to add to this, there really isn't one solution for everyone.

So yes, we have steps in our program that we do to teach you but every tool

that we are teaching you one may work really, really well for one person and it

may not work as well for somebody else.

One responder may swear by one supplement, I mean, you hear this all the time.

There's probably guys saying, "Ah, this is what I use for sleep.

You've gotta try it."

and you try it and it doesn't work for you.

And you're like, "What the heck?

Right?

And this is the thing.

When you are tracking your data, when you are tracking your sleep data and you

see that the latency, the time to fall asleep has decreased, not end goal, but

is decreasing from something you're doing.

If you're seeing that your deep sleep is either not being affected by something,

it may actually be getting worse.

You might be decreasing your deep REM sleep, which is your restorative sleep.

Then, you know, that that is not the supplement for you.

It is not a one size fits all.

So that is why tracking your sleep and stress data is really, really

important for you to be able to figure out what is the best path for you.

And it allows you to start taking control, getting you back into that

driver's seat of what is best for you.

It's kind of crazy that most first responders don't track their sleep.

I mean, truck drivers, they document their sleep.

They have to by law stop driving when they have not had enough sleep.

Airlines they don't want to crash one plane, given the option,

airlines would rather have no planes in the air than to have a tired

pilot flying one of those planes.

Which is why pilots track their time between shifts.

And this should be true for first responders, but I mean, you and I know

that that would most likely end up first off if a service was to roll this out and

everybody complied that pretty much every single one of you in your service would

show that you're all asleep deprived.

And that you all would actually not be able to be on shift and

you would need time to catch up and get your sleep back on track.

Thing is, is that if a service was actually to do that as well, then they

would have to make a lot of changes internally to the schedules, to how

they run things in order to support you as best as they can so that you

can come to work less sleep deprived.

So, because services haven't made these changes yet thing is, is that

I am holding onto the hope that this will happen in my lifetime.

I am hoping and praying that services will start tracking more sleep but the

thing is is that it's not happening yet.

So you can start taking control of tracking your own sleep, and you can

start working on getting a much deeper and restorative sleep as possible

working with your shift schedules, working with everything that your

services are currently throwing at you.

Does this mean that, you will have every single day where you're not exhausted?

Absolutely not.

Not in your career, not in your service, but we can make sure that you have the

tools and the knowledge to make sure that you are maximizing your sleep as often

as you can based around everything that your shift is throwing at you so that

you can get out of sleep deprivation.

And you can start getting restorative sleep, start healing and repairing your

body as much as you can so that when you are thrown curve balls, different

assignments, a huge trauma college just takes such a long amount of time.

Then you will have the skills and the tools to be able to handle that

because you're not going into it in sleep deprivation and you'll

be able to recover quicker after.

Now, isn't it important to take back control of your sleep instead

of waiting for things to change?

I do.

I think of you guys as resilient tactical athletes.

Now, when I'm saying this like you need to be at an athletic level that

ranks up there with pro athletes.

So, if you look at Tom Brady or any other world class athlete, Olympians,

CrossFitters that are top ranked even NASCAR drivers, the ones who stay on top

of their game, they track their sleep, they track their data and that's what

helps them see what's really going on in their body in them because their coaches

aren't necessarily even going to know what's going on in their private life

or how they're being affected by things.

And then it allows them to make educated decisions on the best course

of action and help them peak during the biggest games and events of their life.

So I know my job is made so much easier when I am coaching in my

911 Elite Performance Program when someone has a sleep tracker.

And it allows me to as the coach really see what's going on.

I don't have to ask as many questions and I'm able to know what direction to

take that individual in a lot faster.

They make progress a lot faster when they really are tracking it versus

us going through the steps of the program and them adding them all

together, start feeling better but not really seeing that data that

says, "Ooh, this one's really working.

We should really focus on this one.

This one we don't have to, we don't need to even work on that tool."

So when you're not tracking as well, there are so many things that

you could be trying right now that may not even be benefiting you.

Well, we only have so much energy and bandwidth in our day.

Do you really wanna be spending a lot of it on the things that are not working?

Like where do you want your focus to be on a whole mishmash of things that

some are working and some aren't?

Or do you want your folks to be on the things that you know are

working and are moving the needle?

I know it's actually made a huge difference in my life and one of my sons

who also tracks his data it's fascinating going through the data with my son and

watching him make different choices based on what he sees is giving him more

deep restorative sleep and what doesn't.

We both also know before we started have symptoms of COVID, we knew that we were

coming down with COVID because of the data that our tracker was giving us.

I had my tracker actually for three years and one day someone in my program

actually had the same tracker that I did.

So I started helping them interpret the data on the tools that we were learning.

And it was fascinating watching them excel in their progress because they didn't have

to rely on me as much to adjust and adapt what they were doing as I said earlier.

So interestingly, a couple of others in the program were hearing about our

conversations and how this was working and so they decided to get a tracker as well.

And it was interesting because that is actually when I saw how independent

it made those in my program that they didn't need to wait for me to decide

quite often what the best steps were.

And it allowed them to really take ownership of understanding how

to implement all of the tools.

For their sleep, for their energy, for their moods and knowing with the data

which ones to be adapting, which ones to be bringing in, which ones they didn't

need in order to really help them with their success, which allows them to really

thrive for the rest of their career.

And so because of how invaluable understanding this from the health

tracker is for you to start taking back that control for your sleep, energy and

drive, for the remainder of your career I ended up creating a minicourse that I

now always include as a bonus for those who join my 911 Elite Performance Program

on really diving into health trackers, diving into which all of the different

data that you can pull from it and how to relate that data to your shift work.

How to really relate it to what's going on with you and diving into certain trackers

and the differences between some of them.

Now, the thing is, is that I've decided that regardless on if you do decide

to work with me or not, all of you should have access to this training.

And the reason is is that because we need less mistakes on the job in order

for you to come home to your family.

I am the spouse of an officer and one of my worries is having my

husband, I need him to come home safe.

And if this training, regardless if you work with me or not, if this training

is going to bring down suicide rates, if it's going to help you make less mistakes

on the job because you're going to start tracking and understanding how to take

more control of what is best for you in order to get better sleeps in order to

get more energy then with all of these links and everything, or all of this

research that is linking sleep to suicide, if I can do anything, if I can do my

part then I'm going to do that for you.

So I have moved that training.

Well, it was separate, but I am now offering that training

for free to all of you that are listening to this podcast today.

As Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman says "There is nothing

macho about going without sleep.

Any 10 year old girl at a slumber party can do it.

The macho thing is to manage your sleep.

It is not acceptable to show up for work, sleep deprived."

And if I can do that with this training, if I can start getting

you to start tracking your sleep, your service doesn't need to know.

Start tracking your sleep, start making adjustments so that you can

start getting even five or 10 more minutes of deep restorative sleep.

Then I am all in for that.

In order to get your copy of the health tracker, it's called Health Tracker:

Gain Back Control Of Your Sleep, Energy And Drive, it's the minicourse.

Go to my website, 911ShiftReady.com and click on the link for the training,

add in your email and we will email you the link to get into the course

content and gain your access right away.

So that is 911ShiftReady.com look for that free training

and let me know what you think.

And I will see you in the next episode.

I hope you have found value in today's episode.

Don't forget to like, and share this episode so it's shown to more first

responders and subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss future episodes.

Go to our website, 911ShiftReady.com if you would like to work with us,

learn more about our 911 Lifestyle Program, gain access to our free

training, join our mailing list or find our social media channels.