Thinking Deeply Self-Critically

I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time on me because I’m not who this is about it’s about you. I’ll explain that shortly. First and foremost, I have to give credit where it’s do. The reason I’m where I am in life now is because of others contributions to my life. I truly believe this. I had great teachers most of which probably didn’t know they were teaching me, but I was watching and learning much from them. This is important to understand because those around us are watching us and learning from us. Just like we watch and learn from others who help us through times in our lives.

I began in the helping field three days after the Twin Towers fell in New York. I had no clue what I had gotten myself into. Looking back into the past making it through difficult times was simply a process of learning from others and situations. The end result of that learning came from time, repetition and practice. That process has made me who I am today.

I spent my first fourteen and a half years in an alcohol and drug residential treatment setting working with youth ages from 13-21 that had been adjudicated/sentenced to the equivalent of adult prison in our state. Working at a facility with high-risk youth offenders you might be able to imagine the situations my staff team and I came across daily.

During that period, I was given some fantastic opportunity. Over the timespan of my employment the agency had me become a trainer in three different behavior management courses.  Being granted the chance to train staff in verbal de-escalation and crisis management techniques and working hands on with people in trouble has opened my mind to so many possibilities about helping other through life’s catastrophes.

At this job there were always around 70-80 staff per year that needed trained, and I averaged about 11-13 trainings from January to December. I trained staff for approximately 13 years. As a trainer I had the personal and professional obligation to stay knowledgeable on the topic, learn from those I was teaching and always figure out how to improve from my mistakes so that I could ensure that harm was minimal or nonexistence to the staff culture and especially our clients we served every day. I can’t say enough wonderful things about the experiences this agency provided me and how it formed me into the person I am today. I stated previously it’s about learning and observing from others in our lives and this agency had no shortage of education, experience and opportunities to help implement what we learned. As all good things come to an end, I eventually left the job to take on a role as a director of another residential treatment program that serves men who have patterns of progressed criminal thinking and behaviors and substance use disorders.

Being in the helping field as well as just living life, crisis and complex profound situations are inevitable. We are all going to eventually be faced with uncertain problem situations during working hours and in our personal life.  In this blog I want to talk about what I have found works for me when facing these complex situations of crisis and other disaster in our lives. When we are being self-reflective, I am certain these practices/methods will work for me in my next situation. Weather they work for you is simply up to you and how deeply you consider them. We are each responsible for our successes and failures when assisting in crisis and even life in general. I believe that sometimes the line between success and failure is thinking just a little bit more deeply self-critically, which is a topic of my work.

I had mentioned before that this blog isn’t about me it’s about you. I truly mean this. Whenever we are faced with a complex or profound situation in your life the first thing we have to change, or challenge is us.  It’s our thinking, behaviors, feelings, views and approach which get in the way of us being effective. My hope is throughout this blog each of us challenges ourselves to think deeply self-critically outside of our box, outside of our values, beliefs and comfort zone and challenge what we think is truth. By doing this I believe we will be able to reduce harm to those around us and have more favorable outcomes. One of the areas I’m going to hit on later is the idea that even if we believe we are right we need to re-evaluate and begin to consider the possibility not only are we wrong but how we can and should accept this humbly once we realize it or once our awareness has been raised.

I have a passion for this topic. One of my hopes is that some of that passion will rub off on you only if only just a little bit or just enough to help you help someone in the next complex situation in your life.

In the helping field it’s common we talk about tools. I don’t mean hammers, tape measures or plyers. I’m talking about thing that allows us to be effective communicators. Some quick examples of tools are being able to listen, talk and act tactfully and purposefully to develop rapport with someone. There are some tools that are absolutely vital when we are in the midst of crisis and the use of tools can change rapidly.

After having years of practice, repetition and thinking about how to be effective with other I have come up with what I believe are the tools that are worthy enough to put in my box. These are tool that I am going to carry with me the rest of my life while serving others. In a crisis/complex life situation working with other if one tool doesn’t work then it is our personal and professional responsibility to move to the next if that one doesn’t work then it’s off to the next and so on and so on.  So again, we need to humbly think deeply self-critically and be willing to move on when a given tool isn’t effectively helping out the situation. This is one of our first challenges in crisis: (Identify and acknowledge that what we are doing isn’t working, move on and continue creating a condition of minimizing harm).

In my years of experience there are 4 main profound concepts/methods that I believe are the foundation of becoming the best version of us. I use the word profound because the more and more I think deeply about these concepts/methods they always seem to create more depth in my thinking that reinforces the effectiveness of them. The four Thinking Deeply Self-Critically concepts/methods are Clarity, Mindfulness, Creating Conditions and Instilling/Kindling Hope. You will see these explained in more detail on my website and they will be referenced throughout my work. I want to thank you for the valuable time you have given me by reading my about page and I hope I can serve you through my work. God Bless.