The Wisdom We Share Podcast

Let Your Mud Settle: Resilience, Simplicity, and the Power of Play with Rodger Ruge

• Anjani • Season 1 • Episode 4

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Message us with your thoughts, burning questions, or reflections, we’d love to hear from you.

How do we truly build resilience? Not just to bounce back, but to grow, evolve, and thrive? In this episode of The Wisdom We Share, we’re joined by Rodger Ruge, certified resilience coach and lifelong martial artist, who brings over 30 years of wisdom to the table from his time in law enforcement, spiritual study, and coaching.

Rodger challenges the modern obsession with doing more and instead offers practices grounded in presence, breathwork, play, and simplicity. Whether you're navigating trauma, burnout, or just life’s everyday chaos, his perspective on “letting the mud settle” is a soul-level reminder to slow down, breathe, and choose practices that actually work for you.

In this episode, we explore:

  • What real resilience means beyond buzzwords
  • How trauma, stress and culture intersect in first responder communities
  • Why martial arts are powerful tools for mental and emotional resilience
  • The breath + mantra combo you can start today (in 3 minutes)
  • The science-backed practice that can shift your nervous system
  • The myth of strength vs. vulnerability, especially for men
  • How to rewire your mindset through micro habits of joy and play

Rodger’s Resources & Links:
Website: www.rodgerrugeresiliencecoach.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rodgerruge

Follow your wisdom. Breathe deep. Let your mud settle.

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and I hope every single person listening pays attention to this one key point you gotta have time to play and I don't care how old you are you need to find ways to play things that bring you joy and happiness just for the sake of joy and happiness so for example things that that really fill that and I do these practices some form of these every single day for me the practice of Tai Chi brings balance to my body mind and spirit and that's very joyful for me riding my motorcycle in the mountains of Colorado is another form of incredible joy for me taking a walk around the block with the idea of I wanna see something I've never seen before I program my mind and inevitably I see something I've never seen before even though I've walked around my block hundreds of times right I pay attention to those little things and here's the really impressive part of all that the Buddhist have a saying it's called let your MUD settle so you imagine taking a big jar you go down to a river you scoop a big thing of water and it's all stirred up and you set that jar down come back a couple hours later the MUD is settled and the water is now crystal clear find activities that allow your MUD to settle that are replenishing your soul and do it in equal measure to the challenges that you have welcome to the Wisdom We Share podcast where ancient truths and modern intelligence weave together to inspire ground and shape us for a wiser awakened life I'm Angie Amrit and I'm Robin Wald and together we bring you fascinating conversations from the worlds of spirituality science and human behavior so you can connect to your own inner wisdom joy and clarity elevating the way you actually live your life alright so today we have with us Roger Ruggi um Roger so happy to have you on the show today um and I know that you have so much wisdom to share with people so I just can't wait to get in there with you Roger and I for everybody just we actually we met through someone else and we met for an astrology consult right to begin with um but you and I always really clicked and vibed and I always saw you as wow this person is so special like I know I'm offering you some astrology but you had so much wisdom and awareness and integration to offer me so it's always been an honor you know to connect with you whenever we have so thank you yeah thank you Robin and you know along those lines I think it's kind of important to point out sometimes we come to a place of wisdom and people tend to go oh well you're on this pedestal you're over here you've you've like transitioned past all the stuff that life has to throw at us and it's like oh no time out the people that really are true seekers always have people in their life that add to them that add to their collective that when you struggle you have someone to reach out to this is so so important and I count you amongst that very small circle of friends who can offer me guidance in a different way for me to say hmm how do I feel about that and if I embrace that how do I want to move forward from there because we have our own box no matter how big that box is so I always appreciate you stretching and nudging that box that's great and that's thank you for saying that because I also consider you part of that community right we all have people who help expand us expand our consciousness expand our wisdom expand our perspective right help us see things from a different perspective or remind us of what we knew but haven't been practicing you know and I think that that's a big part of what we're trying to do with this podcast and you know Angie also super connected and spiritual in that way and we're trying to form a community of listeners of people who all are were there for each other right it's all about community which is great so I'm gonna read your bio just so people kind of officially know who you are and then let's jump into this um amazing interview so Roger Ruggi is a certified resilience coach working with the first responder community to create cultural change and cultivate peaceful warriors Roger a lifelong learner has studied meditation with monks and monastics shamanism with Native Americans and subtle energy enhancement with Chi Gong and martial arts masters for over 30 years the author of four books and counting Roger is excited to continue his life journey instilling hope positivity and inspiration into every life he touches so thank you for that Roger um so I wanna dive in because you call yourself a resilience coach and I would love for you to define that for us to you what is resilience yeah I love that question it it really it's it's something that we've kind of gotten into a bit of a buzzword around lately this idea of resilience and you hear it everywhere and in every possible context once the media latches on to something and we think often that it's the ability to bounce back from adversity and get back to where homeostasis is but that's really just a fractional part of resilience to me resilience is also the opportunity to grow so yeah we can get through something survive it and get back to our known day to day that's certainly a aspect of resilience but to me many people miss the opportunity that adversity brings which is a way for us to grow to expand to share to gain wisdom and so for me as a resilience coach not only do I want people who are in a low state of resilience to get their mojo back so to speak I want them to then say and now can I up level from that place and then the Pinnacle of resilience to me is where you look forward to the challenges that come into your life because you know they offer you that opportunity to take another step and if you can get there very few things in life are gonna knock you down and take you out you're gonna have the ability to move through them with so much more ease and Grace when you embrace them as a gift so Roger it you've had a long career in law enforcement and looking back now how would you say from now that shaped your understanding of of resilience inner resilience growing through experiences how would you say that shaped or informed you having that experience yourself in your life you know that's a really great question I don't think I've ever been asked that question actually and there was a moment where I had an epiphany as a young officer so I I only had about 4 maybe five years on you're still kind of in the rookie realm at that point and there was a really bad gang fight in one of my beat in my zone and so I responded to that and I met a young man who was down he'd been stabbed seven times in the chest three of those wounds were what we call a sucking chest wound where they had punctured the lungs I put my hands on those just to get him stable enough for paramedics to arrive and he's a he's one of our known gang members in the community he's been a real problem for us I'm attempting to save his life and when I put my hands on those wounds I got his airflow to go back into the lungs he regains consciousness and starts to fight me and so we get that squared away the paramedics come they transport him to the hospital and they save his life a week later I'm driving through this section of our community it's a pretty rough area it's a low income housing high density and there he is he sees me it's only been seven days he takes his shirt off he still has stitches all over his body remember two collapsed lungs he gets down on the ground starts doing push UPS and then hops up and gives me one of these a little nod with the head right I'm like okay that's really interesting because I'm noticing police officers with non life threatening wounds dying what's the difference and I thought it is this mindset of resilience that they possess so in law enforcement we do a pretty good job of training the body but not a really good job of training the mind if you're on a SWAT team yeah you get that extra training but the average day to day officer really doesn't get it and so I saw a gap and that gap just I it sparked me to write my first book called The Warrior's Mantra which was the idea to begin to train the mind to become more resilient now that was over 30 years ago at this point but the reason that that was important was it kind of jump started me down this path of what is real resilience and how far can we expand it so I started with this idea of survival back to homeostasis but then I saw in my own journey as well there was so much more available and that's what LED me down the road and with that with that you know the training of the mind if you were to pick one thing you know cause I I really love your book about the warriors mantra if you were out of everything that you know and all the wisdom that you had were to share just one one way or one tool or one mantra to share with our audience as a piece of wisdom for them to train their mind to maybe be that tough you know like that that guy that you that you came across what could they do that's something simple that they could do every day for themselves so the one thing I could say and I could say about 1,000 but the one thing I would say is take a martial art and the reason that I suggest this I think everyone should study martial arts because you gain the confidence of having to face conflict you will be facing conflict you're going to spar with people which is a form of controlled fighting and the more you gain skill in that the more you become more resilient to letting go of fear and standing in confidence one of the things that if you find a really ethical martial arts teacher they're gonna help you become so confident that when an adversary comes to you you give them nothing you don't give them aggression nor do you give them fear you just simply stand in your power and I can tell you that the vast majority of the time there will be no conflict because the person looking for a fight is looking for one of two reactions from you they're looking for fear or they're looking for aggression when you just stand confidently with a smile on your face not mocking by the way but just calm and centered they have no idea what to do I've encountered this many times and I used this as a police officer where I just stayed in completely neutral in other words I'm not afraid of you nor am I a threat to you but we have to work this out yeah I heard I heard recently I love that I heard actually recently that um people who are perpetrators can tell from miles away who are victims who have victim consciousness who are scared you know like like dogs can kind of smell fear and so um yeah I think that's that's some lovely wisdom that you know do a martial art I actually did Kung fu when I was little my brother was into it we loved Bruce Lee and then I did Tai Chi Chuan later which is the art of fighting that fighting I loved it and it brought me a lot of confidence you know I was overweight as a kid I was I got picked on a lot so I relate to that so thank you for that absolutely yeah I mean really think about your children as well you know there's so much bullying happening and and all the things that are taking place both of my daughters I put them into martial arts they got to choose what they wanted to do and I had a wonderful ethical teacher who gave them life lessons and all of that they're now young women who are completely confident completely confident they do not walk in the shadow of fear as a result of that I love that as someone who teaches kids you know I teach from 5th graders all the way through teenagers um and as a parent right both of my boys did martial arts my daughter never really was interested she did gymnastics and other things but I could see how the martial arts training um really does ground you in a sense of I have some control right I can control my body I can control my mind and the connection of that both the emotional mental control and the physical discipline is really key and when I teach kids there is a lot of bullying or perceived you know they're teasing me there and how does someone kind of present in a way of like whatever they're saying or doing I can hold true to myself and feel solid and feel confident it's a really important skill for kids so I love that you're bringing this up for adults for anyone right we all need training in this um so what does your martial arts practice look like now and has that evolved over time oh most definitely yeah I too started out with a form of Kung fu it was actually Bruce Lee's root art which is called Wing Chun that's what I thought was yeah I did that exactly and Wing Chun is perfect for police officers because when we get into a physical encounter with someone it's usually when we go to put hands on them and put a set of handcuffs on that's usually when it goes bad which means I don't have access to any of the tools on my belt I have to be able to use my hands to control someone and Wing Chun is called infighting Chinese boxing or infighting so you're really up close and personal I realized I had a gap in my game as a police officer so I studied Wing Chun for that very specific purpose and then from there I wanted to expand so I've studied a number of different martial arts systems everything from jiu jitsu to jiu jitsu to Russian Sytema to Krav Maga I've studied a bunch of different systems and where I am now in the afternoon of my life I am returning to actually one of the arts I studied 20 years ago which is Tai Chi and this is specifically from the Yang lineage of Chen Man Cheng and what I find it's beautiful about this this is more of an internal system and so while it is a martial art as my body is aging I want that aging to happen as gracefully as I can and with Tai Chi it is as healing as it is martial and so I find here that kind of middle point which gives me a wonderful experience and I'm always up leveled every time I leave that class hmm thank you for that you you talk about mantras and pairing those with breathing techniques um so how how do these practices for you how do they work together and how can someone who's never practiced anything like that how can they start to integrate them into their daily life without kind of feeling overwhelmed so how do you how do you pair mantras and breathing and how might you suggest or recommend someone start who's never done anything like that before really really challenging situation for people is the overabundance of information in this regard there's so much out there people always ask me Roger what's the best martial art to study what's the best breath work to study what's the best mantra to do every day my response is always this the one you'll do and so it really requires you to take a little bit of a journey into developing yourself and experimenting until you find the one for example if someone says to me Roger I want to study a martial art I say visit every dojo in your community visit them all and you'll walk into one and go this is it and that's where you begin when it comes to breath work there are so many ways to utilize breath work if you want to take a little bit of a journey into exploring that I recommend a book called The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick Mccawlan m C K E O W N this man has literally dedicated his entire life to how breath work can enhance us in every possible way and there are many many practices within that then as far as a mantra you want to think about well what is it I would like to enhance within myself and then you choose some words or semantics to go with that now to give your listeners an idea of where this might begin I think one of the best breathwork practices is a very simple inhale and exhale through the nose in a relaxed body posture and what we're doing is breathing light slow and deep so I'm giving your listeners permission to do some LSD light slow deep breathing and we want to fill the lungs from the bottom up on the inhale we wanna inhale for about four seconds somewhere in that ballpark four to five seconds don't get obsessed over the time just ballpark it the key is then we wanna exhale longer than the inhale maybe 5 to 6 seconds it only has to be just a little bit longer when we do that we're now invoking our parasympathetic nervous system to come online in other words we're pumping the brakes we're down regulating our hyperness in the world and so as we're inhaling we fill the lungs from the bottom up we do this light slow deep breathing four to five seconds on the inhale five to six seconds on the exhale that just as a basic breathwork is amazing you could dedicate your entire life and never find the end of that practice so that's a really good one now as far as the mantra goes maybe you're feeling really really stressed in your life and you want to help your mind wrap around something opposite of that here's a simple way to choose a single word for each for the inhale and a single word for the exhale so for example if I want to calm myself down I might say on the inhale peace and on the exhale Serenity or I might say happiness joy love friendship a single word mantra associated with that breathwork it's a positive affirmation and you can tailor that to any need you have and that's a very simple but effective don't let simple fool you way to shift your brain's consciousness and get that body mind and spirit coming into alignment and I promise you if you stay with that as a steady practice three minutes in the morning first thing when you swing your feet onto the floor 3 minutes then do it again before your midday meal we don't want to have a full stomach when we try to do breath work and then at the end of your work day before you transition from work to home for example another three minutes and then you can even fall asleep to it just lay down in bed and do another three minutes what you're doing is keeping that parasympathetic response in the body engaged and studies have shown that a solid three minute practice will keep you parasympathetic for up to six hours that's a heck of a return for about nine to 12 minutes of your day yeah that's a good ROI I love that hahaha I love that I I love also the simplicity of this right because what you said you know there are 1,000 practices there are so many martial arts you know when people ask me about yoga and or they'll say oh I tried a yoga class once and I didn't like it or I wasn't flexible and I'm like you need to experiment just what you said there are so many so many paths right and there's a teaching right all paths lead to the one all paths lead us home right so it really is about finding the path that is right for you and I find that for a lot of my clients as well the simplest path is often the best one because it's the one that you will consistently show up to do it doesn't cost anything it doesn't require any special equipment you don't need to be in any special place to do it you could be waiting in the grocery checkout line to breathe with a mantra like you could take it with you and it's when it's like that low hanging fruit it's so easy for us to fucking eat you know it's like the juicy so um I love that you just in real time just gave people very practical like you can do this and this is how you do it and this is when you do it and how often you do it and this is the impact that's amazing yeah it's it's it is so simple and I'm really a fan of simple like we can make things complicated that's fine if that's your jam go do that you know dive into something and and get into the weeds with it cool good good good but if simplicity is available for most people and most people are unwilling to take that deeper dive let's go for the simple and I get asked a lot goes well you know what if what if this happens or that happens I just say breathe find a pause and breathe for three minutes let me give you an example if I take a telephone call or I handle something heavy with a coaching client as soon as I finish I go right to three minutes I reset myself if I need more I do more you can't overdose on this technique right but the idea is I always am resetting I live just outside of Denver Colorado if you've never driven in Denver Colorado it is aggression on steroids and so I know that it's always gonna be a really intense experience just to drive through Denver I begin breathing at my home I get into my car I'm still breathing and I breathe all the way to my destination and I'm completely Zen in the madness these are ways we can incorporate this into our life we don't have to wait for the practice we can engage and become the practice yeah I mean it it takes it takes awareness to do that I find um you know a lot of the teaching I do with clients is teaching them the awareness so that they're remembering to do that because we get into this unconscious habits these daily routines we go on autopilot do you have any recommendations for people like something really practical that will help them not get stuck in their daily routine and the daily fog of it to help them stay really aware and to remember to do their practice the 3 minutes the 3 minutes and the 3 minutes cause it is a simple practice but I find the hardest thing for people is actually remembering to do it in the midst of their day of doing it's an evolutionary process cause my experience mirrors your own for sure and when I'm working with a coaching client and we meet each week one of the things that is of tremendous benefit to them is my holding them accountable to their declared practices so my recommendation is that you do one of two things to help instill this as a habituated pattern and that would be find a partner to do it with so that you are supporting each other or make a declaration to someone who will hold you accountable and if you do that you're going to remember sooner than later and then it'll just become how you live your life from that place but it is truly an evolutionary process especially when we're trying to break old habituated patterns including many folks I'm sure you see it too who are addicted to the hormones of stress what we're really doing is breaking a habituated pattern that is not an easy thing to do so I think we have to be very kind to ourselves and just continue with it but a partner and someone holding you accountable is the best way I know yeah I I love that so as a coach also accountability is one of the big you know ways that I support people in succeeding at their stated goals and declarations and then throughout my own life I've had accountability partners for meditation practice for morning prayer practice for all kinds of things right now I have a dream a dream partner like we when we have dreams we you know send them to each other and we listen and we respond but it's it's a way that I also know like I'm gonna continue with my stated declaration that I'm really seeking to explore and understand my dreams and find meaning right so if you have a goal having someone who knows about that goal versus having it in secret where you can sort of half ass it and nobody's gonna know right once it's like out loud and other people know you have to kind of you know keep your word it elevates your own integrity around that um I yeah something about integrity that that's really key in all of this right yes yeah I love the I love the word integrity because it's one of my personal checks and balances I and I ask myself this question quite often am I in integrity you wanna get really good at something make a commitment to teach it spoken like a true Gemini oh so yes Roger is not only has his son in Gemini you know you also have your Mercury in the 29th degree of Gemini and for all my astrology newbies or whatever level in English Robin in English I'm about to translate the 20 the 29th degree of any sign is that very very last degree last minutes last chance there's an urgency it's called the critical or anoretic degree where it's like I need to work this out resolve this master this in this lifetime this ends here this is like the final and Mercury rules Gemini Gemini is all about teaching it's about learning gathering in information turning information into knowledge turning knowledge into wisdom teaching that back out to others and here you are you're speaking on these things you're teaching these things you're writing books on these things you're so in your mission of everything I've Learned and integrated I know I have a legacy to leave to put that out so tell us what you're working on in that in that sense what are you teaching who you teaching one of the the biggest goals I've had in my life is nothing short of creating cultural change within the first response community and this is a very very resistant community to anything that is outside of a very tiny box and so they refer to everything I do as woo woo and people have even jokingly now assigned me the title of doctor of Woo Woo which is you know just a fun way to banter these these folks are wonderful they have great banter they love to tease each other but at the end of the day they're also curious seekers and they really do want to up level and what I was doing was putting on classes and I've I've taught at this point probably approaching 100,000 officers and firefighters and paramedics across the country but what I saw was not a lot of behavioral change and the reason was they were going back to the known and in the known anybody who practices these things against the larger population is practicing the woo woo and that's just a little they're a little afraid of that uh you know there's a whole bunch of reasons for that but at the end of the day they tease about it they don't take it seriously and when you go back to the known well it's very hard to be that anomaly amongst your peers very difficult so I got to thinking about this and a few years ago I partnered up with a lady doctor Renee Thornton she's a former Navy rescue swimmer she's a she's an amazing human a psychologist we've written a couple of books together and what we started last year was something called Leading High Performance Cultures and now what we did we interviewed 150 public safety agencies and that was 9 1 1 telecommunications paramedic EMS firefighters and police we interviewed 150 of them and we felt that 10 of those leaders these are the top of the top of the food chain we're we're well enough along and willing to embrace cultural change and we brought them together in Michigan on a magical little place called Mackinac Island where there are no cars you can only get places by horse drawn carriage life slows down we took them out of their known and they began a five year project and the five year project is Doctor Thornton and I creating cultural change within the agency that embraces this idea of resilience and so now what we have is a top down model so when the administration and the leadership embraces these things and then says this is how we do business now we're creating a literal departmental cultural change and that's been the difference this year when we come back for year 2 the first year group a new first year group is gonna begin who is that new group they were all handpicked by the existing cohort we have this is how we're taking a kind of grassroots approach to create this through North America because we've got folks from Canada and folks from the US in this project right now what change did you notice in that first group Roger um I'm fascinated about how you were you able to uh make a shift in their mindset around it and and what did what was the biggest change or transformation you noticed with this first year group it's a super good question because how do you decide who's gonna fit that model right what we looked for in the interview was not perfection we looked for a mind that was open to progress and we looked for people who were okay being uncomfortable because let me tell you we stretched these folks hard and they definitely all hit their wall every single one of them it's not just the event on the island we meet monthly we have courses every week and they are engaged in that process so the key to it was who had an open mind and was willing to get uncomfortable in the way they've always done things because that's what we always hear when you ask the question why are we doing that their response is because we've always done it that way we're not interested in that we're interested in the leader who says I want to have a true high performing culture I want the age of death for a police officer to stop being 57 years old I want suicide to not be the number one leading cause of death in public safety they're ready and so they're ready to leave a lasting legacy and to be the model for that that was the key for us was that open mind and willingness to stretch it takes a lot of vulnerability to do that you know and so I think and that is that is an indicator of resilience if you've got people who are able to be vulnerable in a in in positions of leadership and say OK I'm willing to admit I don't know everything I'm willing to admit that I need to change or up level or evolve I'm willing and open to be vulnerable and share and and say that I don't know and learn something new and that to me is the epitome of resilience it's it's the ability to be vulnerable so um it's interesting you found that in people it took a while to find them like I say 150 interviews to get ten hmm it's it's really interesting the the open mindedness peace right I think people when you ask most people they would sort of say that they do have an open mind but then their actions and behaviors don't necessarily really align with that their self you know assessment of that so to have an open mind inherently involves some risk because what you're risking is oh I could be wrong or what I thought I knew and believed in maybe I need to re evaluate that maybe there's a different truth that I wasn't understanding or considering and I I mean if we all were able to keep an open mind maybe the world would look a lot different and more nuanced in terms of how we understand very very divisive polarizing issues where people take their sides and then they only follow the social media and the news of the side that agrees with them so they're only always hearing the messages that they already believe and the ability to have an open mind means listening to the opposite viewpoint or a viewpoint you've never considered and saying huh what if that was true let me try that on a little bit right so it's very interesting that you that that really is an indicator of someone who can grow right is to I think that's why I keep coming back to why I love children so much I really do love teaching children that the beauty of teaching children is that they really do still have a natural open curiosity and they know they will be the first ones to admit they don't know everything yet they're still learning and in that place of still learning there's a curiosity of yes let me try these ideas on let me listen to what someone else says let me respond to that um so here's my thought for you just to step away for a moment from the professional work you're doing in your personal life where are you kind of pushing your edge of getting out of the familiar and being open to something unfamiliar and taking risk around that so this is an interesting aspect of my life where I I've always been a fan of doing something that challenges myself and makes me step into vulnerability and when you think about my background that's pretty oppositional because you know when you're in law enforcement you are supposed to be the line between order and chaos you're supposed to know everything and of course you don't and that's what gets you into trouble and I realized fairly early on that if I did things that challenged me in a relatively controlled environment where I felt at least safe enough then I could begin to expand myself and not get pigeonholed into oh my gosh I don't know what to do when you're uncomfortable being uncomfortable then when strange things come into your life that you haven't had any experience with you're like I can figure my way out of this because you've done it over and over so for example one of the things that I wanted to do when I got divorced my ex wife was way okay with death it was just okay to max everything out as long as you could pay it I didn't want to ever be in debt again and I realized I needed a financial education like when you look at all the capital aspects of wellness emotional cognitive psychological those kind of things I had no game in financial financial is an aspect of resilience and wellness so I did something called uh Harv Ecker t Harv Ecker the Millionaire Mind and he had a workshop it was a three day workshop and I Learned how to balance a budget do all the stuff because I was now on my own and I realized I never wanted to be in debt I have not been in debt since yeah that LED me to I wonder what else I could do to challenge myself I think I'd like to go to something called the Warrior Camp and I went to that and they really put it to me and I did that because I had to physically retire from law enforcement at year 20 with a severe back injury I wanted to say well I wonder what I can do because I sure am focused on what I can't and then that taught me I had a lot more ability than I realized that I had limited myself to up here so I'm always saying okay where's the gap where am I uncomfortable and let me go do something that challenges that that's just been my my modus operandi for many years I I think you're lucky to have that and I know some people do I wanna ask you and kind of go back to what we were talking about a little while ago about PTSD and trauma because I know I know you've had it I've I've also had it growing up um from growing up in a domestic um family domestic violent family and so so I do know from personal experience and from from all the research that when we've had trauma of that severity and it's way more people than we think then um then it makes it so much more difficult for us to do something simple to change because our safety is is lies in our habits so what advice do you have for people like that maybe from your own experience or you know around trauma and how can people kind of you know deal with that or overcome that or move through that in a way that allows them to maybe have a more open mind or feel safe to go there yeah this is a a very important question and my simple answer is get professional guidance you've got to have someone to help you unwind it I ended up being diagnosed with complex post traumatic stress disorder at the time we called it a disorder now we're looking more at it like an injury but the truth was I had experienced multiple traumas uh to give you an example uh a normal human might experience a trauma event a couple of times in their life something that would literally rise to the level of trauma a police officer firefighter in a 30 year career will experience 500 to 800 trauma level events and then they wonder why they're dee evolving in my opinion when we are really starting to realize we may need some help with something let the stigma go that reaching out for help or yeah reaching out for support and help is somehow weak it's actually the greatest strength and you can get someone to help guide you through the complexity of trauma and it is complex it takes a while to unwind that so my my answer and encouragement to everyone is seek professional guidance and you will never regret the time you spend in that it is well worth your time and energy and money yeah I I thank you for that I have to echo that as well me personally I've had therapy I've had counseling I've had energy healing and a combination of all of those really helped me become more resilient and able to deal with it overcome it move through it and become more of who I really came here to be so I think it's great advice and also the advice around the stigma cause there's so much stigma especially for men you know women yes but more so for men there's so much stigma around asking for help like I'm not a man if I go and ask for help um it's just not in their vocabulary so how would you how would you advise what could you say to men who are listening to this who are thinking Jeez that might be me but you know I don't want I don't want to go and where do I start like how how would I look for someone where would I even start cause if cause I think that's the hardest thing is starting that process you know admitting it to yourself and and possibly looking for some help yeah it it is a a really big challenge and you wanna talk about stigma when when this happened to me just I just wanna give you a little relational thing to how big the stigma was in my particular agency we had something called the Employee Assistance Program and that was access to a culturally competent psychologist in other words they worked with law enforcement firefighters they understood us and you could get six sessions with that psychologist anonymously so that was a good thing right I didn't have to necessarily risk it but the problem was the psychologist that we worked with was half a block from the police department so I would literally park like 3 blocks away wear a disguise get to the front door and run inside I'm not kidding so it was pretty bad and you know when we're looking for that the first place I'm gonna go is to online forums in my community where I can I can even be an Avatar if I want I don't have to use my name and I'll begin searching and then I might make several calls to people and just like looking for that martial arts studio I might go visit several until I find the one but it really is up to you to take that first step and I know you two deal with this too as professional coaches there is often a fairly fine line between coaching and therapy but we are not therapists so very often when someone rises to the level where I think they need a psychological intervention of some kind I have a bunch of people in my back pocket in my community that I can refer them to and I have relationships with those people yeah and that's absolutely part of the ethics right of knowing what you're qualified to address with someone right being an accountability partner helping someone vision purpose and path to get there and all of that but really unpacking deep trauma and and doing therapy around past issues and right that's not so like knowing when to refer and that that is again part of creating community right you know like it takes a community to support people and and their health and well being and success so um you know we're we're each part of that um I wanted to ask you switch tax a little bit um thank you for giving those resources I don't know first Anthony did you have any follow up on that that you wanted to address around resources for there are lots of resources I think with the advent of AI also it can be really helpful so using like a chat GPT to to ask you know to recommend this is where I'm this is what I'm facing and you and I would also recommend using AI prompts um and questions to help start that process so I use it a lot even today for myself and the people I work with um you can say things like hey I'm not doing too well this is going on for me what do you recommend what can I do and AI is can be your first you know your first counselor your first therapist and you can just dip your toe in the water so I would you know I would I would only have that to add um but yeah I I kind of echo what Roger said there's still so much stigma around getting help so possibly AI is going to help us um you know in the future starting that process yeah I also think stigma wise and Roger you could um you know speak to this in your experience in terms of as someone who is working to change the culture and create evolution around that culture you know as someone who works with young people it's it's shifted you know we've done a great job at least in the northeast in New York and you know a more maybe Liberal setting education there's been a huge shift in consciousness to destigmatize mental health issues I mean these kids lived through covid and loss of school and social connection and have the highest rates of anxiety and depression and drug use and all kinds of issues and it's there've been really concerted efforts to destigmatize and connect kids to resources and actually to the point where there aren't really enough good professional resources to meet the demand right so that's the flip side of it right now we have an awareness of we need the help but maybe there isn't even sufficient access to appointments to get the help we need um but have you noticed that changing in the hero community specifically that there is a destigmatization destigmatization yeah there certainly is and several people have been really leading the charge that are influencers within the culture right on all sides of it and so we're getting better and better at destigmatizing this idea that seeking help is weakness cause that's the bottom line of it all that vulnerability piece you were speaking to earlier I think that as people begin to realize that you can up level right then we have the ability to say I'm going to seek that and when somebody of influence says hey I really struggled with this and I went and got help and now I'm here we have so many people coming out now that are writing books and doing podcasts and going on lecture circuits and talking about the elephant in the room I really do see it changing and I know it changes when we begin to reject the idea of post traumatic stress as a disorder there's now a huge movement to call it an injury and that in fact you can heal yourself from this injury and when we start to think of it that way how much better are we at allowing that to not be a stigma and I know in a lot of training areas where new people are coming in and they're going to academies I remember when I went through the academy in 1985 we had a two hour block on mental health that was it now it's a huge part of the curriculum and this idea of seeing someone who is a professional culturally competent is what you do and I I was really encouraged I was speaking to a sergeant from the Ventura California police department and she's in the middle of her career so she's got some old school folks and some new school folks and she said Roger it's really really amazing we may have a really heavy call and some of the new folks will come up to me and say hey Sarge that that was a little rough do you mind if I give a quick call over to EAP I think I need to talk this one out and so we were beginning to see generationally it's much more acceptable to do this in the generations coming into the career now yeah and so I love that right I love that because we're now beginning to break it I think we're really one generation away from it becoming okay to do that's amazing that's amazing so here's my final question that we love to ask people what they're playing at in their lives like what are you doing for fun what fills your cup what lights you up but in light of this conversation also not only what are you doing but how does that kind of feedback into your own resilience it's a wonderful question and I hope every single person listening pays attention to this one key point you gotta have time to play and I don't care how old you are you need to find ways to play things that bring you joy and happiness just for the sake of joy and happiness so for example things that that really fill that and I do these practices some form of these every single day for me the practice of Tai Chi brings balance to my body mind and spirit and that's very joyful for me riding my motorcycle in the mountains of Colorado is another form of incredible joy for me taking a walk around the block with the idea of I wanna see something I've never seen before I program my mind and inevitably I see something I've never seen before even though I've walked around my block hundreds of times right I pay attention to those little things and here's the really impressive part of all that the Buddhist have a saying it's called let your MUD settle so you imagine taking a big jar you go down to a river you scoop a big thing of water and it's all stirred up and you set that jar down come back a couple hours later the MUD is settled and the water is now crystal clear find activities that allow your MUD to settle that are replenishing your soul and do it in equal measure to the challenges that you have if you can walk the middle way then your pendulum isn't swinging between these extremes and this is what I like to do some people might call this boring I call it a beautiful life that's amazing that's amazing um Angie do you have any other thoughts or questions for Roger yeah just one what gives you hope after all that you've witnessed in your life that's a very powerful question I'm gonna answer it this way I read a book that completely changed my life just a few years ago and it was called journey of souls by Doctor Michael Newton I just finished reading that book I just returned it to the library this week oh my gosh I can't believe you're talking about this and what I came to from that and many other teachings that I've had you know I've worked with so many amazing beautiful masterful teachers I've really been blessed what gives me hope is that I believe and this will sound a little counter intuitive that everything is exactly perfect and that if I can let go of my judgment I realize that everyone regardless of the circumstances is getting exactly what they came here to learn and that is not always easy I know that I've had my own share of adversities but I can look back on my life and go every single one of them was a value add to my life which means any adversity that comes to me now is a value add to my life that's how I see the adversity I used to resist it hide from it run from it avoid it do maladaptive coping mechanisms to get away from it now I literally look at and I say good I got this that's a real wisdom drop thank you so much Roger and thank you for joining us on this episode um it's been an absolute pleasure to Eek out all of the wisdom that you have and you know clearly you have lots more so thank you for your time and presence here today and um we will hopefully um get you back on and get some more wisdom out of you thank you so much if people wanna reach out to you if they wanna find your books or any of your teachings or wanna reach out to connect with you as a resilience coach how do they find you you just type my name into the search bar and I will pop up my name is spelled very strange so Roger is with a d R O d G E R and the last name is Ruggie R U G E just put that in a search bar you'll find me Amazing Roger thank you so much for joining us today it was amazing thank you it's an honor to be here truly I appreciate it thank you thank you so much for tuning in to the wisdom We share podcast we hope today's episode sparks some new insight imagination and practical tools you can integrate into your daily life continue this journey with us by subscribing sharing and dropping us a review until next time stay wise

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Anjani Amriit

Host
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Robin Wald

Host
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Rodger Ruge

Guest