EP 103: Becoming Mindful Warriors with Lt. Richard Goerling

Lt. Richard Goerling (ret.) of Mindful Badge is our guest today. Richard has been getting a lot of national attention since our last conversation nearly two years ago. He was even featured on the Today Show and NBC Nightly News. Richard's work is devoted to making officers more resilient, and resilience is something we can never have too much of. Eric Greitens has an amazing book on the topic, titled, appropriately, Resilience. In it, he describes resilience as: "…the virtue that enables people to move through hardship and become better. No one escapes pain, fear, and suffering. Yet from pain can come wisdom, from fear can come courage, from suffering can come strength – if we have the virtue of resilience." For officers, we have the burdens of any other regular human being, but we also experience the traumas of other people day in and day out. What may be the most traumatic experience to a citizen might just be your Tuesday. So, in order to avoid becoming consumed by the traumas, we must be able to learn how to navigate them. One of the key ways to do this is through mindfulness training which, yes, includes meditation.