**** Producer's Note: The following is a general transcript of LCC Connect's weekly radio program. Contents include but may not be limited to podcasts, program imaging, announcements, and PSAs. More detailed and accurate transcripts of the podcast episodes featured in this broadcast can be found at LCCconnect.com or by following the links provided in the show notes of this episode. ****

Welcome to a psycho delicious conversation on mental health issues and trends from two local mental health professionals in the greater Lansing area. I'm Michael Stratton, lmsw.

And I'm Morgan Bowen, dnp, pmhnp. And we're here to provide you with a deep dive into the human experience of consciousness and beyond. Our aim is to be educational and entertaining. So just kick back and open your ears and your minds.

Hey, I'm Mike Stratton.

And I'm Morgan Bowen.

It's part two of our suicide talk. And the first part was defining, you know, kind of the. The nature of it and all kinds of different dimensions of it. We went everything from personal to political and gave instructions on people who get triggered. And people can get triggered on this side as well. So if you get triggered during this talk, talk to someone you care about and. And also consider calling. Nine is the suicide prevention hotline. It's like 91 1. It's like someone will be there right. Right away to talk to.

You know what I was thinking? What about Listening Ear? Remember? Is that still a thing or has it been.

Is. Is there a place called Common Ground now? Okay. All right. So this is what happens. This is. Dadalion's gonna look it up because he's our producer.

I used to have a friend who volunteered at Listening Ear. And you. You had to go through a big

training, and I went through Listening Ear. Yeah, It's. It's right there. 3377 website is the ear.org now. It's the ear. Okay. The listening Ear. The Listening is small, but that was the cool one. I went to the Open Door. I was. I volunteered at the Open Door.

Oh, you did?

Yeah.

And then did you do that?

Back when I was a psych tech. So that was 1977.

Wow.

And they closed the Open Door. Closed was the irony of it. But.

But it was. It was like a hotline for answering crisis mental health.

It was. It was phone and also walk in so people could do either one. And it was on. Let me see. It was on South Washington, just north of Mount Hope, in that area over there.

That's interesting.

Which was a pretty rough neighborhood at the time that we did it.

Wait, Washington and what?

Washington and Mount Hope.

Okay.

Yeah. Just probably two or three blocks south of there or north of there. Excuse me. So right in that area before it was.

So what I've heard about 980. The idea of 980 is to build a local infrastructure through, you know, throughout America so that if somebody calls, they would be directed to like a local center or somebody in their community. But I think there's not enough of that yet because it's fairly new. So if you called, you wouldn't necessarily. This is what I think. You wouldn't necessarily talk to somebody Ingham county, or you could be talking to somebody from a different area that has more established center. So Listening Ear is a local resource.

Yeah, that's good to know.

But regardless, call 988.

Yeah, we talked in the first section about ways that we assess it and what we look at. And there's all variety of different things that can lead to someone feeling suicidal. And so you try to treat that. It's not that, oh, we're going to treat your suicide. No, we're going to treat why you feel suicidal, what's going on in your life right now that it feels like it's insurmountable, like you need to escape from it, like there's no chance. It feels hopeless to you. So that's the next step. Medication is probably a big focus of what you do. And when someone presents to you, Morgan, and they talk about being suicidal, what kind of deal.

Yeah, it's treating, you know, if it's coming with depression, you know, it's, it's oftentimes it's a, it's a symptom of depression or it's a function of the depression. So when the person is in a depressive episode, they feel suicidal and other, you know, when they're feeling better, they, they do not feel suicidal. That idea, and it's very true that depression just is a lens. It colors everything. And you talked about it or referred to it in our last talk, but that idea that nobody would care. Meaningless. My life is meaningless. I'm not contributing anything and really feeling that and believing that. So that can be depression or, I mean, it's very connected to depression. So treating them for the depression is really, you know, that's the first thing and identifying what risk factors there may be, you know, so doing a really good assessment, evaluation of the things that we had talked about in our, in our last podcast, access to Firearms. So if somebody is actively suicidal, that's one of the, you know, major things that will kind of, you know, is there firearm in the home? Do you have access to it? Is there somebody that can remove it from the home? Can it be locked up or in some way that you don't have access to it? So that's kind of safety planning. If you get to a point that you feel that you may do something, what would you do, who would you talk to? How would you approach that? Coming up with, you know, a safety plan. So, you know, and if it is a situation in which I'm worried that somebody is, you know, very actively suicidal and could be, you know, in danger of doing something, that's when breaking the confidentiality, call up, you know, a contact person. Usually I try to have the person call a contact person, say, I think we're in, you know, I think we're in a sure situation. Situation where we need to reach out to some of your support people, a parent, a spouse. And I'm thinking you need to go to the hospital and be evaluated to see whether or not you need to be admitted. That happens. But it's not very frequent.

Yeah, it's interesting. There's a couple of strength based approaches. One is what's kept you from doing it so far? And people will often have an explanation of why they haven't done it so far. And sometimes that's because of my family, because of my loved ones, because of this person or that person. Sometimes it's out of fear of like, oh, I'm not going to do it right. If they feel like they can't do anything right. What if I fail at this and I cripple myself in some way that makes it even worse. It could be even worse. And another strength based question is, what has kept it from being worse? Sometimes people will say, well, I have thought about it. But on the other hand, and they'll start to access some of their own strengths that they've had or some of the experiences they've had or something they might even be looking forward to. Those are a couple of things.

I love the strength based question. So for somebody who is experiencing suicidal ideation, I do ask, what is it that has kept you from moving forward? What is the. And people will talk about their kids or there's a variety of answers, but people have a. When they've been that low, they have a pretty good sense of the things in their life that are good that keep them from doing it.

Yeah. What's really important with it is both empathy and respect in terms of really understanding what's going on with that person and letting them know that you really get it, you really, really understand what's happening for them. So that the more you can convey that, the more likely the person is up even more and tell you what's really going on and the depths of it. And that's just like a baseline approach that you have to use with somebody. Well, regardless of whatever situation they bring in. But specifically when someone's feeling that raw and that hopeless and that helpless. The other approaches that get talked about a lot and quite often, I mean, this makes it kind of simple in a way, but it's almost always it's some emotion that the person is experiencing that just feels intolerable. You know, they feel intolerable sadness, they might feel intolerable anger. You know, they might be afraid of what they're going to do if they don't take themselves off the planet. They might just feel completely heartbroken or so lonely, so isolated, whatever it is. And their ability to express that and talk about that and then to be able to start to work with that emotion and also to work with kind of CBT stuff of problem solving, what else can we do about that? All of that is useful.

I also will ask, and this goes to another risk factor that we didn't talk about, but a history of suicide attempts is a huge risk factor. If somebody has attempted before. So I will ask, somebody has like, you know, does this feel like it did when you, you know, in times in the past when you've attempted or have, you know, is this the worst that you've ever felt or the closest that you've ever felt to suicide? So to kind of get a general idea of how this scenario compares to things that have happened to them in

the past, I love what DBT does with it. I keep throwing around these Alphabet soup things. Cbt. CBT is cognitive behavioral therapy. And that's basically a kind of a problem solving and kind of a rational way of looking at things and exploring things in that way and coming up with designed interventions that can help a person address it. So it's both, it deals with your thinking, but also with your behavior. And DBT is dialectical behavioral therapy. Dialectical. Now there are therapists out there that have had a lot more training in that than me. I went to a two day training in it, but the understanding I have is that it was put together. Gosh, I guess I'm going to talk a little bit about this. Correct me. Anything you hear, Morgan, that you know different, feel free to jump in. But it was put together by this woman named Marcia Linehan and she was a Catholic nun who came out, she came out as lesbian and she became a Buddhist. And she was working with borderline clients. Borderline were almost always, almost always women,

not totally, but borderline personality disorder.

Women who were self destructive and who experienced just these complete storms of emotion that they really had a hard time containing. And Psychotherapy was failing in working with it. And she did this combination of Buddhism and cognitive behavioral therapy and called it dialectical behavioral therapy, where people would engage in the dialect of talking about their experience, but then coming up with techniques of working with each emotion. So someone who does dialectical behavioral therapy, they often do it in a group setting. So there's a group of people that they feel supported by and that they talk to. But mainly what they talk about are the skills that they're building, the skills. There's like, I don't know, nine or something like that. Something like nine core skills that they learn. And then when they run into a really strong emotion, they're supposed to call their therapist. Their therapist is like an AA sponsor that the therapist expects them to call two or three times a week, just during the week, just to say, this is how I'm doing. And they keep grading themselves in these different emotional states. And if their emotional states get too hot, that's when they call their therapist and the therapist reflects back. You know, what skill do you want to use for this? It's understandable you feel that way. Which. What skill do you want to use?

It's a powerful therapy and we do have. We'll give a shout out to the DBT Institute, which is a program in Mason. They're located and they do, they do true DBT because a lot of people will say they're DBT informed but true DBT done. The way that lineman kind of intended is there's a strong group component. You meet at least once a week, if not more. You have individual therapy as well. And you do develop a pretty strong connection with the therapist to be able to dialogue and deal with. So the groups is about group support, group therapy, talking situations, how you enacted or didn't enact these skills. And it's a relevant conversation for suicide because persons with borderline personality disorder, one of the hallmarks or one of the symptoms is very chronic suicidal ideation. Chronic self harm, self destructive behavior.

Yeah, Josh Smith was the guy that was doing the training when I went. And he was the head of. He was, yeah, yeah. And he does. I guess he has one in Kentucky as well, I believe, or something like that.

Anyway, it's a great community research. They also have a residential now. That's their name. Oh, do they? They do, they have a residential. Because it can be just an incredibly destructive, debilitating illness.

Yeah, I've referred people there and I guess there's like a waiting list right now. So it's kind of hard to get in there. But it's a very powerful tool. When, when he was given the training, I wrote down what I thought he said and I got back to him later and he said, no, that's not what I said. What I meant was this. But what I wrote down. But he liked what I wrote down. That dialectical means, it's a conversation, it's the dialect. And it explores the wisdom of our contradictions, the wisdom in our contradictions so that we do have these contradictions all the time that are inside of us. And the wisdom, the ability to get to the wisdom of it and pull that out and acknowledge it. That's very strength based in a way.

And those are skill sets that people are able to learn to manage. Impulsive suicidal ideation. Because there can be very. I kind of think of it in two ways. There's the depressed mood disorder, chronic mental illness, you know, that's, you know, suicidal ideation frequently is always in the background. Sometimes it's worse than others. It is part of the person's life and they manage it as best that they can, hopefully. But then there's another kind of form of it that is much more impulsive. When something happens, somebody has, you know, really strong emotions or a very, you know, chaotic situation. Frequently, you know, there's lots of stuff going on. And so it's just like, I, I can't deal with this. I can't, you know, I don't, I don't want to keep doing this. And you know, it's like, I just gotta, I gotta, I gotta be done with this. And so, you know, there's an overdose or, you know, some type of, you know, self harm or suicidal gesture. Sometimes we say, and that impulsivity is what is treated with the DBT can help with that. So when a person who struggles with this does have that impulse of oh, I broke up with my boyfriend or girlfriend, it's over, nothing's worth it. And being able to learn how to manage that level of emotion with these skill sets.

When I went through the training, I thought the skill sets were almost like who Wants to Be a Millionaire? That old show where they, you could. Here were. Some of the skills were like call a friend or get a clue. You can call a friend, distract yourself, do some self soothing, call your therapist, use something they call wise mind, where you access a different part of yourself to look at it differently than the way you're looking at it. In the midst of that kind of panicky feeling of like, I've gotta do this, that kind of impulsiveness how do I work against that? And then there's some other skill sets, but those are all possibilities. The other thing I wanted to mention, and this struck me when I read this book, the Power of Now, years ago.

I haven't read it.

Have you read it? Did Elliot? I have, yeah. So there's a scene early in the book where he describes how he came upon this idea, which is basically Buddhism to say, but that's what it is, where his life was going so poorly, he was thinking about killing himself. Now he's. Now. Eckhart Tolle has a background in philosophy and psychology, and so he's a deep thinker. And when he thought I should kill myself, what he saw in that moment was the duality of that idea, the dual part of himself that I should kill myself. So there's a part of myself I want to kill off. And then is there a corresponding part of me that's okay that would be doing the killing? So there's a competent part of me that could kill off the part of myself that I want to kill off. Is that just a part of me, or is that the whole thing? And he realized that there was a part of him that really was okay, that there was a part of him that was afraid of the future, that was regretting the past, but in this moment, he was actually okay. And he's like, well, what if I just live in this moment? What if I just live now? What if I live in this moment? Am I safe right now? Am I okay right now? And he realized he was. And then, you know, he wrote an entire book and got on Oprah. Got on Oprah, made. Became a multimillionaire. Yeah. So just consider that as a.

Well, that's, you know, that's very much in the vein of the mindfulness that is built into dbt. And that, you know, that dualism is, from what I understand, the dialectical portion. It's like you can both want to kill yourself and want to live at the same time. And to wrestle with that or to conceptualize or contextualize, that is kind of part of the. At least the theoretical underpinning.

It's really. If you change the way you're thinking like that, you are setting up new neural pathways in your brain to be able to look at something with more complexity than you've looked at before that before. And this is a big A symptom, I guess maybe is one way to call it, but a landmark of borderline personality is to see things in all black and white, all good and Bad. This is completely good. This is completely bad versus no, it's good and bad and where's the good and where's the bad? To be able to see things with more complexity and more levels and to just change the way you think, really change the way you think, which then changes the way you are and who you are.

I did want to mention too, there, there are two medications that have by research been shown to be protective against suicide. Oh, and those are lithium and Clozaril. So lithium I've heard of.

Now that's usually given with bipolar, right?

It is, it's, it's like kind of the classic mood stabilizer. The first mood stabilizer. It's been around for a long time. It's very effective. Medication comes with some baggage in terms of side effects and manic depression is

what it used to be called.

Yeah, yeah. But you know, you will see it for people who are chronically suicidal. You will see people who are taking lithium because not because they're bipolar. A lot of times it'll be in a borderline personality disorder context. I see it in that quite a bit. But yeah, so they're taking lithium really more for the anti suicidal aspect of it that's born out in research as opposed to the mood stabilization. And then Clozaril is really, you know, kind of a sub, sub category. Sub. It's a antipsychotic. But also, you know, there's a federal registry, there's a, like a REMS program that, you know. So it's a pretty. There's a lot of baggage, I guess, more baggage with Clozaril. So it's, it's.

But for baggage meaning side effects or

side effects monitoring, you have to do weekly blood draws for a period of time, then you have to do monthly. And then, you know, there's a whole. You also have to do blood draws pretty consistently with lithium because you have to check levels. So yeah, there's a lot of monitoring that goes with it. So it means just more appointments, more, you know, more caution with the medication. But if it's indicated and can be helpful, then especially if somebody's chronically suicidal, I mean, you want to use pretty much everything you can to help. So those are the two medications. So you use those, you can use those specifically, particularly lithium specifically for suicidal behavior or thought.

So before we wrap up Today, once again, 988 is the suicide prevention. If you're feeling triggered by this conversation and the other thing, I'm going to answer this question, but I'm going to ask it of all Three of us, because all three of us have had suicidal thoughts at one time or another. What worked? What kept us from doing it? And I'll go first. Since I asked that question when I was 16, and I really thought. I really had thoughts of doing it. And I'm not going to go into the detail of how I. But it was a plan. It would have worked, and I didn't do it. And I was 16 years old. I fell in love with music. I was so in love with music that I wanted to wait until the next Santana album was out. I was looking forward to the next concert. I was looking forward to the next dance. I was looking forward to. It was just music. I say this, and people kind of say, oh, yeah, me too. But music saved my life. I mean, music really saved my life. And it's been a lifelong love affair with music that really helped me out of a really lonely time.

Was it worth it, the Santana album? Yes. It was probably.

It was great. It was great. It was one of my favorite albums. You guys got any thoughts about that at all?

For me, I mentioned it last episode, but a friend. I remember distinctly thinking of a friend. I was very close. There was one day that I do remember being in my room. We didn't have locks, but I shut the door, and I had medication bottles, and I was really, you know, seriously thinking of doing it, But. But that sense of, you know, the. The pain that it would cause other people, as well as a fear. I think there was just, like, fear of, like, am I really gonna do this? You know, like, there was just. I guess I don't know if I just wasn't. It wasn't bad enough when. When push came to shove, I. You know, I backed. Backed off.

Oh, yeah.

I'd say, as a younger man, I

wouldn't say music, but.

Because I also had, you know, in my teen years, just points where I was not happy with myself. But usually what I did was I buried myself in my artwork.

So I did a lot of drawing

back then, and I found that the more I drew, the less I thought about that stuff.

That was as a young man, as

an older person, you know, it was more just thinking about leaving loved ones behind. I wasn't gonna ever do that to them. Yeah.

It's just not.

Do you still.

Do you.

Do you still do art? I do still draw, yeah.

Yeah.

Not as much as I'd like, but I still get it in there. We need to see your artwork at some point. Yeah. It's trippy now. I would. I would hope so.

Reading for me was was what I got lost and reading was an escape for me. When I was younger, reading was big for me. Yeah, it was like I could just escape into a book.

Okay, I guess that's it. So suicide parts one and two and once again 988 in case you're feeling that way. And we also listed in the first part some different categories or different areas that you can explore. You know, in terms of even helping people that feel suicidal. A Psycho Delicious Conversation is meant for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is no substitute for therapy and should not be treated as such. If you feel a need for real therapy, you should consult your local provider, Google Therapy, or therapists in your area. Check with Community Mental Health or a suicide hotline if you are feeling suicidal.

Mike and Morgan welcome your questions, feedback or dilemmas. Feel free to send us an email at a psychodelicious conversationmail.com that is a psychodelicious P S Y C H O D E E L I C I o u s conversationmail.com the views expressed

on this podcast are solely the opinions of Mike Stratton and Morgan Bowen and do not reflect the views or opinions of any site broadcasting this podcast. Replication of this podcast without written permission is strictly prohibited. Featuring the staff, faculty, students and others that help to make Lansing's premier college what it is today. You're listening to LCC Connect. To find out more about our featured programs or to listen on demand, Visit us@lccconnect.org LCC Connect Voices vibes Vision Lansing Community College Performing Arts is proud to present Summer Stage under the stars featuring a 10 minute play festival directed by Paige Dunkle and Shelley Peterson. A wonderful variety of styles and concepts for this evening of theater, including in the Closet by Stephanie Morales. A young woman discovers she's been hiding something in her closet that wants to break free. Featured at LCC's outdoor amphitheater July 23rd through the 27th at 7pm in the event of rain or extreme heat, performances will move into Dart Auditorium. For more information, visit LCC.edushowinfo. all performances are free to attend.

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weekly throughout the summer for riders of all skill levels. Classes fill quickly. Find more details@LCC.edu KeepLearning LCC Connect Voices vibes Vision hello friends and welcome to Coach Cut's Corner, Streaming bright from Michigan's capital city. This podcast podcast is dedicated to helping you better understand the who, the what and the why of mental performance, personal growth and Lansing Stars baseball Coach Cuts Corner brought to you by Eyewash in collaboration with Lansing Community College. And now here's your host, Stephen Cutter.

Welcome to the show. Thank you for tuning in and subscribing each week. I hope to provide insights into our program and inspire you to challenge yourself, ultimately helping you enhance your life just as I have mine. Additionally, I offer mental skills coaching to athletes across all levels. Find out more@coachcutter.com today I have coach Jeff Allen who's an assistant coach here for the Stars. He will be joining me not only today but as we move forward in somewhat of a co host role. And I always love having people in the WL and Z studios. So welcome to the show this morning Jeff.

Thanks Coach Cut.

A little bit of challenge getting here. I heard Lansing construction, who would have thought? Right?

Right.

Yeah, yeah, we're getting those roads fixed. We got a lot, a lot of construction around the capital city and I think since we moved here it's, it's been, you know, pretty consistent and I would assume probably in most places in Michigan road constructions. Oh yeah, probably a somewhat of a norm. So this morning I want to talk about environment a little bit and I know that environment's not really one of those words that's like a key word in sports but the word culture is and that's a buzzword and man, you do hear it a lot. And trying to define those two environment is the short game and cultures, your long game. And it's a constant, living, breathing thing of a group. And once you get to a high achieving, high growth environment, it doesn't mean that it's going to stay there. And if you're in a low achieving, low growth environment, it doesn't mean that it's going to stay there. It's all made up of people and people make the largest impact on everything. So have you been able to, I know like when we complete seasons or we get towards the end of the season we, we start talking about what, what high, high growth groups look like, and players typically say, wow, that's what we just went through. And they have a better understanding of it. Have you been around people or groups where you've been like, there's something different there?

Yeah, I mean I, I think my first experience with it would have been probably high school football. We had a pretty special team going into Nice. I want to say it was my junior year, sophomore year. It was, it was pretty special to be a part of. You know, it's obviously it's not always going to be comfortable when you're in that high growth environment. A lot of, A lot of growing up to do, I would say, especially when, when you're going into it as 15, 16, 17 year olds, you know, you think you know everything and obviously that's not the. You're always growing, always learning new things.

So do you think it's harder just because of an age thing?

In certain cases, yes. Obviously there's going to be more mature kids at younger ages sometimes and then obviously you'll get the, a little bit more immature kids just depending on kind of the environment that they grew up in. Going back to the word environment, I think that a lot of it has to do with kind of the role models that they're put around kind of the standards that they're held to kind of create that environment. And I think that was really what made me realize that that was a different environment than I had ever been a part of before. Is.

Did you know it at the time though?

No, not at all.

Okay, so it was the retrospect again.

Yes. Yep. And looking back at it at the time, I was probably a little bit upset right at the beginning. Being held accountable and you know, kind of being told like, hey, you don't know everything. If we want to achieve our goals, you're going to have to hold yourself to a higher standard and hold your teammates to a higher standard. So it was a bit of a learning curve for me, but I think that once I kind of bought into it a little bit more, I saw a lot of improvements in my game.

I think high growth environments is something that is, is what we try to teach here. We're teaching them to be highly motivated and productive and chasing excellence. And those environments are tough too. There's the duality to it. They're tough, but they're given the tools to succeed and it really becomes, it comes up to how bad do they want it. A high growth environment, you can experience a lot of that. You're going to experience a lot of failure. You're going to be pushing, you're going to, you're going to need strong leadership in it, which I really like to talk about leadership this morning too. You're going to need mental toughness and you're going to do all these things and it's going to be really challenging environment. And that's where the sayings like iron sharpens iron and you know, all that stuff comes from. And most everybody understands that. But then when you actually get in the environment, you start looking around, your eyes are wide open and you don't know what's coming. And you're typically in high growth environments, you're getting a lot of feedback. Most of that feedback is not about how great you are. And most of that feedback is you're doing well. This is how we need you to get better. And sometimes that feedback feels like criticism for younger kids. And Sometimes it takes three or five years or 10 years to look back and realize that wasn't criticism at all. That was a high growth environment that wanted me to get better. And I got exponentially better from the point that I came in to the time that I left. And I think that's what great programs strive for. Because most, for the most part, you're going to get your standards. Your own personal. You'll get those standards. And if you're able to raise those standards because other people around you have higher standards, you have coaches holding you to higher standards, you have peers holding you to higher standards, you'll get to those standards. But wherever your standards are, that's what you're going to get. And that's why high growth environments are so special, because you've got a group of people that are pushing for excellence. And I don't know that you ever reach excellence, much like you never are going to reach perfection. But it's an interesting environment. And it's also, I find it interesting to watch the excuses come out and then to learn how to start teaching that excuses are nothing more than excuses. They don't mean anything. And why do you think the excuse train exists? Does it feel like that? This morning you could have an excuse for construction or because you ran out of gas or because you didn't sleep last night. You know, we hear all those excuses. I mean, you've been coaching for a while too. You've heard probably a thousand excuses, correct?

Oh, yeah, yeah. And there's always a new one. So keeps you on your toes. But it's just kind of taking extreme ownership of those situations where, you know, if you did run out of gas, that's something that you need to kind of plan ahead for.

Right.

Kind of have a plan to choices.

Yeah, you know, we talk about that extreme ownership. We talk about choices a lot. And most, most everything does come down to choices. Right. So you run out of gas. You probably should have made sure that you got up a little bit earlier to, you know, made that choice. And so that's. That's a big piece of it. And then another big piece of it is just leadership. And I think in general, you might think of leadership only comes from the coaching staff or from the president of the company or, you know, whatever it might be, but the leadership also comes from the team and what type of leadership you have. And have you noticed the leadership and what have you kind of gotten from here with the leadership amongst the team and where it's at?

I kind of going back to our fall meetings, one thing that I've noticed about our leadership since then is a common theme in there was, you know, I'm not really comfortable being a leader with some guys. Obviously, we have a lot of guys that are willing to step up into those leadership roles. And a lot of the reasons behind not being comfortable with stepping into a leadership role was, well, I don't have the stats. I'm younger, or, you know, there's your excuses. So it's like, well, you don't need those to be a leader and show leadership. It's.

Leadership's about who you are.

Yes.

Right.

Yep. And laying that groundwork with how you approach every day. If you're there early and you're getting in your work and you're, you know, picking teammates up when they're down and just everything that is in that entire conversation of showing leadership, you can do without having those stats. And I think that once you kind of take on that leadership role and stop really caring about what those stats say to tell you if you're going to be a leader or not, the stats kind of naturally come because what your goal is, is to help the team win. And obviously when. When that's your number one goal,

you

can just play to the. To your best ability and not really press to kind of put those stats up in order to step into that leadership role.

Process.

Yeah.

Yep.

Process.

Exactly.

What's that process mean to you, really, as.

As like a coach, you would say? I would. As a coach, I think that it's just kind of leading by example. I think that if. If I'm able to show up every day with it's. It's a Jim Harbaugh Quote.

Okay.

And I think his dad said it.

Too bad Greg's not in here. Big Wolverine fan.

Really? Yeah. Go blue. He. He had an interview with him and his father, and he said that every day when Jim and John were getting taken to school, their dad would look around at him in the backseat and say, attack today with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind. And I saw that interview and I was like, man, that's. That's great. I'm gonna try to bring that into what I'm doing. You know, if. If there's anything that I can bring to the table, it's. It's that enthusiasm and that's. It goes back to what we were talking about, about choices.

Choices and what you can influence and what you can control and stuff like that. For sure. I think process for me is it's, you know, it started a long time ago, and it started with a why and a passion, and it just was just a lot of brick stacking, and it was brick stacking in such a way that nobody really could see it, including myself. And that's kind of where the invisible growth came from, those terms. And it was a lot of late nights. And it's all the things that you read about from anybody else that will talk about stuff, and it's just a process. And if you can have a process, if you can build a process that serves you, you can do some amazing things. And if you get wrapped up into results and get wrapped up into stats like you were talking about, and that's where, like, you kind of get held back. You know, you get held back on leadership.

Just.

Just like what you were talking about with some of the student athletes saying that they couldn't be a leader because they maybe hadn't been a starter yet or didn't have enough stats to be a leader. And leadership doesn't necessarily look like that. Leadership's about who you are and. And what you do and. And it's not always about the final results of everything. And I'd spoken many times and said, hard work doesn't equal success. And I think I'm not afraid to share it on here. What I really mean by that is hard work doesn't equal immediate success, but long term, you're going to win. And it's been said throughout history you can follow whether it's teams or people that have done great things, had a lot of success. And we're not talking about money or jets or anything else like that. We're just talking about success in our world where people have made an impact large Impacts. It comes down to the hard work. You've got to be able to work hard and in excellence. Growth environments that we have. That's. Hard work is at the center of it.

Yeah, absolutely.

What else have you noticed since you've been in our program? You've been in here for a few months now. When we talk about culture, which is the long game environment being the short game, what are some things that are maybe have shown up to you that are like clues where it's like, oh, okay, that makes a little sense. I know we talk about, like, mental performance a lot and belief systems and stuff, but has any other things stood out to you?

I think the one thing that has really stood out to me is the guys that show up early every day. That was kind of something that I struggled with at previous teams that I worked with. And you get there and like I said, you try to attack each day with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind. So I'm there, I'm ready to go. I'm. I'm hype and trying to get the guys fired up and get a great day of practice in. And at times you go in and there's maybe two or three guys kind of just kicking a rock around. And the difference between the other teams that I've been with and here is I'm trying to beat guys there. Now I'm showing up 40 minutes early.

And you're still losing.

Still losing. So I, you know, I'm figuring that out. It's my goal to be the first one there.

But that was Noah Bright's goal, too. He never, he never reached that goal either.

No, no. I mean, it's nice to have, have those lofty goals. So I'm gonna keep. Keep shooting for it. But that's really been the biggest thing for me is that really kind of exemplifies leadership in my eyes. It's the guys that are working when nobody else is there. It's the guys that are taking that competitiveness even to the time that they show up and the cuts that they're getting in when nobody's watching. I think that laying that groundwork and getting those daily wins, that's. That's important for a lot of guys

kind of to wrap up or put a bow on the environment of excellence and growth that we're trying to build here. I really feel like it's a place where the best can come to compete and the stakes are very high. The rewards for those who succeed can be great, but the price of entry is equally steep.

Absolutely.

Despite the challenges, this is where the growth comes from. And it is so worth it. I think you're going to be asked to make a lot of sacrifices. You're always competing. You have consistent pressure, which I think all athletes have, you know, pressure. You've constant feedback that you know, as we said earlier, is going to often feel like criticism. You'll be pushed to your limits and beyond most of the time. I found that the performance bar keeps rising in those high growth environment. So the bars here and then next thing you know the bar is a little bit higher and then it just keeps going up and pretty soon, you know, it was, it starts at, you know, if you're, what was the saying? If you're 15 minutes early, you're late or something. If you're not 15 minutes early, you're late. You know, and, and I, we never put that saying in, but it's process based, it's standard base and you know, it's, it's like you were saying, I'm there 40 minutes early and I'm, I'm late. So it's, that bar keeps going up and it just allows for so many opportunities. And in our growth environment, it's not all about the wins and losses or the College World Series or the championships or it's about what's going to happen to them when they're done playing baseball. And that's real stuff. And that's the stuff that you try to shoot for as a coach and you don't ever completely know if you're going to get it or not until maybe 10 years down the road. But that's what's most important. And we're trying to shape and mold and kind of rewire these brains into chasing excellence and not being afraid of losing, not being afraid of failure, not being afraid of somebody making fun of you, not being afraid of social media, not having comparisons of. You're trying to compare yourself to somebody else. Being more in the aspect of that you're competing against yourself. You're competing of how you were yesterday, how you were last month, how you were last year versus this. This person has this, this program has this, this. They, they won this many games, they've got this many titles. That stuff just kind of is really extrinsic stuff and we try to stay away from it. I found that there's an interesting life paradox and it's really that the most exciting outputs come from the most boring inputs. Yep, absolutely uncommon results come from executing ordinary actions over and over with crazy consistency. Those actions will likely not be exciting and it will take you much longer than you would have ever thought. But if you accept the costs of consistency, you can and you will win. And that's really the belief system of what this looks like and what our program looks like. Like leadership, excellence, growth. It's a process and it doesn't happen overnight. And I would imagine just the same way that our other coaches can see it, you can look at practices and yes, we're looking at numbers a lot, but you're also looking at people and you can see growth from people. It's not about expecting perfection. It's not about thinking that they're going to be perfect like they're kids. They're going to make mistakes.

Right.

It's about just seeing how they respond to that stuff. And that's probably been the thing I love most about the fall seasons in college baseball is you get to see a lot of mistakes and you get to see them grow as people. And we tend to see quite a bit of growth in our program and I'm sure other programs do as well. And it's a super rewarding thing because you're seeing people get better.

Yeah.

Anything to add on that stuff?

Yeah, I mean, even with just the short amount of time that we've had in between our fall meetings, and now you can kind of see what you're talking about, about that growth, where we'll bring a guy into a meeting and

say, hey, you need to let's reframe our fall meetings. Because a lot of our listeners probably don't know what our fall meetings look like. But I'll let you kind of reframe what was our fall meetings this year.

So our fall meetings were where we would bring in our guys on the roster and kind of just ask them what they thought their role was going to be on the team for this upcoming year and give them some guidelines on how they can accomplish that goal. Also, we talked about what we think that they could do to help us improve as a team. Got their input as to what they think that all of us could do as a group to improve the team and really just kind of put a game plan together for them.

And was that an. Was that an easy environment for them?

Oh, no. Okay.

Yeah. From what you said, I'll break it down a little bit further. It basically was question based leadership is what it was. And so it was a lot of questions. And, you know, some of those questions were uncomfortable questions. And it's one player sitting in a large boardroom with a coaching staff on the other side of the table and the lights are just dimmed down just enough so the spotlight's on the one chair that's across the way. And it's putting them in a little bit uncomfortable situation. But it's also question based leadership, where you're asking for, what do they think and why does this look like this and how did you do and what do you need to get better? And. And then also combining it with what we see. And most of those conversations were fine, but that doesn't mean that they were super comfortable, that the student athletes sitting across the way were super comfortable. But that's what a growth environment looks like. And growth environments are really, really challenging. I've been in a couple different ones that had some of those metrics, and they're challenging because you're, you're working hard, you're trying to be a leader, you're trying to do all these things. And then instead of people necessarily giving you hugs and patting you on the back, they're saying, well, that's great, but we need this. And the bar goes up just a little bit more and you're like the high achievers, the high performers. Okay, next step, next step, next brick, next brick. And that's somewhat what we built here. And some of it's toned down, certainly because of experience and maturity and things like that. But it's trying to get them to realize that, man, they're capable of so much more. Like, so much more. But it's not just a belief system. It's a brick stacking system and it's an action system. So thank you for joining me in the studios this morning. Until next time, thank you to all of our listeners. We're all playing a game we can't win, so why not play it to the utmost? Go all in and go stars. Coach Cut's Corner is recorded live in the WLNZ studios. Engineering and production assistance are provided by Dadalion Lowry. Thanks for listening and if you enjoyed today's podcast, please share it and follow us on all the platforms of social media. You can find more about our program@lccstars.com and donations to our base baseball program can be made at the same site. See you next time.

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You're listening to Art Happens Here, the podcast that explores the often curious and occasionally amazing art installations on, in and around the campuses of Lansing Community College. I'm your host, Bruce Mackley. A few years ago, the director of our Fire Science Academy approached the marketing department for a rebrand. Turns out the fire science logo that they'd been using for many years, it just didn't work. It couldn't embroider well and it was time for a refresh. So we worked with them and developed what they currently use, which is the LCC Dynamic star combined with a Maltese cross. Turned out cool. I mean, we, we spent some time on it and there was multiple levels of refinement, but we arrived at what they, what they liked. And it is on everything out there. You know, it's, it's badging T shirt designs. You know, they have stickers for the vehicles. It's very, very cool, especially given this group because LCC's Fire Science Academy is one of the best of its kind in the nation. And that is no joke. They're Wonderful to work, work with. Well, what was also included was a metal sign. Although this isn't really a sculpture, sculpture does intersect with, with place making and place making intersects with branding. And this is kind of, I'm going a little bit off track here, but it's important. It'll come back around. There was a sign of this logo. It was a fabricated out of steel, multi level thing. I think it was like three feet across that the, the technicians in our tech careers department machined. They machined the perfect, you know, the lettering, all of it was very, very cool. And it was painted professionally and mounted on the wall. And it has, it's great. It's. It's gorgeous. It is absolutely gorgeous. Interestingly, I found out later that when the grads have their cadet pictures taken, they stand in front of this thing, which I thought was cool too. And it hit me how many times that particular image is going to be seen. And I'm, I'm basing this on some conversations that occurred early in the process where, you know, why can't we just do a flag? You know, why can't we just do a large sticker on the wall? Which would have been fine, it would have been okay. But this thing is something else. I mean, it really makes a statement that we're here and we're gonna be here, right? So I'm looking at this, seeing the cadets pictures, every one of them standing in front of this emblem, this gorgeous glossy metal thing on the wall. And it struck me from brand equity perspective that how many times is this going to be viewed, this image? I mean, you look at family rooms and living rooms and fire station offices are going to be populated with proud pictures of whomever standing in front of this thing. Not to mention social media. Very compelling. Oftentimes, you know, you probably know this, but firefighters, police officers, the military are generational occupations. There's a deep commitment to these career paths that exists nowhere else, maybe. Nah, nowhere else, let's be honest. So it occurred to me that maybe years from now, some fire grad is going to be standing in the exact spot that their mother, father, aunt or uncle stood. And that's pretty cool. Art Happens. Here is a production of LCC Connect. If you want to check out what I've been talking about, visit lcconnect.org thanks for lending us your imagination.

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this has been a presentation of LCC Connect, a weekly program that features the voices, vibes and vision of Lansing Community College. All shows featured on LCC Connect are recorded at the WLNZ studio located on LCC's downtown campus. Each program is podcast based and can be heard anytime@lccconnect.org if you or someone you know would like to be a guest on one of our shows, connect with us by emailing LCC ConnectCC. Eduardo.