Being a FIGHTER PILOT | Build MENTAL TOUGHNESS | #pilotlife #military #airforce | Episode 7

Being a FIGHTER PILOT | Build MENTAL TOUGHNESS | #pilotlife #military #airforce | Episode 7

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In this episode, Justin Alan Hayes interviews Dr. Tim Collins, President of Walsh University. From fighter pilot to President of Walsh University, Dr. Tim Collins has always served others. Realizing that he could only help others if he first helped himself, Dr. Tim Collins has experienced first-hand how mental health is integrated into the DNA of every human being with "the aim to develop students' mind, body and spirit" at Walsh University.  You learn more about Walsh University at: www.walsh.edu, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube & Instagram.  

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Transcript

The Voices for Voices Podcast Episode 7 with Guest, Dr. Tim Collins, President of Walsh University

Justin Alan Hayes:

Welcome to the official, the House of You podcast Sponsored by Voices for Voices, where we discuss how mental health and our careers intertwine. I'm your host, Justin Alan Hayes, business professor author, career coach, founder, of Voices for Voices and The House of You.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Here at the House of You we're passionate about helping others navigate their workforce preparation while also thriving on their mental health journey. So we're sitting down with career professionals and mental health advocates to take a deep dive into our professional lives, ambitions, swap stories on mental health in relation to career moves and so much more. For making the leap to transition careers, job losses, difficult interview experiences, feeling stuck or helpless in your current position or whatever the case may be, we're so glad you found us. Join the House of You as we explore raw and real stories of mental health in the workplace. No matter where you are in your career, you're not alone, welcome home.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Today. I am pleased and grateful to be joined by Dr. Tim Collins, President of Walsh University. Dr. Collins, thank you for joining the House of You podcast sponsored by Voices for Voices.

Dr. Tim Collins:

Swords up, swords up. It's nice to be here, Justin. Thank you so much for having us.

Justin Alan Hayes:

You're welcome. I'm so excited to have you here and to really share from the top down, but then also just as an human being and an individual around mental health. You have a pretty big, pretty big job of responsibility and have that at Walsh University. So let's just jump right in. How did you become president at Walsh University? Some of our listeners and myself included not really sure how does the process go for somebody who applies or is seek out to be president just at a high level?

Dr. Tim Collins:

Yeah, Justin I think it's all a lot of voodoo magic. I'm not really sure how all this comes together. We're, really excited to be in this conversation with you today. Walsh University in North Canton, we are focused on absolutely preparing our students for their careers, but we're also focused on life and their life's purpose. We do this from a whole person perspective. We're interested in intellectual development, physical development, social development, emotional development. And so in every way, shape and form this intersection, as you describe it, in your work of the mental health and career preparation, but it's not just career, we're actually preparing them for work and for home to helping our students deal with the realities of the world around us and the realities of our own strengths and limitations.

Dr. Tim Collins:

So in terms of becoming the president, I would just say, at some level there's an interest in my part to be more impactful in how I can help others. I think that's what leadership is about. My role is a leadership role to the first order. I've retired twice, Justin. This is my retirement gig. For all your listeners, I've retired once a career in the military. I had a full career at Johns Hopkins University when this opportunity to come here and serve in Northeast Ohio was offered to me. And so the first phase of my life was about the here and the now, the second phase of my life was about training students a little bit, but I was also deep in research and technologies and how to make sure that our first responders and our war fighters were ready and had the best equipment possible. But this phase of my life is all about leadership and leadership is about people. Yeah. And so the opportunity to come here and to serve in this role and to be here today with you and to talk about this important aspect of leadership development is really meaningful for us. So thank you for having me.

Justin Alan Hayes:

You're welcome. As you mentioned, you're not only training individuals for the workplace, but also just life in general as a human being. So really, I guess, my next question, knowing that health incorporates mental health and mental health is just an aspect. With the physical health of maybe somebody is injured on the ball field and might have a sprained ankle that might show up as a bruise. Mental health, being more of that internal where might just take a little bit more delving into and really trying to understand what's going on with the individual. I guess I really just curious at Walsh, how did mental health, as a topic, how did it start, the resources that are available and the priority that you as a president in your vision and in your leadership that you're doing today, and then you hope to continue in the future?

Dr. Tim Collins:

Yeah. So thank you for the question, Justin. So I think in terms of Walsh University, we were established in 1960, so we're celebrating our 61st birthday. And we were established by the Brothers of Christian Instruction and they came here from Maine and they came here for the purpose of educating the youth. To going, as they would say, to the edge of society, go to where students who wouldn't ordinarily get this opportunity, bring them in and then create with them the opportunity to become fully functioning citizens and to go out and lead others. Our mission statement is about leading others, serving others. And what we mean by that is this willingness, eagerness, almost this excitement about wanting to actively do something for others. If you're going to do that, you also have to make sure that they're themselves ready for that.

Dr. Tim Collins:

So I think in this space of how long we've been thinking about these mental health kind of issues, I think it's been that way for 61 years, the Brothers have done that, and this is a 933 year tradition that we are continuing on. The very first universities were invented by the Catholic church, the University of Bologna in 1088 opens its doors, still open in Italy. And if you look back over 933 years, well, first you have to say, what's been open that long? What's actually lasted that long? There's three things I think that have made the difference.

Dr. Tim Collins:

The first thing is this respect for the individual, this understanding that all of us have inherently in God's plan, human dignity. And then in terms of the organizational structure itself, we're very mindful of making sure we're meeting the contemporary needs of our students while maintaining continuity in our tradition. And in that tradition, it is about meeting students, taking them from where they are, accompany them and getting them ready for the challenges that they're going to meet. If you're going to build leaders, you have to build people that are ready for challenges. They have to handle their own challenges and then be willing to take on the challenges of others. When we situate ourselves here today in 2021, in the middle of a global pandemic, and we think about the kinds of issues that we're all dealing with and focusing on, my first observation is we're not doing a good job with the language.

Dr. Tim Collins:

So, when we first came out, we of course being the government, America, and so the first things we need to do is we need to put on mask and we need to socially distance. At Walsh University, we rejected that terminology right from the beginning. No, no, no, no. We cannot socially distance when we're in the middle of a pandemic, because what that implies is become isolated, move away, stand back from others. We are naturally wired to want to be connected with other human beings. So we use the term physical distancing with a connection. Don't give up on your support group. Don't pretend that you can just go off in the corner by yourself and weather the storm, you can't. We're all in this together. So the language matters.

Dr. Tim Collins:

It's even the language of mental health. The reality in 2021 is we've come through for whatever reason decades where mental health has been a negative term, not a positive term., Thinking about what you just said. If we talked about this in terms of emotional health, that's a little bit softer and people are kind of willing to dial in. And why is that? Because they don't have a preconceived notion of what this is. So what we find at Walsh University is that our students, if they're locked into the lexicon of the culture, they don't really understand what we're talking about. So we have to change the language just enough, just to turn them and say, whoa, what was that? And if we can give them to think about that, then we can change the whole nature of the conversation. So emotional health or mental health has no less important, no more important than it's ever been in the 61 years at Walsh University. It's always been on our radar screen, if you will, because our philosophical approach has been to meet the needs of the individual. That's not some of the needs, that's all of the needs.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Wow. I love the history and I just couldn't agree more from the standpoint and in the language. So everything kind of starts with the language and us as human beings of how we're just intrinsically wired as individuals.

Dr. Tim Collins:

Yeah and I'll just prove this to your listeners, that we actually understand humans in a different kind of way. From the church's position, the Catholic world view if you will, we've been writing, reflecting and thinking about how humans flourish for thousands of years. So, there's nothing I'm going to say here that's necessarily new, but just to give your listeners something to think about.

Dr. Tim Collins:

So, I'd like all your listeners out there right now to answer this question in their mind, and Justin, I want you to do the same thing please, What is it that makes you happiest? I don't know what flashed through everyone's mind, but I'm willing to bet this piece of chocolate right here, Justin, that what flashed through your mind and nearly every listener is you doing something for someone else. You see we're naturally happiest when we help others. This is how we're wired. You might have thought about, okay, I'm happiest when I'm doing something for my daughter. I'm happiest when I take care of an elderly parent. I'm happiest when I can bring joy to the workplace, because I do something funny. But it's all about this idea that we help each other, this is how we're naturally wired.

Dr. Tim Collins:

So, what we want to do at Walsh University is we want to bring this out, put this on the forefront. See, mental health issues have been the back burner issues. We sort of pretended we built a window, we built a facade, asked everybody to go up and down the street and go window shopping without actually looking at what's behind the window. What's behind the window are people and their minds and their stressors and their own experiences and their education and their framework. So at Walsh we're trying to create a framework on how people can think about how to think and not be told what to think. Because if you're going to lead, if you're going to help others, if you're going to help some of those that cannot help themselves, you got to sort of understand what makes them tick and what makes them tick is not just that internal clock, but what is it that's acting on them that's changing behavior. See, we'll see it witnessed in behavior and we have to be tuned into watching for it. Otherwise, we're just window shopping up and down the street. And we don't really understand the people that we work with.

Justin Alan Hayes:

That's so true. And to answer your question for me, today it is, it's helping others. Doesn't have to be anything monetarily. It doesn't have to be, oh, I don't have the money to do something. It can be something small, a donation.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Just want to let you know about our upcoming Voices for Voices, A Brand New Day event, which is our annual gala event. It's on October 12th at 7:30. For those that are in the Northeast Ohio area, it's going to be held at the Canton Cultural Center and tickets are $20 and all the proceeds go towards the Voices for Voices organization, which is also a 501(c)(3). Dr. Jessica Hoefler is going to be one of the ... I call it the blockbuster speakers, but one of the three individuals that's really going to talk a lot about what she's talked about here with us today and really just that thought of A Brand New Day, kind of like with Piper's Key, of unlocking and setting her free, that's with Voices for Voices and with the brand new day event specifically.

You'll want to share experiences of real everyday people, not celebrities, just people that are going through and have gone through some traumatic things, whether that is mental health related, whether that is anything really traumatic. So it doesn't have to be mental health related. That's how I started the organization, but obviously as I'm learning and want to have a broader reach, that individuals with mental health challenges aren't the only individuals that have gone through traumatic experiences. So again, Dr. Jessica Hoefler will be one of the blockbuster speakers. We're also going to have Brian Laughlin, who is a lieutenant at the Twinsburg Fire Department. Then one of my actual former students, James Warnken, he is an online specialist with expertise and search engine optimization and data analytics and he's actually legally color blind. So he goes through certain software packages to be able to do the work for his businesses now. Even when he was my student at Walsh University, there were some I guess, accommodations, accessibility, things that he was able to do.

 So really not only from a spectrum of age range, but from first responder to somebody in education, traumatic, male, female, that we are all going through and have gone through things and I really want with A Brand New Day is to talk about not just some of the tough times, but how the message of a particular mission and vision is living on and how it's touching and reaching and helping more people. So again, you can find out more about A Brand New Day at voicesforvoices.org, or you can go to Eventbrite, which is the official event platform to put events together, and you can search A Brand New Day and then you'll find the event tickets there. Then you can join us in person. We'd really love to have you and bring a friend, a family member, somebody that would like to be uplifted.

So it’s not just the speakers, we're also going to have a special needs band, RockAbility, going to be playing. So some real rock music. So some of these individuals are going to be playing real live instruments with some mentor musicians and everything from the music. It's all going to be played live, in person. We're not going to use auto tune like some of the music today, and even the singers, the vocals, are going to be done. So it's going to be a lot of fun. We hope you'll make plans to join us and you'll see more on this coming up on our social media pages, the Voices for Voices on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, wherever you consume content, as well as future podcasts.

Dr. Tim Collins:

Brad offered me a bottle of water. He probably thought, ah, I got the guy a bottle of water. Woo. That's awesome. This is how we are.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Exactly. A little bit for the listeners and for Dr. Tim Collins, with my mental health background of having kind of my mental health crisis or crashed four years ago, ending up in the psych ward of hospital for five days and really saying, hey, I need to take control of myself. It's okay if it's something mental health related, if I need medication, if I need counseling, whatever that may be. And it wasn't until I did that I really just kind of really level set my own self. And then from the helping others aspect, once I got comfortable that I was on the right trajectory, I knew that I wanted to help others in some way, wasn't sure exactly how that would be, how it would manifest itself. Sitting here today, having this conversation about mental health and the founding of Voices for Voices of being a platform and a way for individuals to share their stories and to really just talk about human issues, the things that come up every single day that any anybody can relate to. It doesn't have to be super research. It can just be I had a tough day because of I had a tough class or I got asked a question and I might not have come up with the exact answer, or I might have had some test anxiety. We're all going to go through those things.

Justin Alan Hayes:

So, from my perspective, as an instructor at Walsh of starting to share just little tidbits as we go through the course material, as it relates to mental health, but really bringing my experience to the forefront, not just something that's in a textbook, I've gotten a lot of good feedback from students, which is good in general. But the fact that it's about mental health and hey to hear an instructor just be upfront about he's up there, he's nervous, he has anxiety speaking the class.

Dr. Tim Collins:

Yeah. Justin I think you are in many ways a testimony of our mission at Walsh in that while we're preparing students, one of the underlining foundational elements of our educational philosophy is that each one of us has a purpose, and we're not sure what that purpose is. And there's lots of ways that we get to a point where we have to ask ourselves, what is our purpose? Because if you can discover that purpose, then you can actually align yourself with what your skills and gifts are with what you're actually doing at home at work. So while you're trying to figure out, well, how do I take this and where do I go? That's all about this struggle, this natural struggle of discovering one's purpose. Unfortunately, the culture doesn't talk like that. The culture will say, well by 17, you're supposed to know what you want to do and where you want to go. Is the school, is it college, is it the trades, and then you're going to live happily over after. And that's not the way it works.

Dr. Tim Collins:

So when our students say that, what we want to say at Walsh, what you say to them every day in the classroom is, hey, that's normal. That's the way it's supposed to be. Let me tell you, I'm no different than any of you guys. You're struggling because how do I do on this test? The teacher's struggling, how do I ask the right question to make sure that I understand that they get what I'm trying to teach them if I'm going to contribute to this mission of preparing them for their career and for their life and for their purpose. So, you make this come alive for us and you can relate. Again, it goes back to it's a human to human connection.

Dr. Tim Collins:

So our students have to understand, you have to sort of self-identify what your limits are. You had to self-identify, you needed some additional help. And the culture wants to say, you don't need any help. We're all on our own. No, we're not. We all need help. We learn this when we don't know how to talk when we're born. Rose Marie, is trying to figure out how to walk and play and do all those kinds of things. She needs help with that. We get to the other end of life and our elderly parents, they need help. First it starts with just shopping, then maybe help starts to go on to other things all the way down to taking care of their physical needs. That's the cycle of life. It's about helping others. That's why we're wired this way, that we're happiest when we help others.

Dr. Tim Collins:

So, actually when you say I need help, what you're actually doing is bringing joy to someone else. They want to help. It's okay to say I need that and then let's figure out what it is that you need, most of it, I think, my experience has been, as I look at Walsh, there's a lot of things you can do without turning to drugs and alcohol. Our culture says, find happiness. Our students say, well, I'm happy when I'm high or I'm happy when I'm drunk. So they turn to those things and happiness is superficial. What we really want our students to know is you're after fulfillment, you're after joy, you're after for something much, much deeper.

Dr. Tim Collins:

We can win the Super Bowl Justin, you and I this weekend, we could be the walk-ons. We could win the Super Bowl, you and me man, I'll hold the ball, you kick it, score, they win. But by Tuesday, we're both looking at each other, go, that's it? The happiness goes away in a flash. So, if you want to go after it in a deeper way, you have to be willing to talk about it and help others and work others. And so whatever the techniques are, they all will start and end with a human connection. So that's why at Walsh University we have the opportunity for our students when they come in, there's counseling sessions. We've just built up our counseling capability. We assess them for where they are with their health condition mentally, physically, emotionally. We want to understand what their family's situation is.

Dr. Tim Collins:

Of course, Walsh, we're only 2,500 students. So we are small enough that we can know you by name, but we're big enough that we're not in their business all the time. But we really think it's that personal relationship that makes this thing that we call the Walsh experience. We know in our students, they have a big game on Friday and you sir have just assigned them their big paper. So we know that student has got extra stressors. We likely also know what's happening in the background because this matters too. So I spent my first part of my career flying fighters, flying airplanes. The Air Force was as interested in what was going on in my home as they were, what was going on in my jet, and they knew there's a connection. If I'm fussing with my bride or I'm worried that the kids are sick, I might not be on my game in my jet. And if I'm not on my game, my life is at risk, the others around me are at risk and the mission is at risk. So, we want to bring all these together and understand them holistically. So we can only do that if we talk about it and if we talk with each other about it.

Dr. Tim Collins:

So I encourage others if there's a challenge, if you're not sure, it starts with let's talk about it. It could be with someone that you relate to. It could be a classmate. We encourage others. If you have someone, to our college students, look, you're not really equipped. Don't take this personal, you're not really equipped for some of these challenges there are in life. You just don't have enough life in you yet. It's nothing personal. But you have to learn to recognize when it exceeds your capability to meet the needs that you're staring at. That's an important part of leadership too.

Dr. Tim Collins:

Yes, we want to help others, but we want to know when I'm no longer able to help and I need to bring in reinforcements. We saw this in the movies, bring in the cavalry. Where's the white horses, that kind of stuff. So we want to help our students to know that it's okay to do a referral. Let someone else know this is bigger than me, I need to help with that. And so a lot of that is actually happening in the background. Again, another side, it's not what you see, it's not window dressing. This is not window shopping. You actually have to get into the store and move around and look and see are the clothes stacked up, where are they placed, all that kind of stuff.

Justin Alan Hayes:

You bet. Wow. Having that military experience, I think is helpful for those listeners that may have loved ones or may themselves have served in military. So first of all, thank you for your service [inaudible 00:21:17]-

Dr. Tim Collins:

Thank you for paying me.

Justin Alan Hayes:

You're welcome.

Dr. Tim Collins:

Thank you.

Justin Alan Hayes:

What would you tell somebody, maybe a freshman, somebody that's just going through a rough patch, whether in the house, whether it's in the classroom, whether it's some of what we've experienced with the pandemic, certain language that's happening? I guess, what would you tell an individual just from your experience of how do you get started and how do you move on? You can move on, things are going to be okay.

Dr. Tim Collins:

Yeah, of course, my framework here is the Catholic worldview and we're a Catholic university and so that means that we're going to be holistic in how we think about every problem. So, the reality is in the Catholic church, they never tell you how to actually solve anything. They only sort of offer you frameworks on how to think about it. So what I do tell students is when you're having a really bad day, the first thing you need to do is disconnect and go into some quiet time for some prayer. And what I'm saying there is you need to make sure you're connected with yourself first. Are you grounded in yourself? Listen for that inner voice, we all have it. And that inner voice can be a great factor of stabilization.

Dr. Tim Collins:

So the culture wants to teach us we're all manmade. I'm a self-made man. I can do all this myself. I'm on my own. And if I can't do it on my own, then I'm weak. Okay. Not true. First of all, not true. Second of all, what is true is actually we're a reflection of everyone we've ever met and everyone we've ever met is somehow a reflection of us. So, we leave a piece of each other with each other all the time. So there's nothing we do, nothing we do that's all on our own. It's the product of other people that have made contributions to us and then our ability to incorporate that into our lives. It's like a value system. We are taught a value system. That's what education is about the passing of values from one generation to the next. We're taught that and then we carry on. It wasn't like I woke up and said, oh, I invented integrity. No, not true. Someone taught me integrity and then it became part of my lifestyle. The university, we have five core values and those core values we're trying to instill on our students to give them that grounding.

Dr. Tim Collins:

So I tell them, go into prayer, get some quiet time, find some time to reflect. Some people will say meditation, I say prayer, but the idea is get into a conversation with God, we believe he's offering us a plan. We have free will to do whatever we want to do with it, but you at least ought listen to what the plan is and then you can reject it if you wish. But, go to prayer, quiet it down to just turn down the volume. It's kind of like if you listen to hard rock and it's full blast in the car and the person you're riding was trying to ask you a question, you can't hear them.

Dr. Tim Collins:

So what is it we all do when they ask a question? We turned down the volume.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Turn it down.

Dr. Tim Collins:

What did you say? That's all I want them to do, turned down the volume for just a minute. And then let's see if you can just sort of self-identify, not looking for an answer just looking to understand what the challenge is. Okay. I think the real challenge here is that I'm trying to get this paper done, this stressor. Time management is something that the universities are world renowned for teaching students how to do time management. But identify what the real stressor is.

Dr. Tim Collins:

Now, the next step is let's go talk to somebody. It has to be somebody you feel comfortable with. It has to be somebody you feel trustworthy, because you're going to exchange information. It becomes very personal very fast. So that's why relationships are important. Relationships, Justin, are not made just to go to the concert and have a good time. They're made for when times get tough, not when times get good. So there's three types of glue that I think are really important in leadership. I call them the three social glues. And the three social glues are important for bonding, but it's not just for leading, it's also for being led. The three glues are food, fun and ritual. Think about what you do with your daughter on a birthday priority every year. Think about what we do at Christmas time in our own families, the night before, the night after or Hanukkah, name your holiday name, your ritual. All of that is usually around food, and there's usually some fun, because we're trying to build a bond, a glue, something that brings us together so that when times are tough, we have a go-to spot.

Dr. Tim Collins:

So you want to go figure out who that is and then go start to talk about it, and that'll set us on the path of figuring out what we have to do to meet this challenge in front of us. It also helps us to learn, we all have them. No one is immune. So no one should think that they're different than anybody else because they have a set of challenges that are X. Mine are Y. Yours are Z. This is part of our nature because we're all individual. I'm going to go back to the human dignity. We're all made in God's image. We're all made with an individual exclusive purpose. We're all given skills, but you know what? We're also as part of God's plan, we're given limitations because it's only when we're at our weakest we actually become our strongest. When we can rely on others, we can rely on the Lord to help get us where we need to go.

Dr. Tim Collins:

So from the Catholic perspective, what we want our students to know is that if you're going to go it alone for 99.99% of the people, it's not going to go well. And we see this with the rich and famous. Oh, that's a self made person, they did all this. But when you actually look inside, what's going in their personal lives, it's a mess. It's a mess. So Justin, to your question what do I tell students? Prayer, at least get that initial inner voice what's really going on and then start a conversation with someone. And once we get that going, then we're moving in the right direction. The trajectory is the right way.

Dr. Tim Collins:

Which is why in the pandemic, this has been so distressful to us. So Inside The Vatican did a story with us in August of 2020 and I focused a lot on this mental health issue. It's all because the government's answer to the pandemic was separation. Our response to that is yeah physically, but not emotionally, not socially. not any other way. But physically, yeah, let's all back away from each other. It's taken this kind of thing to teach people, quit hacking on me on an airplane and wash your hands. I mean, we were all taught that but we just stopped doing that.

Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah. So fascinating. Going forward what do you see as you've talked about a lot of the challenges, just the society really and how we're brought up. I know as a male going through my struggles that it, I felt, well, I'm a guy I need to just power through it. I can't show my emotions. I can't do this or do that. That just added just an extra level of like, okay, so-

Dr. Tim Collins:

A perfect example where the culture misleads us. See, you were taught that by the culture. That wasn't something that's spraying up out of you. So I'll give you an example in my life where I just struggle with this is, and it relates to, I think, is how we go forward. The punchline to all this is the way you go forward is to acknowledge upfront it's not my fault. It's nobody's fault. So we want to find what's right, we don't want to spend any time on who's right.

Dr. Tim Collins:

So, in 1996, I was on the receiving end of a truck bomb in Saudi Arabia. And so it was Khobar Towers, if Google it or you look in that June evening, June 25th, you'll see a big building, the whole face is ripped off, thousands injured, 19 of my fellow airmen killed. Leading up to that like a daily mass from the Catholic perspective, I go to church every day because I have found in my life with my limitations and my weaknesses, if I can start off the day in a quiet time and get myself centered, what am I doing today, the rest of the day goes a lot better. So I was going to church every day and then the bomb goes off and a couple days later when we started having church the place was packed. This is a good idea, we're all at church today but this could be something all the time.

Dr. Tim Collins:

But one of the things that I struggled with, I think firefighters struggled this, I think police officers struggled with this is why did I live and the guy as far away from my hand, why did he die? So, I was blown. I was blown down a hallway, picked up off my feet, slammed into a cement wall. Arms up to keep the glass from basically just killing me right there. I didn't know. I said, well, why am I still here? But it was nothing that I could control, so that wasn't going to help. And I was in a leadership position. And so I got all these people looking at me like, okay, what do we do now? Like it's time to get to work and we got to take care of all this. So we're trying to take care of everyone else but I also realized that I also have to take care of myself. Because I'm helping them with their struggles, well, I'm having the same ones too. I'm just not allowed to talk about it. Because that's how the culture is, you can't talk about it.

Dr. Tim Collins:

So one of the things that they did for us, which they do for firefighters after these big, tragic events is you go through some therapy and some group work with others that have shared the experience and exchange ideas. I'm a fighter pilot. I'm fine. I'm absolutely fine. Oh really? Then there's a little probing. Okay, maybe I'm not fine. Then the tears are starting to come down because I'm sad that I lost my friend and friends, 19. 19 people that I was responsible to bring back home, I made a promise to their wives. I was going to bring them home, I promise you. I'll bring them back. And I brought him back, but I brought him back into coffin. I didn't bring him back walking upright. So as I worked my way through that, I came to this realization. I can't control all of this. I can only control what is sort of in front of me and I can't control it if I'm not grounded, if I'm not centered. If I'm not trying to pay attention to my inner voice, if I just react emotionally, that's not going to help anybody.

Dr. Tim Collins:

So this idea of balancing being an introvert and an extrovert, you know what you're doing externally, what you're doing internally, you got to pay attention to both. If you exclude either one, you do that at great risk to yourself. So the culture wants to teach you that you're a man, it's not supposed to be that way. I do sort of ascribe to this idea, it's part of the Catholic worldview. We have a man of the family. We have the lady of the family. We have the child. The holy family. Everybody's got their role to play. Men have been given some talents that women have not been given and vice versa. I mean, I look inside my own family. Drenda is my bride. She is much more intuitive. She's much more tuned into reading signs from the kids. I'm not that way. So, how we balance that.

Dr. Tim Collins:

But it shouldn't be as if you're a stereotype and it's the only way because we're still all humans. We still all have these connections. We still have these feelings. And so, we want to deal with them in a way that moves us forward and doesn't pin us down. So I think if we do that, it goes back to the window dressing as leaders at Walsh University. We want our students not just to look at what's in the window, we want to look, go into the shop and look what's behind the window because if you're really going to help them you got to understand what's behind the screen.

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