Crisis Prevention Intervention Excerpt

“Don’t leave home without it.” We’ve all heard that before, haven’t we? We know what it is. It’s your American Express card, right? It used to be. Think again. From now on, you need to think of it as your enthusiasm. “Don’t leave home without your enthusiasm!”

You need to be one hundred and ten percent every day, regardless of what you’re working on. It doesn’t matter if you’re going to work in a substance abuse treatment center, going to work in a hospital, security, retail, sales, law enforcement, etc. Whatever it is, you need to give one hundred and ten percent. You may be saying, “Well, Brendan, how am I going to do that? How am I going to give one hundred and ten percent?” Let me tell you a quick story. (Learn more about our cpi training online and online crisis intervention certification).

At the first locked residential facility I worked in I had this supervisor. His name was Stan. I’ll never forget him. I was, maybe, 20 years old, working in this facility with adolescents. One of the first things he told me was, “Brendan, you can’t afford to not be at a 110% every day when you come in here to work.” I thought he was setting the bar pretty high so I asked, “How am I going to be a 110%?” He told me, “Hopefully, yesterday, you did he best you could.” He paused. “Today, you need to do better than the best you did yesterday.” Go to our de escalation training page to try our de escalation training and get up to speed with what it takes to De Escalate any situation.

Here it is, 20 years later and I haven’t forgotten that lesson. I’ve got to do my best today, but I’ve got to go above and beyond what I did yesterday.

Think about the people with whom you are dealing and the environment in which they are living. They need your best and, in fact, they need better than what you did yesterday. The words you say to someone in crisis may be the only few words, or the few simple things you do, or the few minutes you ever give to them. For you, it’s only a small thing. For them, it may be the difference between life and death.

That said, it could potentially be life or death for you, as well. Think about these active shooter situations that have happened, in recent years. Look at the terrible scenarios and incidents that occur in the world today. It’s sad, isn’t it? We all have these knee-jerk reactions, saying, “Oh, this is awful! We should do this! We should do that!” The reality is that, if we all did a better job of giving each other our best, we would have less overall violence to begin with. I’m not saying that you’re going to stop every active shooter—not by any means–but I have to wonder if one or two of them could have been avoided, if there were someone in their life giving them their best. If someone enthusiastic tried to connect with them and built a rapport, would it have made a difference? I would bet on it.

When you show up to work, to your loved ones, to your routine day-to-day interactions, give it your best. There’s no reason not to, and quite honestly, what’s the point? If you’re not going to try and give your best, then why bother giving anything at all.