The Unbroken First Responder with Rick Ruppenthal

Rick Ruppenthal worked for 30 years as a paramedic and knows intimately the challenges that come with that job. He also knows that every human can rely on the innate resilience and well-being that are part of all of us. And how seeing Thought for the temporary, moving energy it is, can help first responders with their work and their response to it.Rick Ruppenthal is a 30-year retired Paramedic, Mental Health Educator, Transformative Coach, and Certified Change PractitionerFacilitator. His clients gain a greater sense of self-confidence; less worry, less stress; joy, and freedom; better and easier decision-making; more presence in their relationships. In his work he uses no techniques, there is nothing to memorize. No long programs or steps to take. Rick goes straight to the heart and soul, our true source of power, well-being, and resilience.You can find Rick Ruppenthal at RickRuppenthal.ca.You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes* Experiencing the paramedic field as a calling * On the stress typically associated with the paramedic field * How we’re always doing the best we can with what we know at the time * Teaching first responders that they are not broken * Working with first responders to teach them the role thinking plays in stress and PTSDResources Mentioned in this Episode* Micheal Neill’s TedX talk, Why Aren’t We Awesomer? * Sydney Banks’ book The Missing Link * The Unbroken Hero ProjectTranscript of Interview with Rick RuppenthalAlexandra: Rick Ruppenthal, welcome to Unbroken.Rick: Thank you for inviting me.Alexandra: My pleasure. It’s great to have you here. Tell us about your background and how you got interested in the Three Principles.Rick: Okay, well, I won’t go too far back. But primarily my focus has been on my paramedic career. So I’ve just, although I keep saying recently, it’s been almost six years now that I retired from being a paramedic, and I spent 30 years of it, bits and parts mostly in the Lower Mainland, a little bit on Vancouver Island. And eventually, I also took on roles of supervisors, supervision, roles, managerial roles, and also as an educator. I also had a wonderful opportunity to travel around the province of British Columbia, and meeting different all the paramedics and having an opportunity to not only train and teach them, but also I had a team of instructors also that we were part of putting the paramedic program together the three principals. Everybody, I think, that has ever come across the three principles is from a, from a seeking point of view, like searching for something, something we feel is kind of missing. And I got a brief and I’ll just call it a brief understanding, almost 40 plus years ago, through a workshop that I had taken that was, at the time very controversial, very, very cutting edge kind of a thing. What they were doing was they were pointing to this thing that we were more of a thought created world. And how our experiences are being generated and things like that. I really embraced what they were teaching at that point and started to experience that as a reality for myself. And when I got into Paramedicine, I often reflected on how different everybody’s experiences were with the work. It was so fascinating, because part of my education they pointed to how stressful the work was,