How do you balance personal life and work as a firefighter?

Question

Robert Verhelst · Answer

So how do you balance personal life and work as a firefighter? You know, the real big challenge and the biggest thing that people have to really go into is the mindset and the mental side of it. The physical pain is always going to be there. As you get older, everything gets harder, everything kind of aches, you have arthritis, everything like that. But I think it's the mental side that really needs the most work to balance life and work is to be able to wipe your boots off before you enter the house. Whatever it is, like I listen to music and if I'm not ready before I go in the house, I'll kind of wait and just listen to some music, kind of decompress myself to be able to enter into the house and understand that it's a different environment. And that environment, I need to be able to be present, engaged, and not have the baggage of what I had from that shift or from that day be a burden on that. But at the same point, it's also so important to have that person to outlet to, to be able to speak to, to be able to unburden yourself with whatever you're going through. So don't be afraid to talk to people, but making sure that your personal life and your work life have separate entities and understand that they're not the same environment.

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"How do you balance personal life and work as a firefighter?"