Boukabou Solutions | Solutions to What?
Welcome to the off-duty survival blog.
Nearly everything we do can have an impact on our effectiveness while on-duty, especially what we do with ourselves when we are off-duty.
Wait… what?
This blog is dedicated to helping you (a law enforcement officer) live a better life off-duty so that you can be the best officer you can be while on-duty.
What if I am not an LEO?
I am specifically focusing on writing to an audience of LEOs. But maybe you are a corrections officer. Or military. Maybe none of those. Maybe you are a physicist - in which case let me know because we should totally nerd-out (I wanted to be a physicist/physics teacher at one point).
My perspective comes from being in law enforcement for the last twelve years. I have been instructing and building training curriculum for the last six years. It is during these last six years that I have found my passion for providing valuable training and mentoring to officers. It is also why I am on this endeavor to share my experiences, lessons, and explore ideas with you.
What I have learned through teaching and mentoring over 2,000 law enforcement officers throughout my career is that you are motivated and dedicated to serving others. However, we often become complacent about taking care of ourselves first.
So what do you mean by off-duty survival?
Okay, scratch that, we can do better than just survival. This is about surviving and thriving! This blog will focus on sharing the lessons and ideas I wished I had learned sooner or at least with less pain to acquire them.
I am grateful for having tremendously generous mentors that have helped me throughout my life. They helped me survive through difficult times. They guided me and provided mentorship so that I had the opportunity to thrive. It is a never-ending pursuit.
And this blog is part of that endeavor for me. To pass it on to you and our community. I learn so much from so many of you nearly every single day. I feel it would be a waste not to create a space to discuss the important topics that many of us care about and want to learn more on.
Thriving comes from fighting against complacency - it is a constant struggle. Little things add up and turn into big things. Same is true for both directions.
Little bad things will grow to be monsters some day.
Little good things will grow into something special and meaningful.
You have to work hard to grow the little good things; whereas, the bad things will just grow by themselves if we don’t pay attention to them. How do I know this is true? I mean it is a physics law (Second Law of Thermodynamics) - entropy. And you probably know this to be true. If you don’t pay attention to your health, relationships, and finances long enough, you’ll experience chaos. Chaos is the result of complacency. It is the result of not paying attention to what matters.
Complacency (off-duty)
We use that word a lot. Complacency. We say: “Complacency kills!”
Does it only kill us at work? Does complacency not haunt us while we are off-duty?
Are you talking about tactics, Boukabou? Because I’m a ninja on- and off-duty.
Yeah, I am sure you are, and that you conceal carry and have a back-up to your back-up, and you never sit at a restaurant unless your back is to the wall. That’s cool and important too. But that is not what I’ll focus on in this blog.
I am going to mainly focus on the things that we seem to struggle with the most.
Is your personal life in order? Are you building a solid foundation or are you putting yourself in a precarious position?
Our health (physical and mental).
Our finances (managing money).
Our personal development and accountability (seeking opportunities to grow and achieve our goals).
Our relationships (at work and outside of work).
That stuff. Stuff that if we are complacent about, it affects us while we are on-duty. Or could grow into a set of monsters that ruin our careers or worse.
For example:
Some of us work hundreds of hours, if not more, of overtime each year and we are still buried in credit card debt. Some of us do not begin retirement planning until we are half-way or later through our careers.
Yeah, I’m not worried, I will have a pension when I retire.
How many cops do you know that retire and have to get another job? How many have you asked: “When are you pulling the plug?” and they answered you: “When I get something lined up.”
Financial complacency puts a lot of police officers in uncomfortable situations.
I have heard more officers weigh leaving the profession right now than ever before. The conversation ends the same way nearly every single time.
“I need to retire and get my pension, so I guess I can’t quit!”
Those officers talk about the time left to eligibility for retirement like time left to serve out a prison sentence. (Life is not without irony at times).
That is not freedom. That is not what this career should be about. Having a retirement count-down calendar with years left seems to highlight a problem that we all feel at times. This problem seems especially pronounced right now.
It is incredibly sad to see what happens to the passion that gets people into this profession turn into ambivalence. We must build resilience to overcome the challenges that we will all surely face throughout our lives and careers.
Legacy
This blog is about you. It might be called Boukabou Solutions, but that is because I liked the idea of putting my reputation and legacy behind this work. It seemed slightly uncomfortable at first. But I wanted to take it seriously, so I decided to put my own name on the line.
Also, it meant that I did not have to be too creative about branding through alliteration, play on words, and all that really great stuff smart entrepreneurs do (translation: I’m just jealous). But it made finding a domain name and social media handles that much easier! (Speaking of: at the bottom of the page you will find links to all the social media handles, which you can use to stay connected with me).
Finally, I am not trying to be found by everyone. This is my entrepreneurial endeavor to bring value to a specific person in my mind. YOU! I figure that if it brings you value, you will share it with someone that comes to your mind. Maybe a squad or detachment member that would benefit from the information here. I have big dreams and visions for how Boukabou Solutions can someday serve you and this community, but this endeavor must start with this first step.
This blog is about you and your legacy. Police training is about securing the scene as safely as possible. Then investigating crimes and potentially connecting people with resources that are needed. Ultimately, police training is about how to survive the career - both physically and legally. A daunting task. So the training emphasis is understandable. It is necessary.
But there is more to retiring than just making it to retirement. What about our legacy? Can we leave the world a bit better than when we found it at the beginning of our careers? Cliche right?
I still hear my TAC officer’s voice in my head asking me if I left it better than when I found it. Whether it is an academy dorm room (which you know will just get tossed no matter how well you leave it). A collision scene. But most importantly - people. He inspired me to live out this simple rule to the best of my ability. Sometimes I don’t do as well as I want to. But I am committed to never giving up.
Well, imagine your retirement party:
Are you healthy?
What is your relationship with your family?
Are you financially able to retire?
Are you proud of what you have done with your career?
Will your colleagues miss you or are they happy to see you retire?
(By the way, how you are at the end of your career is important because you are part of this world and likely an important part of someone else’s life).
What will your legacy be?
YES! You deserve to be better off when you retire than when you started. I know this should seem obvious, but we don’t always act like it.
Are you on-course for that to be true? Are you thriving?
Those are important things that lead to that cliche question - did we make the world better? Are you and others better off because of all the life energy you put into this career? Especially considering all that you have sacrificed during your career in order to serve.
At retirement nobody truly cares about the awards and titles or rank you achieved. It is about the relationships you built and how you impacted lives. That is our legacy. How will we be remembered?
It is a tough time for peace officers. We need to take care of ourselves and support each other so that we can all do what brought us into this profession - helping and protecting others.
Thank you for joining me and I hope to bring you valuable information and resources to help you take care of yourself and each other. I want you to become that off-duty ninja - you know, with your health, finances, and your relationships. The things that really matter and will make you a better servant to others.
I am excited to build our legacies together!
