Thin Blue Mind / Smokey Heroes
Sports to Law Enforcement: Seven Success Lessons from Sports
Guest Blogger
Dr. Bill Cottringer has worked and taught in the criminal justice field for over 50 years and currently serves as Executive VP for Puget Sound Security companies in Bellevue, WA. He has published 9 books and over 250 professional articles. He is also a sports psychologist and success expert on www.selfgrowth.com
The field of sports has a live-or-die success decree which offers criminal justice personnel a treasure chest of wealth on how to win critical battles and deal with crisis. Successful sports teams understand many 
obstacles must be overcome which impede success. Roadblocks occur when things don’t go as planned, with either Plan A, B or C, quickly go South past the point of no return. What you don’t know from the “black box” is what often kills you in the end.
Here are seven useful lessons learned from sports failures to apply to your criminal justice work in tough situations. Doing as many of these things as you can will help you and your team get the best possible outcome in the worst of situations.
1. The achievement of success in anything requires a well thought-out and well-practiced plan. This takes focus and effort and even more flexibility and adaptability to make required course corrections when the right time comes. Visualize the steps to the outcome you want. One coach even has his players practice the celebration of winning a game after the third quarter. Figure out how to get there before you take the first step toward you goal. Read the rest of this entry »
female clients know when they are dating a loser by the third date. But it had to sell. So we came up with the idea that since we were police psychologists, we were teaching profiling of relationship criminals to women. When phrased that way, people got real interested as 22 of 25 agents on first mailing wanted to be the one to represent it. Usually you send it out to hundreds of agents and get tons of rejection letters before you find one that might take it. (Steven King even wallpapered a room in his house with rejections from his first book, 
Consumption induces euphoria, sedation, itchiness and drowsiness so the bottle says, yet the side-effects not listed on the bottle are much farther-reaching. These slow assassins can be bought on the street or delightfully delivered by a pharmacist. I spent time, money, energy and shed my dreams in favor of the twisted comfort of Oxycontin. Addiction is a physical and mental manifestation of chemical dependence, which may well lead to a vicious cycle of denial and self-destruction. My progression was slow, until it wasn’t. Lying to myself and others was the first step down the dark corridor of addiction. Then came the cheating, stealing and desperation. My story is one of despair and rapid deterioration.
my heroes, my idols, and we even asked them (and they agreed) to be the adopted grandparents of our Russian-born baby. Rocky and Irma wrote or produced almost every show you remember as a child. “F-Troop,” “Facts of Life,” ‘Good Times,” “Gilligan Island,” “My Three Sons,” “Family Affairs,” the list goes on and on. Heck, they even gave Edith Bunker cancer on an “All in the Family” episode. Try writing about cancer and make people laugh at the same time if you don’t think they are skilled. Hollywood writers and a police psychologist, who’d figure? (If you were at my wedding or at the 2-day class I taught at Alliant University, they were there cheering me on.) To quote one of their characters, they are DY-NO-MITE!
Glucose which is the fuel and O2, which is required to burn it. O2 gets to each cell via red blood cells, glucose gets inside each cell only with an insulin escort. The insulin molecules are provided by the pancreas which is signaled to release insulin into the bloodstream any time there is the slightest rise in the blood glucose (sugar) level (above approximately 100 mg per deciliter of blood). The insulin molecules “unlock” the portal thru which the glucose enters the cell by engaging special insulin receptor sites on the cell wall. 