“Be your absolute best” UNL decathlon winner, firefighter urges mental health awareness in first responders

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Mike Bailey has built a career on high-pressure situations. 

Now a farmer, businessman and member of the Ansley Fire Department, Bailey earned recognition as the Big 8 decathlon champion with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln track and field team in 1994. His experiences as a firefighter, farmer and athlete have showed him what it takes to succeed when the stakes are high, but have also taught him that emotions come with those situations. 

“There are challenges. It pushes us to our breaking point,” he said during a presentation at Utica Fire and Rescue’s awards banquet Sept. 18. “It’s OK to have emotion. It’s OK to cry. We’re taught to be tough and to be there and to be the rock for those people, but sometimes, we need to take care of us.”

Bailey said a lot of those emotions come from the rigors of fire and rescue response, and repeated exposure can lead to mental and physical struggles. In order for first responders to do the best job possible, Bailey said they must first pay attention to themselves. It’s easy to get wrapped up into the emotions of the job, he said, so self-care is important for firefighters to remain both focused on the job and mentally and physically healthy. 

“If we want to be the best, it starts with us, taking care of ourselves to be the best we can be,” he said. 

Bailey said aside from personal emotions, another limitation first responders face is doubt. Eliminating self-imposed limitations and striving to get better each call is as important as awareness of one’s health. 

“We have the ability to do so much more but we stop short because we don’t think someone notices,” he said. “Sometimes you have to make a much bigger leap out there. If we want to be better moving forward, we have to find a drive within inside ourselves to push us because there might not be anyone else there pushing until we tap into that uncharted territory.”

Bailey said he knows that sometimes, no matter the effort, a situation may not go as planned and lead to negative emotions. He encouraged the firefighters to not let feelings of doubt and failure settle in, as that can lead to issues on future calls. 

“It can hurt us and affect how we live our life every day. It can hurt us financially. We can find ourselves withdrawn from our friends,” he said. “Because why? Because we feel like we failed, but that’s one thing we don’t teach in classes is that it’s not failure. Failure is when no one is there to try to help.”’

Sometimes though, Bailey said, self-perceived failures can be a motivational tool. 

“We’re going to have days where we realized we failed but we have to take it upon ourselves to say, ‘They never taught me that in class. I never learned that,’’ he said. “When we have those failures, they’re going to drive us to change and be better. As long as we do that, we’re getting better.”

If feelings of self doubt become harder to ignore, Bailey encouraged firefighters to remember that fire and rescue is a team effort.

“Looking around this room, I can tell that all you guys and ladies have each others’ back when it comes to what you’re doing,” he said. “You have to have that teamwork, that trust and those common goals and you can be the absolute best you want to be.”