The Courage To Live
The Courage to Live podcast is hosted by retired Police Captain Josh Bitsko and his wife Jenna, and it explores resilience, leadership, and the real stories behind critical incidents and everyday challenges. Each episode blends lessons from Josh’s career in law enforcement including his response to the 1 October mass shooting in Las Vegas with honest conversations about trauma, growth, and the courage it takes to face both professional and personal battles. The show covers everything from leadership and decision making under stress to mental health, family, and the daily choices that help us live with purpose.
The Courage To Live
Ep. 139: Courage Casts - Rethinking Self Care
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In this episode, Josh challenges the idea that self-care has to be time-consuming or complicated. Instead of focusing on big, planned activities, he talks about the value of small, consistent moments that help you recharge. From short breaks to simple things you enjoy, he shares how shifting your mindset around self-care can make it more realistic, sustainable, and effective in everyday life.
Welcome to the Courage to Lib Podcast. My name is Josh Pitzko, and I'm a retired police captain with 24 years of experience in Las Vegas. Currently, I've traveled the country and I teach people about courage, resilience, and leadership. In today's short podcast, um, I want to talk about self-care. And I've done a bunch of podcasts on self-care. And I want to talk about how I've gotten certain things about self-care wrong. Um, so even when I teach my class or, you know, someone's asking me, like, oh, what do I need to do? I oftentimes go to the go-to answer, right? Well, spending time in nature and taking time for yourself. And like, but you know, people, what do you like to do? Well, I like to fish or I like to hike or whatever it is. And oftentimes, and I've I've seen this mirrored in classes that I've been in. Oftentimes, um it's always these grandiose gestures. So, like, yo, you have to go do this, you have to go do um, you know, you have to go hike, and it's gonna take four hours of your day. I've really had a shift recently, and this is for myself too, is I want to call it, you know, micro self-care. Like, you know what? I'm gonna go and play a video game for 20 minutes. And okay, I know, like, oh, video games is terrible, whatever. Okay, whatever it is that you enjoy, it doesn't take up a lot of my time. I enjoy myself, me and my son will sit there and play Call of Duty or something like that for 20 minutes. And at the end of the day, hey, that was a great time. We had a lot of fun. So finding something like that that you enjoy, and especially finding it that doesn't take very long. Maybe you're gonna go read for a little bit, um, which I like to do and I try to carve out time for, but finding something small that you enjoy that it might just do a quick little recharge. Um, so stop thinking I mean these big grandiose things, those are important too. Maybe once a month you're gonna go for a hike, or every other week you're gonna go fish, or whatever it is. But find those little moments and those little moments that you can focus on yourself. So I also talk about self-care in my book, The Courage to Live. Um, it's available on Amazon. And if you like the podcast, please share it with a friend, subscribe, uh, leave a review, and I appreciate you spending time with me today.