Whether lost in the woods, attacked by terrorists, fighting in a tournament or trying to find your way after total economic collapse, successful outcomes and survival requires knowledge and mental toughness.
Understanding various survival techniques puts you and your family way ahead when even the basics of life are no longer guaranteed. Believe it or not, despite the power of all the survival knowledge you have accumulated, the single most powerful asset you have is your mental mindset that you create for yourself and your family.
Humans are capable of amazing things. A large brain that is adept at manipulating its surroundings can be credited with the many technological marvels in the world today. Mental toughness and the mindset to use it is a powerful tool that can and should be at your disposal when catastrophe threatens the livelihood of your family.
Especially during survival situations, harnessing the power of your brain equates to limitless possibilities. The ability to use this power starts by having a proper survival mindset; the same mindset taught to Special Forces soldiers around the world.
A survival mindset of mental toughness transcends emotion. Not that Special Forces soldiers are void of all emotion; they simply know how to control those emotions and even use to them their advantage when the situation demands. Learning to have this kind of composure in terrifying or horrific situations is not easy. It’s a difficult skill to master but it is the one skill that can save your life above all others when confronted with the stress of a traumatic or dangerous situation.
According to recent studies, 95% of people that perish when exposed to psychological trauma, die within the first three days. This truly becomes a situation of mind over matter.
The Initial Coping Stage
A coping period ensues after the initial situation onset. Survivors, faced with the gravity of their situation, must begin to take action. The importance of creating a plan during the crisis stage should be apparent. Not only does creating the plan help thwart feelings of desperation, it also makes the transition to action much easier and much less stressful.
Staying calm and adhering to the plan ensures that logical, rational decisions are made consistently. Decisions to take action based on emotion are usually not conducive to survival, and rash decisions based on emotion can even be dangerous.
Setting Goals
Most of us know the importance of setting goals in life. They help you achieve the things you desire most. Goal setting is even more important during a crisis. Short term, medium, and long term goals are all important aspects of a proper survival mindset. The logic is simple.
Instead of thinking about the long term consequences of survival, short term goals are much easier to attain and will build the confidence your family will need. A short term goal might be as simple as surviving the next five minutes.
A medium, or mid-term, goal could be locating and securing shelter for the evening or procuring some food. A long term goal may be as simple as surviving until the next day. The timeline for what is considered a short, medium, or long amount of time are transformed during a
survival situation. Living in this limited focus manner will keep your brain healthy even when faced with unimaginable circumstances. A dangerous thought pattern that has been responsible for many deaths is thinking too far ahead during stressful situations.
SEAL candidates are taught a similar way of thinking. The intensive Navy SEAL training program is six months long. Feelings of hopelessness creep up on the recruits quickly if they think in terms of months or even days. By training to look only a few minutes ahead, the tasks presented seem much more manageable and the chances of success more certain.
This happens in medicine as well. When an overwhelming number of sick patients fill the emergency and/or exam rooms, training yourself to just look a few minutes ahead to the next essential task, allows you to stay focused and cleared headed.
Visualization
Mentally rehearsing an action prepares your mind for completing the task successfully even if unexpected circumstances arise. Taking a step by step inventory of everything required for a favorable outcome means less time will need to be spent thinking about these things when
performing the action.
The SEAL recruits learn this through a series of tests. For example, during underwater training, a SEAL instructor will swim underwater and sabotage the recruit’s breathing apparatus. Immediately, the powerful primal fear of drowning prevails and the candidate is often left disoriented and unable to perform the assigned tasks.
To combat this, recruits are trained to visualize the successful completion of the exercise before they actually start. Since these recruits already knew each step that was required, they were more capable of finishing the task despite their sudden inability to breathe.
This technique is often employed in martial arts. Prior to participating in actual sparing, the student is instructed to mentally walk through the technique and visualize himself or herself successfully performing the technique.
This same technique can be applied to any task that needs completion whether it is self-defense, finding shelter, or retreating to safety. Whenever possible, understand exactly what needs to be done and then visualizing yourself completing the task before beginning dramtically increases the chances of success.
Self-Talk
You probably aren’t aware that people can talk to themselves at up to 7,000 words per minute. That is 116 words per second!
However, if most of those words are negative, self-doubt and hopelessness will surely take hold. I call that “potty talk.” You’d be surprised how much “potty talk” most people have with themselves.
You and your family must learn to maintain a positive mental attitude through the use of positive thinking and positive mental self-talk in order to survive.
Managing your self-talk efficiently begins by realizing how often it occurs. Take some time to consider all the thoughts you have in a day. You will be surprised by just how many times you think about everything from the car in front of you on the way to work to the kid’s baseball game after dinner. Realize how many of these thoughts are negative or induce stress. Now imagine these same negative thoughts creeping up during a stressful, imminent danger situation.
The effects can be devastating, or even deadly. Force yourself to replace negative thoughts with positive ones whenever possible. This is not meant to sound like a lesson on positive living, but if you begin training your brain now to manage negative thoughts as they occur it will come more easily when you are depending on it.
The Navy even encourages recruits to use mantras to maintain positive thinking under pressure. Even simple, one word mantras such as “survival” can help to lift your spirits and maintain a proper survival mindset.
I created a 25 minute daily positive mindset self-hypnosis program that I and my patients use to re-enforce positive mental conversations, thoughts and weight management with yourself. You can find it HERE.
Breath Control During Limbic Arousal
When the body is placed under sudden stress or distress, the Limbic system turns on instantaneously. The natural reactions that occur when the limbic system is stimulated can be very helpful if managed properly, however, these reactions can also lead to very poor choices if not correctly controlled. The blood stream is flooded with adrenaline and dopamine that increases physical ability. These same chemicals make the body very reactive, suddenly making years of physical and mental training instantly inaccessible or lost.
Martial artists who practice full contact sparing and Navy SEAL recruits are taught to focus on breathing to temporarily divert their natural attention away from pain, fatigue or whatever situation is responsible for the added stress. Doing this allows your brain to stabilize and logical thinking becomes possible once again while still benefiting from the performance gains that occur from the rise in dopamine and adrenaline.
Controlled breathing is not difficult. This occurs while focusing specifically on a couple steps:
- Focus on breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth.
- Try to exhale more deeply than you inhale. This helps to remove as much carbon dioxide as possible from the lungs that can then be refilled with fresh oxygen.
- Think about nothing other than breathing.
- If your mind begins to wander, gently redirect your focus back to breathing.
It takes just a little bit of practice. Following these steps will slow down your breathing, slow your heart rate and make it easier to regain your mental composure under duress.
After doing this for a couple of minutes, you can re-evaluate your situation with confidence that you are not making rash decisions based on fear or anxiety. This is the same form of diaphragmatic breathing used extensively in self-meditation and hypnotherapy for the same calming and relaxing effects on the body.
Create a Plan
Planning transcends the line between the mindset skills used by Special Forces and physical survival skills because it encompasses both aspects. To think like a warrior or soldier, creating a solid action plan is the first step because it provides multiple benefits.
- A good plan reduces the likelihood of emotional disturbance.
- It also provides hope and can relieve symptoms of anxiety and depression; emotions often encountered in stressful situations.
As I mentioned, a plan should be created as soon as possible. Assess the situation, the environment, and establish your priorities based on the information you have at hand.
Completing this task quickly is very important because fatigue, hunger, or injury could affect your decision making abilities later. The ability to leave emotion to the side and make an accurate assessment of any situation is taught more than any other thing in Special Forces training.
Even with the best intelligence information, no soldier ever knows exactly what they will encounter in the field. Neither do you. Plan for as many contingencies as possible and use visualization techniques to break down tasks into manageable pieces.
A basic plan can be created without much effort. Start by assessing the highest priority survival requirements based on the situation. Determine how to best attain these goals and then break each task into smaller subtasks.
Put the plan into action and take frequent inventory of your progress. Looking at what you have already accomplished builds self-confidence and aids in maintaining a positive outlook.
Following these simple techniques can and will be lifesaving in the event of disaster, calamity or emergency.
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Module 15 – The Mindset Blueprint
is part of our Self-Learning Ketogenic Lifestyle 101 Program.