The Survival Mindset

Key to survival

One of the most central themes of this site is survival psychology. This is because it plays such a crucial role in who lives and who dies.

Many people without skills, knowledge or equipment have survived conditions and events that should, by all normal standards, have killed them.

Others, with great training and equipment, have died almost before they got started. Some didn’t bother to wait even an hour in survivable conditions; they assumed they would die, and then they panicked or even committed suicide.

It isn’t enough to be “tough”

Shortly after the 9/11/2001 attack on New York and Washington, D.C., news programs had expert guests on to talk about how to deal with a life that includes terrorism.

Every one of them recommended a “tough mind.” Well, what exactly is a tough mind, anyway, and how do we develop it? It isn’t really that obvious.

In truth, toughness, like happiness, is more a result of healthy mental practices and broad experience than it is a simple choice. It isn’t enough to say, “I wanna be tough. Ok, I’ll be tough. Yup, I’m tough now.”

Mental Health is the real goal

A healthy mind is not afraid of the quiet. It doesn’t fear its own “voices.” It likes the company of others, but doesn’t need it or other distractions 24/7. Rather, it likes “alone with self” time.

A lot of survival literature, including the Army Survival Manual, breezes through this material, discussing stress management and the most cursory approach to mental health.

I think that is a mistake. My intent is to make this section useful for arriving at a state of inner peace (not spiritual stuff here, but the absence of pathological conflict), as well as discussing specific techniques to deal with the terrible stresses that can and do develop in a survival situation. ...and in everyday life. We live in a world that can make you nuts. Our “civilization” often isn’t very civilized.

Moving right along...

I’m not a psychologist and what I offer here can’t stand in for therapy if you need it. But I have dug into my own mind and found keys to peace and great strength. And I can tell you how I did it. A part of it was deep reading in psychology literature. The other part was the hard part...

I hope to spare you the gobs of research that I did (the head of a noted psychology department once told me that I’d studied as much of the right stuff as most Ph.D. candidates. ...kinda threw me!), and to provide you something of a road map to sustainable mental health—and the mental calm, flexibility, resiliency and toughness that result.

You can take something of an inventory of where you are in this venture. I’ve posted a rudimentary mental toughness self-evaulation. If nothing else, it might be a kick!

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