Survival Mindset – Do You Have The Will To Survive?

Many people that are preppers may have months of water, food, and other supplies. So, are they prepared? If they don’t have the proper mindset all of those preps may be for nothing.

Do you have the Will to survive? The answer is Yes! We all have it in us. The real question is can you tap into those mental resources and make it happen?

For some, the will to survive comes naturally. Maybe it’s their upbringing or other childhood events that shaped their mind in such a way that allows them to push forward in the face of adversity. For others, not so much, but the fight or flight response is natural and it is there for a reason. Unfortunately, no one knows how they will react during an emergency until they have been in one and every situation is different.

First I will discuss the different attributes that make up a survival mindset, then I will discuss what you can do to improve and hone those attributes to increase your chances of survival in any situation.

Attributes of a Survivor: What It Takes To Survive

1. Calmness (Don’t Panic)
2. Positive Attitude
3. Driven (Motivated)
4. Adaptability
5. Mentaly Tough

Those who have survived harrowing situations share similar mental traits that allowed them to prevail. These traits help you deal with the Surprise, Confusion, Hesitation, and Fear that can happen during an emergency.

1 – Calmness (Don’t Panic)

The ability to remain calm is one of the key factors in surviving in most emergencies situations, panic kills. When you are panicking, your mind is overwhelmed and you can’t effectively see what is happening, you can’t formulate a plan, you can’t decide what to do and you can’t act on those decisions. If you are able to perform any of these processes you will most likely do them very poorly.

Another reason to remain calm, panic breeds panic. If you start to panic those around you will most likely also panic but if you remain calm, those around you will see that you are calm and making calculated decisions and will be less likely to freak out. This is especially true if those around you are your family.

So, how will you do during an emergency? Unfortunately, it’s impossible to know how you will react until you have been there. Having been in several, life and death emergency situations in my lifetime, I can tell you that every situation is different, the circumstances, the people involved, the environment, it all comes into play. The one thing that I feel allowed me to make decisions and problem solve under stress was being cool-headed.

2 – Positive Attitude

Are you a glass half full or a glass half empty kind of person? If you are honest with yourself you will probably say both. We all have good days and bad days but if really want to survive, you need to try to focus on being positive. A positive attitude can carry you a long way.

3 – Driven (Motivated)

Those who are survivors, have the drive to survive. What is your drive or motivation? Your reason to survive, this is what will get you through to the other side. For some, it’s needing to be there for their wife and kids or family. For others, it’s their faith or religion. Whatever drives you, grab ahold of it and use it. It can be a powerful tool that just might save your life or the life of someone else.

4 – Adaptability

Another important attribute is adaptability. Having the ability to remain flexible when things don’t go as planned because they almost never do. This is about having an understanding that any planning that is done must have plenty of room for adjustment and modification.

5 – Mentally Tough

Mental toughness is really a culmination of all of the above. Being able to utilize all of these attributes together, push forward and not give up.

How to Develop or Improve Your Survival Mindset

In order to develop or improve your survival mindset, you must first understand what is happening to your mind and body during a high-stress event.

The OODA Loop

The OODA loop was developed by John Boyd, a very successful World War II fighter pilot. The OODA loop is a decision-making process that everyone uses you just don’t know it. It breaks down the process into four parts. Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

OBSERVE – During the Observe phase, you are taking in the information needed to make a plan. You need to see and understand what your situation is.

ORIENT – During the Orient phase, you take all the information that you gathered and formulate a couple of plans.

DECIDE – The third phase is where you chose what the best course of action will be. Looking at the situation you may have come up with 2 or 3 different plans, this is when you decide which one is the best for your situation.

ACT – Lastly, you need to implement your plan. This is where the rubber meets the road and you take physical action.

So at this point, you are probably wondering why I am talking about the OODA loop. These processes occur every time you make a decision and all of these phases can take place in the blink of an eye. If you have never experienced any situation like it before, your brain takes longer to find solutions to the problems in each phase. This leads to either slow decisions or poor decisions, or slow and poor decisions, both of which are not ideal when seconds may count.

The 4 Enemies of Survival

During an emergency, there can be a lot going on around you and there are things you will most likely have to contend with, the 4 enemies of survival; Surprise, Confusion, Hesitation, and Fear.

SURPRISE – Many times with good situational awareness, you shouldn’t be caught by surprise. Unfortunately, you won’t always see trouble coming. In these instances, you need to be able to transition from that moment of surprise into your OODA loop as quickly as possible.

CONFUSION – If there is a lot of different things going on, it may be possible that you become confused or even disoriented. When this happens you need to be able to clear your head and collect your thoughts.

HESITATION – I think that the 20th-century Philosopher Allan Watts said it best – “Choice is the act of hesitation that we make, before making a decision.” When you do not have any experience to draw on, your ability to make decisions quickly, is dramatically hindered.

FEAR – Fear is a normal response. Some people handle fear better than others and how you deal with it will be different than how I deal with it. Although we do not like fear, it plays an important part in survival, author Gavin De Becker covers this extensively in his book The Gift of Fear, I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in preparedness and self-defense.

How To Mitigate These Concerns

Many talk about the importance stress management, which is important and we will discuss that a little later, but if that stress never there to begin with, then there is nothing to manage, right? If you incrementally expose your self to similar situations you will start to gain an understanding of how you are going to react under stress. You can do this for some things but you can’t do this for all emergency situations. There’s no way to truly simulate a plane crash or earthquake but there are things you can do to prepare yourself mentally and physically for a wide variety of emergencies.

So, what can you do to combat Surprise, Confusion, Hesitation, Fear, and transition through the OODA loop more quickly? Four of the best ways to overcome these elements and increase your odds of survival is through situational awareness, education, training, and mental visualization.

Situational Awareness

Situational awareness is one of the most important things to develop. If you see trouble coming it’s best to not be around when it shows up. In order to achieve this, you need to be able to recognize and anticipate threats beforehand. Using all of your senses and that feeling in your gut to help guid you.

Education

This may seem like a no brainer but having a general understanding of the world and how things work, will allow you to take advantage of your environment and move through the OODA loop more quickly. Having a thirst for knowledge and learning new skills will never have a negative effect on your life.

Training

Repetitive training will help but training under stress will both help you learn to function under stress and will also educate you on what to do during similar events.

Mental Visualization

You can’t simulate what it’s like to be in a plane crash, or can you? This is where using mental “What if” senarios with your friends and family. The more detailed and vivid your mental visualization is and the more realistic you make it, the more you will benefit from this mental exercise. Just like we exercise our bodies we also need to exercise our minds as well.

During An Event

Now we will discuss stress management during an emergency. This is where preparing your mind and body beforehand will pay dividends.

When I have found myself in high-stress emergency situations. I have noticed a general process that my OODA loop follows. First I look at the big picture, I use my situational awareness and identify what the threats are and then prioritize them. Then, without losing situational awareness, I focus on the most pressing problem, solve it and move onto the next and the next until there are no further problems to solve.

In the initial moments of an emergency, you may have an adrenaline dump, which can affect your sight, hearing and motor skills. To mitigate these effects you can use a unique breathing technique where you breathe in through your nose for 4 seconds, hold it for 4 seconds and breathe out through your mouth for 4 seconds. After a couple of repetitions of this, you should regain your composure. If you don’t have the time to perform this breathing technique, you will just have to dig deep and push through.

Last but not least, you must remain positive. A positive attitude can make all the difference. The second you let negative thoughts in, you open the door for doubt. It’s absolutely imperative that you believe you can and will succeed.

For more information on mindset check out my Resources page <<< here. Look under Mindset for some options that helped me develop my survival mindset.

Final Thoughts

I like the saying, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Taking the time to get your head in the right place before you find yourself in a situation that puts you to the test can mean the difference between living to tell your story and not.