These are the top 5 lessons I’ve picked up along the way. I hope you find them helpful on your next expedition.
1. There is a heartbeat in my chest and air in my lungs.
This has been my mantra that has seen me through time and time again. It’s about going back to the basics in life. My shelter collapsed…I’m ok, there’s a heartbeat in my chest and air in my lungs. Storm put out my fire… there’s a heartbeat in my chest and air in my lungs. Chipmunks stole my food…there’s a heartbeat in my chest and air in my lungs. Traps empty every day…There is a heartbeat in my chest and air in my lungs. No matter what happened to me, I would repeat these simple words to and found the strength to refocus keep going. May you find similar strength in them on your next adventure.
2. Be Disciplined, Deliberate, and Decisive (The 3 D’s as I call them)
Disciplined: You are in control of yourself, your mind, and your body. It is normal and perhaps unavoidable for your mind to wander in a survival situation. It wanders to your home, loved ones, your feelings, your pain. The important thing is not that your mind wanders but rather that you have the mental ability realized when your are drifting and to refocus on the task at hand.
Deliberate: You act purposefully. You are not fumbling your way through, relying on chance or divine intervention. Everything you do you do for a reason with a thought process behind it. You do it intentionally.
Decisive: You trust in your wits, will, and instincts. You act without second guessing yourself and without regret. You see those actions to completion.
3. Overcome the need for comfort.
Comfort is a luxury. Comfort is a luxury. I’ll say it a third time… comfort is a luxury. We don’t need to be comfortable, and in my experience, the best wilderness survivalists have the greatest ability to tolerate discomfort. Conversely, my students who struggled the most were not the ones with the worst wilderness skills but rather the ones who became obsessed with discomfort. “I’m tired…I’m cold…I’m hungry” were the thoughts that consumed their mind, and all they wanted to do was sit by the fire and wait the trip out. They weren’t working on their shelters. They weren’t working on getting calories. They weren’t working on improving their circumstances. Discomfort both consumed and paralyzed them. It prevented them from taking disciplined, deliberate, and decisive action. Discomfort can halt people in their tracks, leading to more discomfort, and a never ending vicious cycle of discomfort that only gets worse and worse. Learn to tolerate high levels of discomfort by experience discomfort before you have to. The this means exposing yourself to the discomforts ahead of time, in training. For example, try sleeping in a debris shelter you built before you have to one day.
At the end of the day, regardless of how hard you trained, you are going to experience levels of discomfort that you were not ready for. no matter how uncomfortable you get, remember that there is a heartbeat in your chest and air in your lungs. You are still here on this Earth and have an opportunity to take disciplined, deliberate and decisive action to improve your circumstances. And so long as you have that, you’ve got it made.
4. Fail often.
If you fail often, it means that you are doing something. It means that you are facing a challenge and pushing your limit. If you never fail, you are either never being challenged or you are not in a true emergent survival situation. In a true survival situation, you will be challenged and you will fail often. Learn from each failure. Don’t let the frustration get to you. Remember, the fact that you can experience failure and frustration means that you are still alive!
5. See the beauty in your situation.