We often underestimate our strength to survive difficult and even life-threatening situations.

We are all survivors.  We all face challenges and threats that we live to tell about.  Some situations are more extreme than others, but we all have skills that enable us to fight to stay alive and thrive.

You may not be aware of your capacity, but trust me, it is there.  You are an extraordinary survivor.  You have a greater capacity for surviving than you give yourself credit for.  All you have to do is summon your will to live.

Knowing You Can Survive Is Over Half the Battle

Life challenges us.  Outside forces try to break us.  Survival is the ultimate test in living life to the fullest and what you think in your head about your chances is often more than half the battle.

You need to know and understand deep down inside that you are a survivor.  Your body, mind and spirit have more strength than you know.  You have the ability to cope, endure and withstand the harshest and most brutal conditions for much longer than you think.

How do I know?  Well, I’ve had some extreme training where I learned that our limits are well beyond what we think they are.

My Experience at Combat Survival School

I was assigned as an aircrew member in the United States Air Force.  All aircrew members are required to attend what is called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training at Fairchild AFB, Washington.  The course teaches you the skills necessary to remain alive after ejecting or surviving a crash landing in remote and/or hostile territory.

The first part of the course is about how to survive alone in the woods or other extreme environments until you can be rescued.  For me, it was in the mountains in eastern Washington in January.  It was freezing cold.  There was about a foot of snow on the ground.  We had no tents, no food and no clue what to do.  Fortunately, we had an instructor.  Still, for about five days this experience pushed my mental and physical limits.

They deprive you of food in an unfamiliar, extreme environment and then set you off on your own to evade capture while navigating your way from one waypoint to the next.  Once you complete this portion of the training, you still have a long ways to go.

In the second part of the course, you are subjected to prisoner-of-war training.  I had to keep telling myself, “This is just a training environment.  They can’t really hurt me.”  I had to keep reminding myself of this over and over again because they have worked very hard for many years to make it all as stressful and realistic as possible.  Trust me, they are overachievers in this area.

Overall, I think a large part of what I walked away with from the whole experience is that we, as humans, are much stronger, more resilient and mega adaptable than we think we are.  I learned that our minds and bodies can adjust to just about any situation if we keep our wits about us and believe in ourselves.

This is true whether you are stranded in the woods, threatened by an attacker or stricken with an aggressive cancer.  No matter what the peril, you have an amazing ability to fight back.

Life Can Get Very Scary and Overwhelming

I usually write about the positive.  I like to focus on how we can get the most out of life when times are good.  However, a part of living life to the fullest is also knowing how to handle the bad times because we are all going to encounter them.

Lately, I’ve been listening to the audio book version of The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life by Ben Sherwood.  It is an amazing book.  It explores the question, “Why do some people survive while others die?”  I think it is something everyone should read.  It might save your life.

I love the stories from real survivors the most.  Again, the lesson I took away from these riveting tales is that we have a tremendously deeper ability to survive terribly harrowing experiences than I knew even with my experience at SERE.  In the book, people bounce back from near death after jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, falling off cruise ships and being mauled by mountain lions.  It is truly unbelievable what some endure.

Sherwood concludes exactly what I’ve been saying here, “We are all survivors.”  We all have distinct, innate survivor skills that enable us to live through things that would seem like they should break us mentally, physically or emotionally.

Life definitely gets scary sometimes.  If you are in a situation where you need a boost in your ability to survive, then I’d recommend checking out this book and/or the site behind Sherwood’s book that goes by the same name, The Survivors Club.

A Note about The Survivors Club

I want to be clear.  I haven’t received any money or other compensation for mentioning this book.  I just found it personally beneficial and wanted to pass it along.  I know that in many instances nowadays that bloggers are “encouraged” to promote certain products.  That is not the case here. 

I found The Survivors Club on my own and downloaded it via my personal subscription to Audible.com.  This recommendation comes without bias.  If I were going to read the book instead of just listening to it, I would check it out from my local library.  Yes, I’m that frugal.  Anyway, I just wanted you to know this because I don’t want you to think I pushing the book for selfish reasons.

You Can Survive Even the Near Impossible

There are situations where you simply cannot survive no matter what you do.  However, these circumstances are a lot fewer than you think.  Knowing you can survive so you do not lose your will to live is extremely important in extreme situations.  If my mission writing here is to help regular people live life to the fullest, then helping you to increase your survivor mentality so you can live to fight another day is certainly a part of it.  I know that you are an extraordinary survivor.  Do you?

Photo by Frédéric de Villamil

I think we often underestimate our financial power.  We dismiss what is possible simply because we don’t believe we are capable of more.

For example, I think most people think it is next to impossible to pay cash for a nice automobile.  Cars are undoubtedly expensive, but it is possible to buy one without borrowing money.  I’m a regular guy and I recently paid cash for a car for the first time in my life.

I’m not bragging (okay, I am a little), but I’m using this as an example of how we reject our own financial strength and accept a weak position.  This mentality of weakness robs us of our ability to prosper.

We Accept False Limitations About Our Strength

The whole idea for this article came one day when this thought occurred to me, “Look at all the stuff that I’ve bought over the course of my lifetime.”  If you add up the value of all of it, I bet it would be a pretty astounding total.

This got me thinking about how we underestimate our financial strength.  Since most of our purchases are small, we automatically believe that’s the limit of our monetary might.  We’ve never tried “lifting” anything any heavier on our own so our brains accept a false limitation as reality.

We Are Elephants

Let me explain.

Restraining elephants is a difficult problem, but one that was solved ages ago.  When the elephants are still very small, their handlers tie them up with a heavy rope.

They struggle against the rope for hours unable to break free.  Eventually, the baby elephant gives up and the fight is over.  They accept that they are too weak to break the rope and never challenge the belief again even once they become 8,000 pound giants.

Their handlers are then able to tie them up with a rope for the rest of their lives.  One that as adults they could easily snap.  However, the imprinted belief they hold about their strength won’t let them test the rope that holds them back.

We also accept false beliefs about our financial strength early in life and then never test these beliefs again.  We just continue to live in a position of weakness.  We need to stop acting like elephants!

The Way This Plays Out in Our Lives

I think there are a number of ways that our beliefs about our financial strength limit our ability to prosper.  I think regular people subscribe to several of these. 

Here are a few examples of how we underestimate our financial strength:

1.  We falsely believe that we have to live on loans.

I already gave the example of how we think the only way to buy a car is by going into debt, but what about other purchases?  What about paying cash for a home?  Does that sound completely insane?  I’ll admit that this notion challenges my thinking.  However, I used to also believe it was impossible to pay cash for a nice, late-model car unless you were Bill Gates.  Maybe paying cash for a house isn’t all that crazy after all.  You certainly wouldn’t ever have to worry about losing your home to foreclosure if you paid cash instead of taking out a mortgage.  How would that feel?

2.  We falsely believe that living on a budget is too hard.

We have all kinds of false beliefs about living on a budget.  I wrote about a lot of my mental struggles a while back in a series called Things I Learned Living on a Budget – Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.  Obviously, I held a lot of wrong notions about budgeting.  These false beliefs held me back from prospering for years.  Without a budget, I wasted money and drained myself of most of my financial power.  We need to break free of our elephant-like behavior so we can reclaim our true strength!

3.  We falsely believe that we are powerless to change.

An old dog can learn new tricks.  I’m a living example.  A few years ago I challenged my thinking on personal finances and embarked on a Total Money Makeover.  It has changed my life.  I no longer wonder where all the money I make goes.  I know how it is used because I track it and it isn’t all that hard.  I also paid off all my debt except for my mortgage.  It feels good to be able to keep more of my money to do with it as I please instead of having to send it to credit card companies every month.  If this sounds attractive to you, then follow my free guide to budgeting and living debt free.  We are NOT powerless to change.

These types of false beliefs about our financial strength drains us of all our power.  They hold us back and keep us from doing the things necessary to become financially independent.

The Truth About Our Financial Strength

I’ve come a long ways, but I still hold false beliefs that are holding me back.  I’d like to encourage you to do what I’m doing and challenge your long-held beliefs about money. Again, think about all the stuff you’ve bought over the course of your lifetime.  You have financial power.  You’ve just bought into some lies that keep you from using your true strength.

It is time to stop acting like an elephant!  We have to break free from these weak restraints that are holding us back so we can truly prosper.

What false beliefs do you hold about your financial strength?

Photo by Patrick Hoesly

Learning to cope with the hand that life deals us isn’t always easy.  Sometimes we can go through some pretty tough ordeals very early in life.  These experiences can affect our attitudes and beliefs well into adulthood.  Yesterday, in Part One, I told the story of how a series of events occurred in my life and the impact they had on me.  Is something that happened to you in grade school still holding you back from living life to the fullest?  If so, then please read on because today I am going to share how I found the courage and strength to move on after these events.  I have had a great life and I know there is still more awesome times to come.  We do not have to let old wounds destroy us or those we love.  It is possible to make a difference.

It is important that we learn from other people’s experiences.  It is my sincere hope that by hearing what helped me, it will provide you with insights that might allow you to overcome something in your own life or help someone else.  It seems that there are plenty of kids out there that need help.  Just listen to the news and hear what is happening in our schools today to confirm this.  We need people with courage to stand in the gap and help these kids deal with the issues that are haunting them. 

A short recap of where we left off in the story.

I was a preteen boy in middle school and my confidence was shot.  My home life had disintegrated and I was doing poorly in school.  I had been mistakenly labeled and put in what was widely known as a class for the “dumb” kids.  I had a bully coach riding me relentlessly and all the emotional stress caused me to start having stomachaches.  I was struggling and wanting very much to escape.  I could have just folded.  I could have succumbed to it all and resigned from life, but I didn’t.  I found the strength and encouragement to move on.  Here are the things that I believe helped me the most.

The power of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

My grandma always told me as far back as I can remember that I was going to be somebody when I grew up.  She repeated to me that one day I would be President of the United States.  She created a positive, self-fulfilling prophecy in me.  This started well before my troubles in middle school, but I believe that it created an attitude in me that refused to give up.  It made me want to succeed and believe that I could even when everything was working against me. 

I am trying very hard to use this same technique with my children.  I tell them often that they are going to be successful in their lives.  I help them develop images in their minds of what their lives will look like in the future.  I think this is a powerful way that one person can make a significant difference in the life of a child.  Of course, even as adults it can mean a lot when someone expresses confidence in our ability to deal with a situation. 

A school counselor came to the rescue.

It amazes me still to this day when I look back that it took so long for an adult to realize that my stomachaches were caused by the emotional stress of my circumstances.  It often seems that adults are either blind to situations in kid’s lives or reluctant to get involved.  Thankfully for me, there was a school counselor that finally took me aside and started discussing with me why my grades had slipped and what was causing my stomachaches.  This one outsider and confidante provided an outlet where I could discuss my problems.  It seemed to make an immediate difference.  Just knowing that one other person in the world cared and empathized with my situation gave me a lot of encouragement.  She also helped me sort out my feelings and develop a plan to get my grades back on track.  Talking with a friend or being a friend, especially to a child can really have a tremendous impact.  Don’t wait for them to come to you.  People in distress aren’t thinking straight.  Ask and listen.  This is all you need to do.

A new environment gave me a fresh start.

In my situation, a new playground with new playmates proved to be very beneficial.  Sometimes a person just needs a change of environment to help them get over things from the past.  The next school year my mom remarried and we moved to a new school district.  It was in the same town, but the new school offered an entirely different atmosphere.  I also had the chance to make some new friends that knew nothing of my past.  The teachers didn’t know me and weren’t familiar with my problems from the last two years.  I had a clean slate, a chance to start fresh.  It worked wonders for me.  My grades rebounded and my stomachaches went away.  My social life began to recover and I was happy again.  I had hope. 

Of course, I think you have to be careful with this one.  It worked for me, but in another situation a move could cause more stress.  I think the fact that I just changed schools without moving to a new town helped.  The school was where a lot of my problems had manifested themselves.  By getting away from that environment, I think it helped me to leave all that behind.

I had something bigger to believe in.

Faith in a higher power is an amazing elixir for difficulties in life.  Also, when you belong to a group such as a church or support group you have caring people around you to lean on during difficult times.  Fortunately, my parents had gotten me involved in Sunday School at a local church before any of these events took place in my life.  I remember clearly the feeling of optimism I got when I read inspirational verses from the Bible.  Things like Psalms 37:4 that states, “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.”  When you don’t feel like you have the power to change a bad situation, positive, encouraging words like these give hope.  We all need to hope in something.  Having a support group and belief in a power bigger than myself and my problems has gotten me through more than one struggle in my life.  I don’t know how people that are all alone without something to give hope are able to handle these kind of difficulties.

Conclusion

This was a dark season in my life, but because a few people cared, I got through it.  Part of the things that helped me were in place before the hard times came.  This is important.  Had my grandmother not instilled a positive prophecy in me beforehand and had my parents not had me involved in Sunday School, I am convinced things would have been harder for me.  Of course, even with these things, I still needed the new friends and guidance of a caring adult to move on.  If you are struggling or even more importantly if you know a child that is going through a tough time, I hope you have found something here that you can do to help.  Take it from me.  It is truly amazing the difference it will make!

Photos by Tim in Sydney and kilobar and Leonard John Matthews

It is amazing that a series of negative events that happened so long ago can still have such an impact on our lives.  When I was in middle school, I had a series of what I would call incidents happen to me that I believe still have a profound impact on my level of confidence to this day.  I think that as a result, I developed certain habits of behavior that aren’t always productive.  Are things that happened to you in grade school still holding you back?  It is an interesting question to ponder.

A part of living life to the fullest is honest and open self-evaluation.  It is about exploring areas of our lives where we can improve.  I want to continually reflect and learn about myself so I can strive for excellence.  Today, I thought I’d share some of my story and tomorrow I am going to continue with how I was able to deal with these issues and move on.

How an achievement test started it all.

The best that I can remember, it started with a math achievement test.  I had always done pretty well in school.  However, I vividly recall this one achievement test and what happened.  Each student was required to complete a multiple choice math test using one of those sheets with all the circles.  It was the kind you had to complete with only a #2 pencil and every circle had to be filled in completely for the computer to read it properly.  These math tests were timed and strictly proctored.  Somewhere in the middle of the test, I accidentally skipped a line of circles so all my answers were off by one line.  I tried to fix it, but I ran out of time.  Unfortunately, I didn’t understand the importance of the test at the time, so I didn’t tell anyone. 

A few weeks later the results came back and obviously I didn’t do well at all.  What I then learned was that these tests were being used to divide us up into different classes.  There were three classes.  The kids that scored the highest were in the “smart” class so they could continue to be challenged.  The kids that scored in the average range were in another class and those of us that scored below average were in what everyone recognized as the “dumb” class.  I was devastated.  I just knew I should have been in the “smart” class.  It was where all my friends were at.  It was where I belonged.  However, despite my history of good grades in math, no one questioned the achievement test and I was left in the slow learners class.  It was a blow to my ego and in my mind a travesty of justice.  I was dazed and confused and I think a little in shock that adults would let this happen to me.

The summer that shook my world.

Summer started and I soon found out that my parents were a little preoccupied at the time  of my achievement test which is probably why they didn’t step in.  One bright, sunny afternoon while playing some basketball with me, my dad announces that my mom is moving out and taking my brother and I with her.  I felt like the rug was jerked out from underneath me.  My world was starting to spin out of control.  It seems like it was only a few days later that our stuff was loaded up and moved into an apartment.  I was so emotionally upset by my parents’ divorce that I literally felt sick for months. 

When the new school year started, I remember calling my mom often to come pick me up because I had a stomachache.  I did this over and over.  She took me to the doctor, but of course, they couldn’t find anything physically wrong with me.  I now know that it was the emotional stress that was making me feel sick.  However, no one else seemed to get it.  Eventually, my mom began refusing to come get me.  She had to work and there wasn’t anything that the doctors could find that was wrong with me.  It was a tough time.

The coach that didn’t care.

This new school year brought another challenge to my shaky little life.  I encountered my first male teacher that was also a coach.  My confidence and ego were already badly bruised, but this guy didn’t know or care.  He taught science and he liked to intimidate.  I was obviously very distracted and vulnerable.  My grades were slipping.  I started struggling in his class.  His method of motivation was to try to bully his students into doing better.  He jumped on me and proceeded to try to use his middle school coaching skills to get me moving.  Given where I was at emotionally, this did not bode well for me.  It felt like he was a drill sergeant that was sent in to break me.  He was just about the final straw.  The additional pressure that he added to my life almost made me give up altogether.

How all this affected me.

It seems we are so vulnerable as children to these incidents.  Our minds are so open and primed for influence.  I know my experiences were mild compared to what many go through with physical, sexual, and emotional abuse.  I don’t know how they endure it.  Nevertheless, my experiences are no less valid.  They influenced my way of thinking and seeing myself.  In addition, I think these events took place at a very critical stage in my life.  I was a preteen boy that was just starting to try to figure out who he was in the world.  Unfortunately, the answers that were handed to me weren’t pretty.

These incidents told me that unjust things can happen that are out of my control to fix.  As a result, I started expecting bad things to occur to me.  I also felt powerless.  This is what I hated the most.  I wanted to fix it, but I couldn’t, so instead I tried to just roll over and take the beating that life offered.  I felt sorry for myself.  I adopted a kind of “poor me” way of dealing with negative experiences.  I started to accept the belief that I was truly powerless.  I wanted to just give up so that I could escape.  When you start thinking this way, people sense it and they do one of two things.  Some just move away from you and others attack.  It is like the weak wildebeest on the African grasslands.   Its friends around it in the herd move away to protect themselves and the predators move in for an easy kill.

How I dealt with it and moved on with my life.

As much as I wanted to, I didn’t give up.  I moved on.  I got through it.  In Part 2 tomorrow, I will tell you what I think gave me the strength and encouragement to do it.  We all encounter difficulties in life.  How we deal with these and how we help other people deal with them are what differentiates those that succeed from those that don’t.  I hope that by sharing my story, you will be able to better help yourself or someone that you are close to in your life.

If you have had similar experiences in your life, I would love to hear about them.  Please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.

Photos by Tim in Sydney and colourize and saltoricco