At some stage most of us go through a time when we have to be strong and brave. Whenever we find ourselves in a dangerous and continually threatening situation it is natural to ask “how long will this continue?” For some of us this question really is “how long do we need to be brave?”
Sleepless nights, fear and anxiety have their impact on all areas of your life, affecting your personal health and relationships. Here’s how to build resilience and courage.
Although people will often tell you to “be strong” or “be brave” few people actually know how to be brave. People will often tell you that bravery is something you are born with, someone is brave and someone else is a coward.
It’s not that simple.
Bravery is relative, it is also context specific. Above all it is all about what is going on in YOUR mind. There is a story of a World War II bomber pilot who had flown into through enemy anti-aircraft fire on numerous occasions. He said he never felt fear. There was too much to do.
The bravest thing he ever did was walk through a rice paddy in Burma. He never got a medal for it. There wasn’t an enemy soldier present for 50 miles but he had perceived that the danger was high and walking, he had nothing to occupy his mind – and it fixated on the danger.
I was once snorkelling with a friend of mine at a seal colony (in a wetsuit) and I asked my friend if he was ever afraid of sharks. He looked at me as if he hadn’t even considered the possibility and said, “If I think about it, of course I’m afraid of them. I just don’t think about it.”
He mightn’t be one of my smartest friends, but he’s certainly the bravest, and amazingly enough, he’s still alive.
The Romans believed that bravery could be taught. With an army of 500,000 men they protected an empire that encompassed Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. They regularly fought armies much larger than their own. The Roman legionaries were definitely brave.
The Romans taught their soldiers to be brave by accustoming them to the sense of danger and teaching them how to respond to it. Danger triggers adrenalin which can significantly enhance your strength, awareness and abilities.
In a dangerous situation you can become another person, if you know what to do.
The key is to focus on what to do, what you can do and responding to the situation. People who are afraid focus on the danger, the possibility of being maimed or killed and the possibility of having loved ones maimed and killed. They’re not pretty thoughts. In crisis situations don’t think them.
Easier said than done, you say.
Exactly.
And it might take some effort to teach yourself not to do it, but it can be learnt, and all it takes is a little bit of time.
What we want you to be able to do in an emergency is to replace those terrifying and unpleasant thoughts which trigger fear and flight and replace them with immediate actions that need to be done. But the first thing to do is general preparation.
General Preparation
- Have an emergency kit ready, check the Civil Defence website for suggestions
- Make sure your family knows how to respond to emergencies
- Have meeting points arranged so you can meet up
- Minimise dangers at home and work
By taking these steps you know that you have done everything you can to minimise the danger. This isn’t a guarantee but it means the chances are in your favour that you and your family will survive. This means that when the ground starts to shake or any other emergency begins, that you are set up for survival.
Research the Experience
Know what you are going to do when an emergency occurs. Do some research so you know what the cause is and what the best response is.
Knowing what is causing the emergency by itself makes it feel safer.
Rehearse the Experience
Now you know:
- what will happen in an emergency
- know that you have safeguarded yourself as best you can
- know what the best response is
You can mentally rehearse various emergency scenarios. There are several effective NLP techniques for doing this, if you know something of NLP you can do these yourself.
They include:
- The Swish
- The Trauma Cure
- Chained Anchors
- Timeline processes
- Mental Rehearsal
For those less familiar with these techniques, the best approach is simply mentally rehearsing what you are going to do and how you are going to do it. If there are family members that you need to look after, include helping them in your plans. Play these plans like a movie over and over several times. The repetition moves the thoughts into your subconscious mind so that when you need to, you can act immediately.
This preparation will enable you to act immediately, without thinking, to do what you need to do. Like the WWII bomber pilot, when you know what to do in an emergency, you just don’t have time to get yourself scared.
For more information and to book a consultation, contact Peter.
© Peter Campbell, NLP Master Practitioner, www.CogniscientNLP.com.
There is nothing so disheartening as competing and knowing that you are being beaten by a player who isn’t as good as you are, or who trains less seriously than you do. Every sportsperson has participated in games where the worse player has somehow managed to win. This was particularly galling when I was the player being defeated and I could do seemingly nothing as my opponent, lacking technique and finesse, doggedly took my game to pieces and came out the bloody victor at the end. Most sportspeople know of this experience and have often experienced it both ways, taking satisfaction at knowing that they have beaten someone who is better than they are. So how does it happen?
This is a clear demonstration of how what we do with our minds affects how we perform and who we are. As human beings we have a huge amount of control over what our bodies do and how they behave and react. Since we are complicated beings, the majority of these tasks are assigned to the subconscious mind (and a good thing too, imagine what would happen if we absent mindedly forgot to breath) and since the subconscious usually operates beneath our conscious awareness we lose control of this vast and complicated system which runs our bodies for us. With NLP techniques we can take back control of some of these functions and reset the system so it operates more efficiently and towards the outcomes which we set. This is extremely useful in sport when often we have to force our bodies to operate at a peak level the logical and sensible option is simply to take a break, eat some food and relax until we have some more energy and can focus more easily on the game. Sport just doesn’t let you do that, so instead we have to force our bodies and if the subconscious is unwilling, we literally have to fight against ourselves, which distracts us from the important task of focusing on the game or the race and putting all our resources behind winning.
In other cases it is a matter of self belief. Steve Gurney expected to lose his last Coast to Coast because the running leg of the competition had been increased and he had short legs. Dr. Richard Bolstad, who was working with Steve Gurney, took him through some processes which altered the belief that he couldn’t win. For the first time ever Steve won the running section of the Coast to Coast. He attributes his success entirely to NLP and the work that Richard Bolstad did with him (see Lucky Legs, Steve Gurney).