8 things the world's most extraordinary survivors can teach you about resilience

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last updated 10 January 2015

I see a lot of stuff about resilience, persistence, and grit. What I don't see is a lot of legitimate info on how to actually increase those qualities.

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M. Ephimia Morphew, a psychologist and founder of the Society for Human Performance in Extreme Environments, told me of a series of accidents she'd been studying in which scuba divers were found dead with air in their tanks and perfectly functional regulators. "Only they had pulled the regulators out of their mouths and drowned. It took a long time for researchers to figure out what was going on." It appears that certain people suffer an intense feeling of suffocation when their mouths are covered. That led to an overpowering impulse to uncover the mouth and nose. The victims had followed an emotional response that was in general a good one for the organism, to get air. But it was the wrong response under the special, non-natural, circumstances of scuba diving. [Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why]

Wrosch found that people who quit their unattainable goals saw physical and psychological benefits. "They have, for example, less depressive symptoms, less negative affect over time," he says. "They also have lower cortisol levels, and they have lower levels of systemic inflammation, which is a marker of immune functioning. And they develop fewer physical health problems over time." [Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain]

"This is not to be misinterpreted as a bad thing. In fact, being delusional helps us become more effective. By definition, these delusions don't have to be accurate. If they were totally accurate, your goals would be too low." Goldsmith noticed that although illusions of control expose people to risk of failure, they do something else that is very interesting: they motivate people to keep trying even when they've failed… "Successful people fail a lot, but they try a lot, too. When things don't work, they move on until an idea does work. Survivors and great entrepreneurs have this in common." [Supersurvivors: The Surprising Link Between Suffering and Success]

Denying or distorting a bad situation may be comforting in the short term, but it's potentially harmful in the long run because it will be almost impossible to solve a problem unless you first admit you have one. In contrast, having an especially strong belief in one's personal capabilities, even if that belief is somewhat illusory, probably helps you to solve problems… A useful, if somewhat simplistic, mathematical formula might be: a realistic view of the situation + a strong view of one's ability to control one's destiny through one's efforts = grounded hope. [

As the days went by, he continued to concentrate on strategies for survival. At one point, a rubber life belt floated by and he grabbed it. He had heard that the Japanese would use aircraft to strafe shipwrecked Americans. The life belt could be blown up through a rubber tube. He cut the tube off and kept it, reasoning that if the Japanese spotted them, he could slip under water and breathe through the tube. He was planning ahead. He had a future in his mind, and good survivors always concentrate on the present but plan for the future. Thus, taking it day by day, hour by hour, and sometimes minute by minute, did Don McCall endure. [Surviving Survival: The Art and Science of Resilience]

Johnson recounts how officers are trained to take a gun from an assailant at close quarters, a maneuver they practice by role-playing with a fellow officer. It requires speed and deftness: striking an assailant's wrist with one hand to break his grip while simultaneously wresting the gun free with the other. It's a move that officers had been in the habit of honing through repetition, taking the gun, handing it back, taking it again. Until one of their officers, on a call in the field, took the gun from an assailant and handed it right back again. [Make It Stick]

Simpson was learning what it means to be playful in such circumstances: "A pattern of movements developed after my initial wobbly hops and I meticulously repeated the pattern. Each pattern made up one step across the slope and I began to feel detached from everything around me. I thought of nothing but the patterns." His struggle had become a dance, and the dance freed him from the terror of what he had to do. [Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why]

When his fifteen-year-old brother Aaron came in, Leon was suddenly filled with love and a feeling of responsibility for the two boys. He was shedding the cloak of the victim in favor of the role of the rescuer. Terrence Des Pres, in his book The Survivor, makes the point that in the journey of survival, helping someone else is as important as getting help. [Surviving Survival: The Art and Science of Resilience]

Helping someone else is the best way to ensure your own survival. It takes you out of yourself. It helps you to rise above your fears. Now you're a rescuer, not a victim. And seeing how your leadership and skill buoy others up gives you more focus and energy to persevere. The cycle reinforces itself: You buoy them up, and their response buoys you up. Many people who survive alone report that they were doing it for someone else (a wife, boyfriend, mother, son) back home. [Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why]

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