From time to time after all the best training and preparation all we can do is sit back and enjoy the ride. Everything can and will go wrong at some point. At those times the most advantageous reaction is to "embrace the suck". Don't fight it, don't stress it. Getting caught in the moment and stressing are mind killers. Accept your reality and move forward the best way you can. With enough practice and preparation moments of suck can be valuable learning/teaching moments. Lessons from the suck cannot be learned any other way and they are vital to survival. As I mentioned, sooner or later it will all go wrong and when it does can you keep your head and lean on your mentality, ability, attitude and preparation?

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The power of the mind can work two ways; to enhance or decrease our opportunity to survive/succeed. First the mind can become our most critical ally when things get tough. When our plan doesn't work out, when the resources we thought would be available were not, When someone who has it out for you plots against you.... Whatever the scenario may be, how we react and handle our obstacles can determine our success or failure. A perfectly natural reaction to something not going our way to is be disheartened, stressed and remorseful. What we have to persuade ourselves of is things will always happen that we don't want or plan for. If we try to understand how it all fell apart (although there will be time for that at a later time) we can lose precious time. The first things we need to do is get ourselves out of our bad circumstance in a rational, positive way.

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Many people seem to think that survival in the wilderness and survival in the workplace are two different things. In some aspects they are, but when you boil down survival and success they are quite similar. Mental preparation to overcome obstacles is a main common link between the two. How we deal with scenarios regardless of the environment begins and ends with the mind. Preparation, training and physical abilities surely have their places and the true survivor needs to hone each to overcome, but the mind can deal with intangibles that we can't attack directly. Disappointment, stress and plans going bad are things we cannot always prepare for, but the mind has to be ready to face these challenges head on. As it is with business, people will sabotage you, they will lie about you, office politics will mean you're fired for no good reason or you're passed up for that well deserved promotion. Your education, experience, hard work or long hours don't mean jack when confronted by someone with an agenda. So, what do you do? How do you react? How can you react? How do you proceed? These are all questions the quite mind can respond to and respond to well.

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